2016 Election: Is it really a choise of the 'lesser of two evils,' or voting your conscience?

It is a shame that our choices for the White House have boiled down to holding one’s nose and choosing one the perceived lesser of two evils. 

On one hand, there is the self-absorbed demagogue who steps in the bull flop and then puts the same foot in his mouth, repeatedly; a man who is long on criticism and so short of proposed solutions.

On the other, we are offered a career politician whose foreign policy decisions were disastrous and deadly in their aftermath, whose hubris is legendary, and whose integrity has long been for sale.


The old saw that we get what we deserve when we go to the polls cannot hold true in 2016, can it? How could any nation “deserve” either of our horrible choices this election year?

So, the argument here is basically to choose the aforementioned lesser of two evils; that a vote of conscience — say casting our ballots instead for Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein — has no value?

Perhaps, in a political economy of situational ethics, that makes some sense. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” as the idiom says.

Too many are surrendering to that idea, and I understand the frustration that feeds that assessment. But for some of us, voting for either of the major party “choices” is simply too repugnant to contemplate.

Sometimes, a few of us may even say all the time, choosing the right thing is never a waste, even if it isn’t the “winning” choice in the cynical world of politicians.

Vote you conscience.

Want to change a cynical, ethically and morally bankrupt world? First, change yourself

It’s getting tough to write blogs.

Oh, not because there’s not enough fodder, if political, moral, ethical or any other kind of outrage is what you are into.

There’s plenty of all that. 

In fact, there is way, way too much. It is downright depressing.

So much so, that if you think about it for any amount of time, you just might — in your deepest, darkest moments — wish for an extinction-level meteor event.

You know, give the cockroaches a chance.

Currently, a coarse, crude, egomaniacal billionaire has the Republican presidential selection process in what likely will prove to be a politically fatal spiral to banality. 

The Democrats, meanwhile, offer us either a candidate who lies as easily as a snake hisses, has no integrity, and who flip-flops on her so-called “deeply held beliefs” — abortion, gay marriage, capitalism, the War on Terror, immigration, the environment, you name it — depending on which way the political winds blow . . . or a self-described “democratic socialist.”

At least the socialist, in this case, is consistent and honest about his beliefs, however historically bankrupt they may be.

Then, there are the questionable, unending wars and civil conflicts we dive into, only to learn we have been on the wrong sides, or at least ones where we should not have destabilized nation states inherited by fanatic, murderous Islamic extremists who now persecute millions, slaughter thousands, and ultimately threaten billions.

We are, as a nation, morally bankrupt. We do not admit that; rather, we simply redefine what morality is, rather than confronting what we once commonly agreed was immoral.

Ethics — in business, government, even in religious bodies — has become situational at best, and arguably a massive illusion of self-deception, rendering the concept of proper behavior to nothingness.

One can despair.

But perspective is all. We can only control ourselves, our own actions. 

If we value morality and ethics, let it begin at home — how we treat our spouses, children, and grandchildren — and then shine as a rarity in the workplace, and certainly in our friendships.

If we are to lament the state of the world and its leaders, we need to be the kinds of leaders, friends, parents, workers, and human beings we would like to see.

Finally, but ultimately the key to it all, there’s faith.

If we believe we are, indeed, God’s children, time to stop playing the prodigal, and return to what we know in our hearts is true, good, and faithful to the Love that redeems us.

Want to change the world? And it needs changing, oh yes. 

Well, start with the person you see in the mirror — or reflected in the eyes of a child.