Donald Trump is a dangerous man who brings out the worst in America. He is evil. I mean that very sincerely.

Does that sound too strong? I beg to differ. Take this for an example: if you happen to honestly expose Trump’s past of fraud and illegal immigrant labor, his supporters will respond by…    ….countering the accusation? No. Of course not. They will respond by spreading rumors that you’re a closet homosexual.

This is no longer a joke. Even though it never was, the time for an innocent bystander to claim plausible deniability is over. Donald Trump is an evil man: the type of evil that destroys countries.

If you enable him, or passively sit by while it happens, you will have to take some share of that blame. Don’t Be One Of These People.

It’s time to pick sides. Pick the right One.

The Intelligent Trump

Most people used to say that Trump is a clown. This is only partially true.

It is true that Trump is a clown, but it is untrue that he is merely to be laughed at. He’s not a circus clown, and he’s not a rodeo clown. He’s a Clockwork Orange clown: their burglary, destruction, and rape are made more terrifying by virtue of the fact that they are dressed as clowns and going about their criminal business while belting out “Singing in the Rain.” It would be less terrifying if they were in ski masks and had the soundtrack of death metal, because at least that makes sense. For Trump, the current wave across America would make more sense if it came with a military uniform and a column of tanks rather than a creepy performance of elementary school cheerleaders dancing to a children’s song.

Donald Trump is destroying the institutions of this republic which make constitutional rights and self government possible. He sometimes does it passively through his words. He sometimes does it explicitly through his stated goals. But it is particularly bizarre that he is doing it through the party that claims to value those rights and that self government.

And everyone is laughing while he is doing it. The surreal nature of the evil spectacle makes it all that much more terrifying for those of us who still have our heads on straight. But more on his evil later. This section is about his intelligence.

Donald Trump is intelligent in the fact that he knows exactly what subjects he needs to be intelligent about, and which ones he doesn’t, in order to gain influence and gain power. He knows that he needs little to no knowledge about actual governing in order to persuade and win people’s influence.

When he is called out on his lack actual governing knowledge, he retreats to what he is best at: insults.

He knows how to strategically compliment people to get them to do exactly what he wants them to do.

He knows how to strategically abuse people to stop a line of reasoned argument by a cutting insult.

He knows how to make it look like he is “telling it like it is,” even when he is not.

To explain why it is so important to understand the intelligence of Donald Trump, I have to go to a quote of C.S. Lewis famously explaining how it is possible to do something that is bad in the first place.

[B]adness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled. (Mere Christianity, Book II, chapter 2)

The better stuff a creature is made of – the cleverer and stronger and freer it is – then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong. A cow cannot be very good or very bad; a dog can be both better and worse; a child better and worse still; an ordinary man, still more so; a man of genius, still more so; a superhuman spirit best – or worst – of all.  (Mere Christianity, Book II chapter 3)

And such it is with Trump. He is very intelligent, very persuasive, very charismatic, and very, VERY evil as a consequence.

The Maleficent Trump

C.S. Lewis also famously described how evil manifests itself in society in his preface to The Screwtape Letters:

The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.

And this is undoubtedly true. But in the age of Trump, I think we need to give some more credit to the evil that Dickens loved to paint.

How is Trump Evil? Geez…. Where do you begin?

• He is a liar about too many things to count.
• He revels in and fosters lewd behavior in a childish fashion.
• He is the owner of a strip club in a casino.
• He really did try and use eminent domain to take a woman’s home to build a limousine parking lot.
• He has been married three times, and cheated on his wife before marrying his new one.
• He bragged on his licentiousness during the AIDS epidemic by saying that being so debonair at such a dangerous time was like his own personal Vietnam (a war in which he avoided the draft due to an unverified case of “bone spurs” in his feet).
• He mocks American heroes for the actions that made them heroes to deflect criticism of his language.
• He mocks the disabled for their disability when they question him in an unfavorable manner.
• He takes groups of successful, talented, dedicated and forward-thinking people into ruin because of his own greed and impatience, and later lauds himself for all their successes and refuses to take blame for any of his failures.
• He admittedly withdrew the medical benefits of his infant nephew who had seizures and cerebral palsy as a tactic of retaliation in a lawsuit. The lawsuit claimed that Trump had used undue influence over his father, who had dementia, to adjust the will and disinherit the children of his alcoholic brother who had died earlier. (The will was adjusted, and the children of his brother were disinherited. But Trump said this happened because, actually, his father hated his daughter-in-law. A move that, while technically legal, is certainly appalling. The lawsuit was, of course, settled privately.)
• He praised China for it’s strength in violently dispersing the protest for more democratic rights in Tienanmen Square saying, “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world –”.

THAT shows you the power of strength? And this is coming from a man who is running on remaking American strength?

• Oh yeah, and he’s a fascist. And I do not mean this in a blindly insulting “you’re a fascist pig!” sort of way. I mean it in the ACTUAL DEFINITION OF FASCISM sort of way. His only distinction from historical fascism is that he hasn’t killed anyone…    ….yet. In fact, he doesn’t even mind being associated with fascists, so long as they provide interesting quotes and so long as it gets your attention.

And that is not even the tip of the iceberg. It is merely a small sample from a few google searches and a fairly short memory. The list has probably grown today.

Donald Trump is quite simply evil. Not in a joking way, not in a funny way, not in an insulting way. He is evil in a very real and dangerous sense. He is avarice, lust, pride, envy, deceit, and wrath. He avoids sloth, but only because that would hamper the activity of his other vices. He embodies everything that can go wrong in a person (or a country). And, giving greater power to his corrupted morals, he comes clothed in the favor of millions.

So, is this the person you want in charge of our nuclear arsenal? (A nuclear arsenal, by the way, Trump didn’t exactly understand before he was publicly corrected on it.) His character makes him evil, his power makes him dangerous. For this reason, one must never lend support to Trump. One must make every effort to make sure that others do not lend support to Trump.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Stumble Into Fascism.

The Only Logical Conclusion

Don’t laugh at him. Don’t play along. Don’t smile when he says something outrageous.

Resist.

And don’t believe that all is already lost. Trump has only 82 out of the 1237 delegates he needs to become the Republican nominee. But momentum is serious, and the time to do something is now.

Realize that this is precisely the domestic enemy that we have a responsibility to resist. Never give in. With every  “valid point” that Trump happens to stumble upon, respond with the dangerous vessel through which it came.

Resist. Always resist.

If you’re a conservative or a Republican….

….realize that Donald Trump is the opposite of what you believe in. He is both principle-less and vicious. He is not Christian (the manifold reasons are too obvious to recount in full, but here’s an example of extreme clarity just to prove the point). He thinks Planned Parenthood does wonderful things. He is not for small government. He has zero knowledge or skill in national defense. He is not “for” anything but strength, his own strength, and his actual positions are so scattershot, it is difficult to say what he believes at all. He is for getting “things” done, and he has no consistency or idea about what those things are.

See how viciously he goes after those who differ from him, and how wildly his positions have changed over the years both in the long-term and the short-term. So without any consistent policy or principle to direct his fire (other than pure self-interest), what will stop him from turning that fire on you, lowly supporter and blue collar voter, when he no longer needs your vote?

This is why the Rubio designation of Trump as a con-man is so important. These supporters need to be saved from themselves (and from Trump).

Others should take note, because he is not an entertainer or a circus lead, and you should not support an non-Republican non-conservative even if he is the Republican nominee. We need a message that tries to rescue the supporters of Trump from themselves and from Trump. We need to clearly say that Donald Trump does not stand for you. Donald Trump stands for himself. Donald Trump is using you to stand for himself.

Also, realize that voting for Ben Carson is not “figuratively” voting for Donald Trump by withholding a vote for one of the leading candidates. Instead, realize that voting for Ben Carson is LITERALLY VOTING FOR DONALD TRUMP BECAUSE OF THE RULES OF THE STATE PRIMARIES.

If you are a liberal or a Democrat……

….please do not take advantage of this situation to get ahead politically. By all means, attack Donald Trump, but hope for a real election between a real Republican and a real Democrat. Understand that Donald Trump is more than just a symptom or subset of Republican voters or thought. He is a multi-party, multi-class threat to our country. And since Hillary is not exactly the greatest candidate, realize that a Trump vs. Hillary campaign is not exactly guaranteed win.

Or we can do as this liberal Democrat says:

Democrats, your leading candidate is too weak to count on as a firewall. She might be able to pull off a general election victory against Trump, but then again she might not. Too much is uncertain this year. You, too, need to help the Republicans beat Trump; this is no moment for standing by passively. If your deadline for changing your party affiliation has not yet come, re-register and vote for Rubio, even if, like me, you cannot stomach his opposition to marriage equality. I too would prefer Kasich as the Republican nominee, but pursuing that goal will only make it more likely that Trump takes the nomination. The republic cannot afford that.

Finally, to all of you Republicans who have already dropped out, one more, great act of public service awaits you. As candidates, you pledged to support whomever the Republican party nominated. It’s time to revoke your pledge. Be bold, stand up and shout that you will not support Trump if he is your party’s nominee. Do it together. Hold one big mother of a news conference. Endorse Rubio, together. It is time to draw a bright line, and you are the ones on whom this burden falls. No one else can do it.

Donald Trump has no respect for the basic rights that are the foundation of constitutional democracy, nor for the requirements of decency necessary to sustain democratic citizenship. Nor can any democracy survive without an expectation that the people require reasonable arguments that bring the truth to light, and Trump has nothing but contempt for our intelligence.

THEREFORE, let it be known that if Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, I will no longer be a Republican. If Trump is the nominee, I will not support him or vote for him.

The only sensible thing for anyone who calls himself a Republican is to see that your responsibility to your country and conscience is more important than your party.

I will vote for no one if it comes down to Trump and Hillary or Bernie Sanders. Since I currently live in the District of Columbia, and don’t have Senators or voting Representatives, I may just stay home (but for anyone outside of D.C., you should not). My normal convictions keep me from voting for corrupt pro-abortion candidates or for admitted and happy socialists. But my duty to my country keeps this lifelong and die-hard Republican, former TEA-Party-leading, former grassroots-campaigning, political Op-Ed writing, conservative GOP voter from being brought into the sludge of Trump.

I refuse to be defined, influenced, or associated with such a vile and evil man. I encourage you to take the same approach and make it public. #NeverTrump

Supporters of Donald Trump should also take note, too. Some of you are just a lesser-form of the badness that is Trump. I pity you, and hope you never again have such sway over our democracy. Others are people who have legitimate worries about the country and believe that “something different” is the only thing that can make it better. I plead with you to change course.

What you neglect to realize is that it can always, always get worse. (E.g., see: Syria) And it is not enough to say you thought it was going to be different. Because of the public nature of the evils of Trump, the window of plausible deniability is closing. His very public record, character, and statements are too much. Ignorance is a weak excuse to go along with evil, and willful ignorance is downright criminal. Don’t do it.

Don’t be naive. Don’t be defrauded. Don’t vote for Trump.