All Of This Could Have Been Avoided

All of this could have been avoided if the right people in the positions of power made the honest, honorable decisions.

This all could have been avoided if enough Republican voters recognized they were offered a choice to support and defend a known business fraud and unrepentant liar like donald trump, and said No.

This all could have been avoided if enough Republican Party leaders - the elected Senators, Congressperons, Governors, esteemed elders, deep-pocket funders - admitted the trap that donald trump put them in back in 2016, when he threatened to run a third party vanity campaign that could have split Far Right voters and guaranteed a Hillary Clinton victory, and decided that Hillary was the devil they could deal with instead of trump.

This all could have been avoided if that Republican leadership admitted to themselves their Culture War bullshit that they've fed to their voter base - the racism, the sexism, the rage towards immigrants, the violence towards those they deemed Other - created a toxic situation where sensible, practical conservative leadership (yes, that can exist) was untenable, and washed themselves clean of that destructive dogma in order to deny trump his racist/sexist platform.

This all could have been avoided if the political parties - not just the Republicans but also the Democrats and Libertarians and Greens and other parties out there - set for themselves ethical standards for their Presidential candidates to swear to before allowing them to campaign. If they had a screening process where the candidate had to release all their tax returns to public review for the past 20 years, where the candidate had to sell all properties and businesses that would violate the Emoluments Clause before a single primary vote took place, where the candidate had to accept the legitimate results of any vote if they lost. Any single one of those requirements would have stopped trump before he could even start a fake fundraiser for himself.

This all could have been avoided if the Republicans gave up their fetish / worship of business leaders as potential Presidents. The idiotic belief that "Government can be run like a business," which is false as the objectives of a government - uphold laws and serve the public trust - goes against the objectives of a business - to sell products/services and build a profit. That false belief helped trump bluff his way onto the political stage even as a failed businessman.

This all could have been avoided if our American legal system took financial fraud and other white collar crimes more serious. There had been reports and allegations of trump committing money laundering well back into the 1980s. His near-constant appearances in bankruptcy court should have triggered red flags to federal investigators that trump was committing some kind of fraud with all his property developments and failed marketing schemes. There should have been greater effort to track down all the lawsuits and settlements that followed trump everywhere as he bilked and bullied other companies and contractors out of their fair earnings. Instead of going after trump on his fraudulent tax filings today, the district and federal prosecutors should have been doing all this back (1980s) before trump even threatened (1990s) to make a political run.

This all could have been avoided if all the allegations since the 1990s of sexual assault and misconduct trump inflicted towards women were taken more serious. trump should have been a confirmed sex offender well before 2016, and it would have made a reasonable excuse then for the Republican Party to deny him a spot.

This all could have been avoided if enough Americans said "Enough" and denied donald trump even the opportunity to scam and grift us. If enough of us set aside partisan bias - both conservative and liberal - and just recognize the lump of inhuman soulless flesh that trump really is.

Gods help us. This all could have been avoided.