CT Blue

It’s hardly a new observation to make, but it’s a fact that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that those who live through history die off, and are replaced by people who think, for some reason, that things are now different.

They year 2000 wasn’t that long ago, but the lesson that so many of us learned is apparently either forgotten or never learned by the “millenials” who have chosen to vote for either Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. Apparently, such people exist in large numbers, perhaps large enough to throw the election to the guy promising to make America fascist.

Stein, apparently, has an almost Nader like take on the election. According to her, Hillary is the real threat because of all those bad things she will skillfully push through Congress, while Trump will be neutered by a Congress that will frustrate him at every turn. People actually believe, or say they believe this, though both sides of the equation are patently absurd. Hillary will be frustrated by a Congress controlled by the Republicans, while Trump, if elected, would cause maximum harm simply by going along with whatever the Republicans chose to pass.

It’s equally hard to see how any but a right winger would go with Johnson in lieu of Trump. Could it be, as I’ve seen speculated, that the never Hillary types are sufficiently satisfied with the nice sounding “Libertarian” name? Are there really frustrated Bernie voters who would prefer an anti-environment, anti-regulation, anti-social security, pro free-market freebooters candidate to a candidate who, at worst, will be Obama term three?

I was no Hillary fan, but I remember my frustrating attempts to talk friends out of voting for Nader in 2000. Gore wasn’t perfect either, but the world and the country would be better off had we had 8 years of him rather than 8 years of George Bush.

It is getting very scary out there. The unthinkable is becoming more thinkable every day. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that in the end these third party voters will stop and think. We really are at a precipice. Make the wrong choice this year, and the opportunity to correct it may never come.