I’m still ruminating on the events of this year. There will be a lengthy post sometime before 2017. I confess to being about as stunned by events as I have ever been.
The good news, personally, is that I’m working on new short fiction. If my office weren’t so damn cold I could do this all day. But to fill the gap till I pull ideas together for some kind of analysis, here’s a new photograph. Something to sort of sum up, visually, my feelings about this month.
May you all be well. Season’s best.
I should be working on the short story I’ve been struggling with, but instead I want to say a few words about art and talent and memory.
Greg Lake of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and (briefly) Asia has died. He was 69 and he had been fighting cancer.
The first time I heard a piece of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, it was Knife Edge, from their first album, and a bolt went through my brain. This was the “other” band that mattered to me–suddenly and thoroughly, the cadences, the depth, the compositional holism, the instrumental proficiency, the temerity of three young guys to challenge Bartok, all of this displaced the light-hearted, Bazooka Joe triviality of so-called pop music that saturated the airwaves a the time. We had that or the in-your-gut near-chaos of Jimi Hendrix and the grime-laden street patina of the Rolling Stones, and now, above it all, musicians who not only had the chops but the historicity and grasp of the psychological possibilities of infusing contemporary rock idioms with the incision and deep-boned depth of what we often mistakenly call classical music and make it speak to a new generation. They elevated what was in so many ways a toy in musical form to something that could take us out of ourselves in the way Beethoven or Mozart did for people so many of us neither knew or respected at the time.
The period lasted from about 1967 till 1975 or ’76. In that less-than-a-decade near geniuses made musical pronouncements we are still responding to if only to try to deny or reject, and the best of them were represented by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Condemnations that they were “pretentious” mean little in an era where pretension is embodied more by attitude than talent. A major “star” styles himself by not smiling and mouthing polemical inanities better known than the music he produces, this is a form of pretension, but one that elevates nothing, reifies nothing, establishes nothing beyond a sullen narcissism. Perhaps ELP was pretentious, but those who criticize them for that understand little about real pretension, which is a mask hiding an empty space. Maybe ELP were pretentious, but if their pretension masked anything it was a room filled to bursting with ideas and exuberant joy in musical experimentation. It contributed. If it made some feel inadequate or small, well, that was not ELP’s fault.
Greg Lake, in his ELP years, possessed a magnificent voice, a gift for phrasing that bordered on the operatic, and deftness of interpretive innovation that was a match for Keith Emerson’s volcanic expressionism and Carl Palmer’s controlled hyperkinetic rhythmic adventures. They were evenly matched and magnificent and I am ever so grateful to have grown up to the soundtrack they provided.
Take note. Brilliance has moved on.
I’m feeling arty today. Struggling with a new story, which is fighting me (they often do) and in need of distraction, I played with a couple of images. So, here you are.
It has been clear for all of the campaign season and is now becoming clearer that Donald Trump should not be president. He is temperamentally unsuited to the position, he does not have the working knowledge of how things work in a government, and he is wildly unpredictable. He is also as thin-skinned as they come.
But so what? He has been elected. For better or worse, unless something remarkable happens, he will be president for the next four years.
By remarkable I mean any of several possible legal scenarios.
There is a petition circulating to request the Electors of the Electoral College change their vote. This is possible and, as previously noted, not only perfectly legal but one of the reasons the College was established to begin with. It is also possible Trump will decide this is a bad move for him and resign. It is questionable whether this would leave Pence in place. After the inauguration, it is possible congress could impeach him. There is ample in his background that would seem sufficient.
Addressing just one of these, I could suggest that the Electors do something even more remarkable, and that is to nullify their vote entirely. Give it to no one. This would likely force a new election. We would have to do the whole thing over.
I do not believe we have ever had a nominee winning the Electoral vote with such a gap in the popular vote before, As the ballots continue to be counted, it is clear that among those who actually went to the polls, Hillary Clinton is the winner. It would be ethical and legal for the College, on December 19th, to change their votes to reflect this reality. Will that happen? I rather doubt it. I do not believe there is sufficient moral fiber extant to take that kind of a position and it may well be that most of them, aligned with Party the way they seem to be, want this.
Which means the elephant is loose in the china shop. This is going to hurt and hurt a lot.
So what are our options?
It has been suggested we abolish the Electoral College. It is, however, in the Constitution, so getting rid of it requires a constitutional convention, which means opening the whole thing up to revision. I personally don’t trust that we have on hand the wisdom to do that. We see all the time other countries that continually rewrite their constitutions and it rarely ever comes out well. We might pass a new amendment to nullify it, the way we did with Prohibition, and that would avoid putting the whole thing on the surgeon’s table, but that would also require an enormous consensus across the country, something we’ve been lacking of late. I don’t think that would work, either.
So here’s a thought. There is no reason to have the Electoral vote announced at the same time as we’re doing the popular vote tally. As we are now painfully aware, on that day, the votes just aren’t all in. Expecting this big complicated mechanism to do all this fairly and honestly in one day may be too much. Had we not locked in those ballots on the day and waited for the balance of the vote count, we would not have a fait accompli the undoing of which could cause a violent ruction. Since it is the case that they meet for the final vote on December 19th, we should simply wait till then for any kind of announcement.
There was a time I hated the idea of term limits, but I’m coming around to the notion. The real damage of this election is in the fact that through negligence and apathy we returned a vast number of incumbents who are set on undoing so much that mitigates the reality that we have been on a course of public pillage which has cost us jobs, savings, security for millions of people who simply do not have the resources to hire the kind of legal help to protect themselves. Supposedly, that has been the task of our government. But how can the government do that without some sense of what its constituents want? We do not vote in sufficient numbers, regularly enough, to place representation in Washington that reflects the reality of our lives. For whatever reason, Americans have traditionally disliked politics and whenever an excuse presents refuse to participate, even at the most basic level of exercising the franchise.
With that in mind, two things we could change that might make it easier. First, make election day a national holiday. That would be simple enough. Secondly, do what Bernie Sanders suggests, make registration automatic, a birthright. When you turn 18, you’re registered to vote.
Of course I can see obstacles. Certain parties have always tried to tie the right to vote to property. The resistance to things like Motor Voter registration demonstrates that. But dammit, that would settle it. At the time of your majority, you would also receive a federal ID, good for all manner of thing. If you can’t get to the place to do so, then we should have mobile registration units that will come to you to secure that ID. I think voter ID laws as they stand are there simply to bar people from voting. We saw this in Wisconsin in a pronounced way. So simply make it law that at 18 you are automatically registered to vote and at the same time you receive your federal ID. In fact, it could be done as part of the whole senior high school process, folded in with yearbook photographs. Done. Turning someone with such an ID away from a polling place would then be a violation of federal law.
Another issue is this whole nonsense about third parties. Here’s a reality. Third parties have never gained traction in this country. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, because it was never intended that there be parties as such, but secondly because we do not create coalition governments as are done in many places where having three, four, even five parties is normal and the winning party must create a government from proportional parts of all parties. Here, with the winner-takes-call method we have, third parties do little more than muddy already murky waters.
But a more trenchant reason is that the two parties we do have take in and absorb viable third party concepts and people. One or the other morphs into what becomes effectively a new party. Which is one reason talking about what either party was like half a century ago is absurd. There may be some continuity but rarely consistency.
Given that, what I would suggest right now is for Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and Barack Obama to form a coalition to essentially invade one or the other party and begin to transform it in accordance with whatever program they devise between themselves. We cannot ignore Stein or Johnson or at least not what they represent, they made substantial showings in this election. But they will never, at this rate, achieve the kind of authority to challenge either major party, certainly not soon enough to do much good. But by forming a nexus of change within one or the other, they could remake one of the two major parties. Rather than let it happen as it does by accident, it should be done consciously and directly. These four represent the chief aspects of what might make a responsive party. Together, they could be amazing.
Finally, given that we are likely stuck with the situation at hand for the next four years, two more ground level suggestions. The first, the people in congress are supposed to represent all of us. Whether you voted for them or not, by law they are still our representatives—our employees, basically. Treat them that way. Don’t leave the conversation because they’re not your guy. Flood their offices with your input. Tell them what you want. All the time. Burn their ears. They must represent you, that’s how it is supposed to work. Act toward them as if you had put them there. You can still work to unseat them and put someone more to your liking in their place, but while they are there make them do their job.
Secondly, since it would seem civics is rarely taught in school anymore, maybe we should start local classes in it to acquaint people with how all this is supposed to work. Bring the kids. It has become obvious that too many Americans don’t understand the first thing about the way the government works—or could work if people did their part, which they can’t do if they don’t know how.
We are possibly about to lose a great deal. We have a government in place that won by a minority of voters. That is not majority rule it is minority veto. It may be that such things must happen before we act. Secession, a Great Depression, the Cold War. If true, it does not reflect well of us. The tools are there but we have to turn the dials.
Lastly, there are many people in this last election who were turned away from the polls. Voter suppression is very real. But many more just opted out. They were discouraged, perhaps, by their choices, but that’s simply not good enough. You play the hand you’re dealt or you end up barred from the game. Stop waiting to be inspired. Inspiration is not reason, it is not logic, it is not a substitute for dealing with reality. It’s not sexy, but when you vote, the fact is you’re hiring an employee to do a job. The only factors that matter are “Is he/she qualified” and “Do they support the things I support?” Everything else is a bonus and that merits reelection. If they fail in their job, your fire them at the next election. But being swept off your feet by bold rhetoric and substanceless campaign slogans and baseless judgments of “personality” is a sure way to be disappointed—even badly betrayed. But significantly, keep that in mind—at the end of the day, the president is an employee. He—or she—works for you. Handing over your conscience because they dazzle you with promises of brilliance not based on ability or sympathy is irresponsible.
Talk is heating up about the possibility that the Electoral College might displace Trump and select Clinton. I have a couple of thoughts on this.
Firstly, this would be perfectly legitimate. If you need a historical reference, check Federalist #68, which discusses the electoral college and its purpose. Remember, the United States was formulated as a republic, which is not the same thing as a democracy. The Founders wanted to keep a firewall between The People and their government. Over the course of time, we have gotten used to the idea that We The People directly elect our national representatives. We do not, although it certainly appears that way and most folks can be forgiven for believing otherwise.
As constituted, the Electoral College was to be the final say. The possibility that someone completely unsuited to the presidency drove the Founders to cautious hedging. The phrase which no doubt will be oft-quoted in the coming weeks till the Electors meet is this one:
“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States”
What they sought to do was prevent the possibility of a demagogue rising to the highest office, which in many ways seems to have just happened. But the entire paper is worthy of scrutiny. for instance:
“It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief. The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.”
Historically, there have been instances of individual Electors changing their initial votes. There has never been an instance where the College overturned an election presumably won during the popular election. Needless to say, occasionally there have been presidents elected by the College who lost the popular vote. Four times before now.
There are two things to bear in mind in the current situation. The first is the mood of the country. We had two unpopular candidates. One was unpopular for perfectly understandable reasons, namely the things that came out of his mouth during the campaign. The other was unpopular for a variety of reasons that have to do with public perception and the complex propaganda of her enemies. Be that as it may, the campaign season has been tainted by an excess of irrationality. We already saw threats of armed uprising by certain groups should the “wrong” candidate win. We are now seeing mass protests by people who are profoundly unsettled by the one who presumably did win. The divide is severe and based now as much on wish-fulfillment and the swift justifications of revisionism as on the perception of looming catastrophe. And now we are seeing a mounting count of popular votes accruing the presumed loser, far more than can be reasonably explained away by statistical error.
It would seem a good time for the Electoral College to exercise its legal authority.
But at what risk? Civil War? Riot, certainly.
Which leads directly to the second point. The Republican Party controls both houses of congress and several high-ranking members have already stated they will oppose anything and everything Hillary Clinton might do, basically a continuance of their stance toward Obama. What point is there, then, in handing her the election by way of an arcane and untested method if for four years she will be required to do nothing but dodge political bullets, worry over impeachment, and be thwarted at every turn? As it now stands, she’s damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. Had there been any turnover in congress to increase the Democratic presence, it might be worth a shot.
I’m asking questions here not proposing solutions. We have made someone the Principle who clearly cannot do the job. We have elected exactly the kind of person the Founders sought to guard against by establishing the Electoral College. The question is, if they act how will that much change the next four years.
Something to think about.
The number will make sense presently.
It’s Friday. I’ve spent the last few days trying to process what happened Tuesday. It is not going well. I’m angry, frightened, and more than a little disgusted by the fact that we allowed Donald Trump to be elected president. I’m a cynic most days, an optimist forced by reality to concede that the world is perhaps more malign than not. But I’m also, marginally, an intellectual. By that I mean someone who deals with that reality by trying to understand it and make it cogent. By looking at things through the lens of causality, knowing that events are products, usually of combinations of factors no one person can see. So when the inexplicable happens, I do my best to analyze it and find the underlying drivers. This is how I am able to walk out my door every morning and conduct my life.
It is clear from everyone’s reactions that no one expected this, least of all Trump. I think he was planning his next reality show, Real Losers of Presidential Races. For that reason among many others, I do not believe he is even remotely prepared for the unsortable mess he is about to be required to deal with. As for the country, well, we’ve been playing with this idea that a “businessman” might be a good president. We’re about to find out.
What concerns me even more is the vast ocean of Red that now controls the country. If Trump’s election was some kind of protest against establishment Washington, it failed, because most of the incumbents kept their seats. So clearly there was only one office this vote was aimed at. I’ve been saying to anyone interested in my opinion that possibly the more important part of this election was Congress. Well, clearly no one listens to me.
Why am I so pessimistic about this election? Because the ideology in control of this majority is contrary to everything I thought we were trying to build. I can’t think of one thing these people want to do that will be good for anyone but the rich. And actually I don’t think it will be very good for them in the long run, either.
Trump has sided with congressional Republicans in a desire to repeal what they persistently misname Obamacare. There are people who have been hurt by this law, yes. But there are many, many others who for the first time in their lives had access to meaningful healthcare. Those millions will lose that unless what the Republican Party intends to do is simply expand MediCare to cover them. That is not in their playbook. They are committed to a policy that you should pay for your life yourself, that it is not the government’s job to make your life easier or better, even if the condition of your life is a consequence of government policy in the first place. So the ACA gets repealed, insurance companies start voiding existing policies which are not profitable, healthcare costs resume their precipitous rise, and in a few years people start dying from treatable and often preventable illnesses that they might have avoided had they had the resources. The pharmaceutical industry will once again gouge people, their profits will once more soar to ridiculous heights, and the poor will go begging.
Trump wants to “do something” about immigration. What he and apparently the majority of GOP congressional members mean by that involves mass deportations, stricter rules for visas, green cards, guest worker permits, etc, and punitive restraints against countries which have a problem with drug cartels running roughshod over them and making life hell for people trying to make a living, which is why they’re coming here in the first place. We do not recognize “life under threat from a drug dealer” to be a legitimate form of persecution, so the drug war, which we fund, puts all these countries and their citizens in a bind which we refuse to take responsibility for. Medium-sized businesses here that presently rely on guest workers (which is a good portion of the agricultural industry not owned by Archer Daniels Midland and the like) will find themselves stripped of a labor force they to date have had a difficult if not impossible time replacing with Americans who can’t afford to live on seasonal work at low wages. Other examples abound. This will also mean deporting children and young people born here but never naturalized who have never known any other country. In essence if not status they are Americans, but no matter. Their “documents” are not in order.
Trump wants to produce jobs, “big league.” Obama will be leaving office after presiding over seven years of the largest private sector jobs growth since the end of the Vietnam War (which is very relevant, that date), but Trump and the GOP act as if nothing has changed since 2008. If you are one of those still underemployed or out of work, maybe Obama’s record makes no difference to you. But it should. The usual method of pumping up jobs numbers, employed by both parties but much indulged in recent times by the very Republican administrations who vowed to shrink the size of the government, has been to increase federal jobs and supply grants to states for state jobs. These are not stable jobs because they depend on funding tools that are also unreliable given the recent push to cut spending and cut taxes. Obama has reduced the deficit, which will rise if President Trump opts to pump money into infrastructure programs in order to produce those jobs. If he intends to stick to the GOP pledge to cut taxes even further, that means he will have to borrow the money, which will increase the debt again. We don’t have much wiggle room there after the catastrophic policies of the Bush years. We’re going to be bouncing up against 100% of GDP and then, Katy-bar-the-door if we have another recession because there will simply be no relief. Trump has a track record of borrowing and defaulting. He cannot default on this kind of debt, so the question will be,. what then?
But I can get behind a push to invest in infrastructure. We need it badly. What I cannot get behind is the continued refusal to address the extraction of capital out of our economy by way of a tax cut program that sees even more money sucked into the coffers of Big Business and out of the country. You can’t increase spending AND cut taxes forever. Eventually you reach the point where the mule dies. (Old joke, the farmer who tries to train his mule to work on less and less food over time, until one day the mule keels over dead and he doesn’t understand why.)
I will say this again. I know people don’t like taxes, but it’s largely reflexive. They fail repeatedly to understand whose taxes are supposed to go up. Coupled with the fact that to make up for what states are not getting from the federal government anymore, local taxes have to rise, the blame is universal. People want services, but they don’t want to pay for them. As services deteriorate due to lack of funds, they complain when a tax increase is sought which is intended to bring those services back up to par. It’s a vicious circle of misapprehension.
Taxes are one of the surest tools to fix capital in a community.
Be that as it may, let us go on.
Why did people vote for Trump? We don’t have to dig far to understand that by his own words he is a misogynist, a racist, someone who sees no problem contradicting himself, a liar, what we used to call a demagogue. The projections for the election gave him a very low chance of winning. What happened?
A combination of things. People wanted someone not a Washington “insider.” Whatever that means. No, I know what it’s intended to mean, but then why did they send all their incumbents back? But Trump is not an insider, so there is that.
A certain segment of the population has been chafing under what they derisively term Political Correctness for decades. It’s like having your table manners constantly corrected. Why can’t I haver as baseball team named after Native Americans? Why does that make me “culturally insensitive?” It’s just baseball. And why do I have to adjust a lifetime of rote understanding to accommodate a biological male using the girls’ bathroom at my daughter’s high school? And why are you still making me feel bad about slavery 150 years after it ended? And why can’t I whistle at a pretty woman on the street?
Why do I have to change everything I’ve always taken for granted because someone I don’t know has gotten their feelings hurt?
Of course it’s more complicated than that, but for many it amounts to that level of anger. They want to be who they are and not be criticized for it.
Unfortunately, this includes a host of less trivial-sounding factors, like reflexive distrust of anyone who doesn’t look like them, talk like them, think like them, or go to church like them. These are not harmless traits, as we have seen. Racism, nativism, intolerance, protectionism, all aided and abetted by a thick strain of anti-intellectualism which manages to include antagonism toward expertise, toward science, toward any kind of reasoning that calls into question who they are.
Added to that, we have people who have adopted a political view akin to religious dogma. Hillary is a criminal. No matter that she has been investigated, questioned, and cleared on every charge for decades. FOX news or Rush Limbaugh told them. This is holy. They will not be dissuaded because if they have this wrong then everything they believe, everything they are, is wrong, and then what? It took them years to acquire the veneer of informed opinion, they have neither the time or the capacity to undo all that armchair work.
Then there are people who truly believe the federal government is nothing but evil, just by virtue of existing, and they may feel that this is a good chance to see it crippled. The instances of militia groups declaring armed uprisings should Hillary win are examples.
Some people are so enamored of money that anyone with more than seven figures to their name is automatically worthy of respect if not outright admiration.
Finally, there are those who simply cannot get past the idea of a woman in charge. For them, it wouldn’t have mattered who it was. I doubt Michelle Bachman or Sarah Palin would have gotten their vote.
It may also be that, Americans being traditionally contrarian, a sizeable number of voters resented being told that Hillary was a shoe-in. We still retain a perverse affection for the underdog—I say perverse because we don’t seem very consistent on who that may be. When some CEO raking in hundreds of millions of dollars on bonuses complains about the cruel regulations placed on his company can successfully pose as a persecuted underdog, we may have a problem with understanding what that word actually is intended to describe. Be that as it may, I wouldn’t doubt that a significant fraction of those who voted for Trump did so out of a misplaced sense of fairness.
Which brings me to the number. 47. That would be 47%. According to some polls, that is the percentage of people who did not vote. Ninety million, more or less. I suspect the odds are good that the overwhelming majority of them would probably have voted against Trump. Since this has been the case in the past, I’m going to assume it to be true. Hillary did win the popular vote.
Liberal apathy.
Oh, certainly a lot of them stayed home because they didn’t get to vote for Bernie Sanders. “I didn’t get my candidate so I’m not going to vote at all!” I have zero respect for this. For many reasons, but just look at what you have done to the rest of us if that’s your reasoning. Because if so, you not only left us with Trump, you were also instrumental in all those GOP incumbents going back to Congress. You have damaged us with your petty snit. “If I can’t have chocolate ice cream, I don’t want any!”
But there are many others who saw the projections and decided they didn’t need to go vote because Hillary was a shoe-in. Despite the fact that she told you not to rely on those polls. But even if that were the case and she was a shoe-in and she had won, the fact that you also didn’t vote to oust the Republican majority would have meant four years of the kind of grinding gridlock Obama has been through. This was irresponsible.
47% of you decided to have no say in the future of your country and by your absence you have left us with what may turn out to be the most devastating administration since—
I won’t say. You have no sense of history. You don’t understand the concept of voting strategically. I can only conclude that you are either selfish or lazy. Either way, you will learn the price of abstaining. As will we all.
I’m not criticizing people who voted third party. They voted. They acted responsibly.
So thank you for your nonparticipation. The subsequent state of the country can be laid in large part at your feet. You have, by your absence, shot us all in the face.
This is, in my experience, a liberal problem. I remember back in the Sixties, when the country was in comparable disarray, how the Left began to hate liberals. It seemed to many that the Left was a monolith, and subsequently all of them were painted with the same brush and labeled Liberal. Liberal bashing has been a hallmark of the Republican Right since Reagan took office, but really the GOP should be grateful to liberals, because they are so uninvolved. There are likely many reasons for this, but the big one I have noticed is that liberals don’t seem to have any staying power. They attack a cause, work to solve the problems, often overcome obstacles and put reforms in place. Things change. And then a curious thing happens. They go home. They leave the field.
In a way, this is understandable and very American. For them, politics is a grimy, necessary chore that must be attended to in order to have the time, the space, and the freedom to do all the other things in life worth doing. We should be able to solve the damn problem and be done with it. Finished. Now there are Other Things. They assume the fix is done and we can go about our lives.
The Right has been like that as long as there was a status quo few people complained about. But that hasn’t been the case since the Korean War. So the Right does what it does. For many of them, this is religion. They fight, they stay, they don’t go home. So when the liberal left decides it has won and does go home, the conservatives are still there, working to undo everything they don’t like. That has been happening since 1980, consistently, and it is time liberals learned this lesson. You can’t assume problems stays fixed.
Whatever the base cause, the fact remains that, at least for me, everything I like about this country is under attack by people who, for a variety of reasons, don’t like what progress has brought them. In my opinion, they have bought the argument that it is not rich people taking everything not nailed down that is hurting them but all the people who have benefited from the totality of a civil rights movement that has not yet finished its work.
I still believe we can make a pretty good world. But we have to collectively get over the idea that unrestrained acquisition is the only valid metric of success.
But you people who stayed home and left us with this mess? Read between the lines.
I said I’d try not to do any more political posts till after the election. I have nothing to say–well, nothing I care to say–about all the current bogs, tangles, pits, and mudholes. So in lieu of that, something peaceful, restful, effulgent with the promise of a quiet day…
With only a couple weeks now till the election, I’ve decided to make it plain (if i I haven’t already) that I intend to vote for Hillary Clinton.
I have a number of reasons for doing so, some of which are not quantifiable, but if I may I’d like to state a few of them.
First off, she is opposed, disrespected, and outright hated by all the right people. Her list of detractors is a grocery list of those I would like to see ousted from their own positions in government. This includes people like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, Representative Issa, and just about every firebreathing Tea Party moron who has been miring the workings of my government in the muck of intransigence like a child refusing to eat their vegetables for far too long. Given their records, if Hillary Clinton bothers them, then I’m voting for her. This extends to the entire Republican establishment which made it their number one priority eight years ago to simply block and impede everything President Obama tried to do, for no good reason. Try as I might I can find no justification for this other than petulance. If you aren’t willing to play the game you do not get to set the rules.
This has cost us as a nation.
Secondly, while I have been lukewarm about her for years, this past year I have come to respect her. She’s tough, smart, and by virtue of the relentless vetting she has undergone at the hands of a congressional majority determined to ruin her has apparently been demonstrated to be not only less corrupt than one might wish to believe but also one of the more honest candidates we’ve had. As to her criminality, the fact—the galling fact to many of those in my first category—is that if she were guilty of something we would know it by now and she would be under indictment. They have tried. They have spent multiple tens of millions, wasted months of public time, scoured, probed, intimidated, and otherwise made a nuisance of themselves in service of destroying—
Destroying what?
Apparently (and thirdly) a woman they fear. A woman. I know there is another woman running for office, but in the course of this last year I have come to feel that Jill Stein is not capable of managing the office. Her understanding, for one thing, of international finance and even basic economics seems lacking. While she opposes many things I also oppose I do not see her as someone who could do a damn thing about any of it, not just because both parties would be disinclined to work with her but because she doesn’t show to me the requisite comprehension of the complexities of the problems. She’s not being attacked much by the major parties because she is not a viable contender, but if she were then they would be going after her for the simple fact that, like Hillary, she is a woman. (Which means they would not bother discussing the issues, it would all be personal attack.)
(Years ago Phyllis Schlafly endorsed a woman for president—Michelle Bachman. Demonstrating that she was less interested in the historic meaning of having a woman as president as she was in wrecking the legitimacy of the idea.)
Like Obama, I believe the bulk of the antipathy toward Hillary Clinton is in her failure to be a white male.
Yeah, I do think on a gut level, for many of her detractors, that’s about it. First a black man and now a woman. A woman! Good gosh, what will the world think of us? As far as I’m concerned, it’s about time. She’s qualified. Her lack of the appropriate genitalia should not be a factor. But for some, it is. It will be. If they’re in congress, they must go. We need to get past this nonsense.
Fourthly, given her range of experience, I believe she will be best able to steer this ship that is our country through the reefs of the next several years quite ably. Not, perhaps, spectacularly, but we don’t need that. Spectacular has drawbacks. I’d like to bank on competence. That’s what I’ve liked about Obama. Say what you will, he has not wrecked us. We’re coming out the end of his term better than when he began. No, not for everyone, and for certain not without mistakes, gaffs, and bad calls along the way, but I believe we are in a better position to face the future now than we would have been under either of his opponents. I have no desire to have that derailed by handing over the wheel to a berserker.
Which brings me to Five. She is not Trump. If ever there was a clear distinction between two candidates, this is it. Aside from the meanness he has elicited in his base, he has a pitiful grasp of government, he has been a blatant hypocrite, a consistent liar, and a demagogue. I don’t believe you can call him an ideologue because I can’t discern a cogent ideology, unless it’s narcissism. But above and beyond all that, I do not believe he will Be There. I believe he will get quickly bored and leave it all to his vice president. We’ve seen a bit of what that can lead to (Cheney) and Pence is an ideologue, on par will all those in my first category, and I am weary of them. But Trump will quickly tire of the innate difficulties of managing an office he doesn’t understand. I believe this is why he has failed at so many of his well-touted business ventures. He has no staying power.
Hillary Clinton does have staying power.
Finally (Six) at least publicly she supports many things I support. Her statements on policy are consistent with many of my preferred positions. I need not recount them here, I think. Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time should know. Yes, there are some things that trouble me. But I will still back her rather than risk destroying the country.
That has often been part of the hyperbolic campaign rhetoric of many campaigns, but this is the first time I’ve felt it had some legitimacy. Trump’s assertion that he will virtually eliminate corporate taxes should surprise no one—he will directly benefit—but it will, under present circumstances, put us in such a hole that we might never climb out of it, effectively transforming the United States into the richest third world nation on the planet. The poverty, the collapse of infrastructure, the ruin of any and all safety nets will tear us apart.
I know people don’t like taxes. But for once we have to stop thinking of them as some kind of penalty. Taxation, at its most basic, is the best and surest way to secure capital in the country. That’s why we were able to build the strongest economy in history during a time when the top marginal tax rates were north of 80%. Even the private sector did better because the money was here, not free floating in some vague transnational pool of capital under no nation’s control.
Anyway, there’s my endorsement.
Since I’m in Missouri, I’m also throwing in my support for Jason Kander for senate and Chris Koster for governor. Both of their opponents hold positions antithetical to my own. It’s that simple. I do not agree with either Roy Blunt or Eric Greitens.
Maybe now there will be no more political posts from me till after November 8th. Maybe. We’ll see.
