To the Editor:

It would be dreadful enough if Donald Trump were merely the most unfit, unprepared, unworthy and uncouth person ever to seek the presidency.

But it is worse than even that. He is inciting his followers to violence if he loses the election, which he claims will be stolen from him. He’s prompting them to acts of intimidation at polling places. His paranoid ranting aims to subvert the legitimacy of a Hillary Clinton presidency, in the same way he libeled Barack Obama’s citizenship. His accusation that “international bankers” are conspiring against him is nakedly anti-Semitic.

His threat to imprison Clinton is fair warning that he would be a tyrant in the mold of Vladimir Putin, the Russian dictator who is trying to help him win.

Trump’s conduct has become subversive, seditious. He is a clear and present danger to the republic — more so than any foreign foe, because this enemy arises within.

“Democracy is on the ballot,” President Obama has warned. That is true.   

At a rally in Cincinnati last week, one Dan Bowman — identified as a 50-year old contractor — told the Boston Globe what to expect if Clinton is elected.

“If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it. We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office, if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take .... I would do whatever I can for my country.”

It is a federal crime to threaten the life of a presidential candidate.

That is what Donald Trump is doing to our country. He has willfully laid bare and inflamed the ugliest aspects of America. It’s plain to see that he will not accept defeat with the grace that most Americans expect from those who don’t win. He means instead to launch a post-election fascist movement with himself as its führer. We know now how decent Germans felt as they watched Adolf Hitler seduce and spellbind their countrymen.   

The antidote to Trump’s poison is to whip him as soundly and convincingly as possible. Those who don’t vote or waste their votes on hopeless third-party candidates will be voting in effect for Trump, and to put their country in peril.

Hundreds of responsible Republicans have endorsed Clinton, along with prominent newspapers that had never recommended a Democrat for president. They did so because Clinton, despite her imperfections, is the only rational alternative to a hideously unqualified, immoral and dangerous narcissist who can’t take criticism without lashing out like a schoolyard bully. To put this bully within reach of the nuclear codes would be civic insanity.

The pity of it is that too many Republican officeholders are still his enablers, recommending his election even as they claim to deplore his past and present vulgarities. Do Sen. Richard Burr, Gov. Pat McCrory, Rep. Mark Meadows and Rep. Patrick McHenry really believe Trump deserves to be president?

It makes no difference whether they are in it for the spoils that would come from having a Republican, even one as counterfeit as Trump, in the White House, or are simply trembling in the face of Trump’s hard-core followers. Either way, they’re selling out their country for selfish ends. It brands them as unfit for office as Trump himself. 

Martin Dyckman

Asheville