Friday, June 12, 2026

Just Say No

I have decided for whom I will vote for president. Nobody.

I can’t vote for the wannabe Hitler; why anyone would is beyond me. I can’t vote for the assistant to genocide. So, when it comes to the top line, I will leave it blank.

Over and over, I have heard folks decry the disgusting choices offered to us. An anti-vax scion of the Kennedy clan, all of whose families have decried his views, an indicted senile clown, or the guy who keeps an eraser handy to remove all the red lines he draws and, perhaps due to his mental decline, forgets he drew them. Full disclosure: I am a few months older than the orange guy, so if you choose, you can chalk up my screeds to senility as well. These three benighted white men whose whole lives have been dedicated to creating an image of themselves should be relegated to the scrap heap of history. History will not treat them well.

The leader of an attempt to overthrow an election he lost or the guy who won. God, what a nightmare. I’ve read somewhere that we get the government we deserve. Well, here we are.

If I don’t vote for the eraser guy, I’m told the crook will win. Frankly, either way, both will back Israel in realizing its goal of expanding its territory from the river to the sea. Both will point to the attack on October 7, 2023, as a justification for seven months and counting of horrific “tragic mistakes,” killing almost thirty times the number killed on that murderous day, of seven months of destroying hospitals and homes and killing over fourteen thousand little children, maiming and mutilating countless others, and creating orphans. It has been pointed out that, yippee, two Hamas leaders were killed in the fiery inferno that Israeli bombs set off in Rafah this week. Well, that makes it all right, I suppose.

Every administration has insisted that settlements must stop. Every administration has exacted no cost as settlers use the very tactics that the Klan used to terrorize and drive out Palestinians from their homes and steal their property.

We constantly hear that Israel has a right to defend itself, but when Israel attacks Syria, Lebanon, or Iranian embassies, those countries are warned that they best not to defend themselves. Apparently, attacking possible future imagined enemies is OK. Extrajudicial assassinations by the US or Israel are fine.

The US has vetoed any attempt to sanction Israel for violations. When the ICJ or the ICC brings matters to the fore, the US backs Israel. The eraser guy and the orange guy both back Israel. College presidents have people who complain about Israeli actions arrested. Complaints about Israeli behavior are called antisemitic.

It’s interesting to point out that most of the Jews in this world are not ethnic Semites, while almost the Arabs are. It’s time to deep-six that term. Judaism is a religion. Israel is a country. Conflating the two is bad for Jewish people all over the world. Jews everywhere are deemed responsible for the carnage and displacement in Gaza and the West Bank. They are not.

So, back to my original premise. If you don’t like Trump, don’t vote for him. If you don’t like Biden, don’t vote for him. Most importantly, if you don’t like any of the choices, don’t vote for them. Leave that category blank and get on to your representatives, senators, and mayors. Show up to vote; it is the very, very least a citizen can do, but just leave the top category a resounding empty choice because the choices we have are so grotesque.

Yeah, Trump or Biden, depending on your poison, might destroy the world as we know it. Neither will. Both will do more harm than good, but history, depending on whose version one ascribes to, shows that short of a nuclear holocaust, we will survive. The world will survive even with a nuclear holocaust. In a battle between humans and the planet, bet on the planet.

Don’t vote for any of these guys. You will feel better if you don’t and need fewer drinks.

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M.A. Callahan

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