The rise of Trumpism has made this — by light years — the ugliest, most classless, most vulgar, coarsest, most unworthy presidential contest in my lifetime.
One might perhaps say that Mr. Trump has merely unleashed the angry incivility already lurking below the surface. And, sadly, that’s almost certainly true. (It doesn’t speak well for the state of our nation.) But he’s also been the principal contributor.
He’s mocked women, boasted about the alleged size of his genitalia, advocated war crimes, mocked the disabled, suggested unconstitutional measures against unpopular religious minorities, mocked Mitt Romney (a far more decent man than he is), ridiculed Marco Rubio’s sweat disorder, boasted endlessly (and perhaps dishonestly) about his vast wealth, supported violent thuggery, routinely branded his political opponents liars, bragged about his supposedly great vocabulary, mocked Seventh-Day Adventists, stereotyped Mexicans, questioned whether a Cuban can really be an Evangelical, quarreled with the pope and several ex-presidents of Mexico, derided John McCain’s military service in Vietnam, and a host of other genuinely reprehensible things. And now this. (For one response, see here.)
Opposition to the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, in my judgment, isn’t merely a political choice. It’s a moral duty.
I keep asking myself how any decent person out there can possibly regard Mr. Trump as suited for the presidency of the United States, for the office once held by men like George Washington and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.
I understand voting for him if the choice is between him and Mrs. Clinton — though I personally see no compelling policy-related reason to choose one leftist over the other, and though I will vote for neither of them in the general elections — but I cannot comprehend choosing Mr. Trump if virtually any other option is available.
He is unfit for the White House.
He is destroying the Republican Party. He will not, and must not, be president of this country.
P.S. Representative of the corrosive effect that Trumpism has had on American political discourse, within the past two or three days one Trumpist (apparently a Latter-day Saint) has taken to branding me a Nazi “brown shirt” because I’ve argued that Americans ought to vote against Mr. Trump in a free and democratic election. This proves, he says, that I seek to suppress the free agency of those who support Donald Trump and that I dream of rounding them up into camps.
I found his allegations unspeakably bizarre. But more than that: My father participated in the liberation of one of the major Nazi concentration camps. To be called a Nazi simply for speaking publicly about my (entirely democratic, legal, and constitutional) political views is, to me, profoundly offensive and un-American.
What hath Trump wrought?
I’ve never seen such hateful divisiveness before, and to experience it from members of the Church is deeply disheartening.
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