lesser of two evils

As we get closer to the actual election of our next president, the news stories get more horrifying and the Facebook posts become more insane.  There are women of Mexican heritage touting Donald Trump with dire warnings about Clinton.  There are black men totally invested in Clinton while ignoring that the last Clinton presidency started this amazing new race-to-the-top with incarcerating black men for minor drug charges--I must admit, it took the wind right out of the sails of the drive-by's in our town, but now we have a militarized Police force using profiling and stop and frisk as an excuse to harass people of color--especially if they are large and dark, if they are surly or could be high, you can shoot them.
We have Wiki-leaks--showing up a little at a time so that no one knows what to do with the information.  And do we know where it came from?  Do we know if it is altered?  Is anyone checking and reporting back to us?
A random study (or poll, or questionaire or imaginary dream re-creation announced that our paid bureaucrats in positions of power think we are not smart enough to know what is good for us--the government needs to just tell us what to do.  Our female candidate makes the point that Lincoln spoke out of both sides of his mouth to get rid of slavery, My granddaughter has pointed out--repeatedly--that by fifth grade, she has learned about the pilgrims 6 times, complete with how they dressed and how they ate turkey and dressing and cranberries and pumpkin pie and had the meal with the Native Americans, but has never got that that they survived to that meal due to assistance from the Native Americans.  (Forget most of the rest of that lesson--the clothes and food are not accurate and they never discussed when this meal occurred or how many years went by before anyone found a need to commemorate it or if it really happened at all.  This year they added the story of Pocahontas.  At least she learned she married John Rolf and not John Smith.  It is like history is by Disney anymore and has no actual purpose.

It does make the nonspecific study results in which our bureacrats need to tell us what to do, more likely.

But back to the topic at hand--an election between two candidates that are seen as evil, choose which one is the lesser evil.  (what I don't understand is why so few people get that there are other candidates and with media attention and their votes, they are as viable as those 2 evils.)
So lets look at some other "lesser of two evil" choices:

• would you rather be bitten by a rattlesnake or a copperhead?
• would you rather eat dog crap or cat crap
• would you rather be murdered by a knife or a gun
• would you rather be falsely accused/ then framed for rape or for murder
• would you rather live in a single room with no windows, doors or light, or a glass room that is constantly bright as day.

I could go one, but by now, most of you are thinking, I wouldn't want either one, I can avoid a snakebite (in truth, most of the snake bites I've seen were to the hands of drunken young men that decided to pick them up on a dare).
I'm not eating crap, try to make me and I'll fight you.
I try to avoid being murdered--by anything--and have no intention of going softly into that....blah, blah, blah,
I hope not to have anyone try to accuse and/or frame me, but certainly should never be expected to choose one.
and the last--who cares, sounds horrible, and only a madman/woman would cause me to have to choose either one.

In other words--we humans do not have to choose the lesser of two evils.  We don't have to.  We can find other options and if someone or something tries to force us to choose--we can fight, we can even go so far as to fight for our lives, so why should we go to the polls and "choose the lesser of two evils"
 I think perhaps this election cycle is a sign of bad times coming.  I think maybe we Americans, that  are so quick to spout off about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and "living free or dying free" and "government by the people and for the people" are going to have to stop our infernal self-absorption; our non-stop focus on buying the latest craze and being entertained and making our kids feel happy-happy-joy-joy all the time, and try to find an actual way to get our country on track.  I'm not a "let's get back to how it used to be" kind of person.  It needs to be a country for all its inhabitants and we all need to wake up and think, empathize, look at our current lives and make some decisions about what it means to be a member of this society.

We can keep thinking in bumper stickers--"make America Great again", "we are number 1" "America, love it or leave it"---none of those mean anything because they are slogans, not plans, not goals, and not truths.  We aren't number 1 in anything we should brag about.  We were never great to everyone.  And if it keeps going like it's going, most won't love it and no other country is going to welcome our refugees anymore than they are those of Africa or South America.  Wake up.

Because, truly, the lesser of two evils is still evil.
No one should have to vote for evil.
We can do better than that.