In the classic movie, The Princess Bride, we find our hero trying to save his love from the hands of the evil Vizzini. He challenges him to a battle of wits where Vizzini must discern which cup has poison and which is safe. Then, both will drink and the winner is the one not dead. The trick was on him, though. Both cups were poisoned. Wesley, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, had developed a tolerance for the poison, so regardless of which cup Vizzini chose, he would die and Wesley would live.
That’s the Presidential election of 2016 in a nutshell. The difference is that a few members of the political class and the media will be able to survive the poisonous choice of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. The rest of us are doomed to liberalism, incompetence, corruption, and potential destruction regardless of who wins. Hillary is more liberal than Trump. Trump is more incompetent than Hillary (and please don’t point to the real estate empire he was born into as proof that he’s not incompetent). Both are corrupt. Both give us a smorgasbord of directions from which our destruction can come once they’re in the Oval Office.
I am not voting for either candidate. I will not support either candidate. I will oppose both candidates. Trump supporters will say that this means I’m supporting Hillary. Hillary supporters will say that this means I’m supporting Trump. Both are wrong. Our nation was built on the dissent against the choices given to pre-revolution patriots by the ruling class. Those patriots, many of whom died fighting for the birth of the nation while others became the leaders who carried us through those formative years, did so against the call of the masses. People often forget or never learned that the American Revolution was not popular before it started. There wasn’t a massive uprising of the mighty majority to make it happen. Most Americans, unhappy as they may have been with the circumstances, would have preferred to work within the British system rather than oppose. This changed once the revolution started gaining traction, but if it were up to the masses, we would have ended the 18th century under the rule of the King.
These stories – The Princess Bride, election 2016, and the American Revolution all come together to help us see one clear path forward. Americans who are unhappy with the binary choice forced upon us should look outside of those choices without fear of wasting their efforts or votes. They shouldn’t drink from either poison cup. They shouldn’t bow down to the voice of the masses. Today, a large majority of Americans are firmly in Hillary’s camp or Trump’s camp. A good number of those people in the camps are there unwillingly, but they’re not going to leave out of fear for the other camp being stronger as a result. They carry the spirit of those against the American Revolution in their hearts; dissent at this point would be destructive in their opinions. I’m not saying this to insult them. The lukewarm supporters on both sides are doing what they think is right, but they’re still doing it out of fear. They fear the other side winning just as many unhappy subjects of King George feared going to war with England.
We have two choices to make. The first choice is easy: we need a new conservative party. Join it. Regardless of who wins, we cannot sit around and wait for this travesty to repeat itself next election, and the election after that, and after that, and…
The second choice is harder. Do we simply avoid the Presidential election? Do we vote for down ballot conservatives but skip the top of the ticket? Do we endorse and support a third party candidate?
I have looked at and spoken to 3rd-party conservatives. Right now, the only one who has any chance at all is Evan McMullin. His path is nearly impossible, but not completely impossible. We asked members of the new party if they thought we should endorse and the volume of replies was absolutely shocking. Regardless of how that plays out, we must speak directly to McMullin before endorsing. Most questions can be answered by simply watching his interviews and reading articles about him, but the question we haven’t had answered is: Does he have a real strategy to win this thing? If he can’t win, we won’t endorse. That’s not a question of whether or not he has the potential to win. We need to know if he has the strategy to win. The only way to know this is to hear it from his mouth.
Regardless of what happens with or without McMullin, it’s easy for me to say that I will not be voting for either major party candidate. They are disasters. Both sides are trying to put their cups closer to me, but I won’t drink from either. Suicide just isn’t my thing. As Vizzini said, “I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.”
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