A vote that isn’t for the Democratic nominee in November is a vote for Trump. Allow me to explain.

What I mean is this: It is the duty of every person who identifies with American values to stand up against him. And there is no other vote, other than the D one, that conveys this vital message. This message is what America is all about — from top to bottom, from creation myth to modern-day battlegrounds — and an opportunity to not voice affirmation in America is the kind of moral cowardice bullies like Trump prey upon.

There never before has been the embodiment of the opposite of American ideals as represented in the Constitution as we have in Trump. This stems from several observations. He does not believe in Freedom of the Press, nor Equal Protection. His leadership style is autocratic: He frames his candidacy in terms of dominance. He won’t participate in one-on-one debates. He advocates for an America in which the President has vastly expanded powers. He has made it known, again and again, that people who stand in his way risk getting “hit” or cast aside in some form or another. This is the kind of guy that, if ever he comes to power, would take revolutions to remove.

What about third parties? Allow me to first digress as to the unworthiness of the candidates. Take Gary Johnson, whose economic policy rests on his false assertion that the US is bankrupt. He points to the roughly 20 trillion dollars in debt as evidence of this, to which anyone can point to our GDP. Interest on debt payments is only about 5% of our GDP, which means we can easily pay back our debt. Which means we are not bankrupt. Other than that, the Libertarian Party’s convention, if you believe this write-up, sounds like a scene straight out of South Park. We can’t take him as a serious candidate with that party behind him. Jill Stein is an anti-vaxxer and praised the Brexit vote, with practically no party apparatus, either.

But the real reason a vote for third parties should be off the table: Imagine the day after election day, and Hillary barely wins, in great part because of third-party voting activity. That means that we have four more years of the same brand of anti-Americanism, in which the next guy (perhaps even Trump Jr.) tries to get that number closer to 51-49 in their favor. That’s why we have to make this a landslide. Even if you don’t like Hillary. Plus, heavy third-party voting activity is probably the only pathway that results with Donald J. actually in office.

Finally, I don’t for a second think Hillary is the corrupt, above-the-law liar that people make her out to be. She is a genuine professional and does her homework, which the debates proved. I observe that those who do think of her as some monster tend to display a “guilty until proven innocent” attitude towards her. But even if that is what you think — if you disagree with me on that — then do you really want Trumpism to be the one that nails her into the proverbial coffin? If the point is to find “justice,” coming at the hands of autocratic demagogue is completely self-defeating. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Trump is the biggest danger to American values and everything we stand for. Voting against it isn’t a “lesser of two evils” scenario, it’s a zero-sum game where either evil or love will prevail. Vote your conscience.