An open letter to the American people
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| All the dignity that the Clinton v. Trump trainwreck is worthy of responding to with. (courtesy: Mitch Carter on Instagram). |
Fellow Americans,
I take voting—informed voting—seriously. I take good government seriously. I take our glorious republic seriously. And that is why, paradoxic as it may sound, I cast a ballot this morning with the name of a dead gorilla written in as my choice to be our next President. I do so as a pointed reflection on how 31 million of our countrymen conspired throughout the past spring to make a joke of this ballot.
To vote for someone is to believe, even if you view them as only the least undesirable option, that a candidate is at some basic level fit for the given office. I do honestly believe that Hillary Clinton is crooked, underachieved, too often wrong on policy, did recklessly endanger state secrets in a fit of paranoia—then shamelessly lied to the American public about it, and is generally unworthy of the Presidency which she truly seems to feel owed. But this does not in any way mitigate in my mind the blatant unfitness of Donald J. Trump, a crass, erratic, inveterate liar and know-nothing charlatan, who not so long ago repeatedly donated to the Clinton political machine he now makes a show of disparaging, and defended Bill Clinton in the victim in his own sex scandals, before more recently, and ominously, replacing Slick Willie as his political muse with the murderous imperial Russian gangster-President Vladimir Putin.
One dangerous, shameless liar does not absolve another. Unfitness does not excuse unworthiness. No matter what one or the other have spent the past year arguing to the contrary, it remains that any individual whose public life is so defined by such pervasive defects in character is unfit to stand as the leader of a free people. I consult today especially the memory of my beloved grandfather, whose journey of 5,000 miles across land and sea to escape the most depraved tyrannies of the twentieth century was not made to revel to in the criminal mediocrity of miscreants and appeasers. I think this morning as well of the founding generation, men who roused a nation into existence out of colonial subjugation, firm in the belief that it was within their power to remake the world, rather than settle for what was and was found wanting, and pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to that end. Those who have found themselves so moved as to believe there is a genuine choice to be made today are within their rights to do so. But with mine and our heritage in mind, I choose today to not participate in this, so that none shall ever be able to say I was among those who accepted responsibility for this damned nonsense. One or the other will win anyways, that much I accept is almost certainly true. But whichever it is will be gone and replaced in due course as have been all who came before them, and with any luck ushered out by a resurgence of good taste, sober thought, and sane, decent sentiments. In the meantime, for mine own small part, either-or shall not enjoy the pleasure of my confidence.
Dissenting,
Mitchell D. Carter
American individual.
-Mitch Carter.
