Still whittling.

Spoiler alert - Katherine Watt voted for Trump in 2020.

In my adult life, I have cast votes and/or campaign-donated in presidential primary and general elections for Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, and Tulsi Gabbard, among others.

I didn’t vote in November 2016 after watching war criminal Hillary Clinton and her allies rig the 2016 Democratic primaries to kick out Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

I skipped the 2020 primaries, because there was no role for Pennsylvania voters in May after Super Tuesday rigging sealed the deal for Biden. But I did vote in the general election in 2020, and I voted for Trump.

I had a lot of reasons.

Among the top ones:

First off, crassness doesn’t bother me.

Unelected, unaccountable career bureaucrats in the CIA, FBI, DOJ, NSA, DNC and RNC coordinating with propagandists at the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and Fox to conduct a four-year coup (hard or soft) against an elected head of state and the interests of his or her working class voter base bothers me a lot, whether it happens abroad or in the United States. Exhibit A: the evidence-free Russiagate story and the subsequent lionizing of Robert Mueller, James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, war criminal George W. Bush and the rest of the neoliberal/neoconservative elite technocrat ruling establishment.

Second, free speech doesn’t bother me, even when I disagree with the views of the speakers, and even when the speakers say angry, aggrieved, racist, sexist or otherwise awful things. Even when the speakers say things that could be subject to defamation, libel and slander review in a court of law. That’s a risk-benefit analysis individual speakers must decide for themselves; the burden of proof is high, especially for speech about public figures and speech about issues of public concern; and the truth is an absolute defense.

The answer to bad ideas and arguments is better ideas and arguments, not the silencing of speakers through corporate, academic or government censorship, cancellation, firings, and deplatforming through social media mobs.

Further, the point of presenting better ideas and arguments in public places isn’t to convince the counter-party that he or she is wrong. The point is to reach out to thoughtful, open-minded onlookers - the debate listeners - who are trying to understand the world and navigate it in good faith.

Free speech doesn’t bother me. The coordinated suppression of a major corruption story about the son of the Democratic presidential candidate, by unelected, unaccountable tech overlords and propagandists at the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and Fox, weeks before an election, bothers me a lot.

I was on the fence for many months after the rigged 2020 primary (during which Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren coordinated just ahead of Super Tuesday to boot Bernie Sanders from the race and anoint Biden) about whether to stay home, cast a protest vote for Gabbard, or vote for Trump.

When I realized in mid-October that Trump’s electoral opponent was not Biden, but was rather the unelected, unaccountable Deep State acronymic organizations, their propagandists in the mainstream media, the narrow-Overton-window enforcers in the tech corporations and the DNC/neoliberal-RNC/neocon elite coalition institutionalized by the Lincoln Project, I knew which side I was on: the side opposite the FBI-CIA-DOJ-NSA-WEF-CFR axis of ruling class elitism, the manipulative mainstream media, tech corporations, and the Congressional neoliberal-neocon Hydra monster, which, for all his major shortcomings, happened to be Donald Trump.

Three, I’m anti-war. American imperialism bothers me a lot. Working-class veteran PTSD, depression and suicide epidemics bother me a lot.

Trump didn’t start any new wars, and tried to bring home American troops stuck in war zones he inherited from Clintons, Bushes and Obama. The unelected, unaccountable military bureaucracy blocked his efforts, with help from the neocon-neoliberal Hydra monster in Congress, led by Liz Cheney.

Fourth, I’m against police states and mass incarceration, and I think the “drug war” is stupid. Biden and Harris have both spent their political careers locking people up for non-violent drug offenses. Mostly minority men. Trump worked with Cory Booker and others to pass the First Step Act, providing a pathway out of prison and back home for thousands of non-violent offenders.

Fifth, and probably most dispositive: I have far more in common with the class Hillary Clinton labeled “deplorable” than the class she and her kind regard as elite experts entitled to hold political power and rule over the peasants.

I admire farming, factory work and small business ownership more than I admire any other occupations.

I hate the George Soroses, Klaus Schwabs and Bill Gateses of the Davos-centered world. I hate mega-corporations and monopolies. I hate their functionaries: the unelected, unaccountable career technocrats of the “professional managerial class.”

When Biden and the DNC continued Hillary Clinton’s trajectory, and framed the 2020 fight as one between the working people in the massive crowds supporting Trump and the elites writing checks from their offices supporting Biden, I threw my lot and my vote in with the people I admire, not their self-styled overseers.

I wasn’t voting for Trump the man. I was voting for Trump the symbol, the “Molotov cocktail” thrown by angry, desperate, despised working class Americans into the inner sanctum of political power, as Michael Moore once described him.

Trump himself may have all the weakness of will and bad personality his haters attribute to him, but I care way more about the lives, dignity and values of his working class, multiracial base of support than I do about Trump himself. Trump’s election in 2016 was a message to the ruling class. I’m among the people who tried to send the message again in 2020.

I could go on, but won’t. I’ve said more than enough to qualify for the secret police surveillance and gulags the so-called American liberals are planning for 75 million or so of us Trump voters.

Note to same: my kids, husband and friends don’t share my political views and politics don’t unduly influence our relationships of care and affection, so they don’t need re-education camp, cancellation, deplatforming or any of the other tools in the anti-“domestic-terrorist” — Newspeak for domestic dissenters now that the Orange-Man-Bad ‘Resistance’ thinks of itself as being in-power — toolbox.

To those who unsubscribe after reading this, bon voyage.

To those who stick around, thank you.