Political Tuesdays: What I Saw at the Hostile Takeover

2016 may be the year I become apolitical.  But first, I have to blog this out of my system and close all those open windows in my browser.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to dissolve the bands of loyalty which had previously connected us to a grand political party, and to assume, among the Pokemon Go players of the earth, a relatively blissful ignorance and apathy about the downfall of civilization as we know it, a decent respect for the dozen or so readers of this blog requires that we declare the causes which impel us to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that the Republican Party has been hijacked by the overweening narcissism of one man; that Donald Trump does not represent the values and ideals associated with the Republican Party or with conservatism as a political philosophy; and that, being endowed with the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, no free and independent American may be forced to blindly support the presumptive nominee of the Party to the detriment of her own conscience.

I realize that people of good conscience can and do disagree about where to proceed from this point. Personally, I still hold a flickering candle of hope that some of the Never Trump delegates I sent to the state convention will go on to Cleveland and be part of a peaceful counter-insurgency that will appoint an actual Republican candidate who stands a chance in the fall election. Otherwise, my vote is completely wasted, as is usual in Washington State. But I realize this is a very faint hope indeed.

Some will vote for Trump while holding their nose, because they fear Hillary more; some wholeheartedly support him because they actually believe he's serious about saving them from illegal immigrants or bad trade deals, or whatever it is they fear. I will try not to judge, if they will respect my freedom of conscience here. Simply put, I can't support any candidate who endorses abortion; that clearly eliminates Hillary, and Trump is equally clearly not credible on this issue. That leaves me a much sadder person, but it's oddly freeing at the same time.

In a more selfish vein, I am simply not able to take the constant anxiety. I don't see either candidate as fit for office, but I'm used to being the party out of power; the shame of being associated with such an unstable and self-centered candidate as the Donald, even if there is no chance of his winning, is enough to make me withdraw from politics altogether. Wherever I turn for amusement or distraction, I see a caricature of this buffoon: he's Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream ("Methought I was enamored of an ass!") He's Anger in Inside Out, complete with orange hair:

He's evil rich Biff in Back to the Future II. The list goes on: if we don't want America to turn into Trumpville, we need Jimmy Stewart to turn things around and filibuster until people come to their senses and do the right thing like they never did in the primary. I realize I'm mixing my metaphors, but I was a literature major and there's a lot more where that came from.

Now, here's where I clear my browser, and believe me, it needs it:

• a new center of gravity for the Republican Party
• America has never been so ripe for tyranny
• even Democrats think Trump might be a Clinton plant
• My vote doesn't matter, my conscience does
• this holdout is thankful for the National Review
• David French, the candidate who might have been
• Donald Trump's missing intellectuals
• Why Hillary would be better than Trump
• P.J. O'Rourke's rousing endorsement of Hillary (if you read nothing else, read this; I aspire to mix as many metaphors myself someday)
• #exGOP
• if only he would listen to reason, this might work
• Stockholm syndrome in the Republican party
• excuse the language, but Hell No
• not voting for Hillary, either
• nope, definitely not
• hereby I announce my refusal to vote for a Baby Boomer for president. You had your chances (over and over and over again) and you keep coming back. I want a Gen. X president, someone of my generation, and I'll write one in this time if I have to. It's not all about you, Boomers, and it's time you accepted it.