I don’t like to write too much about politics, just the occasional snide remark. But this being my last column before Election Day, I can’t stop myself. No, really, I can’t. 

Consider yourself a member of my Valley News Election Support Group. If you want to excuse yourself and leave now, that’s fine. But don’t miss today’s Peanuts!

Ready? Here we go:

After all these years I haven’t made sense of Donald Trump. I think he is still working on it too.

He is running for president, but instead of policies or calls for America to be a shining city upon a hill, he is spewing oddities of all sorts: Haitians eating pets, sharks vs. batteries, the military vs. leftists, a claim that he is the “father” of IVF, admiration for the late, great Arnold Palmer’s manhood.

He cusses and says cruel things and fans love him for it. Eight years of this, and it’s getting more intense. The Trump persona grows bigger, meaner, Category 5, like a hurricane sucking up bad energy from waters cooked by climate change. 

It’s … a lot. To quote the eminent thinker and seafarer Popeye the Sailor, “That’s all I can stands and I can’t stands no more.”

I am just a minor columnist in small-town America, a nobody, a loser in the Trump way of looking at things, but the question haunts and baffles me. I ask myself, Is it an act, or does he really mean all these things? I detect some performance in him, like the artifice of big-time wrestlers.

But clearly, in some cases, he does. I think in his heart he despises immigrants, since they don’t come from Germany or Sweden anymore. I guess he is OK with people of color, but only if they like him and there aren’t too many. 

Trump is, of course, against taxes on rich people, particularly ones who build business towers, hotels, golf courses, casinos and put a name like TRUMP on them. He may be able to partner with Elon Musk on a TRUMP rocketship. Just imagine one of those babies thrusting into space!

I just can’t believe he really cares about abortion, the Bible (but maybe his $59.99 version), ordinary people, ordinary countries (Taiwan and Ukraine come to mind), young people, old people, the poor, the sick and the lame. It’s not in him.

Give him four more years and he will build that wall. It might well say TRUMP on it. Or perhaps a man of his age will order up a different message: KEEP OUT! He will pardon himself, and test the Supreme Court’s fealty. He will leave office a trillionaire. 

I share this knowing there are no open minds anymore. I might as well lecture the squirrels in my yard, or the deer who come by before first light wondering if I am up. (I am, or should I say I yam?)

I recognize that a good portion of my fellow Granite Staters, and a smaller portion of Vermonters, see this completely differently. We’ve always had varying world views. Now we are in different universes.

I find it unsettling to be so far apart. I am tired of the arguments. Instead, I wonder how this can be? How do they not see what he is?

I find almost nothing redeemable about Donald Trump. He is reluctant to go to war — good. He is wily about delaying legal action — not so good. I don’t see him serving well — even by his own lights — for four more years. I have seen old men decline (yes, including Joe Biden). This road goes downhill.

The other side sees mortal danger in Harris-Walz, the woke-Marxist-inflation-loving duo of Fox News legend. They will cancel them. The economy will tank. Those who do not recycle #2 plastics will be sent to gulags.

So here we are.

I have skin in this game, albeit blotchy senior skin. I will turn 72 later this year and four more years of Trump would be a long, long time. It would be like reliving the McCarthy Era, or disco. 

There is more to be said, but nothing will be heard. The stars and the planets and absentee ballots are fixed in their courses. The electoral college, to borrow a phrase from T-shirts, “is what it is.”

We are a long way from Abraham Lincoln’s declaration calling upon the better angels of our nature. “We are not enemies, but friends,’’ he said at his first inaugural. 

I wish I could be as sanguine and wise. At this troubled moment I can only say this: 

Really, this guy?

Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.