i'm torn

I'm torn. On the one hand, I could never vote for Donald Trump. Did not vote for him, will never vote for him, could never vote for him, for two main reasons.

1. The guy is totally out to lunch on climate change. Willfully oblivious. Dangerously oblivious. He claims his 'gut is better than most people's brains.' Not on this issue, baby.

2. His full-throated embrace of the military-industrial complex. Increasing the defense budget, upgrading our nuclear weapons, trying to create this new 'space force,' etc. We simply can never spend too much on 'defense.' (Of course, the establishment Democrats are totally on board with all this as well.)

ON THE OTHER HAND, there are a couple things I agree with him about. The main one is immigration. Broadly speaking, we need to know and control who is coming into this country. Who can disagree with that? Above all, we need to control who can become citizens. That means ending this 'birthright citizenship' nonsense. The 14th Amendment had to do with the rights of ex-slaves and their children, because in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War Southern states were trying to deny these people the full rights of citizenship. It had nothing to do with illegal aliens; the term didn't even exist then. Very few nations have birthright citizenship today, particularly developed nations. As for the vaunted wall, why not give the Border Patrol what it wants, where it wants it? Do you want to secure the border, or don't you? These are the people tasked with doing this on the ground. Give them what they want-- and in a lot of places, what they want is a wall.

The other thing is something the media really doesn't want to talk about: Trump actually seems to want to withdraw from some of our perpetual military engagements around the world. When he indicated he'll pull our troops out of Syria, the Democrat/Media complex went apoplectic. How dare he? Does anybody even know why we're in Syria, or what the hell we're doing there? And just what are we still doing in Afghanistan after 17 bleepin' years? Does anybody know, does anybody care?

So I'm torn about all this. Not torn enough to ever consider voting for Trump, mind you. But I don't understand why so many people seem incapable of forming independent judgments on each of these issues, rather than just buying the whole ideological smorgasbord of either the right or the left.