I realized, as I woke up with a bang this morning earlier than I wanted to, that I am far more emotionally, intellectually and patriotically, never mind ethically, invested in the Presidential election result in 2024 than in any previous election.

The reasons, I hope, have been made reasonably clear here, not just over the course of the campaign, but over the past eight years, ever since the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck chugged out of the metaphorical station. I also am, alternately, furious and amused by the ridiculous reality that the candidate I feel so strongly has to win today for the good of the nation is probably the worst Presidential candidate one of the two major parties has ever offered to the American public on Election Day, at least since the Civil War, with the exception of Woodrow Wilson, Trump himself and Hillary in 2016, and Joe Biden in 2020. I also am more anxious about what the Post 2024 Election Ethics Train Wreck will bring.

I am certain that if Trump wins, the Left will riot, and as the rioting will occur during a dead-in-the-water Democratic Administration, it will not be controlled and may even be encouraged. Make no mistake, this will be 100% the fault of the Axis of Unethical Conduct and the Harris campaign. They have used fear and hate as primary weapons against Donald Trump when they weren’t trying to impeach him or lock him up, and raised the intensity of this unethical—I could say “evil”—strategy to previously unimaginable levels when they realized that they had nothing positive—well, unless you consider aborting more babies positive—to justify another Democratic Presidency.

The party and its unethical news media useful idiots deserve to be punished, though I am not sure how. Both may have damaged themselves sufficiently to qualify as condign justice, but I doubt it. They have divided, wounded, scarred and imperiled the United States of America. There has to be accountability; there have to be consequences.

The first penalty needs to be a defeat today.

Other related ethics observations:

1. The last hysterical and desperate Trump-Deranged smear turned out to be the worst. I had been tipped off to it in a comment on one of the posts here, then my Trump-Deranged relative used it to argue it (“that is, what”it” being a complete lie/fantasy/delusion on the part of her fellow sufferers) proved the GOP candidate was as demented as Biden. The moment I heard the claim, I knew it had to be false. I didn’t want to dignify it with my time until one of my Trump Deranged theater friends posted this yesterday…

Your candidate literally jerked off and went down on a microphone. It happened. I’m still trying to figure out who the fuck votes for that kind of thing but I’m not going to kink shame. Vote blue for… Safe microphone?? I’m I can’t even I’m not I can’t I something I hashtag aneurysm

Edit: he also threatened the stage crew. I don’t have to explain why those are fighting words. “Do you want to see me knock the hell out of people back stage” and “it’s a pretty stupid situation.”

Or would you rather just see me blow the microphone?

It was the wave of “likes” that did it. Yes, this guy is a moron, and like so many artist morons, unaware of just how ignorant he is because so many in his bubble are just as ignorant as he is. (No, those aren’t “fighting words” or even threats. Stay in your lane, dufus.)

So I watched the video. Nobody, and I mean nobody, could possibly think what Trump did had any sexual connotations whatsoever unless 1) they are obsessed with sex and see everything as sexual 2) confirmation bias has so damaged their minds that whatever Trump does or says it is instantly translated into the most damning interpretation possible no matter how unlikely, or 3) they are so suggestible that whatever an Axis hack says is immediately accepted as fact.

Trump was doing a long, long rant about how bad the technical support was at a rally and how angry he was about it. Finally he mimed what it’s like trying to address a crowd with a mic that doesn’t work, which included bending over and miming the act of shouting into an invisible  dead mic. Yeah, he had his mouth open, and he was miming holding a microphone, but the context was clear, his intent was clear, and his message was clear. Claiming there was anything obscene about the mini-routine is a new low even for the Trump Deranged and their Big Lie addiction.

I will add that Trump’s periodic journeys into physical comedy are not as deft as he seems to think they are…

Did I bother to reply to my friend’s astoundingly idiotic and offensive post? I did not. There is no point, and I had promises to keep and miles to go before I slept. But these are the people who deserve to lose, and lose big.

2. Now, I found the video revealing in other ways. I don’t usually watch Trump rallies, but it is clear that this is an art form he is embracing, and a completely new way of campaigning. It’s risky, it’s often annoying (to me, anyway) but it’s not evidence of dementia. Trump is, as the saying goes, “letting it all hang out,” giving ordinary people a rare opportunity to see a potential leader without filters, scripts and artifice. Especially when running against a carefully packaged phony like Kamala Harris, his openness has great appeal. It is literally (see, unlike my idiot friend, I know what “literally” means) is an improv stand-up act, and Trump doesn’t know what he’s going to say next, just as Lennie Bruce often made up his routines as he went along. It’s a high wire stunt, and, not surprisingly, Trump periodically falls on his metaphorical face. Still, the public sees a real person, or thinks it does.

In the rant over the microphone, the audience got a view of what Trump is like if he doesn’t get the performance he expects. It was a bit scary, but one would come away from the rally knowing that this guy would fire someone who under-performed. (Trump made that point directly for those who couldn’t connect the dots.) The candidate is comfortable with who he is, assumes everyone knows what his policies will be so it isn’t necessary to explain them, and, again clearly, is confident that he’s going to win.

For better of worse, we are unlikely to see any President or candidate for President speak in front of a crowd like this, but—and this shocked me even as i thought it—the closest we have had in Presidential history was FDR’s “fireside chats.”

3. In all the prognostications claiming that Harris will win, the logic is that women voting to “protect” the “right” to abortion will carry the day. If so, it will be a low point in U.S. moral and ethical history as well as the most warped, ignorant and selfish voting wave ever. Trump isn’t proposing to do anything about abortion, pro or con, and Harris is lying to suggest she can or will. But she is running on a platform of “Make it easier to kill the unborn.” Those voting for her on this basis are literally (See? I’m smart…) saying that nothing else facing the nation—not the ticking time bomb of the national debt, not the Democratic embrace of totalitarian methods, not illegal immigration, not the dangerous wars around us, not race divisions and preserving free speech, is as important as being able to have consequence-free sex and to treat a developing human being in the womb as the equivalent of a tumor or wart. And all they are doing is saying it, because voting for Harris will not accomplish the goal motivating the vote. These are ugly, unethical, and stupid votes.

4. My relative made a last ditch call yesterday to try to shame me into voting for Harris. “You do know that RFK Jr. will be the Secretary of HHS under Trump, right,?” she said. “That means polio, diphtheria, cholera, and all the rest will be back.” Well. First, that is another nightmare scenario that I think is unlikely. Second, I’m not going to vote for a President and a party I think are catastrophes on the hoof because I am worried about a potential Secretary of HHS.

5. No matter what happens today, the polling industry should just give up and go away. Polls have been useless, indeed worse than useless. The motives of the pollsters are unclear, their biases are uncontrolled, and they now just serve a fodder for partisan propaganda.

‘Incompetent, irresponsible and dishonest is no way to go through life, son.‘

6. Vilified though he is by the bitter Left, all of America owes Elon Musk a debt of thanks. If he had not taken over Twitter, that indispensable social media platform would have been weaponized to censor Trump, Republicans and his supporters, as well as Harris critics. Especially with the news media blocking and burying inconvenient news as never before, Musk’s rescue mission to preserve free speech has been a rare bright spot in very dark times for our republic.

7. I am crossing my fingers and toes hoping that whoever wins the election wins in the popular as well as electoral vote. Yesterday I read an attack on the Electoral College that exemplified one of my least favorite appeals to authority. Joshua Holzer, an assistant professor of political science at Westminster University argued that the Electoral College was archaic and flawed because “Every other country that used an electoral college has been unsatisfied with the results and chosen another way to pick a leader.” What are those countries whose decisions the the U.S, should be following?

Colombia, Chile, France, Finland, and Argentina.

The fatuous “everybody does it but us, so we must be wrong” fallacy is used by the Left to argue for abolishing capital punishment, installing national health care, and socialism in general. The United States has been inspirational and spectacularly successful because it diverged from the paths of other nations at its inception and has done so repeatedly since. I don’t care what Colombia, Chile, France, Finland, and Argentina think is the best way to choose leaders. At least so far, our leaders have been better than those elected in Colombia, Chile, France, Finland, and Argentina.