Hard Pass

[Content Note: Hostility to consent; bullying.]

I've never liked a Republican presidential candidate in my lifetime. Especially not since I've been old enough to vote.

My first election was '92, the year I turned 18. The Republican candidate was then-President George H.W. Bush. I didn't like him at all. In '96, it was Bob Dole. I liked him even less. Then it was George W. Bush, twice in a row, followed by John McCain, for whom my distaste is legendary in these parts, and then Mitt Romney, and don't even get me started on that guy.

Since 1992, the Republican Party has moved even more rightward, and I've moved even more leftward, so it's not surprising that I dislike every Republican candidate more than the one before him.

But, as I've written previously, whether I like a presidential candidate isn't nearly as important to me as whether I feel as though I can trust them.

What I've always meant by that is: Trust them to run the country.

I've never thought that I couldn't trust any of the Republican presidents to be relatively decent human beings to me one-on-one, for some limited amount of time, as long as we talked about the weather or some similarly anodyne subject.

Until now, of course.

Not only would I not want to have a drink with Donald Trump; I wouldn't want to be in the same room with him for any amount of time for any reason. I wouldn't want to talk to him on the phone. I wouldn't want to exchange one glance or word with the man.

Because I don't want to be around any person who has such aggressive hostility to consent; such profound contempt for women; such a deep, nasty, bullying streak.

In this way, if not others, Trump represents a fundamental break with the previous nominees of his party, as well as other people who could have been the nominee.

I don't want to be, could not tolerate being, anywhere near the guy.

And all the reasons that I don't are the very same reasons for which his supporters cast their votes for him. They affirmed the precise behaviors and attitudes that make him utterly repellent to me.

Which is pretty chilling.