“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” — Woody Allen, in his book “Side Effects” (1980)

My liberal friends often ask me how I can possibly support Donald Trump as president. My answer is that I am not a big fan of Trump, because I find him “unpresidential” with his often reckless tweets, erratic behavior, narcissism and generally unorthodox governing style. Yet, I find the alternative – the so-called resistance – no better and in some respects even worse.

I repeat: I do not like the Donald. But I also don’t like the Bernie, the Hillary, the Lizzie, the Nancy and others in the leadership of the opposition. Allow me to explain myself.

I realize not only liberals but many conservatives are anti-Trump. For example, a thoughtful conservative critic such as Bret Stephens, in explaining “why I’m still a Never-Trumper” (New York Times, Dec. 30), notes Trump’s shortcomings in character and virtue.

Fair enough. But even Stephens concedes what he considers many Trump successes in foreign and domestic policy, accomplishments rarely acknowledged by a media that had predicted (if not hoped for) catastrophic consequences of a Trump presidency:

“Tax cuts. Deregulation. More for the military; less for the United Nations. The Islamic State crushed in its heartland. Assad hit with cruise missiles. Troops to Afghanistan. Arms for Ukraine. A tougher approach to North Korea. Jerusalem recognized as Israel’s capital. The Iran deal decertified. Title IX kangaroo courts on campus condemned. … Wall Street roaring and consumer confidence high.”

Try as they might, Trump’s worst enemies cannot ignore some of these positive developments during his watch.

Regarding the economy, unemployment is close to 4 percent, the lowest level since 2000; consumer confidence is near a 17-year high; the stock market experienced a long boom, with the Dow reaching 26,000 for the first time, fueled by tax cuts and the rollback of government regulations before dropping due to reports of much awaited wage growth and accompanying concerns about inflation.

Aside from recent tax legislation reducing what had been one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that 80 percent of the middle class will get a tax cut under the legislation. The Federal Register, containing almost 100,000 pages of regulations, has been reduced by one-third over the past year.

One of the regulations rescinded was President Barack Obama’s “Dear Colleague” letter to universities that even many civil libertarians had criticized as violating the due process rights of the accused in Title IX sexual harassment cases. Also rescinded were Obama-era Department of Justice orders that had thrown police departments under the bus and hindered them from doing their job in fighting crime.

In foreign policy, Obama’s mostly weak, feckless behavior has been replaced by a stronger diplomatic and military posture, epitomized by the virtual elimination of ISIS and making good on “red line” threats to retaliate against Syrian use of chemical weapons.

We have appropriately withdrawn from UNESCO, which had the chutzpah to declare the Western Wall an “Islamic holy site,” and reduced funding to the United Nations, which had condemned America’s affirmation of the reality of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The Jerusalem decision produced some unrest but not the violent upheaval in the Middle East that critics had anticipated.

Trump’s critics who had argued that his hardline policy toward Iran was uniting the Iranian people behind the dictatorial regime were proved wrong when mass protestors marched in the streets against the mullahs, thanks in part to the increased economic pain they were experiencing due to U.S. economic sanctions.

Instead of  kicking the can down the road with a policy of “strategic patience” toward North Korea as his predecessors had done, Trump rightly has sought to demonstrate impatience against a growing nuclear threat from Pyongyang.

As in all things Trump, it is true there is much to criticize, particularly his bombastic rhetoric. In handling the “football,” the black satchel containing nuclear launch codes that accompanies the president wherever he goes, one might hope Trump would avoid the kind of trash-talking one sees during NFL games. So, yes, he should not have compared the size of his nuclear “button” to Kim Jong Un’s. Still, there is something to be said for straight-talking.

It is possible that Trump’s character flaws and bad governing habits may catch up with him and produce a disaster domestically or internationally, but it has not happened yet.

Meanwhile, I keep thinking what the alternative to Trump is. It’s not pretty, not in my judgment.

It is a party that could not even bring itself to say in the last election cycle that “all lives matter.”

It is a party whose two main future presidential candidates at this point are a self-declared socialist and a closet socialist. 

It is a party whose fixation on identity politics has enabled the worst sort of racism, even worse than Trump – exemplified by a highly supportive liberal professoriate that feels comfortable with statements such as “All I Want for Christmas is a White Genocide” (tweeted by a Drexel University professor of global studies) and an assertion that academic rigor in engineering education reinforces “white male heterosexual privilege” (written by a Purdue University professor).

It is a party that equates patriotism with nativism and thinks it is OK to allow millions of illegal aliens into the country complete with discounted college tuitions and free welfare benefits, protected by sanctuary cities and states, yet pretends it promotes the rule of law.

And, as David Brooks (himself a Never-Trumper) has noted, it is a party that “thinks it’s worth closing the government, destabilizing the economy and straining the military” in order to push an “immigration uber alles strategy” (New York Times, Jan. 23).

It is sad that the choices we have today are a far-left party vs. a far-out occupant of the White House. I keep hoping for less polarization and more sanity in our political system, for a spirit of compromise in undertaking reasoned, fair-minded immigration and health-care reform and tackling other policy challenges.

But until we get it, I will grudgingly resist being a “Never-Trumper” because I think he may be the lesser of two evils, if only by a slim margin.

I guess that makes me a “hold-your-nose rather than full-throated Trumper.”