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(This is a piece written by my close friend, Bill Blackwell, with whom I grew up in the very conservative town of Lynchburg, Virginia. Bill is an insightful and skilled writer, not surprising since he holds a MA in English. He says what many Americans are thinking, with substantive evidence to support the reasons why.)

I write to address a matter of such significance that I consider it to be a serious threat to our nation. I want my children and grandchildren to look back and say “BB” (as they call me) stood-up for what he believed was right – and did so with passion and a set of decent human values.

In that spirit, I unequivocally submit that Donald Trump is not qualified or fit to be President of the United States, and I urge good citizens of all political persuasions to work to defeat him. He has neither the expertise nor the temperament to be our commander-in-chief.

Donald Trump is an ego-maniacal man with no discernable interest in anything other than himself. He worships at the altar of greed and the accumulation of wealth and power. His modus operandi is to attack and degrade anyone who opposes him in any way.

In the course of his primary campaign, Trump belittled a war hero, mocked the gestures of a physically-challenged reporter, questioned the faith and patriotism of our sitting president, demeaned the FBI, ridiculed our judiciary system, and dismissed our free press as irrelevant.

Trump has disparaged Mexican American citizens, recommended the vetting of all Muslim American citizens, called for “extreme vetting” of all immigrants that would include an “ideological test” (details to come!) and proposed the rejection of certain legal immigrants he labels as “dangerous.” His paranoid xenophobia is as extreme as it gets.

Trump has engaged in the denigration of women, saying things previously unheard of in our national political dialogue. Americans who watched the early Republican debates saw Trump’s disgusting sexist attacks on candidate Carly Fiorina and Fox journalist Megyn Kelly – including comments involving female anatomy and bodily functions. His misogyny is self-evident.

This is not politics as usual. Donald Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric has incited violence — his rallies hotbeds of anger and resentment. His appeals to base instincts of bias and fear are an indication of how he would run our country. When supporters literally call for the death of his opponent, we are entering “third world” territory. It is a scenario no reasonable American can abide.

In a brilliant speech to Stanford graduates in June, the highly-respected historian Ken Burns pulled-no-punches in his assessment of Trump, calling him “an infantile, bullying man.” Burns went on to say that “as a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant know-nothing-ism, disrespect for the judiciary, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, and a political paranoia that points fingers, always making the other wrong.”

Robert Gates was Defense Secretary under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. On “Face the Nation” in May, Gates assailed Trump’s foreign policy, warning against the candidate’s brazen style and lack of consistency. Gates said Trump “seems to think he has all the answers and that he doesn’t need any advice from staff or anybody else,” adding that he doesn’t appear to want to surround himself with “informed advisers.” That is very scary stuff in a volatile world!

Following the Orlando Massacre in June, millions of Americans came together to reaffirm their commitment to the principles upon which our country was built. In contrast, Donald Trump responded by spewing hatred, blaming refugees and immigrants, and congratulating himself for having predicted it would happen! He repeated similar rhetoric after July’s atrocious slaughter in Nice, again using a tragic event to promote himself as the only one who “can make us all safe.”

One cornerstone of Trump’s campaign has been his claim of huge business success, but voters should closely examine Trump’s business endeavors, many of which involved clever tax-evasion strategies, convenient intentional bankruptcies, and documented cases of not paying bills to contractors/vendors. As a NYT’s editorial in July summed-it-up, “Over the span of his career, project after project has produced allegations of bad faith, broken promises, blatant lies or outright fraud.” Trump’s lack of business and personal integrity is startling!

An analysis by economists from trusted, independent Moody’s Analytics determined that if Trump were elected president and implemented his stated policies, the United States would experience a lengthy recession, enormous job losses, much higher interest rates and diminished long-term growth prospects. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan fiscal watchdog group, has estimated that the current $19 trillion in gross debt would rise to $35 trillion under Trump’s proposals that include record tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

Whether it is foreign policy ignorance, economic policy myopia, or domestic policy absent of compassion, Donald Trump demonstrates his disqualifications every time he speaks. To those who may think that Trump has only used his bombastic style, showmanship and belligerence to gain attention and rally supporters, and that he will magically become “presidential” if elected, I say “bull____.” There is no “better Trump” or “presidential Trump.” He has been who he is too long to be anything or anyone other than what we see: a selfish, pompous, narcissistic blowhard.

One of the most damning assessments of Trump as a possible president comes from Tony Schwartz, the man who ghostwrote the Trump bestseller “The Art of the Deal.” Schwartz, who spent a year with and around Trump and crafted an image of him “as a charmer with an unfailing knack for business,” not only regrets having developed that myth, but is frightened by the prospect of Trump having our world’s future in his ill-informed, fearful, unpredictable hands. In fact, Schwartz goes so far as to state that “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

At the RNC convention, Trump delivered a dark and frightening acceptance speech, stating that the nation is at a “moment of crisis” and America is currently a “dangerous environment.” All this is a part of trying to create a negative image for susceptible Obama and Clinton haters and to sell his mantra of “make America great again.” In truth, America has been and still is great!

After the convention, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Kathleen Parker described the weeklong Hillary hate-fest as filled “with much shouting and pointing…and clenching of fists as the angry crowd roared” again and again “lock her up” and more. At least 2 supporters called for her to be executed by firing squad for treason! Parker declared that “Trump has cast a spell over a swath of America, inspiring them not with soaring rhetoric but with dark harbingers of worse to come. In the familiar way of despots, tyrants, and kings, he has made the many feel better by singling out the few to fault.” Finally, she concluded, “many have compared Trump’s brand of rhetoric to mankind’s worst, including, unavoidably, Adolph Hitler.”

Just recently, fifty of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, signed a letter declaring that Donald Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.” The letter says Trump would “weaken the United States’ moral authority” and questions his knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. They warn that he “would be the most reckless president in American history.”

While countless citizens admit that Trump’s frenetic rhetoric scares them, they incredibly go on to say they will vote for him for no other reason than to defeat Hillary Clinton. The sheer absurdity of such a stance is manifest, so I will waste no breathe here trying to undo the pure irrationality and incredible hate behind it. Besides, as a wise good friend finally taught me, “you can’t take out of a person’s mind with reason, what reason didn’t put into it in the first place.”

I will simply say that Hillary is eminently qualified to be president and point out that any vote not for her is, in effect, a vote that could help elect the vile and dangerous Donald Trump as the next President of the United States. Beware and be wise, my friends…….