Dear US Republican voter
This is addressed to the many millions of
sensible, thoughtful Americans who usually vote for Republican party candidates
at election time. Please, look in a mirror, and ask yourself seriously: ‘Can I
face myself if I vote for Donald Trump?’
Surely, you already know the answer. He is
a liar, a fraud, and a narcissist with a mean streak the width of the Pacific
Ocean. Worse than that, and this is what concerns those of us watching from
afar, he is very, very dangerous. He lashes out without thinking, and he
insults people with no heed of the consequences. He refuses to listen to
advice, and has an unshakeable belief that his own instincts and ‘common sense’
are all he needs.
It would be hard to think of anyone less
suited to be president of the most powerful nation on earth and commander in
chief of its armed forces.
Please. Don’t do it. For your own
self-respect, for the reputation of your great country, and for the good of
humankind. The decision you make on 8 November matters to us all; that’s why we
all have a right to plead with you to do the right thing.
Perhaps you agree with him about
immigration. Perhaps you think he really does know how to get Mexico to pay to
build a wall along the 2,000-mile long border. Perhaps you agree that torturing
terrorist suspects and threatening to murder their families is the best way to
confront the terrorist threat.
But do you like the idea of a president who
publicly insults the parents of a US serviceman killed in action? Can you
respect a man who turns on a woman with a crying baby and deliberately humiliates
her? Is that the kind of man you want living in the White House?
I understand that many of you think Barack
Obama was a weak president, and that he failed to stand up to America’s
enemies. Perhaps you think he surrendered to Iran and was wrong to open up to
Cuba. But do you really want a man who apparently didn’t know that Russia had
seized Crimea from Ukraine to be making the decisions about when and whether
the US should go to war? When you watch him at his rallies, do you say to
yourself: ‘This is the man I want to see deciding when to send our servicemen
and women onto the battlefield’?
Is he? Really?
I get it that you love the way he annoys
people like me. I get it that you like the way he breaks all the rules, he’s
his own man, says what he thinks, does what he likes. He behaves, perhaps, like
you’d like to behave sometimes, if only you were as rich as he is. (But how rich
is he, in fact? He’s refusing to publish his tax returns, so we have no way of
knowing.)
And I certainly get it that you don’t trust
Hillary Clinton. Nor do many Democrats. But the way the system works is you have
to make a choice. And I’m sorry but you need to ask yourself this question: ‘Am
I going to vote for a president who may well be suffering from a serious personality
disorder?’
Specifically, a narcissistic personality
disorder, a condition which according to the American Psychiatric Association, is ‘characterised by the presence
of both grandiosity and attention seeking’. Among the criteria required for a
diagnosis to be made are: a need for excessive admiration; a preoccupation with
fantasies of brilliance, power and success; and a sense of being special. It
can lead to arrogance and haughtiness, and a single-minded pursuit of status.
I’m no psychiatrist,
but, well, you can draw your own conclusions.
As an American voter,
you carry a greater responsibility than most other voters. The decisions you
make impact directly on us all: I suspect the world would have been a very
different place if Al Gore had been your president in 2001 instead of George W Bush.
So you’ll have to forgive me butting in to an electoral process in which I have
no vote. It matters to me just as much as it matters to you.
Here is what I hope
you will do. I hope you will take a good long look in the mirror and decide that
you cannot, in all conscience, vote for Donald Trump as president. I hope you
will also contact your local Republican party officials and plead with them to
disown the man who threatens to destroy your party.
Some have already done
so. According to the Washington Post,
turmoil in the Republican Party has escalated sharply this week with party
leaders, strategists and donors all voicing increased alarm about their
candidate’s behaviour. This now goes beyond his views; it is about his mental
health.
A man who is reported
to have asked a foreign policy adviser, apparently in all seriousness, not once
but several times, why the US doesn’t use its nuclear weapons, is not a man who
should be allowed anywhere near the White House.
Even Newt Gingrich, who
at one time hoped that Trump would pick him as his vice-presidential running
mate and who is, in theory, one of his most ardent supporters, seems to be
close to giving up on him. Trump, he said, ‘can’t learn what he doesn’t
know because he doesn’t know he doesn’t know it.’
I find that pretty
scary. I suspect you do as well. But unlike me, you can do something about it.
If necessary, close your eyes, and grit your teeth, but please, please, please,
do not vote for Donald Trump. The only way you can be sure to keep him far away
from where he could do real harm is by voting for Hillary Clinton. I know it’ll
be hard, but you owe it to your children, your nation and the world.
Advice taken. Thank you. Maybe a companion piece to the Labour Party in the UK would be interesting?
ReplyDelete