Voting For One Reason Alone

 A FRIEND OF MINE, an intelligent, well educated older gentleman, voted for Trump in 2016 , mainly because both of them are Republicans. Either my friend didn't  hear the Access Hollywood tape, or did, and didn't care. My friend, a man of principle, was also evidently unaware of Trump's shady biography, and his behavior during the 2016 campaign, spreading lies , and slandering everybody in sight, including fellow Republicans. Either that, or he didn't care, like so many trump voters. My friend knew one thing about Hillary Clinton: he didn't like her. He never gave me any specific reason why; something about her tone of voice, her participation in a pedophile prostitution scheme, or something or other. During the for years of Trump my friend managed to pay enough attention to the president's behavior, especially the comments about windmill cancer and taking bleach to cure a virus, to start to get the picture. Trump, he began to realize, is an idiot. By the time the election of 2020 arrived he was a rock solid hard core anti-Trumper. And yet, he just couldn't bring himself to vote for Joe Biden. Why not? I don't like Joe Biden. Why not? Because Biden is anti second amendment, and wants to take everyone's guns away. Predictably, no amount of factual presentation or argument or persuasion using facts about Biden's actual stand on gun control could change my friend.s mind. So, he voted for the green party candidate, and, as he said, threw his vote away. I admired his honesty, if not his reasoning. And, at least he didn't vote for some right wing wacko white supremacist. There are a million and one important issues for all voters to consider in a presidential election; the great American single issue voter, undaunted by any sense of responsibility for being educated on the issues ,holds firm, ignoring one million issues, while voting tenaciously based upon a single one,that all important one, as if none of the others mattered or existed. He may be a homicidal mania, a serial killer, and a pathological liar, but by god he believes in freedom, and in our sacred Christian right of arsenal ownership. He thinks illegal immigrants should be shot on sight, felons should be given the electric chair, and the only socialist is a dead socialist, but, by god, he is "pro life", and protects the unborn, including sperm cells. In a more perfect democracy, the single issue voter would conveniently, magically forget to vote, or better yet, forget to register, or both.