Honor Veterans With Your Vote Nov. 5

Next week, Rhode Islanders join their fellow Americans honoring people sworn to defend the nation and Constitution, days after weighing whether a man threatening both should lead them, with their vote Nov. 5.

It’s the third post-election observance where voters have had a chance to vote for the guy who said he’d like to recruit the sort of generals Hitler had working for him. That Hitler did some good things.

There are plenty of other reasons to vote against him. So, so many. Some lowlights:

• He’s the guy who has publicly said he would be a dictator on the first day of his presidency.
• He’s the guy who pointed supporters at the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election, delivering a trashing eclipsed only by the British during the War of 1812. Then he watched the attacks on the news without lifting a finger as staff urged him to do something.
• He deliberately lied  about the COVID-19 virus in a cowardly campaign that needlessly cost thousands of people their lives from a false sense of security about the pandemic.  The most conspicuous local example was of Pilgrim High Principal Gerald Habershaw’s evident disregard for COVID-19 precautions and a public health-informed executive order by Gov. Dan McKee requiring people in schools to wear a mask during the school homecoming dance three years ago. Habershaw had been placed on paid administrative leave following a COVID-19 outbreak at the school, partly attributed to the dance when he died of a heart attack while also fighting a COVID-19 infection.
• He bungled the federal pandemic response badly enough that the public health emergency lasted far longer than it should have, requiring trillions in economic stimulus and significantly contributing to, if not causing outright, the inflation we’ve all been experiencing since.

We could go on here. Many, many reputable news sources have. But kindly direct your attention back to honoring veterans next week. You should absolutely turn out for parades and ceremonies, and stand with veterans who have vowed to defend the United States of America and its Constitution.

When you do that, it would be good to do so knowing in your heart that you did not stand against them, their oaths and and the liberty of your fellow Americans with your vote Nov. 5. That you voted for the only person whose name on the ballot will guard against his promise to demolish the Constitution and the nation.

We endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the only such choice in the presidential election.