I’m not fond of Donald Trump and I don’t support his candidacy. I suppose I’d go so far as to say his candidacy scares the living crap out of me. But I’m not about to tell you why. Why? Because everybody else does.

I’m glad that so many people have stepped forward to offer their take on why Mr. Trump should never, ever, be let anywhere near the White House, except for maybe a guided tour. They should. The people need and deserve to be told about how they are being hoodwinked by a snake oil salesman, which is one of the safer things I can say about the man.

But my issue is that among the many diatribes bashing the big basher himself, a large, even vast number of them involve some sort of analysis of why he has risen to the prominence of being the presumptive presidential nominee of a major political party. An even bigger topic for these frightened American souls is who are his followers and why do they follow him.

The speculation runs from the sublime to the ridiculous and it seems lately that virtually every pundit who is worth his ego must needs weigh in. It’s like the Olympics of opine. I may be wrong, after all, but it appears to me that there is an amazing race (homage to the reality TV world of today) to see who can most definitively and correctly determine the correct and definitive reason for the phenomenon that is Trump and his minions.

Enough already. Frankly, we really don’t need to figure out why he is a mere 270 electoral votes from being the most powerful man in the “free” world. At least until after he is given a sound beatdown (although many of us have a pretty good idea why). And this is where the pundit analysts and opinion talkers, in my opinion, are failing.

In reality, these journalists and political analysts and pundits and party personalities are singing loudly, even if mostly on key, to the choir. They are educated intellectuals writing and blogging and making videos for educated intellectuals in places where only educated intellectuals will read, hear and see them. In other words, while often brilliant in their insight, they will have little to no effect on the votes of a sizable (read huge) majority of those whose hearts and minds are what really need to be changed.

Our task is to fight as hard as we can to defeat this charlatan, this wolf in wolf’s clothing. What we really need is for us educated intellectuals (effete intellectual snobs as Spiro Agnew once called us) to get busy, down and dirty, and get everyone possible who knows the real dangers of a Trump presidency to go to the polls and vote against him, better yet for a candidate who is capable of defeating him. And convince those who doubt this is a very real danger, that it is very real and very dangerous, and get them to the polls to vote against Trump also.

Holding ones nose strikes me as a much better option than potentially having no hands to hold it with.

We don’t need to figure Trump and his followers out. We just desperately need to defeat him.