In one day, most of you will cast a vote for who you want to serve as the next president of the United States.
By now you likely have been inundated with articles, commercials and personal appeals to do your part as both a citizen in this democracy and a beneficiary of the people who shed their blood and gave their lives so that you could have that very right.
This is not one of those pleas.
If you are not inclined to vote, there is probably nothing I can do or say in the next few paragraphs to change your mind. If, however, you are one of the people who are smart enough to participate in your destiny and the direction of the country you live in, I have but one request of you:
Help us beat the assholes. Please.
Look, I don’t care to know your particular party affiliation, your race, gender or sexuality. All the policy points, controversies and debates surrounding this election boil down to one unavoidable fact: Donald Trump is an asshole, and he must be defeated.
I know this word is offensive and shouldn’t be used in mixed company, but in the search for other adjectives, none of them fit as well. “Jerk” seemed too innocuous. “Cretin” was just too British. “Motherf—ker” was a little too abrasive and takes too long to type (plus, he might take “motherf—ker” as a compliment, because we can be sure that Donald Trump has actually tried to … you know.)
Assholes are what is wrong with this country, and I’m not talking about the medium-strength schmucks who take up two parking spaces or get in the express lane with 34 items in their cart. I’m talking about the people who—like Trump—believe that stopping and frisking random black men will make a city safe, or that a level of celebrity makes it cool to fondle the genitalia of strange women. A—holes want to take away your health care. Assholes perpetuate the rape culture. Assholes simultaneously believe all Mexicans are lazy and they are taking all the jobs. Assholes are ruining America.
I don’t have enough space or a strong-enough command of the English language to catalog the litany of misdeeds perpetrated by the carrot-colored comb-over. Whether you call it racism, xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, bullying, misogyny or random p—sy grabbing, there can be no debate that Trump’s asshole credentials are beyond reproach. And by the transitive properties of assholeness, his supporters must also be included in the circle of assholeness. If you support an asshole, then you must—at the very least—have asshole tendencies. That’s just math.
What we face Tuesday is perhaps the last stand of the right-thinking, normal human beings against the rising tide of people who think it is acceptable to publicly make fun of mentally disabled people, belittle the parents of a dead soldier, blame a woman’s steadfastness on belligerence brought on by her menstruation, brag about sexual assault and discriminate against people because of their religion. Trump supporters don’t simply turn a blind eye to these shenanigans; they want him to serve as the leader of the free world.
Let there be no mistake about what I am saying: If you are a Trump supporter, you are an asshole. If you are a Trump supporter, you endorse a platform that proposes to kick Muslims out of the country. If you pull a lever for the Dorito-skinned sociopath, you think it’s cool to have a commander in chief whose only grasp of foreign policy seems to be groping Miss Universe contestants. If you vote for Donald Trump, you are climbing in bed with alt-right neo-Nazis who believe that white people are a superior race and that “slaves built the U.S. the way cows built McDonald's.” You agree with punishing women who choose to have abortions. You are anti-woman. You are pro-bullying. Voting for Donald Trump is choosing an evil kind of hate that you can never roll back or put in reverse. You can’t stuff the devil back into his hole.
Even if you are reluctant about Hillary Clinton, at least you know there is no doubt about one facet of her candidacy: She is intelligent and experienced enough to govern. Stop believing that Trump supporters just want to “take it to the Washington politicians.” You can’t burn down America because you don’t like the color of the drapes. Supporting Trump is not cutting off your nose to spite your face. Supporting Trump is like cutting off your face to spite your face.
There is a quote by the philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke that reads: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. … All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
That quote is bulls—t.
Evil triumphs because assholes exist. We are now engaged in an existential battle against an asshole constituency that can rule for the next four years. It is up to us to beat back the rising tyranny of pink-necked, Confederate-flag-wavers who think women, Latinos, the disabled, non-Christians and nonwhites are all subjects to be suppressed so they can take this country back to the time when the iron fist of the white man reigned supreme.
If you really want to make America great again, there is another quote by another Caucasian philosopher and statesman, and a foremost expert on assholes, that sums it up perfectly:
“You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime. "—Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem
On Tuesday, you have but one choice …
Don’t be an asshole.