An Inconvenient Blog

By Ashkan

I do not want to vote for Donald Trump. But I might. 

He’d get my vote — a scornful one albeit — if election day were tomorrow. But it’s not. And a lot could change between then and now: his opponent, his number of ear bandages (if we get to two then I’m knocking on doors for the man), my emotional maturity, the number of guilt-tripping pro-democracy platitudes Abigail and my progressive friends feed me, among others.

One factor I didn’t mention is anything Trump himself could do. Because what hasn’t he already done? And why is none of it enough to disqualify himself from the presidency in my eyes?

I’ve been toying with these thoughts recently.

Swing voters — much of the silent majority — who vote for Donald Trump don’t do it because they’re yearning for a deft pussy grabber nor a dynastic autocracy. They don’t do it because they’re pro-life (by a wide margin they’re not) nor because they too wish for a speedy climate disaster (by a wide margin they care about the environment). They hold their nose and overlook these things: even if these behaviors or views would be unjustifiable if housed in another candidate.

Trump defies political logic because he defies reality in a lot of ways.

He is unfathomably confident, unfathomably wealthy, unfathomably persecuted, and unfathomably resilient. Think about it — can you name one person in your life who even mildly resembles Donald Trump? An even more interesting thought experiment: can you even imagine meeting him in person? Can you fathom him? Does he seem real to you, like someone you can touch?

His allure is that you can’t imagine getting a beer with him. He’s the image of a divine, assassination-proof martyr battling the establishment and other forces of evil. In a way no human could. In a way only a once-in-a-generation leader and messiah of strength could. Consciously or not, a surprising amount of people want to root for him even if they can’t rationalize it.

To be crystal clear, this is not how I’m deciding my vote. My vote is leaning towards Trump first and foremost because our incumbent president is brain dead and secondly because I am politically conservative. Full stop.

This past week, though, I have wondered if a part of me is falling prey to his divinity. I say this because Biden might drop out of the race this weekend — nullifying my main reason to vote for Trump. Yet I still don’t feel compelled to vote for Kamala Harris. I might vote for Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer. I know I’d vote for Pete Buttigieg. But this Chinese menu of bespoke voting preferences really shouldn’t exist if my thought process was really ABB (Anybody But Biden).

Sure, I align with Trump on a lot: I believe in a free-market economy, a strong border, a small government, that American tax dollars should serve Americans, that the decline of meritocracy in the name of DEI is concerning, and that Americans should have the right to bear arms. Yet my divergence with Trump on the sanctity of our Constitution and our democratic institutions should be stronger than any of this noise. Unless his divinity might be getting in the way.

I will, in the end, vote for the candidate I can logically justify. I did that in 2020. I voted for Jo Jorgensen because I could not justify voting for neither Biden nor Trump. Right now, because Joe Biden is in the race, I can make a strong case as to why the leader of the free world should be sentient.

But in 2020 I noticed on election night that I was cheering for Trump. I didn’t vote for him — and with the information available to me at that time I stand by that choice — but some magnetism of his still called to me.

I know I’m not alone. I know there are other politically engaged, moderately over-educated voters who are faced with a similar tug of war between what is logical and what is bizarre. I’m just some guy who is one data point in an ethnographic study.

Our challenge is to keep our wits about us and vote according to our conscious minds and not our Freudian ids. For now, my conscious vote is Trump’s to lose. But we’ll see.