My Vote

Whom I'm voting for and why

Everybody hates celebrity endorsements: basically, a bunch of ridiculously spoiled out-of-touch people looking at the camera trying to guilt or shame you into voting the way they tell you to. These people supposedly get their jobs from their charisma -definitely not from being the brightest people in the room - which is why it’s such a mystery to me that such supposedly “socially gifted” people don’t realize that their endorsement ads make them look like the world’s biggest assholes and probably persuade more people to vote against their candidate rather than for them.

So if celebrity endorsements are this annoying, imagine how much more exponentially annoying an endorsement from a niche internet microcelebrity like myself is. I can see you now, sitting in your living room reading this Substack. “Who does this guy think he is?” you muse to yourself. “Explain to me why I’m suddenly supposed to take advice from a guy whose Substack is so basic that he simply inverted the most commonly-used color schema!"“

Don’t worry, I’m not here to preach to you. Vote for whomever you want. I won’t name you or shame you or blame you if you have different priorities or a different level of concern over the issues than I do. I’m just here to explain to you whom I’m voting for and why.

Ultimately, there are very seldom any perfect choices when it comes to voting. At the end of the day, you’re always going to have a certain level of disagreement with any politician - or with any person in general. Politics is all about tradeoffs, and when you vote for a politician you are basically making a calculated guess that he will do more good than evil.

Considering some of the harsh things I’ve said about Trump - even implying he was involved with Jeffrey Epstein’s child prostitution ring - it may sound strange to say I’m voting for Trump. But consider the evidence. Democrats had a perfect angle to attack Trump for four years: namely, the fact that Jeffrey Epstein died on his watch, and that he classified the documents. The fact that none of them chose to attack him in this way implies that they are way more compromised by the client list than Trump is. They definitely don’t want to fault him for his oversight - because it benefited them. Furthermore, Trump is now actively promising to release the Epstein client list if he wins the election, so… maybe I was wrong. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I’d rather be the kind of person who owns up to a mistake rather than going into denial mode. I fully admit that I suspected Trump of pedophilia, and I was totally justified in doing so, because all the evidence pointed to it. However, since I made that accusation, the exonerating actions of Trump and the incriminating actions of the Democrats have made me reconsider my position. Simply put, the evidence has changed, and it would be stupid not to allow my opinion to change as a result.

Furthermore, the fact that I’m even allowed to go on the internet and share my opinions - even opinions that could be damaging to people in power - is one of the fundamental rights that is under assault this election season. For the past decade, Democrats have always been the party of censorship. The greatest trick that the authoritarians who want to suppress your free speech ever pulled was convincing so many of the public that there is somehow a difference between free speech and hate speech. Then once we have agreed to that absurd proposition, they start labelling certain kinds of speech as damaging. “Oh, you can’t criticize Obama,” they’ll tell you. “Criticizing our first black president is racist hate-speech, and it’s damaging to minorities.” “But I think there are valid questions to be asked about his drone-strike program,” you say. “Doesn’t matter, he’s black.” they respond, looking at you like an idiot. “Don’t you understand that criticizing him is hate-speech? What are you, some kind of racist?!?”

Democrats don’t seem to understand how damaging this erosion of speech rights is to our democracy, because certain valid ideas cannot even be discussed simply because they’re out of the Overton window. Suggesting that Covid was a lab leak was not even allowed to be discussed until fairly recently, even though the “conspiracy theorists” like myself were right the whole time. Suppressing the ability to talk openly about things is the most dangerous hallmark of an authoritarian dictatorship, and rather than renouncing their censorship platform and reaffirming their commitment to the First Amendment, Democrats are doubling down on this “hate speech” nonsense. During the Vance-Walz debate, the most telling thing I noticed that made me absolutely sure I was going to vote for Trump was when the two Vice-Presidential candidates discussed their feelings about free speech, and Tim Walz basically said “There’s a difference between free speech and hate speech.” That stuck with me, because at the end of the day, no matter how much I disagree with some of his policies, Trump’s side has never tried to censor or silence me. I can criticize him all I want - fairly or unfairly - and that’s something that makes our country truly great.

So, that’s why I’m voting for Trump this year. But, again, vote for whomever you want - I’m not the boss of you. I’m just a humble rando who occasionally does political analysis on the internet.