Dear Americans: VOTE. This Is Critical

This is it. This is the day.

Image is a banner with white stars on a navy background running across the top and bottom, bordered in red. In a white box in the middle, it says VOTE America. Every Vote Counts.
If you’re in Pennsylvania, you can get a free Uber or Lyft ride to the polls. Here’s how.

When you vote, remember this important truth:

Image is a quote from Rebecca Solnit that says, "Voting is a chess move, not a valentine." Beside the quote, there is a black and white photo of her sitting with tall grasses behind her.
So please, don’t write in a candidate who has no chance, or vote for third party candidates who not only will not win, but are unfit to govern to begin with. Don’t throw your votes away. Trump needs to lose, and lose hugely. The bigoted assholes, the white supremacists, the violent fanatics he’s goaded and enabled, they all need to see him crushed. They need to see that hate doesn’t win. They need to understand that they are despicable, and decent society will have nothing of them.

Vote.

***

I am so terrified to find out whether my fellow citizens are such sexist dupes that they’d elect an admitted sexual abuser with none of the knowledge, temperament, and experience necessary to run a country as huge and complicated as ours, rather than have to call an eminently qualified woman Madam President.

I haven’t been able to do more than read about this shitshow and huddle in my blankets in abject dread. It’s never been like this before. Every other election, even 2004, I knew the country would somehow muddle through. This time, if we make the wrong choice, I don’t think we’ll be okay again. Not until after too many people have died. At the very, very least, our Supreme Court will be fucked for at least a generation, and the suffering that will cause is huge.

I can’t wait for this to be over, and yet I’m dreading it.

If you can vote, cast your vote for Clinton. Vote downballot for the most progressive candidates available. Then come huddle here with me. We’ll get through this together.

***A SPECIAL NOTICE TO TRUMP VOTERS***

But if you vote for Trump, realize that you’re voting for a deeply racist child rapist. Realize who you’re unifying yourself with. These are people who burn black churches, who torch transgender people’s trucks, who beat up protestors, harass immigrants, and even attack a child in a wheelchair for having the audacity to disagree with their hate.

If you vote for this man, you are condoning this behavior. You’re saying it’s okay to assault disabled folk, women, and people of color. That’s on top of the endless pile of reasons why he’s completely unfit to be president.

I don’t care what your reasons are. I don’t care if you’re lodging a protest against the Dems, or really think an ignorant jackass in the White House would force everybody to have some wonderful revolution, or if you’re just easily bamboozled. I don’t care if you’re doing it because you think Clinton is evil, or think she’s going to rip fully-developed healthy babies from wombs right at the 9th month, or don’t like her husband, or whatever reason you might offer.

If you vote for this man, you are reprehensible, and I want you to realize that and sit with that realization and feel awful about it. And then I want you to do better. But I don’t want to hear a single word from your mouth until you’ve had that epiphany. As long as you feel you did the right thing by voting for Trump, I don’t want to hear a single thing from you.

Because you voted for this. You voted for a man who foments this kind of hate. And that says nothing good about you.

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Dear Americans: VOTE. This Is Critical
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