By Pat Race
Updated: 16 minutes ago Published: 16 minutes ago
Don’t vote for Donald Trump. He’s terrible.
As a candidate, as a leader, as a businessman, Trump is simply the worst of us. All of our most cynical, greedy, fist-pumping hoorah stuffed into one orange sausage casing and fed back to us through cable news and algorithmic ad placement.
I know, I know, Alaska loves a con man. We’re still putting on plays about Soapy Smith 125 years after his best scams. We appreciate a trickster, a trouble maker, a ne’er-do-well. But I would argue that Trump isn’t a lovable sort in that way we Alaskans really appreciate. No, he’s more sinister and selfish and his lies aren’t the fun kind that make us think a volcano is smoldering on April Fool’s Day.
There’s a documentary on HBO Max called “Stopping the Steal” that I would highly recommend watching. It’s a harrowing recap of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and it’s told almost entirely through interviews with Republican insiders. These aren’t “gotcha” interviews, either; they’re frank, behind-the-curtains insights by the people who were there as a sore loser of epic proportions tried to bend reality and cheat his way to a presidential victory.
Despotism has no place in America — we must reject it and we must reject those who embrace it.
We all lived through those months of tweets and news in slow motion but to see it compressed into a concise 90 minute documentary sure brings it all home in a way I didn’t expect.
Criticism of Trump isn’t uncommon from those who have spent time in his orbit. J.D. Vance wrote as recently as 2016 that he goes “back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a–hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
America’s Hitler. And that’s from his running mate!
So what’s the alternative? Let me just say this about Kamala Harris: She’s got a real resume, from district attorney to attorney general to senator to vice president. And she busted up Trump so badly in the one debate they had that he won’t face her again before the election. She’s a winner and I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt our prospects if we pitched in a few electoral votes.
Of course, if you’re having a hard time voting for Harris, there are six other candidates on the ballot in Alaska. Just don’t vote for Trump. He’s terrible.
Pat Race is an illustrator and filmmaker who was born in Juneau and studied computer science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=67086b2daab84e3da4ec1b7e511eab68&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.adn.com%2Fopinions%2F2024%2F10%2F10%2Fopinion-alaska-can-do-better-than-donald-trump%2F&c=2058216520090638117&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-10-10 12:48:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.