If you’re not an American, you’re probably sick of hearing about the 2016 United States presidential election. I get it; there are plenty of Americans who are sick of hearing about it. By the time this publishes, the election will be under two weeks away, so for the most part it will be over with. But there is so much at stake here—especially for Americans, but also the world. Following are four related essays that try to cover just what it all means.

Essay #1:
THE TRUMP MAILER

In my mailbox today in late October was yet another Trump campaign mailer. I’m in Maine’s second district—which Trump might win. Maine is one of two states that can opt to split the electoral votes by district; in Maine, like every state, we have two electoral votes for our two senators, but we also have another two for our representatives in the House. Maine allows those latter two to go independently to whoever wins the individual districts. Maine has never done this before, but polling is tight in this more-conservative district, so Trump just might pick up one of Maine’s four electoral votes. He needs every one he can get, so that one vote is important.

This mailer came from the Republican National Committee—the organization that has the most dangerous candidate ever fielded on the ballot. The mailer doesn’t appeal to Democrats or liberals or even to moderates; it doesn’t even appear to be aimed at the far-right rabid base that Trump enjoys. He doesn’t need them; he already has them.

Instead, it appears to be geared toward Republicans who are afraid of a Donald Trump White House. There are many of them; scores of elected Republicans have spoken out against him, with plenty planning top vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, and many endorsing Hillary Clinton. No major newspaper has supported Trump; several conservative papers that have always endorsed Republicans have even endorsed her instead. Sensible Republicans have come to realize that they must choose country over party and ensure that their train wreck of a candidate does not win the presidency.

So this mailer seems to be trying to snatch back some conservatives who aren’t planning to vote for him—perhaps those who are planning to vote for Johnson or write in Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence. The wording on this mailer is clearly trying to appeal to conservatives who perhaps can be drawn back in—those who might realize that a vote for Johnson is as good as a vote for Clinton.

Here are the front and back of the mailer:

This all sounds like stoking fear in conservatives, but it’s sweet for liberals.

“Hillary Clinton could fill three seats on the Supreme Court,” it proclaims, by her appointing “liberal judges who legislate from the bench.” In conservative-speak, terms like “legislate from the bench” and “activist judges” are judges who rule against them; when they rule for them, they’re naturally just interpreting the Constitution properly.

After the death of archconservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the court was left with a 4-4 split amongst justices who are fairly conservative and fairly liberal. Despite President Obama nominating Judge Merrick Garland to the SCOTUS on March 16 of this year, the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to even give a hearing on President Obama’s nominee to replace him, claiming that they feel that the next president should choose. Of course; they’ve been hoping all year that a Republican will win the White House, and if they retain the Senate, they can install a conservative judge. From there, conservatives could stack the court if there are any retirements, of which two are likely. This could change the very fabric of the United States: Stack a nine-justice court with six conservatives, and they could accomplish anything: undo Roe V. Wade and criminalize abortion, reverse the court’s decision that gays are allowed to marry, or even reinstate religious rites into public schools.

They could continue building what conservatives have been working towards as they’ve been edging further to the right over the past 60 years. They could cement beliefs that corporations have the same rights as individuals. They could support Republican gerrymandering to rig districts to give Republicans more seats in Congress. They could turn a country built on immigration to one that hatefully bars anyone they don’t want from coming in. And they could continue their assault on voting rights, upholding insane laws that seek to limit certain groups that typically vote liberal. With a stacked conservative court, there would be nothing they couldn’t accomplish.

Naturally, if Hillary Clinton wins the White House, and especially if the Democrats take the Senate as it looks like they probably will, the reverse would be true. A woman’s right to control her own body would remain intact. Gays would be allowed to marry and have their equal rights protected. Schools would continue to be barred from promoting any religion. Corporations would be reduced to the business entities that they are and not on par with American citizens. Unfair gerrymandering attempts will continue to be struck down. We’ll remain open to immigrants. Everyone’s right to vote will be protected. These things all have the conservatives worried.

“Changing its balance and values for a generation,” it continues. “A liberal agenda that lasts for a generation.” This is correct. Installing three liberal or conservative justices during one president’s time in office would be huge. Both sides see it that way. Neither side wants the other to enjoy the benefits.

“Threatening our personal freedoms,” it says. “Zero regard for personal freedoms and liberty.” This is where the conservative argument goes off the rails. You just read my take on what things will be like should Trump win and what they would be like if Clinton wins. You can fact check any of this; this is not my opinion but a forecast of how it would likely go in either scenario. So when you consider the list of things conservatives want to see happen and compare them to the things that liberals want to see happen, it is outrageous that this mailer claims that the liberal result would be a threat to personal freedoms and liberty.

Conservatives talk about the liberal threats to personal freedoms and liberty, but that isn’t what they’re worried about at all. They’re worried about the country changing into something they don’t like—not one that hurts them or their freedom and liberty, just one they don’t like.

The mailer could have been a liberal mailer. The stakes are the same. But the liberals are on the right side of history. I’ll talk about that in the next essay.

Essay #2:
WHAT IS U.S. CONSERVATISM
AND LIBERALISM?

When it comes to social conservatism and social liberalism, these are two very different ideologies.

Social conservatism can be summed up succinctly: Conservatives don’t want anything they’ve known as the American way of life to ever change, and they want you to adhere to all of their beliefs whether you agree with them or not.

This sounds like liberal whining, but it’s really true. The further to the right a conservative is, the more pronounced these beliefs are. They don’t want gays to marry because marriage is a Christian thing (not true). They don’t want wind and solar power because they’re just fine with the oil they’ve always known (never realizing that the Republicans they vote for all too often make a lot of money off oil). They fight against climate change because it’s a lie, a massive conspiracy involving virtually every sensible scientist, nation, and governing body on the planet (it isn’t). They want mandated prayer back in schools because we always used to do it that way and it doesn’t hurt anyone (it does). They want non-Christians kept out of the country because the United States was founded as a Christian nation (it wasn’t). Evolution is a lie (it isn’t). Through all of their beliefs, they use their view of values, traditions, and religion to support the oppression of others.

Conservatives demand that we all do it their way. We should all want to deny gays the right to marry because they want to deny them that right. We should stick with oil because they want to stick with oil. We should embrace prayer because that’s what they want. We should kick out all non-Christians because they think we’re a Christian nation.

Conservatives look back. They say they’re protecting American values, as if every American MUST have the same values as they do—or SHOULD. They say they’re protecting American tradition, as if “Because we’ve always done it that way” is some kind of mantra that makes discriminating against others acceptable.

Liberals, on the other hand, are progressive. They look to the future. They look to moving forward to better ways of doing things. They work to ensure that everyone has the same rights as everyone else and that no one person or group is treated differently. They fought for marriage equality. They seek renewable forms of energy because that makes more sense. They accept climate change and evolution because you’d have to be an idiot to ignore the ridiculous mountains of scientific evidence that prove both. They recognize that taxpayer-funded public schools are no place for establishment of any religion, and they know that this country is a nation for everyone regardless of religion or lack thereof.

That mailer talks about personal freedoms and liberty. What do you think? Whose stances are about personal freedoms and liberty—conservatives or liberals?

Conservatives talk about personal freedoms and liberty even as they work nonstop to curtail those things for people who aren’t like them. When they say “personal freedoms,” they mean “The right for conservatives to ensure that nothing they’ve known as the American way of life will ever change.” When they say “personal liberty,” they mean “The right for conservatives to force everyone to adhere to all of their beliefs whether you agree with them or not.”

Both points are silly, and they’re perfect examples of oppressing personal freedoms and liberty. No one who doesn’t want gays to marry has his freedom or liberty infringed upon if they do. No one who wants schools to lead students in prayer is hurt by that not happening; contrary to what they’ll tell you, students can pray in school all they want—the schools just can’t lead it. None of the examples I outlined hurt anyone’s freedom or liberty if they don’t go the conservatives’ way, but people are surely hurt the freedom of liberty of others if they do.

So it boils down to this: When conservatives don’t like something, they believe it hurts their freedom and liberty. Yet they don’t care when the shoe is on the other foot. They don’t care if gay people are treated like second-class citizens. They don’t care if non-Christians are forced to endure prayer led by schools. They don’t care about anything so long as nothing ever changes. And if we don’t like it, the solution is to just believe everything they do.

How’s that for zero regard for personal freedoms and liberty?

Yes, the next president might well install three justices to the Supreme Court. At the end of September, Hillary Clinton said in a speech that “The next 40 days will determine the next 40 years.” She couldn’t be more right.

It is imperative for so many reasons that Donald Trump is not elected president, but for issues of social equality and human rights, for the United States of America this is the one thing that should escape no voter’s mind at the polls.

Essay #3:
HOW THE U.S. ELECTION
CAN IMPACT THE WORLD

“The United States is a fucked-up place,” cries everyone else who is sick of us. Well, I won’t argue that, but before you sling self-righteous insults at this country, give your own a long, hard look. Every country is fucked up. All of them. Email me your country if you don’t agree and I’ll be happy to tell you why yours is messed up.

But the difference between Americans and people in most other countries is a very basic one. This will sound arrogant, considering that I am an American, but I assure you that it’s just a plain statement of fact. While we all depend on each other in many ways, there’s no arguing that most other countries benefit a hell of a lot more from the United States than the United States benefits from them. It’s for this reason that non-Americans had better pay as much attention to what happens in this election as we are.

Regular readers of The Cud know that I write a monthly flash-fiction column called Cud Flashes in the Pan. The stories are typically science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural horror, but my favorite subgenre is dystopian social sci-fi—looking at what could happen in the future if we don’t get our shit together.

Cud Flashes typically has a theme every month. Sometimes it’s a single word, like “Hot” or “Trees.” Other times it’s holiday themed, such as the usual Halloween and Christmas editions. Occasionally, I take a favorite album by a musical artist and do shorts based on the song titles. And for Valentine’s Day, I always do “Love and Lust.”

This year, in August, September, and this month, I did a three-part theme called Planet Trump. I don’t generally use these op-eds to steer people to my fiction, but I urge you to read these three installments. In the past three months, I have postulated a lot of “what if” scenarios about what might happen to the world if Trump were to get elected. Yes, the world, because the man would do some crazy stuff that will almost certainly affect you and your country.

For example, Donald Trump said that, if elected president, he’d consider pulling out of NATO because it’s “obsolete.” Countries we’ve been supporting need to start paying us for all the protection they’ve gotten or they have to get out. “And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” he said at a Milwaukee rally in April.

He’s either nuts or he doesn’t know a thing about international affairs—likely both. NATO was long the key alliance that protected the world from the Soviet Union, creating a balance of the superpowers. Does anyone doubt that the Soviets likely would have overrun all of Europe without American protection? They divided Germany after World War II and it took the imminent collapse of the USSR to effectively end that division. Now, with Vladimir Putin throwing his weight around, does anyone really believe that if the United States pulled out of NATO that the Russians wouldn’t be right there making life miserable for everyone?

There are hundreds of U.S. military installations outside the U.S. They’re usually there by treaties and agreements. Locals often complain about them, but they’d certainly complain a lot more if the U.S. were no longer there and aggressive neighbors took advantage of that fact. If they all closed down, the world would rapidly become a different place.

Then there’s his belief that other countries should just get nuclear weapons. Somehow, nuclear proliferation on a global scale makes perfect sense to him. In a New York Times interview, Trump said he was open to allowing South Korea and Japan build nuclear arsenals instead of the U.S. protecting them. President Obama said of this stance that Trump “doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally.”

Trump then denied saying anything about Japan going nuclear (he did), but "eventually they’re going to want to get them anyway.” But if that weren't enough, for Trump it all came down to money.

“I would rather have them not arm, but I’m not going to continue to lose this tremendous amount of money,” he said.

There's nothing wrong with watching the money, but to prioritize the money over preventing nuclear war is stunning.

Declaring that NATO is obsolete and that other countries should load up on nukes are two major world-stage game-changers. Now couple those ideas with his apparent wannabe bromance with Putin. If the U.S. gets in bed with Putin, abandons NATO, and allows other nations to build nuclear arsenals, where are we headed? Let the little guys nuke it out while we unify with a new Soviet juggernaut? I know—it sounds too ridiculous to ever be true, but not long ago the chance of Donald Trump becoming president seemed the same.

People talk about how the United States sets standards for human rights in the world. And the United States drops a lot of foreign aid absolutely everywhere; just read or listen to Gordon Sinclair’s “The Americans” radio broadcast (at https://goo.gl/rr2AKD). It’s just as apt now as when he first broadcast it in 1973, because still today we’re the ones who are there when things go wrong, the first to lend aid, the first to help, and the first to shoulder the financial burden. That’s all courtesy of American taxpayers. You’re welcome.

If Trump is in power, you can bet that the U.S. would not be there to save everyone when disaster strikes, to defend nations we’re no longer allied with, to hold the Russians in check, and to help keep a balance in the world. What would happen to the world? What would happen to the United States?

I don’t want to find out. I don’t want this world to become anything like the dystopian stories I wrote for the three months of Planet Trump.

But they sure as hell might.

Essay #4:
AT HIS CORE, WHO IS
DONALD J. TRUMP?

There’s a lot of talk about how Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both horrible candidates. I disagree. Clinton is not a perfect candidate; she has her issues, but they pale in comparison to Trump’s. If you’re a Trump supporter, I’m sure she seems like a horrible candidate, but Trump is a horrible candidate to so many more people than Clinton supporters. Let’s look at the characters of both of them.

Part 1:
Some Character Basics

Hillary Clinton has been in public service practically her entire life. She has a decades-long track record of helping those in need.

Donald Trump got money from his rich father to start a business. He built those businesses while not paying taxes, by going bankrupt multiple times, and by deliberately refusing to pay contractors what he’d agreed to pay them or by not paying them at all.

Clinton and her husband started the Clinton Foundation, which has helped people all over the world. Despite conservative claims that Clinton used her position as Secretary of State to get donations in exchange for favors to foreign governments and others, there is no evidence to support any of that. Two charity watchdogs rate the Clinton Foundation very highly: Charity Navigator awarded it four out of four stars after reviewing the Foundation’s taxes; CharityWatch indicated that 88 percent of the Foundation’s money goes to its charities, with just 12 percent for administrative costs. Check out the well-cited Wikipedia articles about the Foundation and the State Department controversy at https://goo.gl/azQfDq and https://goo.gl/7hXOMS for details.

Trump started the Donald J. Trump Foundation and throughout his campaign has talked about all the money he has donated to it to help others. But after $5.4 million he donated from 1988 to 2008, he hasn’t made a donation, so this is a family foundation without any family money. That hasn’t stopped Trump from spending it; reportedly, he spent money on a six-foot painting of himself that he ended up owning, made campaign contributions with foundation money, paid personal legal settlements, solicited without being properly licensed to do so, raised millions for veterans but did not disperse those funds until the media called him out on it… the list just goes on and on with other claims of improper or illegal activity. Charity Navigator currently has a “Moderate Concern” advisory in the wake of the charity being shut down following a Notice of Violation by the New York State Attorney General. CharityWatch does not rate the Trump Foundation because it’s a private foundation run by the family instead of a public charity run by an independent board. Read this well-cited article about the Trump Foundation, and good luck poring over the ridiculous list of controversies: https://goo.gl/14TuaX

Clinton’s opponents, particularly Donald Trump, vilify her for her husband’s sexual escapades. She didn’t do them; her husband allegedly did. But they want to find something wrong with her, so they attack her for not believing her husband’s accusers or, often, for simply being married to a man who was accused of such things.

Trump was revealed on a 2005 tape talking about kissing women and grabbing their crotches without their permission. He admitted to sexually assaulting women. He defended this by saying that it was “locker-room banter.” (I’ve been in locker rooms. I’m a heterosexual guy; I get it, we talk about women. Sometimes we get quite crude. But in all my years I have never heard a guy brag about sexually assaulting them. What kind of person would do such things and then tell other people that he does them?) So one wonders why anyone was surprised when, after Trump tried to dismiss this “locker-room banter,” women started coming out of the woodwork with stories about Trump doing exactly those sorts of things to them. As of this writing, 10 such women have told their stories. Many of them have corroboration, such as having told others at the time about the incidents or having had someone else witness it. Trump denies it all; they’re all liars, they’re all setting him up, it’s part of the Clinton campaign’s efforts to make him look bad, and now he’s saying that he plans to sue all these lying women once the election is over.

There are a few character contrasts between Clinton and Trump. But let’s talk about honesty and integrity in general. I did this a bit last month, but it bears further study.

Part 2:
Clinton’s Honesty and Integrity

On September 24, the New York Times ran an article called “A Week of Whoppers with Donald Trump.” The lede: “All politicians bend the truth to fit their purposes, including Hillary Clinton. But Donald J. Trump has unleashed a blizzard of falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies in the general election, peppering his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts with untruths so frequent that they can seem flighty or random—even compulsive.”

Trump supporters follow his nonstop claims that Hillary Clinton is a corrupt liar. There are three key things that they harp on nonstop: her email server, Benghazi, and her paid speeches.

She had a private email server. It was stupid, which she admits. But ignoring the other Secretaries of State who had them, it was really the Obama Administration’s responsibility for allowing her to have it. It wasn’t against the law to have one. And Clinton has talked about this ad nauseam to Congress (for 11 hours), the FBI, and the press. Her story has always been consistent, and the FBI’s Republican director concluded that there was no cause to charge her with ANYTHING. This hasn’t stopped Trump from trumpeting about her alleged 33,000 missing emails. Many of the missing emails had been deleted over time as any user typically would, and her legal team deleted many more after its investigation. Some were recovered and authorities decided that they were work-related, so she did make a few mistakes. But, notably, she always took responsibility for having the server and for not handling the emails well. Yet Trump demands to see the emails—as if she backed them up to a flash drive just in case she had to hand them over to Trump someday. Read about it here: https://goo.gl/1rrBwV

And, by the way, despite this manufactured outrage over her email server, why is it that Republicans seem to forget about the George W. Bush email server issue, where senior White House staff used it in an apparent attempt to keep communications off the public record? There were three domains, two registered to the Republican National Committee and one to Bush-Cheney’s reelection campaign. To this date about 5 million emails have never been found. Amazing that Clinton is held to such a higher standard by Republicans. The truth is, she isn’t; it’s just politics. Check it out: https://goo.gl/suGHMk

Then there’s Benghazi. Like the email server, there isn’t much more everyone could do to investigate this. There were investigations by the FBI, the State Department, a pile of congressional committees, and others, not to mention exhaustive digging by the media. Clinton even testified for eight hours before the House Select Committee. The end result (despite some investigations continuing) was that Clinton was not responsible. But it sure looks like Republicans have been trying to make her look like she was since 2012—almost certainly because they knew she’d run for president in 2016 and it would make her look bad. Check it out: https://goo.gl/HVoN3e

Clinton also gave speeches and got paid for them. I’m not sure why that’s a big deal, especially when such accusations come from a billionaire like Trump. But they reveled in the WikiLeaks dump of emails that included transcripts of some of her speeches that purport to make her look bad.

That’s really about it for the major issues. I mean, Trump and his followers hate her in general, but that’s no surprise. There isn’t a laundry list of bad stuff going on with her. Like her or not, she seems to be about as honest and aboveboard as a politician gets.

Part 3:
Trump’s Honesty and Integrity

So let’s look at Trump.

He refuses to release his tax returns. One can reasonably suspect he doesn’t want the American people to see where his money is, what taxes he’s avoided paying, who he might be cozying up to in Russia, etc. Now, he doesn’t have to release them, but his excuse for not doing so is a lie: He says he’s under audit, and they will be released when it’s over. Every tax preparer in the country knows that he can release his returns while under audit. The IRS, which cannot comment on whether Trump is under audit, has also said this. Despite media requests for Trump to release a copy of the audit letter he would have received from the IRS, he has not done so. And the audit has been going on forever; no audit takes this long. Trump is lying.

Those 10 women who have accused him… sure, someone might be lying. But probably not, and almost certainly not all of them, especially with witnesses and corroborators. And given that that damning tape had Trump telling people in 2005 that he liked to sexually assault women, it’s hard to imagine that he’s innocent of all of those claims.

Then there’s his foundation—the one where he has misused funds for personal reasons, all of which would be criminal.

He continues to deny ever being for the war in Iraq, despite audio evidence to the contrary. He just keeps denying it. I think you could play it for him and he’d still deny it.

Then there’s the famous tape from a 1991 interview with People magazine. People wanted to interview Trump, but instead they got “John Miller” on the phone—but it was clearly Trump. He didn’t even try to disguise his voice. Of course, he denied it. If you haven’t heard this, it’s hilarious: https://goo.gl/zBMqy5

These examples aren’t even political issues, but they show a pattern of dishonesty. And we’re just getting started. Let’s get into some other stuff. I hope you have plenty of time, because these are all worth reading.

Read the story I mentioned in The New York Times (a liberal-leaning paper), “A Week of Whoppers with Donald Trump”—and remember that this was all just in ONE WEEK: https://goo.gl/0jjZE2

His lies are nothing new. Check out this story in The Washington Post (a conservative-leaning paper) from November 23, 2015, “Donald Trump is constantly lying”: https://goo.gl/73Amoj

But perhaps nothing tops this great piece by Hank Berrien at The Daily Wire (a conservative political site) on April 11, 2016, “Lyin’ Donald: 101 of Trump’s Greatest Lies”: https://goo.gl/eUc2JF

After you’ve finished enjoying (or being mortified over) those, check out PolitiFact’s ratings of the things Trump and Clinton have said. This nonpartisan group checks the facts and posts whether it’s true or false, and how true or false. Every politician is wrong about things—by deliberately twisting things, by just having the wrong information, or my misspeaking—but when we have someone whose consistent inaccuracies are to the level of Trump’s then something is wrong—and it isn’t media bias.

These are screen grabs from October 22, 2016:

Summary: She’s right and/or honest most of the time. He’s wrong and/or dishonest most of the time. Look at those graphs. Their truth versus false numbers are almost inverted. But don’t take my word for it; click through to see current numbers for where the candidates stand:

Trump: https://goo.gl/kL0GHt

Clinton: https://goo.gl/R7lKUg

Part 4:
Lyin’ Crooked Crazy

Trump likes to give his enemies—or perceived enemies—rude, childish nicknames. Ted Cruz is “Lyin’ Ted.” Bernie Sanders is “Crazy Bernie.” Hillary Clinton is “Crooked Hillary.” But Donald Trump is a serial liar and apparently a corrupt businessman. And the sheer volume of his lies and apparent crimes might well qualify him for insanity.

Donald J. Trump is Lyin’ Crooked Crazy Donald. He’s everything he accuses others of being. This is not a man who should be president of the United States, not president of a homeowner’s association, and not president of a local fan club—but especially not president of the United States!

He has an apparent hard-on for nuclear weapons, a lust for going to war, and bromantic daydreams about leaders like Vladimir Putin. He’s on a quest to build a wall on the Mexican border, on a mission to keep Muslims out of the country, and obsessed with booting out illegal immigrants even if they have children who are American citizens. But even if you ignore all of this or any of the other alarming ideas that he’s come up with, the man is about the most dishonest, corrupt, criminal, immoral candidate we’ve ever seen. That’s not me throwing out subjective insults; these are things that we can research and prove.

The irony is that after months of getting his supporters chanting “Lock her up!” at his rallies, and he proclaiming that Clinton will likely be in jail by the time she’d be president, it just might be Trump who gets locked up for his ridiculous list of possible criminal issues.

Americans can do much better than Donald J. Trump. And on November 8, I hope to hell that we will.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a writer living in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.