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Nothing is more local then voting. No duty of citizenship is more fundamental, sacred, necessary, or ties each community into the whole cloth fabric of our 50 united states than our quadrennial exercise of casting ballots for president. All citizens, starting in La Conner, need to be reflecting on the president of the United States when he calls for people to vote twice, which both breaks the system and the law.

This president simultaneously displays his profound ignorance and utter lack of caring of the first principle and premise of self-governance: electing our leaders.

After months of attacking the Postal Service, combining that with trashing voting by mail and then appointing a high roller Republican donor to head it, President Trump now advocates voting by mail and in person, a twofer. Brilliant: have his base vote for him twice. He creates the fraud he rails against.

It is not that this man has no respect for the rules. For him there are no rules. No, there is one: win. Win and win now and be bold and brash about it.

Other B words describe him: blustering and bullying. But worse is the C word that his actions prove: Cancer. His presidency is a cancer on this country.

In the body, cancer is a mass of cells growing uncontrollably, a malignant growth destroying the body parts they adhere to, gobbling up the healthy life within. Cancer is a destroyer of life.

This is our president.

In 1973, John Dean, as White House counsel and in support of President Nixon, told him there was a “cancer growing on the presidency.” Dean had assembled the facts and found that Nixon’s team had broken laws in working for his reelection. Dean respected the rule of law and played by the rules.

Nixon would fire Dean and scapegoat him.

Donald Trump has one purpose: To win at all costs. Is he a sick man? He is a man with no concerns beyond himself. He does not govern and is not competent to rule. He wrecks.

He has failed upward his whole life. No. He has bullied and blustered and cheated, breaking laws while enabled and abetted by subordinates, banks and politicians. He has built his franchise on crying wolf more dramatically and, yes, entertainingly than anyone else.

Donald Trump is no joke. He is more than a menace to our democracy. It is in tatters already. Daily we tear each other apart. Trump – our president – not only does not care, he is instigator in chief.

When he departs he will take the White House silver, cash in at a crooked bank and, like pretty dictators everywhere, go live in exile on some island. We need to vote him off this island. We need to vote him out of office.

Elections are the core of representative government. We join together to govern ourselves by electing our leaders. When our leader advocates voting twice, he is not gumming up the system, he is destroying it. The delicious irony is that fair play, millions and millions of people all across the county, acting fairly, can defeat him.

In the end, this presidency is not about Trump. It is about us, the citizens of the United States and what we stand for and who we are as a people.

Trump cannot win a majority of the vote. He can cheat his way to a second term. If he does, we will have allowed ourselves to be conned.

There are eight weeks to act.