Please VOTE!

If you live in the US, please think strategically, and don't sit this one out.

I know there will be disagreement here. Please take this as written in a spirit of respect, love, and mutual understanding.

Today I voted for a major party presidential candidate for the first time in my life.

In the past I have always voted for a third party because I have lived in states where the same party wins no matter what, and I saw my vote as more powerful if I were to try to get a third party to the 5% threshold, which has major implications for campaign funding and ballot access, and as a long-term goal I want to break the two-party system.

The presidential votes I was most excited about were for Ralph Nader (Green) in 2000 and for Ron Paul in the Republican primary in 2008. 

In 2016, I voted for Johnson/Weld (Libertarian). Johnson was embarrassing, but there was a significant chance of getting the Libertarian Party to 5%, which they missed at 3.3%.

In 2020, I abstained. Trump exhausted me. Biden didn’t scare me. No third party excited me. I didn’t want to spend hours in line dealing with COVID policies. 

This time, I want my voice heard. The popular vote is up for grabs, and I want my vote counted as part of a resounding landslide vote. 

Nothing is guaranteed. The 2000 election was decided by 537 votes in Florida. Jim Scott won a Virginia legislature seat by a single vote in 1991. We will see curveballs. States that are thought in the bag for one candidate could even be in play. 

There is EVERY reason to vote.

These are my top issues:

• Avoid World War III. If we are all dead there is no point of having any other issues.

• Protect Free Speech. If we lose the right to free speech, we lose the right to defend every other right.

• Health Policy. We have a radical divergence in the prospects for health policy. On one side is more of the same. On the other is a repudiation of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and corporatist Big Food laden with industrial toxins, and an exoneration of traditional fats and oils, regenerative farming, raw milk, and a culture of health and fitness.

I have my own opinions on abortion, but I do not consider them relevant to this election because abortion is not seriously on the table at the federal level. The overturning of Roe means meaningful abortion politics now happen at the state level. If you want to impact abortion policy, cast your votes or make your campaign efforts at the state level. If you consider all of my issues important as well as this one, for example, you can split your ballot voting in different ways for president and for state or even congressional and senate elections. 

The only federal issue here is the possibility of a national abortion ban. Harris would oppose this. A meaningful synthesis of Trump’s many positions on abortion [1] are that somewhere between 1999 and 2011 he flipped from pro-choice to pro-life, that he would have considered a national abortion policy until Roe was overturned, and that he now firmly considers it up to the states. It appears he would advocate [2] for states to impose limits with exceptions for rape, incest, or life endangerment at 15 weeks or further, but has affirmed [3] that he supports this being entirely left up to the states. 

This confirms to me that if abortion is your single issue, you should be focused on state politics.

When I filled in the circle on my ballot, I voted for Trump/Vance.

Did I “vote for Trump”?

Literally, yes.

But strategically? No.

I voted for a coalition between Trump/Vance, Kennedy/Shanahan, and Tulsi Gabbard, with Elon Musk and Ron Paul at the helm of cutting government waste, Vivek Ramaswany at the helm of articulating the American Dream, and a little hope that Thomas Massie could get his fingers into farming policy. Trump even had dinner with Angela McArdle [4], chair of the Libertarian Party, who I interviewed and who helped me and a group of New Yorkers strategize on defeating the city's emergency powers and vaccine mandates during COVID. 

I voted for this DREAM TEAM.

Here is how I see the issues.

WORLD WAR III / WORLD PEACE

Trump’s foreign policy was largely in line with the bipartisan consensus [5], but he joins the ranks of only Carter and Ford in not starting new foreign military operations [6], he presided over a steady decline [7] in American troops deployed abroad that started under Obama due to the winding down of the Iraq war, and he expanded the use of drone strikes [8]. His taking out of Iran’s Soleimani was a high-precision operation that avoided any overt broader conflict. Overall, then, he favored avoiding wars, keeping troops out of harm’s way, and preferring special operations over ground wars in executing the basic goals of bipartisan foreign policy consensus.

His major departure from that consensus, however, was that he opposed NATO expansionism, and preferred to keep Russia in check by other means [5,9]. He armed Ukraine and he expanded sanctions on Russia, but he also used more diplomatic (in his style) rhetoric toward Putin, while reining in freeloaders in NATO and failing to talk up the NATO security guarantees.

It was known and clear that promoting Ukraine joining NATO would provoke aggression from Russia. The US under Biden continued the longstanding policy of NATO expansionism (including the US State Department-led coup during Obama’s term to get the current pro-western Ukrainian government into power), with overt statements that Ukraine should join NATO. 

Daniel Vajdich, a senior fellow at the pro-NATO Atlantic Council, argued, “When you actually look at the substance of what [the Trump] administration has done, not the rhetoric but the substance, this administration has been much tougher on Russia than any in the post-Cold War era.” [5]

Trump’s toughness on Russia did not involve Ukrainians dying en masse to fight Russia out of their border. 

The bipartisan Washington consensus that will continue between Biden and Harris is the much more lethal version we are seeing right now.

That traditionally Democratic Michigan Muslims and New York Jews  [10, 11] are both supporting Trump for world peace while the Middle East is burning is a testament to Trump’s “art of the deal” approach to foreign policy enabling an aversion of World War III.

PROTECT FREE SPEECH

The “Twitter Files” [12] showed that all the censorship during COVID was directed by unelected federal bureaucracies like the FBI. 

If we are to protect free speech, we need to rein in the unelected bureaucracies. 

I do not believe Trump is a principled advocate of free speech. Indeed, he has supported banning flag burning, [13] and when Elon interviewed him earlier in the year he failed to articulate a principled defense of free speech when prompted. 

However, Harris has *promised* to get the Department of Justice to police social media [14]. This means *criminalizing* our free speech on social media. 

When discussing whether Trump should be allowed on social media, Harris said “You can’t say you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter.” [15] 

The only way to have the same rules across social media platforms is for the government to legislate those rules, which means government telling social media who to deplatform.

Free speech is seriously deteriorating in the UK, where people are being jailed for social media posts. The “UK Files” [16] have shown that the British Labour Party and the Center for Countering Digital Hate had a plan to “kill Elon Musk’s Twitter” and have representatives in the United States campaigning for Harris.

With Trump and Kennedy joining forces, we have a serious possibility of reining in the unelected bureaucracies. 

With anyone else, the unelected bureaucracies will continue their war on free speech.

With Harris, she will *evangelize* in favor of criminalizing speech and accelerating this war.

HEALTH

The Make America Healthy Again movement is an incredible opportunity to repudiate the top-down centralized public health policy that smothered our rights during the COVID era, to rid our public health institutions of their corruption, and to embrace regenerative farming, healthy food and living, and getting toxins out of our food and environment.

Trump was naive toward the biosecurity state and public health establishments. His advocacy of the COVID vaccine, calling himself “The Father of the Vaccine” for years, and his appointment of biosecurity state advocates like Robert Kadlec, were a huge part of the problem. And they were his undoing. The pandemic was clearly manipulated to get Trump out of office.

So why vote Trump on this issue? 

Because Kennedy *literally* wrote the book on this topic. [16] 

Kennedy excoriated Trump for his role.

Kennedy also excoriated Robert Redfield, then head of the CDC. And you know what Redfield said? “You got everything right.” [17]

I believe that Kennedy can change minds. So that Trump and Kennedy are teamed up to me means we should give this a shot. 

Could Trump screw him over? Of course.

The way I see it is this: 

Trump will be a second term president, meaning he is in this for his legacy rather than to support his alliances for reelection. He is narcissistic, which means that he wants adulation. He is a nationalist, and he loves making deals. I think he sees this as a deal to make with Kennedy to make American kids healthy so people will love Trump for that result as part of his legacy.

Kennedy’s expertise is legal, and I really believe we could get him on a corruption-routing rampage as I described here [18].

When Trump eats McDonald’s fries, Kennedy turns it into a national discussion on how to “make fryer oil tallow again.” [19]

Kennedy wants to end the war on raw milk [20] and “reverse 80 years of farm policy in this country and end our reliance on industrial meat production, factory farming, and chemical-based agriculture.” [21]

Kennedy has made it clear that he does not want anyone to vote for him and you need to vote Trump if you want Kennedy to do these things. [22]

Whether you agree with me or not, GO VOTE!

REFERENCES

1.https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trumps-many-abortion-positions-timeline-rcna146601

2. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-signals-support-15-week-abortion-ban-rcna144213

3. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-abortion-restrictions-left-states-dodging-national-ban-rcna146309

4. https://x.com/angela4LNCChair/status/1850973408693272661

5. https://theintercept.com/2021/11/21/america-militarism-foreign-policy-bush-obama-trump-biden/

6. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-which-us-presidents-led-the-nation-into-new-wars-idUSKBN2A22QR/

7. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-military-presence-around-the-world-interactive

8. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/trump-triples-obamas-drone-strike-rate/

9. https://www.cfr.org/election2024/candidate-tracker/donald-trump

10. https://www.theroanokestar.com/2024/11/01/michigan-arabs-and-muslims-endorse-donald-trump-for-president/

11. https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/09/19/trump-holds-10-point-lead-harris-new-york-jews-poll-finds/

12. https://x.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857534737072128?lang=en

13. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4792101-donald-trump-urges-jail-sentence-burning-flags-protests/

14. https://x.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857534737072128?lang=en

15. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/will-kamala-harris-shut-down-x-twitter-if-elected/

16. https://chrismasterjohnphd.substack.com/p/fauci-gates-and-the-biosecurity-state

17. https://x.com/AV24org/status/1849956065162506242

18. https://x.com/ChrisMasterjohn/status/1852044308704297020

19. https://x.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1851290987953324196

20. https://x.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1849925311586238737

21. https://x.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1772353618798133529

22. https://x.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1853440835062575163