Beware if Thou Doth Protest Too Much

In the 2000 Presidential election, George W. Bush famously defeated Al Gore by 537 votes after a prolonged recount in the State of Florida. That year, third-party candidate Ralph Nader was on the ballot as well, running as an alternative option. He received just shy of 3% of the national vote. In Florida, he received 97,488 votes. 

Nader was the "protest” vote for those people unenthused by two flawed candidates, and disgusted with the two-party system. His supporters, wanting to send a message to the “establishment” and spark a movement, voted their conscience. Two years later the United States invaded Iraq. Nearly 5000 US soldiers perished, tens of thousands were wounded or maimed, and over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians were killed.  

Nobody knows for sure if Nader supporters would have voted for Gore over Bush, or if they even would have voted at all. Historians however will debate one question for years to come: If Gore had won, would we have avoided the Iraq war altogether?  

If I may present a tangential scenario, let's suppose that -as a result of protest/conscience votes for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein- Trump ends up winning the entire election by just a few hundred votes. We now have a democratically elected President Trump.  

Fast forward a year or two and our thin-skinned, easily-baited with so little as a tweet, historically vindictive Commander in Chief finds himself being tested by North Korea/Russia/Iran/Iraq/Syria as well as ISIS, Al Qaeda et al. 

Now, does our President Trump temper his natural instinct to punish those who dare cross him? 

Does he seek counsel from sane, pragmatic advisors who may dare not tell him what he wants to hear? 

Or does he unleash holy terror on these countries, killing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of innocent people, in the process further destabilizing the global peace process and relaunching the nuclear arms race, this time with even more participants?

Now nobody can predict the future, but it’s probably safe to say the next President will be significantly tested when it comes to foreign affairs, domestic security, and national interest. 

So if you have patiently read this far, the question I hope you consider is thus. If in 2-3 years, we end up with a President Trump who senselessly commits awful atrocities because he lacks the temperament, knowledge, and global perspective to make sound decisions, how many innocent people would have to die to make your protest vote incapable of satiating your conscious?