[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]

I’ve been trying to pull myself out of my recent paroxysm of electoral despair, and, remembering Gandalf’s wise words to Frodo (“…all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us”), turn my attention to doing my part to stop Trump. Ergo, the girls & I will be volunteering for Hillary Clinton this weekend.

But first, I need to get something off my chest.

I wrote the following rant in a Facebook comment this morning, and having finished it, I decided it needs its own Tumblr post. Warning: salty language ahead!

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Can I just say, as I look at that ugly map … whatever the ultimate outcome, even if HRC ekes out a 3-point win or whatever, it’s just so goddamn depressing to look at the electoral map and see how much of it is the standard shade of red, even though Donald Freakin’ Trump is the nominee. His normalization is so overwhelmingly, despair-inducingly gross.

Nothing in American politics in my lifetime has been as depressing and disillusioning as the conscious, deliberate decision by the “leadership” of the GOP to acquiesce to Trump (and the <40% of the GOP primary electorate that supported him when the race was competitive). In doing so, they have chosen to signal “Trump’s our guy” to average Republican voters, who – just like average Democratic voters – pay minimal attention, and simply vote with their “tribe.” Even given the poor decisions made by the Republican primary voters, it did NOT have to be this way. There were other paths the party’s “leaders” could have taken, whether endorsing Gary Johnson, reluctantly backing Clinton for the good of the country (as George H.W. Bush and a few others have done), or putting forward a plausible independent conservative candidate, back in May or June when that was still possible. Quite honestly, with HRC being so unpopular, and Trump being so electorally self-destructive, I genuinely think a decent high-profile conservative third-party candidate like a Romney or a Ryan could plausibly have won. And anyway, win or lose, promoting and supporting such an effort would have been honorable, patriotic, and the right thing to do.

But the GOP “leadership” rejected the principled alternatives, out of cowardice and careerism, and decided instead to normalize this objectively vile, monstrous, unhinged, bigoted, wannabe war criminal and (at best) petty tyrant … this proudly ignorant, thoughtlessly authoritarian, transparently unfit ignoramus … this deranged narcissist with terrifyingly fascistic instincts.

Now, thanks to that abject failure (or rather abdication) of leadership, even honest and thoughtful conservative voters face this awful choice of Trump vs. someone they loathe plus a guaranteed liberal Supreme Court. IMHO there’s still a clear moral choice that such voters must make – gotta vote Hillary, even if they’ll oppose her vigorously for the next four years, just as I would be forced to vote for even someone I find loathsome like Ted Cruz if he was the only viable alternative to a hypothetical “Dem Trump” (i.e., if the Dems ever nominated an equally dangerous demagogue) – but, Jesus, these voters have been put a terrible, terrible spot by their party’s “leaders.”

In sum, fuck Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, etc. (to say nothing of enthusiastic Trumpkins-who-know-better like Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, etc.), and the rest of these cynical careerist assholes, forever and ever and ever. They have sold their souls to a strongman for the sake of their precious goddamn careers, notwithstanding that doing so means grievously endangering the country they profess to love. They are a disgrace to themselves, their party, and their nation. I will never forgive the “leaders” and influencers who, faced with the clearest moral choice imaginable, utterly failed to stand up to a transparently unfit and dangerous demagogue, and indeed decided to rally their “team” behind this monster.

As I wrote to Paul Ryan last night, in a series of tweets responding to his tweet honoring the statesmanship of the late Shimon Peres: “You praise statesmanship, yet you support an unhinged narcissistic ignoramus with fascistic instincts for POTUS. Your careerism has corrupted your conservatism, compromised your patriotism, and conquered your very soul. Shame on you, sir. President Trump would pursue plunder, torture & murder of noncombatants. War crimes all. How dare you invoke ‘statesmanship.’ You could have single-handedly altered the course of history by calling Trump a fascist & refusing to endorse. But no. Coward. I hope you go to bed, every night for the rest of your life, knowing you own this. You surrendered the GOP to a fascist. You.”