Write in a Name on Election Day; Biden and Trump are a Threat to National Security

Over the last several months, I have been in political agony. After President Biden’s pitiful performance during Thursday’s debate, I know for certain that I will not vote for him.

Sure, the Democrats, like former President Obama and others will rally around him publicly. But common sense tells us that privately it’s a different matter. For Democrats, they are faced with a huge risk. Boot Biden but bring in someone relatively unknown against a former President whose name is constantly on the lips of friends and foes alike. Keep him and risk losing the independents the Democrats need to beat Trump.

Say whatever you want about former President Trump, but he is a big, imposing man with a huge personality that sucks up all the attention in the room. He is a strong man and that makes him immune to telling the truth or any rule of law. He is a demagogue, a populist, and such people are impossible to beat when the contender has been banded weak. Whether such a branding is fair to President Biden is a moot point. He is seen as week, and that makes the United States look weak. He is a threat to national security.

In fairness to the current President, he has always been a poor speaker and not a very imposing presence. Regardless of what former President Trump thinks and feels, Trump is the reason Trump lost the election. What President Biden does have is resilience and inner toughness. He never gave up, and this is what I admire about Joe Biden. He has had a difficult life and spent most of his time in politics as a poor man compared to other politicians.

However, when the public is concerned about age, and the President has had weeks to prepare, there is no excuse for such a lousy performance. Such does make me worry about Biden’s cognitive decline. If Biden wins, he has to function at a Navy Seal mental level for four more years. We have watched just how much presidents age in office. It is a brutal job that has no job requirements besides that the candidate has to be super rich or able to get hundreds of millions in support. We can and most likely will elect a man with multiple felonies who has made it clear that he is an enemy to the United States of America.

But, alas, there is a bug in my ear trying to convince me to vote for Trump. Part of it is anger, a protest that the Democrats are just so out of touch with reality. The other more sensible part is that I cannot stand U.S. foreign policy.

Vladimir Putin is right, but I hate what he does to human beings, both Russians and Ukrainians. The United States continued to expand NATO against Russia’s wishes over and over again. The excuse from the U.S. was that it could not tell democracies what to do. But as Putin pointed out, how many American bases are spread throughout the world? Then look at how many Russian ones were before 2016.

We have pissed off Russia and in a bad way, and that is not good. This is something that Henry Kissinger was predicting. Though I don’t claim to be an expert in foreign policy, I’ve been around when the USSR was around. Did U.S. policy prevent North Korea from getting nuclear weapons? No. Has the U.S. stopped terrorism after 20 years in Afghanistan?  No. Both ISIS and Al-Qaeda are still around. Who has influence now in Iraq? Iran.  And Iran hates us. Why? Because, in part, the West sold Iran and Iraq weapons during the war between Iran and Iraq. The U.S. also supported a brutal dictator so that the West could get its hands on oil cheaply.

The U.S. has not won a war since World War II because it has nothing to do with winning wars. It has to do with the stock market and making money. Oh, and the U.S. government often calls wars “operations.” Hmm, I wonder who else did that?

Yes, Putin. He had a special military operation, not a war. The U.S. does this all the time. We also use and supply the world with weapons of mass destruction, cluster munitions condemned by the UN, and give them to Ukraine to kill Russians. We scream when Russia hits a hospital, but it’s okay for Israel’s Prime Minister to hit a hospital in Gaza and wage war on people who are basically in a huge camp with no way out. It’s okay that the U.S. supplies 2,000-pound bombs to Israel while talking about peace, and we wonder why so many in the Middle East hate us. When one kills a hundred of your people, does it make it right to kill thousands of theirs even when almost all of them are innocent?

This is why Putin calls us idiots and despises the West. Where are our principles? No, I am not a fan of Putin, but in fairness, the only thing I know about him is what I am told through the U.S. It’s not like we invited him here and we can listen to what he has to say. Such would never be allowed. So much for a free country. I support Ukraine and still do. I support Israel having a state, as they do, but we cannot and should not ignore the common brutality in all of this. Nor should we accuse Russia or China for acting just like the U.S. has for decades.

And that is my point, I want a different policy. I don’t want us to be the big police officer anymore. Let China and Russia bear the cost of that. Yes, we may have to pay more for stuff, but then we buy too much stuff anyway.

As to China, Taiwan is China’s business. It sits 90 miles off the Mainland’s border. As much as I want to support Taiwan’s goal of freedom, it can never get away from China. They must negotiate. Ukraine was a sovereign nation, even according to Russia, so a violent invasion from Russia was horrid, brutal, and uncalled for. Nonetheless, the U.S. and its allies played a role in that invasion by repeatedly ticking off Russia. There are Ukrainian areas that want to be closer to Russia, but that is ignored in Western media. What about their freedom and rights?

But the U.S. does not care about democracy in Taiwan. It’s never really cared about democracy at all. It cares about semiconductors because the U.S. allowed idiotic trading practices where we put all of our eggs in one basket instead of diversifying trade. I always joke that if we go to war with China, we will have to ask China to make our uniforms and weapons. We may even have to ask for soldiers. Such trade is based on greed and opportunity at the moment, regardless that U.S. officials knew for decades that these trading practices were stupid and even dangerous.

This is all to show that the U.S. is now in a weakened state with a president that looks and sounds weak. I have little doubt that we will be in war with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran if Biden stays on. We cannot win that war. Will we be willing to send our daughters and sons to Chinese, North Korean, and Russian meat grinders by the millions? Will the U.S. resort to threatening its citizens with a draft or prison? Here we go again. Are we not like Putin’s Russia?

We have crossed a red line with Russia. They only sit on thousands of nuclear weapons. I have changed my tune in recent months. Ukraine has to negotiate with Putin because no matter what government Ukraine wants, Russia sits on its border.

The thing with President Trump is that he is a strong man and looks like those other strong men. Unlike Biden, a man who is so predictable that Putin knows what Biden will do for the rest of Biden’s life, Trump is unpredictable. He may even scare Putin. A strong man also knows how to deal with a strong man, and Trump may offer a different approach to the world than Biden’s outdated though well-intentioned plan. We have to deal with China and Russia peacefully while preparing our military for the worst in case Putin is bent on confronting the West no matter what.

I worry that Trump only believes in Trump and only does what Trump likes at the moment, so who is to say we won’t be worse off with him? He, too, is a clear and present danger to the United States and its values because the United States is nothing but an old casino to him, just a past trophy.

What does the voter do? In a massive country like ours, both the GOP and DNC have given us their worst candidate simply because they have influence and power. Whatever happened to loving one’s nation and doing the best to get a functional adult in office? There is such selfishness and personal greed among our nation’s politicians that I wonder if this is the end of the United States. If President Biden loves the United States, he will step down. That is the sacrifice he needs to do to have any chance to preserve any semblance of democracy. If Biden stays, Trump wins.

I don’t care if they are liberal or conservative. I just want a competent human being that has a moral or ethical compass. Wanting the U.S. to be neutral is not isolationist. I am sick of these endless wars, where we concern ourselves with other nation’s problems.

I do still support NATO and the West because our nation was born on the principles that came from the West, but we don’t have to be the single boss. We also have to accept that different countries do things in different ways. We have enough resources. I want a new direction, a fresh start for the U.S.

On voting day, I will write in a name, maybe Taylor Swift. I suggest you all write in one, too.