How could you do it?
The man is clearly deranged, a bad actor who tried to cheat the voters out of their decision in the 2020 presidential election and has made it obvious that he intends to continue only accepting election results if he wins them. And of course along with that decision, his threats to use the government to go after political rivals and to silence media outlets who speak out against him — such threats seem more like promises than threats. Ditto for comments about being dictator from day one, comments about how we should add extra terms for our presidents too (like China did for Xi), comments about how if his supporters just get him in now, he’ll fix things so they don’t have to vote again.
And his party has reacted by getting rid of those who would stand up to Donald Trump, and by coming up with a plan to make sure that the kind of people who prevented him from stealing the 2020 election will not be in his administration in 2028.
And you are going to vote for this.
That is evil.
It is mean.
You are being so mean to me.
Every morning I wake up at 4AM hurting from this crime that you would shove down my throat.
Abusers shove themselves on others.
Donald Trump is an abuser and now he’s learned how to shove himself on the nation, replacing our government of the people by the people for the people of a government for Trump’s perpetual glory power and wealth.
And you would saddle us and future generations with this crime.
If you don’t think it is a crime, go live in Russia for a while and see.
It is a crime to turn the powers of state into a weapon of oppression, and that is what you are asking for when you stop letting the citizens act as a final check on madness, corruption, and evil in government.
Why are you doing this to me?
How could you be so evil?
I don’t understand it.
What is the cartoon reality that you are basing this decision on?
I see a lunatic’s angry scribblings over his family picture: horns for half and halos for the other half.
Neither of us built this government; neither of us died face down in the mud defending it.
We both walked into it.
It was a lucky break.
A little respite in human history.
Not having to fear one’s own government.
Not having to fear speaking out against the powers that be.
Not having to decide between being fair and honest and keeping one’s family safe, sound, and with safe food and drinking water.
It was great!
It was heaven!
But you couldn’t see what had been given you.
All you could do was pout around that you didn’t always get your way.
And now it’s come to this.
The ultimate sulk: you are going to pout us all out of our joyful democratic republic and into another boring old autocracy.
What is going on?
How can you think and feel so fuzzily?
Especially those of you who think what you’re doing is holy.
You most of all rattle my faith in life and my fellows.
You most of all punch me in the gut.
How could you be so evil while believing your actions so good?
Go live in Russia and see what you are foisting on all of us.
Go try it out.
It is evil to turn your government into a criminal organization.
I feel all the time sick to my stomach woozy so confused.
So many people fought for our liberty, and all we’re asked to do is pull our heads out of conspiracy theories and angry rants long enough to notice that this man is going to harm our shared democracy and that is not OK, and so we have to say No to him.
There are problems here.
The divide between rich and poor hasn’t been this great since right before the Civil War and right before the Great Depression. It’s scary because the clear answer is that the very rich need to lose some of their wealth and that wealth needs to be spread among everyone else. That is the way forward for democracy, for truth justice and the American way. But it is scary to tell powerful people who already have too much sway over your politics that the system has been unfairly tilted towards their advantage for forty years and now we have to implement some corrections — they will still be so rich that they can do whatever they want, but not as rich as they are. And it is scary to figure out how to gently and fairly and carefully and gradually correct this error. But handing the keys over to a man who wants to turn the people’s government into his government and a party that has removed those members willing to resist a post-democracy GOP while drawing up plans to increase the power of the next GOP president — that amounts to hand this country over to the regime and their chosen oligarchs. Everyone will live in fear of the government, just some more than others. This is not an okay thing to do. It is an evil decision.
What is going on?
Sometimes I scroll on a landing page that has some feeds from right-wing news sources.
And so I kind of see what’s going on: Fox News is not responsible journalism; it is a noise machine; it is a propaganda mill. And Fox News is no the worst of them.
But still: Even Donald Trump’s own advertisements paint him as a lunatic liar: There he is saying that replacing Joseph Biden with Kamala Harris was nothing but a “coup”. What is he talking about? Biden is allowed to resign; the Democrats are allowed to rally around Kamala Harris; there’s nothing even rule-bending going on there. His comments are inane nonsense. Meanwhile, anyone can go to the January 6 investigation site and see transcript after transcript of members of Trump’s own administration detailing how he tried to coerce them into cheating for him so that he could cheat the US electorate out of their decision in 2020. And this is the evil: This is the evil you are shoving down my throat: the evil of Putin’s Russia: the evil of a country where you have to nod along with inane, cruel, mean, stupid lies in order to hold on to the scraps that the Great Leader and his Wise Officials leave to you. Already the Republican Party demands that you nod along with inane, cruel, mean, stupid lies in order to have a voice at the table; what happens when this Republican Party with this leader is given the keys to the kingdom? Yeah, supposedly those keys are just on loan; but we all know that is not his plan.
What is wrong with you?
Why are you doing this to me?
How can you be so evil?
I just can’t take it.
I feel so betrayed.
All the time I feel so hurt and angry at what you are doing to me. Like we were family and we didn’t get along all that great, but at the end of the day, we were still family and would stick up for each other’s rights to be ourselves. But no, now you back a man who would use our government for crime against its citizens. Whatever story you tell yourself, however you justify this: When you replace the will of the people with the will of the king, no one is in charge except the king; and everyone loses, even the king: it is better to lose power in a democratic republic than to clutch power with oppression and violence, caging yourself in your own despotism. Sure, Trump doesn’t mind, but it will harm his soul. And so the best thing for everyone is for us all to gently but firmly say No to this crime that he’s hatching.
I just don’t understand how you could act in such bad faith.
It hurts me so much.
If you support Donald Trump in 2024:
You are wrong about God.
You are wrong about Goodness.
You are wrong about the soul of things.
Not that I’m so amazingly right about God, Goodness, or the soul of things.
But no one’s worldview makes sense to any person except to the degree that that person thinks, feels, and acts aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing — centered around the Love that chooses everyone always. And supporting Donald Trump is not compatible with thinking, feeling, and acting aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing — centered around the Love that chooses everyone always. Because silencing people and forcing them into submission is the opposite of helping people find a meaningful relationship with the Love without which all dogmas are just empty noise — worse than empty noise because, being clutched as if they were God when they are in fact just human notions and hopes and fears, self-righteous dogmas severed from Love are used to justify all manner of ungodly behavior.
There is a point where feeling, thinking, and acting are so willfully incompetent that they are not just sloppy, but evil. In the Fall of 2024 Trump supporters have crossed that line. And I don’t know how to respond. I am demoralized. It feels like I have been betrayed by people I didn’t always agree with, nor even always get along with, but who I fundamentally trusted. Do you understand? You have hurt me.

Authors: Bartleby Willard, Amble Whistletown, et al
Copyright: Andy Watson