Many people seem to misinterpret the #NeverTrump movement as one dedicated to denying Donald Trump the GOP nomination and, by extension, the presidency.  In fact, #NeverTrump is not a movement at all, but simply a commitment by its adherents, including this writer, not to vote for Donald Trump, ever, under any circumstances.

Ronald Reagan made this writer a Republican.  Donald Trump, if he is nominated, will make him an independent.

Sad!

No matter how many times #NeverTrumpers explain why they cannot, will not vote for Trump, his supporters can't, or won't, get it.  Nevertheless, here again, courtesy of Kevin Williams of The National Review, which publication Trump's supporters apparently have chosen as the object of their daily Two Minutes of Hate against #NeverTrump, is why #NeverTrumpers will not vote for Trump (emphases added):

It is not that Trump is less mentally stable than Mrs. Clinton (probably true)[,] ... more dishonest ... (difficult to say)[,] ... might do even more damage to the republic, or any other point of comparison between the candidates.

The issue, instead, is this:

Donald Trump is unfit for the office.

He is unfit for any office, morally and intellectually.

A man who could suggest ... that his opponent's father had something to do with the assassination of President Kennedy is unfit for any position of public responsibility.

His long litany of lies – which include fabrications about everything from his wealth to self-funding his campaign – is disqualifying.

His low character is disqualifying.

His personal history is disqualifying.

His complete, utter, total, and lifelong lack of honor is disqualifying.

His time on Jeffrey Epstein's Pedophile Island, after which he boasted about sharing a taste with Epstein for women "on the younger side," is disqualifying.

The fact that he knows less about our constitutional order than does a not-especially-bright Rappahannock River oyster is disqualifying.

...

[T]he problem with Trump isn't that he is less fit to serve in comparison to Mrs. Clinton, but that he is unfit to serve, period.

Extensive – and accurate – as Williamson's list is, it is incomplete.  Left off is Trump's statement that he would order U.S. soldiers to target terrorists' families.

The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families," Trump said on Fox News earlier this month. "They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families.

Trump's opponents and critics – and, one would hope, his own supporters – pushed back that Trump, in his profound ignorance and amorality, was pledging to order his U.S. soldiers to adopt the savage sensibilities of the terrorists themselves by deliberately targeting civilians – old men, women, and children.

They said such an action would be a clear violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention specifically and, in any case, immoral.  They were right.

They said that if a President Trump ever were to give such an order, no American soldier would obey it.

They were wrong.

The writer does not know what history of the Vietnam War is taught in schools these days; however, he is old enough to have followed the contemporary reporting about this man…

… and what he and the soldiers under his command did:

The Mỹ Lai Massacre ... was the Vietnam War mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968.  It was committed by U.S. Army soldiers from the Company C of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11^th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division.  Victims included men, women, children, and infants.  Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated.  Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted.  Found guilty of killing 22 villagers[.]

Anyone reading beyond this point can be forgiven for crying:

The villagers, who were getting ready for a market day, at first did not panic or run away, and they were herded into the hamlet's commons.  Harry Stanley, a machine gunner from the Charlie Company, said [that] [h]e first observed a member of the 1^st Platoon strike a Vietnamese man with a bayonet.  Then, the same trooper pushed another villager into a well and threw a grenade in the well.  Further, he saw fifteen or twenty people, mainly women and children, kneeling around a temple with burning incense.  They were praying and crying.  They were all killed by shots in the head.

The list of atrocities goes on.  And on.  The writer really has no desire to quote – or read – more.  But this is the essential part:

A large group of approximately 70-80 villagers was rounded up ... and then led to an irrigation ditch to the east of the settlement.  All detainees were pushed into the ditch and then killed after repeated orders issued by Lieutenant Calley, who was also shooting.

Is the writer saying that the U.S. military is an organization of mass murdering monsters?  Of course not.  He is saying that in a 1.3-million-member military, there are many, perhaps a great many, soldiers who absolutely would obey an order to kill innocent, non-combatant men, women, and children – soldiers who may indeed be decent, honest, moral people in ordinary circumstances.  But warfare is not an ordinary circumstance, nor is the military, where peer pressure, esprit de corps, and the instinct to conform and obey orders are strong, an ordinary organization.

There are men, women, and children living today who should thank God that Donald Trump said what he said on a debate stage, as a presidential candidate, and not from the Oval Office, as commander in chief.  For what might a soldier willing to gun down women and children on the order of a lieutenant be willing to do on an order from the president of the United States?

The only way to prevent another My Lai is to commission only officers and elect only presidents who would never consider giving such an order.

Whatever her failings, this writer does not believe that Hillary Clinton, in her worst moments, would ever give an order such as the one Lieutenant Calley gave at My Lai.

But Donald Trump would.  He said so.  How many innocent lives are you willing to bet that he didn't mean it?

This writer is with Kevin Williamson.  Donald Trump, intellectually and morally, but especially morally, is not fit to be president and commander and chief – or, for that matter to hold any office requiring moral judgment.  Therefore, on November 8, if, as seems probable, Hillary Clinton holds a significant lead over Donald Trump, the writer will write in Ted Cruz or vote for a third party or independent candidate.

But if the election is close and there is no third-party or independent candidate sufficiently likely to garner sufficient electoral votes to throw the election into the House of Representatives – if the writer sees the slightest chance of a Trump victory – this conservative will vote for Hillary Clinton and not lose a minute's sleep for having so voted.

#NeverTrump.

Gene Schwimmer is a New York and New Jersey licensed real estate broker, author of The Christian State, and jolly good fellow at the Schwimmer Institute for Cogitation Advanced Applied Dilettantism.  Impress your friends and get invited to all the best parties by following Gene Schwimmer on Twitter.