I never have been the biggest fan of Donald Trump as our president, yet I will proudly vote for him. I could list several policies from his presidency that I did not like and did not agree with. However, I will never list any personal “flaws” as my reason for disliking Trump. Past personal mistakes are an inferior measuring stick for voting allegiance. What level of perfection do we require from our elected officials or from anyone for that matter? If you dig into the personal life of anyone you will find flaws, transgressions and plenty of other people who do not like that person.
You aren’t voting for your best friend, you’re voting for the person who has the guts to make difficult decisions and craft creative policy. Although most importantly you are voting for the person who has the intelligence to surround themselves not with people who they like or owe something to, but someone who is an expert in their field.
So many policy decisions are actually determined by other people (hello Fauci and Tracy Stone-Manning). Kamala Harris has been in politics far too long to have not created deals with other politicians. Do I believe Trump also has some allegiance and is indebted to other influential people? I do, unfortunately that’s the nature of politics even on a very local level. However, I believe Trump has far less “I owe you’s” by the very fact that he has been a politician for less time.
I find much hypocrisy from Democrats who love to hate Trump and claim they will not vote for him because he’s not a good person. Yet, President Obama most likely killed more people through war than any other president by issuing more airstrikes. His last year in office alone he issued almost 27,000 bombs into 7 different countries. Apaches (that did most of the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan) aren’t considered airstrikes or counted among these bombing numbers. The casualties were extreme, it was genocide. It’s the untold tragedy of our generation that any military personnel that served overseas will tell you about. I would claim that makes him not only a bad person but also incompetent on foreign policy or incompetent in hiring people in his administration that are knowledgeable on foreign policy.
Guess what, I don’t think Kamala Harris is a good person for many reasons but that’s not the reason I will not mark her name come November. I’m not voting for her because her policies in both California and in the current administration are abysmal, which is clear in the downfalls of the economy and quality in life in California and the country as a whole. “By their fruits ye shall know them” might be more true in politics than any other setting. I will look at the results of candidates and their voting records to determine my vote.
The fact of the matter is, both republicans and democrats are going to claim the other side lies and only believe what they want to. There exist extremists on both sides as well as ignorance. At the end of the day, you can only look at the fruits produced by policies by both politicians. I for one, was much happier and felt optimistic for my family under the Trump administration policies than under any Biden/Harris policies.
– by Simone Griffin, Escalante
Read more letters to the editor on this topic in Who is Deranged? by Chip Ward.