Outlast 2

I bought the Outlast Trilogy for PS4 new for $12 on clearance and I played through all three back to back. I'm going to focus on the last one, Outlast 2 And because it's on PS4`I get to take my own screenshots. Yay! I love the disclaimers in these games. It’s like “You know why you’re here. Enjoy the game, sicko.”

Outlast 2 is a run and hide survival horror game just like its two predecessors. You have no weapons or flashlight but a trusty camcorder with a night vision mode that allows you to see in the dark with clear atmospheric conditions. This mode uses batteries which you have to collect to keep it functional. Some differences between this and the first two include now taking damage and needing to heal yourself with bandages which you can find. The run button is now L3 instead of L1 which is now the look behind button and let me tell you that was hard getting used to after playing two games with it the other way around. The other two games took place in the same asylum and secret testing facility but this one has the distinct setting of rural Arizona so it’s outside or underground for a majority of the game. Now I haven’t been to ALL of Arizona but I find it hard to believe that there’s a part of Arizona looks like this. Yosemite in California yes or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest maybe but this just seems like too much granite and too many trees for Arizona. Where are the red rock formations, sagebrush and Joshua trees?

The premise is that you’re a cameraman for a reporter, (your wife,) going to investigate the disappearance of a young woman when your helicopter crashes rather abruptly from unseen forces. You arise from the crash with a dead pilot and a missing wife so you set off to find her which takes you straight into the heart of a backwater commune of cultists. Their religion has loose connections to Christianity but kind of runs afoul being centered around rape and human sacrifice.

There appear to be a lot of different horror influences here all melded into one. It’s a lot of Children of the Corn and The Hills Have Eyes. And then there’s some Blair Witch Project and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And then at the end there’s even some The Descent and even one iconic death scene that was straight out of The Omen.

The enemies in this game are all over the place in breed. They’re all humans I think but there’s insane religious zealots which inhabit the ramshackled farm and village areas. They’re like The Ganados from Resident Evil 4. There’s sick people who have been quarantined to a shanty town on the outskirts. There’s weird tribal bush people in the deep wilderness and a couple of guys resembling Master and Blaster, (let’s see how many pop culture references we can do,) who hunt you down with flaming crossbow bolts. There’re mud people in the caves. It’s like a whole freak ecosystem. There’s also no way to tell who’s going to try to kill you on sight, who’s only going to try to kill you if you’re up in their face and who just wants to puke on the ground and be left alone.

There are chase segments where you have to crawl away from pursuers through a tight spot either under a house or through a cave and you move so damn slow I’m constantly thinking there’s no way they’re not going to catch me but they don’t because they’re moving just as slow I guess. it’s almost comical that it’s a dire life or death flight measured in feet per minute.

The hiding places have been significantly downgraded. Not many lockers or beds around. Instead you mostly have water or containers of water which are hard to see out of and leave your vision blurry when you come out and oh my God, is that blood? I can seriously submerge myself in a drum full of blood to hide? Wouldn’t I have to spend the rest of the game running around looking like Carry after prom night?

Ignoring the big recurring baddies, guys with flashlights are the worst enemy. If you have to go within ten yards of them they will eventually spin around and spot you if you aren’t behind something. Considering you can’t hurt your enemies, the convention that you can essentially see in the dark while they’re effectively blind in it makes it a level playing field but guys with flashlights just screws you. However you are granted another tool which wasn’t in the first game, the camera microphone. Switch it on when using the camera view and you get a sound reading on your HUD. You can eavesdrop but that’s not that important. It works kind of like a geiger counter. Depending on where you aim the camera the bar goes up when you center on a noise source which is usually a person. The higher the bar, the closer the person to your proximity. This thing works at a good distance and through walls so it’s almost like you can see through objects in a crude sense.

Like the other games there are backstory or exposition documents scattered around that you can collect and specific events or objects that you can record with your camera. I like how your camera shows a timeline of everything you’ve gathered and shows blanks when you missed something not that you can do a damn thing about it. In the other games you could flick on your camera and the thing in front of you is recorded but in Outlast 2 you have to stand there for 10-15 seconds shooting what is usually a static object and if you move at all you risk interrupting and resetting it. Really? Come on. If it’s an event, you sometimes need to immediately turn the camera on and begin recording before whatever it is ends and you never see it again. But there’s so much crazy shit happening all the time it’s impossible to tell what you’re supposed to document and what’s just another Christmas tree decorated with entrails. Why am I recording this? It’s like the hundredth… one of these I’ve seen tonight.

The segment where you have to go rafting down the river sucks. When I started out and had to paddle across the lake I kept getting hung up on an invisible wall with no way to tell that I wasn’t moving at all. In the river the raft handles like shit but it’s basically made like the door to a wood cabin so kudos on making a door that floats like a door I guess. There are two places on the river where you are scheduled to get wrecked and lose your raft but somehow on my first try I maneuvered past both of them and made it to my destination with significantly less sidetrack and hassle. However when I got there there was no way to dock and get off either by climbing up the ladder or getting on the pier because it’s only supposed to happen as part of a triggered event. I was just stuck floating around on the worst raft ever. I went past the dock and down river to a place you’re not supposed to be able to go, (still unaware things were amiss even though I’d been clipping through objects in the environment,) and I found where the river terminates in a low res pond which I actually think is creepier than the regular textures.

You periodically switch back and forth between the twisted nightmarish present reality and a twisted nightmarish version of your flashbacks from something that happened to you in Catholic school. These sections kind of remind me of FEAR (the haunted office simulator game.) When you’re at the school sometimes the Upsidedown leaks in and the Demogorgon appears and chases you. (Yes, that’s actually the most efficient way to describe it.) But seriously this monster is crazy. It’s a guy with a bunch of arms. I didn’t get a good image because he’s kind of ethereal and teleports and kills you on touch so it’s hard. Initially I was okay with this but I got increasingly annoyed with being continually transported here because I wasn’t seeing the relevance to the actual storyline I was invested in and so it just feels like I have to do busy work until I’m allowed to go back to the forest and get chased by Ganados again. It’s like the game just gets interrupted occasionally with some other game that you have to play. And when I say that I really think these should have been two seperate games. The two have too much diversion to help eachother but enough content to go on solo. Why do they need each other? The school has its own plot and identity as a psychological horror game with one big badguy and some weird phenomena that sometimes makes you question your sanity. The most interesting thing is when the game pulls off a seamless transition between being in the Arizona wilderness and then suddenly you’re in the school or vice versa. It implies that you’re having a mental episode which is reinforced when you check your footage of things from the school and it’s distorted beyond recognition. It’s like the stuff you see there isn’t really happening… but it can still kill you. The problem is this cool mechanic is wasted on transitioning from one dangerous and scary place to another dangerous and scary place. It could be so much more unsettling with a contrast between one location where you are (at least relatively) safe or there are at least rules and constants of normalcy you can cling to and then another location that is chaotic and upsetting. A good example is when you hear the siren in Silent Hill and the world changes into Alternate Silent Hill. Silent Hill as it stands is a creepy abandoned town but that’s it. It also has monsters in it but somewhere in your mind you are familiar with the concept of an abandoned town because that’s something real. When the siren goes off, suddenly the world around you ceases to make sense as you’re thrown head first into a rusty metal hellscape. As bad a place as regular Silent Hill is, when you hear that siren you feel panic because things are going to get worse and similarly when you come back out again you feel relief. In Outlast 2 you’re just going from one Alternate Silent Hill to another. There’s no sense of dread when it happens. Instead of “Oh no, it’s happening” it’s “Great, this shit again.” 

It would be interesting to see this psychological world transition concept fleshed out into its own horror game. It needs to stay subtle, no defined crossover moment. Maybe something like Jacob’s ladder. I imagine a game taking place in a mundane setting of everyday life and then it takes a sinister turn and you start seeing freaky shit. Borrowing the Vietnam War backdrop of the movie, the player would have PTSD episodes triggered by something and then your environment would change to reflect your twisted perceptions. Maybe you go to trim bushes or something in your backyard and then you turn around and find you’re stranded alone deep in the jungle with monsters signifying a distorted version of the Vietcong you remember fighting. Maybe you’re working on your car and you go under it with a flashlight and suddenly you’re back in ‘Nam exploring a VC tunnel system full of traps. The line between reality and your nightmares becomes increasingly blurred and you eventually end up killing your wife thinking she’s a monster or something. I’d buy it… then again I buy anything that’s horror.

Not until the end of the game do you get a clear flashback of what happened between you and the girl you knew in school. In it you are your child self and it plays out as an unaltered truthful memory so it’s odd to see this blood smear through the stairs door window I recognize from an earlier foray into the school, (you can see it in the image of the many armed man). Oops. I think the level designers forgot to clean that up.

There doesn’t seem to be any line that these games won’t cross. Rape, crucifixion, baby murder, baby birth, full frontal nudity, castration and even what appeared to me like a guy masturbating over a corpse… It was a nice little romp.

Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation is a first person survival horror game based off of the Alien franchise. You play as the now adult daughter of the movie franchise's main character, Ripley. You investigate a derelict space station, Sevastopol looking for the black box data of the Nostromo mining vessel which her mother of course destroyed and fled in the first movie attempting to escape the alien scourge which has now infested the very same station you are trapped on. So in the timeline this should be between Alien and Aliens while Ripley is still in stasis in the escape shuttle.

In case you're wondering how I feel about the Alien franchise going into this game, I've read the original book, I own the original movie trilogy and the AVPs (if you care about that,) I have a Nostromo T-shirt and my dog's name is Ripley. I've never played an Alien video game… and still haven't seen Covenant.

Isolation is heavy on sneaking and hiding. You hack computers, cut through metal hatches, force open doors and generally go places you're not supposed to go to do things you're not supposed to do. The alien is definitely not the only threat you have to worry about on your way.

There’s a long build up of quiet and isolation up to your first encounter with enemies. Four armed humans appear in a big room searching for me which is a bit excessive when all I have is a wrench. When I heard them coming I fled the room. I soon discovered that there was no way I could reenter and do whatever undetected to pick them off, (assuming that’s even possible to do.) There are utility panels in a lot of places in the game where you can turn on or off local utilities like air filtration, lights, sprinklers, loudspeakers, etc. Honestly I’m mystified as to how most of this shit can help me if it does. I only ever used them to open doors and turn off security cameras which is pretty straight forward. In this room I can shut off air filtration which will make the air cloudy which I’m going to guess will make me harder to detect. The problem is that there are no boxes anywhere near where I am and it’s not possible to reach one undetected. I had no distraction items in my inventory so I just sat and thought and sat and thought. I couldn’t even pull the enemies from the room and get them to chase me. Eventually I just turned the game off. When I came back The four people had spawned outside of their room just right there around the corner from the save point. They came at me in a conga line and I just killed them one by one with the wrench as they emerged save for the last one. What was that all about? A glitch or did the game just realize I was up shit creek without a paddle and gave me a leg up?

After that I had an encounter with the xenomorph it was short and uneventful. It was like an introduction more than anything.

The next area was my first real serviceable stealth test. The area is populated with numerous ‘Working Joes’ as they are called in the game. These are low grade maintenance androids kind of like a simple prototype of Ash from the movie(s). They certainly couldn't pass for human though. They look like demon possessed store mannequins and are one of the freakiest video game enemies I’ve ever seen. Their uncanny valley appearance combined with glowing eyes and an emotionless reprimanding of you for making them waste company time while they search for you so they can beat you to death just for being in a restricted area is effectively terrifying. They're stronger and more resilient than humans but slower. I think the best part about this is that once you get attacked by one of these you don't trust any of them for the rest of the game which now that I think of it mirror's Ripley's fear of the synthetic in Aliens that looks like Ash, (the android that basically got everyone killed.) I did pretty well overall on this part.

 It wasn’t until the second encounter with the alien that I really hit the learning curve brick wall. The alien comes out of a vent after you get a password off of the computer. Your objective is to find a specific ID card in the medical facility you’re in and then get out. If the alien catches you, you die. It’s invulnerable to weapons, is really perceptive in sight and sound and also runs faster than you which means remaining undetected at all times is pretty much imperative to success. You’d think you could just sneak out of the room and go somewhere else and your chances of encountering it would be lower. NO. Similar to the rubber band AI in a racing game which magically keeps you from getting too far ahead of the computer players, you will never be reasonably distanced from the alien. Even though it doesn’t sense you it’s always going to be meandering around within 15 yards of your location at all times. (At least in this place.) Forget looking for the fucking ID. You barely have enough of a window to pop out of one locker and into another a few steps down the hall before your motion detector shows a dire proximity to the alien again. Obviously you have to enter a hiding space before it sees you or you’re fucked. Sometimes it will investigate your hiding spot. The first time this happened a ‘hold breath’ prompt came up which I missed and then died. The second time it happened I passed the prompt but then a second prompt came up for ‘lean back’ which I failed and then died. It gives you like half a second to react. What a fussy bitch. The time after that the alien just went straight to ripping open the locker and killing me with no prompts. It hadn’t seen me or even entered the room yet. Yes, by my assessment it seemed to spontaneously appear in the room after I hid for the sole purpose of killing me. What the fuck? Have fucking mercy. This is ridiculous. It’s like trying to hide from God. I keep wondering if there’s more than one of them or if it can teleport because it's just always where you are. You can leave it behind in one room and run straight into it in the next as it exits a ceiling vent in front of you. I tried messing around with a utility box I found in a pretty dark and obscure little nook. I got impaled from behind with my back against the wall. How did it find me? If I can’t successfully interact with THIS without dying then what the fuck can I interact with? How is the alien coming out of a solid wall behind me? I can’t walk around. I can’t stop to pick up or read things. Hiding works about half the time. How am I supposed to accomplish anything? Some of the automatic doors just plain take forever to let you in too. Is there even any excuse for this other than to be a pain in the ass and potentially deadly? This is simple technology in supposedly the distant future. It would be impossible to find an automatic door in present day that comes even close to opening this fucking slow. Yeah it's probably just loading the area beyond the door but it's still bullshit.

I got into a discussion with a GameStop employee who asked me how I felt about Isolation. I told him, “It's kind of a pain in the ass.” He told me he never finished it and it's on his backlog now. And he said that the alien learns from what you do and adapts. When I look at the trophy stats for the game it shows that only 28% of players complete the game, (get the final chapter trophy.) The game is a legit pain in the ass but I did get better.

I’ve never failed this abysmally hard at sneaking or at a video game in general since LAX in Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow which was one of the very rare occasions I abandoned a game and it was at the very end. I spent one entire gaming session just dying in Alien: Isolation like 20 times. I accomplished nothing except learning how to run and hide and what places were pointless to visit in the obnoxiously large area. Now that I know you can lean back while hiding I do it automatically. When I turned the game back on the next night I died twice in quick succession but then found the ID and escaped. I thought that was the end of that encounter but no. It's still skulking around for the rest of the chapter. The chapter finale gets pretty ridiculous. You're supposed to get to the elevator and leave the area but you have to run a gauntlet where not only the alien is lurking but men with guns who are looking for you. You don't even have to deal with the men. Just hide somewhere, count to twenty and they’re probably all dead because the same improbably cruel criteria for staying alive also applies to your human foes. (Combat and running is to the alien what premarital sex is to a murderer in a slasher movie. You do it around them, you're dead.) Suddenly they added vent openings in the ceiling that are instant death by alien if you just walk under them. They don't even show up on your detector. So you have to navigate through this dark area watching everything from the monitor in your hand to the hall in front of you to the fucking ceiling, stopping to scrutinize every single overhead square shape you see in the strobing emergency lights.

Eventually you get a flamethrower, (I like that they touched on all the equipment from the first movie: shock sticks, flamethrower, motion tracker.) The flamethrower is your ace in the hole for when the alien finds you. When previously all you could really do is scream, “Not in the face!” now you can hose that bitch down with napalm to drive it off, (or more like a couple of very frugal fireball button taps.) This could constitute an indefinite fix for continuing your mission for a while or the alien could come right back seconds later for round two. It's a crap shoot.


 Making progress in this game is often grueling. You move slow and quietly punctuated by long periods of hiding and then maybe you get killed and do it again. A lot of times the alien just won't go the hell away so you can move on. It has this tendency to just camp out near your objective. You might see it close on the detector or come in the room so you hide in or behind something and wait for it to fuck off but it doesn't. It's pacing around the room like it knows you're there and is just trying to wait you out. Sometimes it'll just go stand in the doorway. The worst is when it leaves and then comes right back in like it's going “Ah-ha!” It can do this for forever. Once after accomplishing a significant amount of tasks I decided to backtrack to a save point. On my way I had three or four encounters with the alien where I had to hit it with fire and two times where I had to hide. When I finally made it to the save point the alien came out of a ceiling vent and I had to drive it off with fire. It retreated to the vent only to come out seconds later. This time I hid behind a big column and we played ring around the rosie for like two minutes while I used the motion tracker to see which way it was moving so I could stay out of sight. I JUST WANT TO SAVE AND GO TO BED! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?


The game has a crafting system. You can collect parts and blueprints which allow you to create about half a dozen different gizmos. You can actually make a medkit. The rest are distraction, disabling or lethal depending who you use them on. They can all be thrown or planted so that they're triggered by proximity. The only ones I ever really used are the EMP device which momentarily disables uninsulated androids and the Molotov which can be used to scare the alien in a pinch if you're out or want to conserve flamethrower fuel because it depletes quickly and the more you use it the more resistance the alien builds to it. Everything else I may have used successfully once. Those noisemakers don't seem to draw enemies far enough away from me to actually accomplish anything.

The loading screen gives you tips at the bottom which is nice because it takes like a fucking hour to load the game. One of the tips is to listen to dialogue of survivors before approaching to assess if they're a threat. This is bullshit. You will never definitively know from listening to them if they'll try to kill you once you make yourself known to them because they're never going to say something as contrived as, “GRRRR, I'm going to shoot the first person I see,” or “Gee, I hope more survivors show up. I love new friends.” when I come across ANYONE or ANYTHING I automatically assume they're a threat. I've spent inordinate amounts of time listening and sneaking around people who ended up being indifferent to my presence. I've barged into rooms I thought were safe and gotten shot at. That time I tentatively entered a big occupied lobby finally realizing it was safe only to come back minutes later and get shot at. What is up with that shit? It makes no sense. Are these bad people that ousted the good people while I was out? Are they the same people but got angry at me for some mysterious reason? Why would I assume to recheck a room I'd already established as safe especially when I'm running from the alien and have my nose buried in the motion tracker. I can only really figure out the working Joes since realizing that their eyes are only red when dangerous.

The sound design in Isolation is top notch. In fact I think it won an award for it but I can't remember where I saw that. Suffice it to say that every sound made me feel like I was about to die which is great for a horror game.

 I like how well the game sticks to the retro futurist technology of the 1979 movie. You have a lot of monochromatic green computer screens and I love the big data chip you insert every time you use a save terminal. You get to talk to the main computer via keyboard just like Mother. You get to suit up in the bulky ribbed space suits with mounted lights. You even get to play a flashback where you enter the original derelict, (after the Nostromo team,) and see the Space Jockey. You see the adult xenomorph(s) plenty. You see eggs hatch. You see facehuggers hatching, crawling and attached. You see bodies cocooned on the walls. But strangely you never see a chestburster scene which is probably the most iconic thing about Alien. Even if you've never seen Alien you probably know about this scene. It's just something that's enshrined in pop culture. Hell, within it's genre it's arguably the most horrific thing in a horror movie. You get choked and faceraped by a giant spider, unknowingly incubate its egg and then an alien explodes out of your chest. Why would the game not use this?

 
This game really drags on. You just go from one issue or one foiled scheme to the next. It finally ended at about the seventh or eighth time I thought it was ending. There is bad luck and then there is moving the goalposts. When you're seconds from evacuating after getting the run-around for the last four hours and then get snatched away and cocooned in a mysterious location with the mission being go back to where you just were THAT'S MOVING THE FUCKING GOALPOSTS.

This game will definitely piss you off. Just when you think you've seen everything and have it figured out it throws you a curveball. You might not enjoy the game's cruel nature of kicking you in the dick, in fact I'm sure that's why so few finished it, but in the end the experience is at least undeniably very Alien.

The Election from Hell 2016

This has nothing to do with video games. This blog was created ultimately to rant about stupid things, (things that I find stupid.) That encompasses a lot of things. I’ve tried reigning it in more toward games but everything outside of that is technically still fair play. This is relevant because it is the single most stupid thing I have ever seen in my life. It is driving me insane and I feel that I need to write about it somewhere before I explode. This is a very long post full of anger about politics but If you’re a huge Trump supporter you may save time and read the much shorter abridged version here:

[Jewish lies written by a Liberal cuck and paid Hillary shill.]

If you’re an intelligent and open-minded human being then feel free to read the full version below:

I’m thirty years old and married with children. I’m a white man. I’ve never voted before. For my whole life I have never cared about politics or elections. I’ve been the definition of apathy when it comes to voting. I never registered or sought to identify with a particular party. I always thought it was a pain to follow and research candidates and props to make informed decisions. What does it matter anyway? I’m one person with one vote living in a hard blue state. (Grew up and lived in mostly red counties.) No matter who gets elected, America continues to exist and chug on with ultimately minimal change or disruption to your everyday life no matter how much of a whiny little paranoid bitch you are. That has now changed. ALL OF IT.

From the primary election in 2015 I was at least aware that Donald Trump was running as one of the like two dozen people to be the Republican candidate. Oh yeah, that sleazy, belligerent fuckstick, I thought. How kooky of him. I was reminded of the Gubernatorial election in California when we elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. I recall Gary Coleman and some other weird shit on the long list of people throwing their hats in the ring to be governor. How weird that was. I thought Trump would likely be weeded out early in the nominee running because why the hell wouldn’t he? He has no political experience and the shit comes out his mouth ranges from laughable to repulsive. How could this sideshow possibly garner enough support to propel it anywhere. Surely the registered Republican base recognizes the grave seriousness and immense responsibility of choosing the next president of our nation and leader of the free world. Apparently not, because he won the primary and became the GOP nominee. Okay… Go get the popcorn and buckle up because once this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re going to see some serious shit.

The GOP is now in ruins. People are switching out in protest, refusing to endorse Trump or voting for him with clenched teeth because Trump does not represent Republican values as we’ve known them AT ALL. My how suddenly progressive the holier than thou family values party became when they out of the blue elected a candidate who’s had three wives, tells people on Twitter to check out a sex tape, been in Playboy Magazine, wife posed nude, referred to his own daughter as a “piece of ass” and has no discernible religion or even a solid ideology to grasp. Now piece of ass comment aside I don’t care about ANY of that. I don’t think that it solidly indicates that Trump or any candidate is too worldly, morally bankrupt or incapable of leading America as president. What I find most fascinating is that the sanctimonious GOP establishment who has touted these Judeo-Christian ideals as the necessary foundation of a noble and strong American society tossed that shit right out the window once they realized that it was contingent to getting their fingers on the White House. They’ve outed themselves as having morals of convenience which become fluid if necessary to conduct a power grab. Excuse me while I now feel sanctimonious right back at you. What happened here is that the GOP’s very naive core voting base which they keep locked in the basement with token offerings of guns and government instituted Christianity escaped and found someone more interesting who told them everything they wanted to hear. The actual GOP establishment was left scratching it’s head in confusion going “Well gosh I always thought our voter core’s needs resonated strongly with that of our obscenely rich white men with solidly backward beliefs about women’s health and reproduction.” The don’t and they haven’t for who knows how long. They only stuck with you because you were the closest they could get to what they actually wanted, not because you were relevant. So now that the curtain has been pulled back we can see exactly how things work and that there is a clear division in party ideologies. There is no going back to what it was before. They either change what the GOP is all about or it vanishes altogether. I say good they deserve it after creating this monster in the first place. Unfortunately they may be replaced with a nationalist/fascist party so that sucks. We're going to see a mass migration of actual Republicans. The funny thing is that we now see Trump trying to lure these actual Republicans behind him by pretending to give a shit about their stupid cornerstone beliefs like stripping women of their health/reproductive rights and stripping gays of their marriage rights because doing so will reinstate the value of our straight marriages which was stolen by them, right? Is that still the narrative? I have to say it's only gotten more stupid since marriage equality has been legal for a while now.

It’s really interesting how evangelical Christians have stuck with Trump. The mental gymnastics being used to rationalize their obvious cognitive dissonance is “Sometimes in the Bible God uses an evil man to do his work.” Okay but here’s the thing see, sometimes in the Bible SATAN uses an evil man to do SATAN’S work. In fact I dare say that’s far and away the most common use for evil men. I’m not voting for Trump on the off chance God is planning on turning him into Paul the Apostle. Here’s a reminder I think many Christians need on a constant basis: when asking yourself what would Jesus do always remember YOU’RE NOT JESUS.

Trump’s campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again.” We don’t know precisely when America was great but we know one thing, it isn’t now. Yep, despite what your life might be like in America, Trump literally says we’re all living in a third world country. I guess someone had better tell all the illegal immigrants that are “pouring into our country” this because they still mistakenly believe it’s better than the countries they all left behind to start a new life. A motherfucking white male American millionaire born into perpetually sustained affluence and given every advantage in life says his country, the one that’s allowed him to possess everything he has, is terrible and the system is rigged against him. Meanwhile the crowd of mostly white middle class men cheer and nod their heads in agreement. Yeah, what a hellhole, right guys? If someone can convince your stupid ass that you’re living in a shithole when you can just look out the window and see that you’re not, they can convince you as to the reason of why you’re living in a shithole. It’s illegal immigrants. Yes remember when some dirty Mexican stole your beloved dream job of digging ditches in the sun and then raped your wife? It’s those very same people that caused the dire struggle of the middle class white man and his so so many unjust problems that no one else could possibly understand. Keep up the fight, brothers! We shall overcome! These bad hombres sneak across the border to relocate their families in America for the express purpose of stealing and raping Americans because they can’t just find something to steal or rape across the street from their house in mexico with much less travel and punitive consequences.

This is a typical cornerstone of the “alt right” ideology. As you might have guessed, the “alt” in alt. right is short for “alternate reality.” Within this alternate reality is an ever present danger of being murdered or assraped by immigrants so you need to fight them off with assault rifles and RPGs but the government is perpetually moments away from taking your guns away so you need to stockpile weapons to fend off their helicopters, tanks, drones, bombers and legions of well trained soldiers which will completely steamroll you regardless during the impending hostile takeover. It’s not really something compatible with regular reality which is why illusion breaking things like facts such as illegal aliens trying extra hard to behave so they can stay in America often need to be perceived as lies from the Jew or Liberal conspiracies. If Trump is elected, America will essentially become the crotchety old shut in at the end of the lane who watches through the blinds with a shotgun as he waits for a hooded negro to materialize on the sidewalk. If you can’t see why this is an issue you are already one of them and it is too late for you. I’m not going to say it’s fine and dandy that it’s possible for people to just come right into the country undocumented but I’m not going to conclude that the answer is a wall and a gestapo immigration force.

The next time some dipshit tells you America is a third world country ask them what their definition of a third world country is or ask them to name some countries they’d rather live in or they think have it better because I assure you nothing meeting a higher number of their standards exists. I always find it hilarious when right-wing nutjobs idly threaten to leave the country if X happens. Like, where you gonna go, bitch? Canada? Enjoy your no guns and excellent healthcare. The truth is you hate the idea of America. You’ve always hated the idea of America and you want it to be something else entirely. The country you actually want to live in doesn’t exist on this planet and likely never has because it’s nonsensical. You are not the patriot you think you are. You are closer to a separatist peddling toxic and seditious garbage.

Trump’s whole campaign is founded on fear and exploitation. The message is that we're being robbed by immigrants, threatened by Muslims and the solution is to stop America from getting any less white. I remember early in the campaign where Trump had a rally where he invited someone who's relative was raped and killed by an illegal immigrant. Okay that's sad but what's your fucking point? This is why we need a wall? Congratulations, you just utilized a logical fallacy which can be used to vilify literally any group of people you want permitted you can find that one person who hates them for it. Like no white man ever raped and murdered anyone when they illegally immigrated to the New World? You're using specious reasoning to appeal to people's emotions like pre existing hate and suspicion. Tying an entire group of people to the actions of an individual is unethical and unhelpful. I know it’s cliche to compare someone to Hitler because dreadfully uncreative people overuse it to describe anyone they don’t like, particularly politicians even when they share no compelling parallels with the infamous Nazi dictator but Trump is Hitler 2.0. It’s the very same rhetoric. A man comes into a dire situation, an ACTUAL dire situation. Germany was ACTUALLY on the ropes after WWI. In America a dire situation is we have to wait a couple of days before getting the power to kill people with our finger. Man comes into a perceived bad situation and says wow, everything’s terrible. We need to get back to our roots. We need to make our country great again. You know what the problem is? It’s those assholes over there. Someone should get rid of them and I’m just the guy to do it. And the rest is history. History I don’t think we learned well enough from.

Trump, for a majority of his presidential campaign was doing or saying something notably reprehensible or stupid on almost a daily basis. That is not an exaggeration. He’s slowed down (relatively) toward the end but he’s done so many things that you don’t even remember most of them. Some things I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on like retweeting a supposedly anti-semitic image, (maybe he just read it and didn’t even notice the visual elements,) or supposedly kicking a crying baby out of a rally. I watched the clip of him speaking at the podium to some unseen woman trying to leave with a crying baby. I can't even really explain what was happening here but one thing was certain, it was indescribably awkward and uncomfortable to witness. Was this… a joke… gone horribly awry? Let me just say this: Clinton is not very funny. She is cringeworthy half of the time she jokes but when Trump jokes, especially with sarcasm, we can't even tell if it's a joke because his view of reality is so distorted that it's just as likely that he’s being sincere about the odd thing that he just said. And I'm sure it's left many a rally goer awkwardly looking to the rest of the crowd for clues on how to respond appropriately. Are we cheering this time or laughing nervously while side eying one another? The media will often pick up these comments which may sound shocking to many and cause a small backlash and then Trump will respond later that it was obviously a joke. How are we supposed to know? Here, try this joke next time.

Q: What's the difference between a Trump gaff and a Trump joke?

A: About 24 hours.

But anyway there were three things that I can recall that didn’t just get glossed over. They actually caused people to step back and think for a moment before eventually shrugging it off and concluding “This is fine.”

Judge Curiel Saga

Judge Curiel is a second generation Mexican American born in Chicago. Why the hell am I telling you this first? Because his heritage is of great importance to Donald Trump. He is the judge presiding over the Trump University fraud case happening in a few weeks. When he decided to unseal documents related to the case and make them public, Trump went completely ape shit. He had these… uh… things to say.

His assertion was essentially that the judge couldn’t do his job properly because he’s Mexican. That’s racist. All judges are going to see cases in their careers where they have a personal connection with something in the case. Regardless they are instructed to best maintain impartiality. In rare cases there are judges that are bad at this such as the one in the infamous Brock Turner rape case but Curiel is actually known for being particularly harsh in cases with Mexican drug cartels to the point where a hit was put out on him. Hell he didn’t even have a connection with this case. The case is about fraud and whether it happened or not. Trump is the one that tried to make it about race. And why did he even mention the wall? Curiel is an American citizen, dumbass. The judge didn’t do anything wrong so get over it gracefully. Also you’re running to be my president and I’d very much like to know about your fucking fraud case.

Khizr Khan Saga

At the Democratic National Convention a Muslim Attorney and father of an Iraq War veteran, Captain Humayun Khan who was killed in action spoke. He raised an open question to Trump. Would my son, a man who sacrificed everything for America, even have a place in your America? Uh oh. An upstanding Muslim family with a fallen veteran child. Bet it never occurred to you that Muslims like this could possibly exist. Khan proposed Trump had never read the constitution and said he had “sacrificed nothing and no one.” Trump responded by trying to redirect, accusing that Khan’s silent wife on stage was not allowed to speak, (like he gives a shit,) when in reality she said nothing because she loses her composure when seeing images or speaking about her dead son. Trump followed up with a week long Twitter bitch saying that Khan had no right to “viciously attack” him like this. He also claimed he’d sacrificed plenty which of course spawned the ironic hashtag #Trumpsacrifices. Everything Trump has done in his life has been to benefit himself. If someone else benefited from his actions it was purely coincidental. He has never once thought about someone else and helped them at his own sacrifice unless is was ultimately going to come back to him with interest in some shape or form. He’s the antithesis of the idea of sacrifice. He’s certainly never done anything comparable to the sacrifice of a soldier, especially a dead one. His reaction to Khan was absolutely appalling. When a Gold Star family raises a valid point that one of your main policies will essentially be vilifying their dead war hero son, you shut right the fuck up. Unless the next thing that comes out of your mouth is a heartfelt apology from down on your knees, you SHUT YOUR STUPID FUCKING PIG MOUTH and drop it. Even if they are out of line which they aren’t. Trump has also shown contempt for POWs and soldiers who have PTSD. Well, Mr. Trump, perhaps you could have done a much better job serving your country than them but we’ll never know because you had some widdle bone spurs. Trump loses his shit around veterans because he's a narcissist who can't handle being around someone who is inherently more respected and venerated by society that him. I see him as president begrudgingly awarding a soldier the Medal of Honor and then feeling suddenly compelled to tell everyone in the room that his genitals are large and he has lots of money. This whole ongoing debacle drew harsh backlash from everyone including the GOP. Even Fox News, which is now just the Trump Apologist Network was struggling to jump right in on this one because he’s in direct conflict with one of their main heavily touted ideals. This was one of the cardinal sins he committed during his campaign that I feel clearly disqualifies him from the presidency. If you are not going to show respect to each and every veteran and their families you have no fucking business telling them where they’re going to fight and die. I motion that Captain Humayun Khan receive the Medal of Honor for going above and beyond the call of duty by helping save America from one last bad guy… while dead.

Trump Tape Saga

The biggest October surprise we got was the Trump Tape, a recording of Trump talking to Billy Bush on a mic he was not aware was on. On that tape was Trump speaking in very crass terms about physically sexually harassing many women… whilst married to his current wife. He essentially claimed his celebrity status gave him access or free reign over whoever’s body. After this tape leaked, Trump said he had never actually done any of the things that he had claimed he had done in the tape. Really? Because either you are speaking about things that you did or you are attempting to portray yourself as a sex offender just to impress some douche bag. Either way, what the fuck is the matter with you? And then all these assholes swarm into Fox News trying to enable his shitty behavior. “This happened eleven years ago.” Oh yeah, he was a young and reckless sixty year old. I’m sure he’s attained enlightenment since then and is a completely different person now. “It’s just locker room talk. All men do it.” No. No they don’t. Bragging about your many consensual sexual conquests is one thing. Bragging about violating/hurting people is unacceptable no matter who you are, end of story. And that goes quadruple for a fucking presidential candidate. Why are you trying to make this kind of behavior acceptable? Why do we not just offer everyone the basic human respect and dignity they deserve? It really isn’t hard. Also a man who feels the need to boast that he grabs women “by the pussy” sounds like a man with a very tiny dick.

The whole thing was quite shocking to... idiots I suppose. Wait. You mean the dirty old man who created and judges Miss Universe and berates its contestants as animals is a sleazy douche bag with no respect for women? I would have never guessed. Didn’t alter my opinion of him whatsoever but what really disturbed me deeply about it was that while it did damage him momentarily in the polls, people were still coming out and defending something that was clearly indefensible. I know that Fox News is fine with sexual assault because of Roger Ailes but can you imagine if this tape instead had Hillary Clinton on it making similar remarks about men. Do you think Fox News and other Trumpeters would jump down in the sewer to provide the same defense for Clinton? Hell no! It wouldn’t be “locker room talk” and “We’re not electing a pope.” It would be scowling news correspondents shaking their heads and wagging their fingers over a banner that reads “Hillary’s War on Our Moral Fabric.” People have been asking all election, “Is there a double standard for Clinton?” Yes there is and it was made manifestly apparent by the right trying to downplay blatantly abhorrent behavior coupled with awful direct and indirect implications for Trump’s actions and mindset. Where is the fucking line? Do you have any scruples at all? Do you you stand for anything? At what point does your conscience outweigh your lust for having a “Republican” in the Oval Office? Or are you just willing to follow him all the way down the rabbit hole into hell itself? That’s not how morality works. If you view something being right or wrong as contingent upon who did it, you’re doing it wrong. This is the most stupid and absolutely appalling game of Emperor’s New Clothes I’ve ever seen.

The vast majority of the things Trump claims he will do are just cardboard cutouts with nothing holding them up and completely disintegrate under the smallest amount af scrutiny. How are you going to make Mexico pay for the wall? They don’t care about your wall. They don’t care about you. I dare say they don’t have a spare four billion dollars to spend on your wall. Mexican President Nieto explicitly told you they wouldn’t be paying for your wall. Hours later after meeting with him Trump said back in the US “Mexico will pay for the wall. They don’t know it yet but they will. Believe me.” Okay, we’re back where we started. How? No I will not believe you. I want answers you walking colostomy bag! That money’s coming from the American taxpayer or it’s not happening at all and you fucking know it.

How is he going to implement his proposed Muslim ban? Are we going to invent religion detecting machines that you walk through at the airport? Are we going to make everyone coming in sit down and take a test and hope the terrorists all answer truthfully that they’re Muslims? Are we going to just blacklist entire countries that have registered Muslim populations above a certain number which would likely need to include many European and other non Middle Eastern countries? None of that sounds feasible or effective.

He’s going to bring back our jobs from being outsourced overseas. Okay that sounds great except for one thing. I’m no economist but wouldn’t bringing back those jobs cause the cost of everything to spike to offset the costs of companies using the more expensive US labor? Is that better? That’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

How’s he going to revive the coal industry. Is he going to use a time machine to take us back to the Victorian era when coal was a highly relevant energy source? Oh that must have been the time when America was great. It all makes sense now. Or perhaps we’ll see him invest in developing steampunk technology for the future. Steampowered sex automatons! Wait, that’s a terrible idea. Imagine the burns. Now that I think about it his policies are basically leading us to a Bioshock Infinite nation. Everyone get into our big racist Victorian island and float away.

He just about never clarifies how any of his big policies work and they are all logistically nonsensical. He just says shit that people want to hear and it all sticks because you idiots have the suspension of disbelief of a three year old. Candidates like Dole and Romney who lost their elections as the Republican nominee have to be kicking themselves right now. All this time they naively assumed that their base was intelligent enough to want things like well explained feasible plans for solving America's issues when they really could have just used their Jedi mind trick, jangled some shiny keys in their face and claimed that if they were elected president they would cure cancer and personally shit out a flying solid gold Bentley for each and every American.

Trump's off the cuff remarks are the most mentally grating things I've ever heard. It would not be uncommon to hear him say something like: "Folks, we’ve got an illegal immigration problem in America. Illegal immigrants are immigrating illegally and let me tell you, it’s an immigration problem." He sounds SO GODDAMN STUPID when he’s off the teleprompter. I can not believe that people’s brains don’t explode from the sudden thought vacuum which occurs when he opens his mouth. If you just read that image, what in the everliving fuck was that? I have never heard anything like that from a sober person. That was not an answer to a question. That was a free form jazz odyssey of word diarrhea. What is hidden in there that makes people go “Wow! This guy knows his shit! He’s taking us places!” I listened carefully to him during the debates and the jist of what he said every time he was asked a policy question was “The way Obama is doing it is stupid. The way Hillary wants to do it is stupid. [looping reiteration or meaningless gobbledygook to fill time if needed.]” Very rarely did he actually offer a genuine solution and legitimately attempt to answer the question. Why does no one else notice this? Why do you just let him get away with it? This feels like a Kickstarter scam. Just because you refuse to look behind the curtain doesn't mean anything is going to be back there when you elect him.

He has no discernible ideology to anyone because it's an amorphous ideology. The ideology is “Me first at all cost.” He will do whatever he wants to whomever he wants to get whatever he wants. He keeps saying he was against the Iraq war. He wasn’t. He praised the Clintons at one point. Now everything they did was Satan. Before, he has a relationship with Vladimir Putin. Now he doesn’t know him. He does not follow a pattern. He just goes where the money is. If he thinks you are useful for obtaining something he wants, he will stop and entertain you momentarily. He will pretend to be or care about whatever you wish until he gets what he desires and then you can fuck off and drown for all he cares. His entire campaign is a giant scam.

I’ve heard a lot of the same arguments from Trump supporters throughout his campaign as to why they’re voting for Trump and they’re all bullshit. Every last one of them.

“He’s a doer.”

They speak in terms as if he’s already fixed everything. As I've said, his policies are largely magic wand politics. Assuming something he proposed actually made sense, both you and him are going to have a rude awakening when you learn that checks and balances exist and no one wants to help him do anything because he's burned all of his bridges.

“He’s a strong leader. We need strength right now.”

People point to Trump’s air of smug and bombastically blunt certainty about everything and his willingness to tear into anyone he deems bad without restraint as “strength.” He’s going to stand tall and not take crap from anyone. Trump as you see him is Trump at a Trump rally. He only thrives in an environment where he has control and is filled with loyal idiots who came to revel in communal hatred for Hillary Clinton and hear spectacularly outlandish claims and promises. When you remove him from this supportive energy source of boundless echos and accolades and put him in say a presidential debate in a swing state or Mexico he is practically staring at his shoes and whispering like he’s an eight year old who just went over to the neighbors’ house to apologize for the baseball through their window. It’s a facade. He is a paper tiger if ever there was one.

“He’s an outsider and not a politician.”

This is such fucking stupid logic. You assert that all politicians are inherently lying, plotting manipulators on a quest for power and money and that someone by virtue of having no experience in politics is automatically better. Your Lord and Savior, Donald Trump is everything a bad politician is and more but minus the qualifications and experience. Oh but at least he’s not technically a politician, right?  This is like if you screamed “Help me! I’m being attacked by a vicious wolverine,” and someone responds, “No, you’re actually being attacked by a vicious honey badger,” and then you’re like “Oh, that’s a relief. I thought it was a wolverine.” A shady scumbag businessman is in no significant way different from a shady scumbag politician.

“She’s the candidate of status quo. He’s the candidate of real change.”

Again, stupid logic. Change is not inherently a positive thing. It’s just making something different than what it was. The status quo you’re talking about is American sitting passively in a rocking chair and not really accomplishing anything. The change you are talking about is America putting on a blindfold and jogging down the New Jersey Turnpike in rush hour traffic.

“He can’t be bought.”

He’s literally a one man special interest. He has a brand and is head of a real estate empire which includes a “university” investigated for fraud and some bankrupt casinos. He is the personification of big business and as president is going to do things that benefit big business as we can already see from his tax plan. This is the expedited prepackaged form of “being bought.” This is like coming back to your flattened house after a tornado and saying “Oh, good. Now my house can’t burn down.” Also, having a “not bought” status is only achievable if the candidate does not accept big donations. He has.

“He’s telling it like it is.”

He’s telling it like you’re willing to believe it is.

“He’s an F U to the establishment.”

I’m all for flipping the bird to the establishment and pissing on their stupid little games but I also have a brain capable of weighing the factors involved in any decision and simulating the outcome. Electing Trump as president to spite the establishment is like scuttling your ship to spite the captain. Teehee! Won’t the captain have egg on his face when we all drown. Sure showed him. It's not worth it by a long shot.

“We need to think about the Supreme Court seat.”

That’s it? You’re voting Trump because you need a warm body wearing a republican sticker to select the new Supreme Court justice and prevent the filthy DemoRats from getting any leverage in the government? “Oh no, the Supreme Court justice” is your dire worst case scenario? I have to say that looks pretty trivial against the dire worst case scenario of electing Trump which is “Oh no, the planet is fucked! We’re all dead!”

“Hillary’s going to trample our constitutional rights.”

Based on what evidence? Oh and don’t think I don’t know that whenever you raise the broad issue of “constitutional rights” you’re only talking about second amendment gun rights because that’s the only thing you ever jump up and advocate in it. And no, the second amendment does not ensure that you receive the rest of your rights. What does that even mean? If it came down to it you’re going to point a gun at someone until they give you freedom of the press or right to a trial? Hillary Clinton has given no indication that she’s interested in repealing the second amendment. In fact she’s confirmed the opposite. Now you can make the baseless argument that she’s lying and secretly plotting to do it but let’s rewind. Remember about eight years ago when Obama took office and he was going to press the “Take their Guns” button and it was all going to be over for gun rights? Here we are eight years later. Nothing has changed. Obama hasn’t even lifted a finger but in all that time you’ve been on pins and needles sounding the alarm and crying wolf and every time there’s a mass shooting in America gun sales skyrocket because Obama’s gonna do it this time. I can feel it. So now that Hillary’s knocking on the White House door What is different this time that makes your irrational alarmist bullshit on the mark? That’s not even mentioning that a president alone lacks the authority to just repeal an amendment. You’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to perpetuate a fear based on a stupid fantasy you invented.

Going back to constitutional rights. I’d argue that Trump’s mindset and speech indicates a greater threat to our constitution. He’s barred news outlets from his rallies like Politico and Washington Post who are liberally biased and hate him but it doesn’t matter. People are going to shit on you and you need to accept that because people are allowed to express their opinions in America. After the Presidential Debate spoofs on SNL which made fun of the candidates he said SNL is terrible and “should be canceled.” He alluded that the New York Times would be out of business when he became president. He spawned the hashtag #repealthe19th (women’s suffrage) after saying he would win easily if only men could vote. He’s claimed that our democracy is an illusion and everything is rigged to hand the presidency to Clinton. After being behind in the polls late for a time he said “We should just cancel the election and give it to me.” WE SHOULD BYPASS DEMOCRACY. The system is corrupt and rigged but if it was rigged in my favor that would be fine. Does this sound like the very avatar of liberty, the leader of the free world talking? Does he realize he’s not running to be godking of North Korea?

His proposed Muslim ban is an awful idea. Whether he intends to or not, he is setting the precedent that all Muslims are to be assumed terrorists. Granted there are already plenty of mouth breathing cave dwellers who believe this. Yeah, that would mean that a fifth of the world population is terrorists. And nevermind that much of terrorism and counter terrorism/innocent civilian clashes in the world is going on between two opposing Muslim sides. Trump would be (already has) singling out a group of Americans and telling them they are not wanted here while simultaneously declaring to those that are already suspicious or hateful of them that hunting season is now open. If you are going to put all Muslims in the box with ISIS you’re just going to have a bigger box of ISIS. The first, most obvious step toward keeping someone from becoming a terrorist is to tell them they’re not a terrorist. This proposition is anti American, detrimental to the human race and beneficial to terrorism. What’s that, you say? The Japanese internment? You mean that shameful thing we did back when blacks were also second class citizens? Fuck off.

America first is another one of Trump’s policies. It’s more like a mindset where we don’t kill our jobs with outsourcing and are less likely to invest in preventative measures for foreign issues letting the neighborhood go to pot until something scary starts knocking at our door because that kind of attitude worked out great in WWII. I don’t really know where this America First shit suddenly came from. Were you putting America first when you dodged the draft? Were you putting America first when you weaseled out of your taxes? Were you putting America first when throughout your entire career and on to this day outsourced your jobs and bought overseas every chance you got? Were you putting America first when you thoughtlessly tried to destroy the American people’s faith in their country’s democracy to save your ego? That doesn’t sound like America First. That sounds like Trump First. It has never ever occurred to Trump once in his life to do something for America until SUPPOSEDLY right now because it’s a lucrative stance to have.

When Trump is ahead in the polls he’s jerking himself off on stage about it. When he’s behind in the polls the polls are “rigged” with no evidence. When the FBI recommends no charges for Clinton on emails the FBI is incompetent and the Justice Department is an “arm” of the White House protecting Clinton. When upon finding more emails the FBI announces the reopening of the case days before election against protocol Trump has “always respected” the FBI and the director has “restored his reputation” and then they don’t recommend charges again and then they’re crooked trash again. When the fire marshal cuts attendance for a trump rally he “doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.” When the first presidential debate is during Monday Night Football and might get lower ratings because of it it’s a Democrat conspiracy even though the debates were decided by a bipartisan committee before he was even the nominee. Everything is a slight or a conspiracy against him. If something bad happens it’s always someone else's fault. The liberal media is conspiring against me to lift Hillary. The “liberal media” is not forcing you to say and do stupid things on a daily basis. They can only work with what you give them which is everything. Maybe if you’d played more team sports as a child you’d have a healthy method of dealing with failure or loss. And on that note If I’m watching a 49ers game and they’re losing, I don’t immediately suspect refball as the first three causes. I can analyze variables which include the actual Niners team. Harbaugh left. The talent was gutted/left. The management is incompetent. Kaepernick can’t make a pass greater than fifteen yards. They lose because they suck. I don’t need to concoct a conspiracy theory about the NFL telling the officials and other workers to gouge the Niners sneakily from all fronts because Kaepernick won’t stand for the National Anthem just so I can believe they’re a good team. These things that Trump says come from a mindset symptomatic of a personality disorder. How can anyone stand to be around a person who believes they’re never wrong and blames everyone else for their problems to a ridiculous degree?

I can’t imagine Trump actually enjoying being president. His only experience is in his business which follows the model of a dictatorship. He only cares for an environment where he calls the shots, answers to no one and if he doesn’t like someone he can dismiss them with the wave of his hand. If he became president he’d be immediately disenchanted with the idea once he found out he didn’t have anywhere near as much power as he believed he’d have, it requires patience, cooperation, the will to serve others, continual interactions with many many people who can’t be dismissed and focused attention on a lot of things that are of no interest to him. He doesn’t fit the job description in portfolio or personality.

I never realized until now how important it is to be a good role model when you're president. If you think and act like a shit, suddenly all the pariahs and dregs of society begin to slither out of the woodwork thinking it's fine to walk around in the daylight. Trump has already done measurable damage to the country without even setting foot in the White House. Bullying has risen in schools. A black church has been burned and a large scale domestic terrorist attack on a Somali housing complex intended to ignite a “race war” has been thankfully foiled. Trump has also urged his supporters to go out and watch the polling sites for signs of a rigged election, whatever the fuck that means. Many of these followers including gun nuts and white supremacists groups have answered the call and plan to be creepily loitering around polling locations basically setting the table for widespread election day violence. The utter recklessness of this fucktard is nothing short of astounding. If I were President Obama I might consider mobilizing the National Guard before hand.

When you think it’s highly suspicious that Hillary deleted many of her Secretary of State emails but Trump absolutely refusing to release his tax returns for no valid reason is fine.

When you’re appalled by Clinton’s response in Benghazi but the rise of Trump stoked hate crimes and domestic terrorism is fine.

When It bothers you that Hillary could be sworn in as president while being investigated by the FBI for emails but Trump having two court dates between now and then for fraud and child rape is fine. (Okay the accuser dropped the rape case as I wrote this.)

When it bothers you that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes but when Donald Trump doesn’t pay his taxes it’s not only fine, it’s “smart.”

When it bothers you that Hillary's husband (who’s not running for president) has had infidelity issues and rape accusations but Trump having a recording of himself proclaiming he believes in Manifest Breastiny, rape accusations and a dozen other accusations of sexual misconduct is fine.

When you think Hillary poses a threat to our national security because of her mishandling of sensitive materials but Trump publicly beseeching Russia to launch cyberattacks on America is fine.

When you think Hillary will cause WW3 just because but Trump wanting to disband NATO and wondering why we don’t use nukes is fine.

When you’re certain upon your own inkling that Hillary’s going to attack your 2nd amendment rights but Trump wondering why we don’t use torture and showing utter disdain for freedom of speech and freedom of the press when it’s against him is fine.

When Hillary saying that “half of Trump’s supporters belong in the basket of deplorables” is hurtfully prejudiced but Trump saying all illegal immigrants are criminals, all Muslims are terrorists, a Mexican Judge can’t do his job because of his ethnicity or him getting sued by the Justice Department twice for racial discrimination in his housing is fine.

When the Clinton Foundation accepting money from countries who mistreat women bothers you but Trump misappropriating funds from his own Foundation to purchase portraits… of1 himself is fine.

When it bothers you that Hillary lies about things but when Trump has made a flat, unskewed true claim in a remarkably minuscule 4% of his professionally fact checked claims and 70% of them have at least a mostly false rating and he is the lyingest liar since lies came to Lie Town is fine. It means you have your head shoved up Trump’s ass and are subsisting entirely upon his shit. It is so so SO incredibly apparent that Trump is the worse choice here. Stop pretending this is a hard decision. It's not EVEN a decision. He is a veritable cross section of just about everything bad the human race has to offer. If Clinton did half the shit Trump did, she’d be dead in the polls. I find it difficult to believe that this many people are this weak-minded, this gullible and this stupid but maybe I’m giving you too much credit. What is this enormous invisible thing tipping the scale toward trump for you? Even if Clinton is as corrupt as you say and she gets elected, America will still be America. With Trump? The America Experiment has failed. We’re privileged to live in a country where we get to choose our government officials. Maybe our choices this cycle are less than perfect but to willingly choose the ill prepared, erratic, inflammatory, blowhard with no experience and no plan who’s full of contempt for what America represents and everyone who’s not a rich white yes man flies in the face of logic and the very reason our founding fathers constructed our democracy which was to protect us from shit like this. If you truly believe that our democratic system is rigged then allow me to invite you on behalf of America to not participate in it. 

The way I see it there are only two explanations for anyone wanting to vote for Trump over Clinton besides just being a racist. Either you’re a Republican and you’ve stigmatized the Democratic party to the point that they are just automatically the worse choice in your mind regardless of the candidates; you’re so used to voting Republican that you’re willing to turn a blind eye to the unending cascade of red flags coming out of your candidate just to assure yourself it’s okay to continue voting Republican. Or… (and I didn’t think it was this for a while,) or, whether you are aware or not, you are scared absolutely shitless at the prospect of having a female president and don’t want to admit it. I know Trump’s wheelhouse demographic is white men, practically ONLY demographic. They’re turning out to protect their thousands year old empire. If the US gets a female president their reign comes to an end and they’re that much closer to being on a level playing field where you’re expected to respect the former lessers that surround you. I used to think it didn’t really matter if the president was a woman but with the way this election has played out it has become clear that if a line of thought is clouding your mind and causing willful blindness to such an absolutely ludicrous and dangerous degree it must be eradicated forthwith. It’s time to evolve and get the fuck over it.