America, this is your wake up call! Pay attention. Stop sleeping. Urgent action is needed.Donald Trump has a 22-point lead in the Republican primary. Twenty-two points! Somehow 41% of Republicans support Trump for president. How is this possible?This is Donald Trump we’re talking about. The hair. The divorces. The gold seat belt buckles. This is a man who believes that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.Can’t we do better than this?I’m a proud liberal, so I always think that Republicans have bad ideas, but they’ve really outdone themselves thus far. Donald Trump for President. Seriously?
He’s like your know-it-all neighbor who thinks that nothing’s as good as it used to be, and if we could just get rid of everyone who isn’t like us or doesn’t agree with us then everything could be great again. In his mind, there’s only one point-of-view that matters in this world, and it’s his.His recent statement that he could stand on Fifth Avenue in New York and shoot somebody without losing any supporters is an appallingly tone-deaf thing to say in a country where mass shootings are a regular occurrence. He claimed that he was joking, but gave no explanation as to why he thought it appropriate to joke about shooting someone.Trump has proposed many backward, idiotic ideas. Should we expect him to suggest a return to using duels to settle disputes? Maybe he can be a modern day Aaron Burr.A return to dueling is an asinine idea, but it doesn’t seem completely beyond the pale with Trump. He’s suggested so many ridiculous policies (banning Muslims from entering the U.S., building a giant wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and making Mexico pay for it) that dueling almost seems to fit right in.Why is anyone listening to anything this guy has to say? He’s a businessman with a television show. If he lived 100 years ago he’d be a carnival barker trying to convince us to come inside the tent to see the lion-faced man.And 41% of Republicans want to make him President of the United States?Perhaps this is a reflection of our entertainment. Reality television has permeated every aspect of our lives, so why not our politics and government? Voting became part of television when we started choosing the next American Idol or bestowing the mirror ball trophy on Dancing with the Stars, so why not let television infiltrate our voting in presidential elections?Why not? Because then we end up with Donald Trump for a presidential candidate.We can do better than Donald Trump, can’t we? Even the Republicans, with their dozen-deep pool of presidential candidates this cycle have to admit that Donald Trump isn’t the best choice. I wouldn’t be too excited about any of them, but someone has to be better than Trump, don’t they?Can you imagine a President Trump comforting the families of the victims in the next mass shooting after joking about shooting people on Fifth Avenue? Or what if he visits Hamtramck, Michigan, the first majority-Muslim city in the United States, after calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country?We can do better than President Trump, and surely the Republicans can find someone else to nominate. Ted Cruz might be just as bad as Trump, and he’s in second place, so the Republicans are going to have to dig deeper.The good news is that with Trump and Cruz in the lead, Americans will get a good long look at them, and see just how disgusting they are. And with some luck, they’ll tear each other apart as they scramble for votes, and someone slightly less crazy will emerge victorious.Neither Trump nor Cruz will be the nominee, I suspect. At some point, the madness will end, other candidates will turn out more of their voters, and we’ll look back and marvel that either man stuck around for as long as they did.But until then, Trump will continue his over-the-top rhetoric, and keep “telling it like it is” and some of the voting public will love it. As with all things Trump, his campaign is go big or go home.Here’s hoping that he goes home.Want an e-mail every time I write something new? Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. I'm not going to send you a bunch of junk, and you can ditch me any time you want.
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