October 03, 2016 09:49 PM UTC

Charles Manson or Donald Trump: Who Would Republicans Prefer?

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• by: doko

There are three groups (not mutually exclusive) of Trump voters. One belongs to the struggling workers and families who want to see a complete break from our dysfunctional government and who are under the mistaken impression that (1) canceling trade agreements and stopping corporate relocations will restore non-automated manufacturing jobs and the shrinking demand for coal, and (2) that Trump will make it happen, even though after a year of campaigning he hasn’t produced any evidence that he has ever spent a single minute thinking about the welfare of anyone other than himself. The second group includes the Klan members, white supremacists and less outspoken racists who, like the white leaders during the waning days of apartheid in South Africa, want the structure of a police state to futilely try to delay the inevitable and and to appropriate as much as they can before they are put out to pasture. They find in Trump a supporter who desires to kill family members of criminals, to stifle criticism by loosening slander and liable laws, and to legitimize a climate of fear among anyone who isn’t Caucasian. The one thing that these two groups have in common is that nothing that occurs during the campaign will dissuade them from voting for Trump.

The third group is comprised of Republicans and other right-leaning voters who won’t vote for a Democrat (and especially this candidate) under any circumstances, regardless of how poisonously incompetent and ignorant the Republican candidate is. This group pretends to justify its loyalty to the Party rather than to the country by resort to some phony litmus test, such as who will get to appoint Supreme Court Justices. They’re okay with Trump the candidate having already damaged the country by fanning the flames of his conspiracy theory about the “rigged” election (and as an avowed conspiracy theorist, what possible harm could Trump do as President?). They’re more afraid of what decisions the Supreme Court may make in the future (apparently they’ve never heard of Justices who change their judicial approach over the many years of a lifetime appointment).

It got me thinking. Is there a candidate who would be considered by this third group of voters as even more distasteful and toxic than Trump, such that even they could not bring themselves to vote for him or her? Immediately I thought of Charles Manson (for purpose of this exercise, let’s assume that being a convicted felon is not a bar his candidacy). I mean, here’s a guy who’s been in prison forever for a mass murder, is unkempt, and who knows nothing about most issues that would confront the President. Hillary Clinton versus Charles Manson. Think about the ratings for that debate. Who could possibly vote for Manson?

But then I started paying attention to the Trump justifications coming from the has-been Guliani, the lackey Chris Christie and Trump’s other supporters job-seekers, and the answer became less clear. Here are some of the justifications for Manson’s candidacy that I can imagine hearing:

Unlike Trump, with his three marriages and affairs, Manson’s a family man. If you recall, the disparate vagabonds that Manson put together at his commune was known as the “Manson Family”. He took wandering, lethargic soles and molded them into a focused and enthusiastic group of worker bees. Nobody will do a better job of bringing people together than Manson!

Manson may have committed murders, but he wasn’t a terrorist. Trump has some easy answers for stopping terrorism, such as making all Muslims in this country third class citizens and destroying ISIS immediately by executing Trump’s secret plan that none of our generals is smart enough to devise. But to Trump, the existence of the Second Amendment means there’s nothing that can be done about all the other mass murders in this country. Manson, on the other hand, knows more about committing murders than almost anyone, so he alone is in a position to do something about it. As more people in this country are killed by non-terrorists than by terrorists, think of the number of lives Manson will save.

Manson’s the real outsider. You want change from someone who’s not one of the elites? Who could be more of an outsider than someone who’s spent decades in prison? And who could be a better advocate for reform of the prison system than someone who knows it inside out?

There’s no tax return issues with Manson. Disclose them or don’t disclose them, who cares? There’s nothing to be learned from reviewing the tax returns of someone who has spent most of his life in prison.  Trump says that his ability to lose almost a billion dollars in one tax year shows that he’s a genius, without explaining what he had to do to lose that much money. He says he will use his exceptional knowledge of the tax code to fix it by removing the loopholes that keep him wealthy, which would have the effect of decreasing the value of his financial interests that conveniently will be managed by his children. No conflict there. Unlike most politicians, Manson has no conflicts with his financial interests because he has no financial interests!

So what makes Trump a better candidate than Charles Manson? I really don’t know.