There’s no way I’m voting for him, but I also disagree that he’s a terrorist or that this election is any different from 2016 or 2020. He’s not going to pass pretty much anything in Project 2025, and while the Supreme Court does lean strongly conservative, they’re not going to let him get away with the worst of his plans, if he actually follows through (which I highly doubt he will).

If you haven't, you should read some history books from the POV of people who lived through the early to late 1930's in Germany. Erik Larson does one from the POV of the US ambassador to Germany during that time, called "In the Garden of Beasts".

Almost word for word, (with the non-relevant bits swapped around), exactly what Germans were saying about Hitler during that time. Nobody thought Hitler would do or go as far as the media and "alarmists" were signalling, and anyone who called it what it was, a plan to force Germany into a war rather than pay down their debt from WWI, along with the attempted extinction of anyone they classified as "undesirables" (started with Jews, and moved on to many other groups. Replace "jew" with "trans" and the similarities are nearly impossible to ignore); was flagged as being hyperbolic and out of touch and exaggerating what the Nazi party and Hitler were "Really" trying to achieve, or what Chancellor Hindenburg could prevent him from doing to keep his power in check.

Obviously everyone who thought the threat wasn't real or being overblown was wrong. But it took years and years for them to be proven wrong. At every single step along the way, were groups of people saying "This time, this is the check to the Nazi/Hitler power struggle that will work and keep them in check".

There is absolutely no reason that couldn't happen again somewhere else. Assuming that there was something deeply wrong/broken with Germany that led to the rise of Nazism is the height of folly. It can, and is happening here, just as it's been attempted in other countries since WW2 ended.

Do I like the fact that my choices are:

• Vote for a democratic party that keeps shifting more and more towards the right/center without gaining anything progressive in response OR
• Vote for a literal wannabe dictator who can and will give rise to a fascist party in America and hand the most powerful military in the history of humanity over to a certifiable narcissistic wannabe dictator who has literally, not figuratively, done and said everything up to and including "I will be dictator on day one in the office", has never walked it back, and has never treated it as a joke, has already attempted one coup, refuses to believe in the democratic process (see disputing the 2020 election despite no proof) and has all the hallmarks of the next generation Hitler, including literally repeating parts of Hitler's speeches as a part of his speeches.

I'm not super happy with option A, because I would like to see more change here, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let option B happen.

Whether or not you believe that option B is a real threat, like everyone else in the world and most Americans currently believe, doesn't matter to me. You being wrong about this doesn't make me more right. And you are wrong about your views of trump and what he's trying to have happen. But it's unlikely any amount of evidence or historical context will convince you, so I'm not entirely sure why I'm typing this up, except in the hopes that someone else comes along and reads it and maybe it sways them towards acknowledging how great of a threat trump and the current republican party poses to the idea of a free and fair world.