And so here we are. Stuck between a witch and a clown.
A witch with a crumpled, tired face from years of deceit, lies and unbridled political corruption employed for the sake of personal profit.
A clown with an orange face, a gaudy commercial empire and a voracious appetite for attention and ego enlargement.
Like many, I remain unimpressed, uninspired and unattached to either.
Like many, I was pulling for someone else in the primary race.
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But that time has past. We are where we are; this is what it is.
But many disagree.
Many are fighting the notion that we have but this binary choice left in front of us. The never-Trumpers carry on their obstinance like a child refusing to lie down when the lights are out and the bedtime story has been read.
I listen to these points of view and cries for another way.
The last threads of hope for an emergent Libertarian candidate, like an Austin Peterson or the like.
The vows to take a stand with a principled write in.
And the frustrated deliberate intentions to disengage altogether.
I empathize with all of these sentiments. Really, I do.
But I can't stay living in any of those spaces. I just can't.
I know they can feel good, and they can sometimes feel like honor.
But they aren't real and therefore aren't really good or honorable.
They are nothing but inventive ways to avoid the truth and the practical reality of the choice at hand.
I'd love to see a Libertarian candidate gain some actionable momentum, especially one with a reasonable approach to foreign policy and the border.
And at this point, I'm tempted to write in either Ted Nugent, Brad Thor or Vinnie Stigma for president.
Any of them would be wildly better than the options before us.
I'm also partially tempted to just walk away from the process entirely.
But life doesn't really work this way. Or at least work well.
Often times you have to deal with the reality in front of you even if it is a tragic moral choice.
As an entrepreneur and a father, I know this all too well.
Some of the same pundits I hear saying that it is unconscionable to vote for Trump as merely a means to block Hillary also clearly delineated that a choice to keep Mubarak in power in Egypt, an arguable lesser evil, would have been preferable than to have allowed his displacement by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood as a result of the misguided Arab spring.
Somehow making a delineation in a situation of clear tragic moral choice was seen as palatable in a post-Arab spring analysis, but unthinkable in a Trump vs. Hillary election dichotomy.
Now I know these two scenarios aren't one-to-one comparatively. I get that we should strive to attain a higher hope for our election choices. But in terms of logic, the unavoidable reality of what's really in front of us still requires the same admission.
Because that's what we have.
A tragic moral choice.
I now choose to live in this space. The space that sees this tragic moral choice for what it is.
And in this space, I believe that not to choose is to choose.
Not to choose, in essence, could be a choice for the potential greater of two inevitable evils.
So I will pull the lever for the clown.
And I'll pray the clown gets boxed in.
Boxed in by influencers – whether it's Mr. Newt, his children, or Roger Ailes.
Boxed in by strong thought leadership that reminds him of the clear signaling he sent that he would populate SCOTUS with constitutional conservatives.
Boxed in by foreign-policy influencers that constantly remind him that Islam is not a religion of peace, that the Iranian regime is not an honest partner, and that ISIS is an apocalyptic hegemonic death cult whose actions are driven by their desire to hasten the return of the Mahdi, their Islamic Sunni messiah – who just so happens to resemble the attributes of the biblical antichrist.
Boxed in the way Gingrich's '94 Republican House boxed in slick Willy and forced meaningful welfare reform.
Boxed in by the evangelicals who have risked the tarnishing of their reputations to commit counsel to Mr. Trump.
And boxed in by the God of the universe who equips even the most unlikely of secular leaders. (Isaiah 45:5 "I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me.")