Really.
Enough with the nonsense of “not voting for Trump is as bad as voting for Clinton” or “not voting for Clinton is as bad as voting for Trump.”
I cannot, in good conscience, vote for either of these two candidates. Maybe I’ll vote for Johnson. Most likely, I’ll just vote in the down-ballot races.
Here’s an analogy which is, admittedly, incomplete: consider the pacifist.
It’s always been hard for me to accept the idea of pacifism. Sure, a pacifist refuses to fight in the military. Some have even done so at great personal cost, and have accepted roles as medics and the like which endanger their lives without the ability to fight back. But what if the United States itself were attacked? Is it right to remain steadfast in one’s refusal to fight back, even if that meant subjugation under a foreign power, even if that foreign power wished not simply to help themselves to some of our natural resources but literally enslave us, or even annihilate us? Is it right to remain nonviolent, even if one is under personal attack? So far as I understand pacifism, they believe it’s so, that the morally right thing to do is in fact not to kill another person, even under self-defense — and not with an expectation that someone else will do this for them, but with an acceptance that the consequences may be grave, but so be it. And, in the end, they are not “morally at fault” for the outcome — the attackers are.
If I refuse to vote for Clinton to save us from Trump, or Trump to save us from Clinton, am I to blame for whatever ruinous policy decisions the future president makes? No. The people who vote for and implement those decisions, and their supporters, and those who voted for them, are.
Image: own photograph
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