Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

Apparently, our friend P.J. O'Rourke is back, to the extent that he ever left, and last night I heard that he dislikes Donald Trump so intensely—P.J. called him a "flying monkey"—that he's going to vote for the Deathcamp Dolly, instead. I could speculate about what brought P.J. to this unspeakable lapse in judgment, but instead, I want to bring an unprecedented sense of proportion to the concept of voting for "the lesser of two evils."

If Donald Trump is a bad guy—and, given his sticky fingered habits with other people's real estate, I have no doubt whatever that he is, at more levels than one—then comparing the New York Mercantilist King to the former Worst Lady is more than a little like comparing Mister Smee (Captain Hook's bumbling henchman) to Hannibal Lecter.

If you think I exaggerate, I urge you to consider: Mr. Smee killed nobody, as far as I remember, while Hannibal Lecter killed (and sometimes ate) about three dozen victims. With fava beans, he said, and a nice Chianti. Of course Lecter was a mostly fictional character, if you go in for that sort of thing, strictly eliminating other fictional characters.

Now while no deaths that I know of have been attributed to the Donald, I've seen the "Clinton Body Count" estimated at about ninety souls (Be aware that Snopes assert that it isn't true, only causing me to have more doubts about the ideologically-impaired factoid-finders), making Hannibal a piker, compared to the Woman With One Eyebrow, and, most importantly, she is a living, breathing, albeit evil human being, allegedly responsible for the demise of other actual human beings. If what many observers believe is correct, that means there are hundreds of mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, sons, daughters, girlfriends, and boyfriends out there whose lives have been brutally and irreparably shattered simply because their loved ones knew too much or were otherwise in Hillary's way.

Living, breathing human beings robbed of their futures and reduced to compost.

Now, add to their number the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of innocent Third World folk slaughtered by Hillary's serial-philandering co-criminal, simply to drive his childish sexual misbehavior off the nation's front pages and evening news broadcasts, and what you've got is a couple of chuckling mass murderers aiming for the White House again. I once opined that William Jefferson Blythe Clinton had given even oral sex a bad name. When Waco Willie was the President, I often referred to him as "Caligulito". Unfortunately, I can't begin to think of a female figure from Classical times whose simmering evil matches Hillary's. Perhaps Dr. Sean Gabb or Terence James Mason can help.

Of course, I could always be wrong in my view that, compared to Hillary, Trump is essentially harmless. Many a diamondback rattler gets mistaken for a bull snake, If I am, I guess I'll be very sorry. An awful lot of people are comparing him to Hitler Himself. Then again, I'm sure that if you looked, you could find somebody who compares Barney the Dinosaur to Hitler. To my admittedly limited knowledge, Donald Trump, the obnoxious orange guy with the weird hair, the National Used Car Salesman, has never sent anybody to an extermination camp. Hillary, on the other hand, if we're to credit our nearly thirty years of political experience with her, is a traveling extermination camp all to herself.

Some people I know (and even love) try to wriggle out of the moral dilemma this election represents by backing marginal candidates who didn't ever have a chance at altering the mess we live in for the better. There's Bolshevik Bernie Sanders, for example, busily advocating an antiquated ideology that, historically, has inevitably resulted in a populace dying by the millions. There's the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, whose anti-rational, anti-scientific, anti-capitalist platform makes me … well, green. And then there's Gary Johnson, who wouldn't know a real libertarian if one walked up to him and pissed in his ear.

Where is Pat Paulsen when we really need him?

And so I've made my mind up, and I can't say that I'm happy about it, but I'm voting for survival. I'll refer you to my essay "Why Did It Have To Be Guns?" Rather than spend the few years I have left in a FEMA camp, I'll take my chances on the used car salesman. Considering that at my age, this could be my last election, and recalling with chagrin that the first time I voted, it was for Tricky Dick Milhous, I guess I'll sleep okay at night.

Publisher and Senior Columnist L. Neil Smith is the author of over thirty books, mostly science fiction novels, L. Neil Smith has been a libertarian activist since 1962. His many books and those of other pro-gun libertarians may be found (and ordered) at L. Neil Smith's THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE "Free Radical Book Store" The preceding essays were originally prepared for and appeared in L. Neil Smith's THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE. Use them to fight the continuing war against tyranny.

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