Ajey Rants About the Election

This election is difficult for me. I’m still iffy on whom to vote for. Here are my thoughts so far.

But first things first, let’s get our facts straight.

Why?

Because the left follows a simulation of the news (comedy news shows), the right follows a simulacrum of the news (talk radio), and nd the news itself is…not even a simulacrum of itself anymore (CNN). So now, everyone has a different set of facts. Trust me: I follow socialists, alt-righters, and Silicon Valley libertarians. I’ve seen this divergence in real time.

So here are my facts:

0) There are no good options for the presidency. There are only bad options and less bad options. I’ve written about this before.
1) Hillary Clinton is smart. She knows her policy, and she knows how to get what she wants.
 1a) There’s no guarantee that she wants what the people want.
 1b )She has a track record for being kinda shady.
 1c) She deserves more than a slap on the wrist for her carelessness with classified information. She of all people should know better.
2) The following United States policies are inexcusable:
 2a) Our military, both in size and willingness to use it.
 2b) Our repeated violation of civil rights and liberties, including but not limited to unwarranted searches, torture, and mass surveillance.
 2c) Our refusal to admit immigrants and refugees — the vast majority of whom are NOT criminals — into this country. Have you read that plaque on the Statue of Liberty? Immigration to the United States is a feature, not a bug.
 2d) Our use of excessive force and mass incarceration, especially on queer people and people of color. The “War on Drugs” comes into play here.
 2e) Our disregard for citizens’ health, including but not limited to closing women’s health clinics, denying trans people healthcare, charging needlessly exhorbitant prices for healthcare, ignoring the physical and psychological needs of veterans, and not doing nearly enough for improve food quality for poor Americans.
 2f) Our lack of investment in poor Americans, including but not limited to education at all levels, social safety nets, and fast, open, secure Internet access.
 2g) Our refusal to properly address climate change and pollution.
3) The quality of life for Americans has risen significantly. However:
 3a) The quality of life for rich Americans has risen the most by far.
 3b) The quality of life for not-rich white straight men has not risen as much as promised.
 3c) Everyone else has rightly raised their expectations for their quality of life.
4) Our votes for more local politicians (including but not limited to legislators, state representatives, and mayors) are more consequential than our votes for president.
5) “Burn This Shit to the Ground” is how people die. (This is for the socialists in the room.)

Those are my facts. If you disagree with my facts, you will probably disagree with the rest of this article. Leave now. (Or…argue with me. I’ll show why your opposing facts are bad.)

For the rest of you, here’s what I’m thinking:

The Case for Hillary Clinton: Buy America Some Time.

Hillary Clinton will not make the world explode. She will continue the arc of the moral universe as it bends — very slowly — towards justice. Listen to her interview with Ezra Klein from Vox. You’ll see that she’s intelligent, she’s detail-oriented, and she has a better game plan than anything I’ve heard from the ISO — or anyone else, for that matter. However, she barely questions many of the policies that I find appalling.

Above all else, she will keep the country in once piece for at least four more years. It’ll be borrowed time, but it will be important time. During those four years, we (Activists? The left?) can push into politics in ways that Occupy Wall Street couldn’t. We can do to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party did to the Republican Party: push a dream for the future to a party that seems to have lost touch with its base. Imagine giving the main parties another “shellacking” in 2018, except one led by former Black Lives Matter activists, by Green Party politicians, by the people fighting for justice on screens and in the streets today.

That vision didn’t really play out for this election. But if Clinton is in office, we get four years to build a presence, educate people, and make change where it really matters: Congress, state legislatures, and local governments. I, for one, will be there to make change happen. I’ve seen too much to remain silent.

The Case for Gary Johnson: Lay the Groundwork for 2020.

The country is fucked for 2016. If Trump gets elected, America will burn from the top down. If Clinton gets elected, America will burn from the bottom up. The GOP is dead, and the Democrats are crumbling, too. The next four years will be chaos no matter whom we elect. We should look to the next presidential term instead.

The Libertarian Party is on track to be a contender for 2020, if not for 2016. The Johnson-Weld ticket has the governing experience to run almost toe-to-toe the Clinton-Kaine ticket. Weld, from what I’ve heard, is a master fundraiser, and he has never had a better case for the political donors now left in the cold by Donald Trump. Johnson is almost polling well enough to enter presidential debates, and he only needs 5% of the popular vote to give his party federal funding for 2020. Trust me, I checked. Finally, the Libertarian Party has got a better shot at 50-state ballot access than the Green Party. I checked that, too.

Johnson doesn’t address all of my grievances with American policy. But he addresses about half of them, and I’m interested to see how principled libertarian policy affects this country. (Compare that to the current system, which MLK called “socialism for rich and rugged individualism for the poor.”) Johnson probably knows what he’s doing — at least in terms of domestic policy — but he’s also ready to rock the boat. Whether that will make a difference someday is anybody’s guess, but it’s worth a shot.

No candidate is great here. But if Trump is a bet on the past, if Clinton is a bet on the future, and if Stein is a bet on a pipe dream, then Johnson is a bet on the future. Specifically, he’s a bet on The Future According to Marc Andreessen. As far as visions of the future goes, I wouldn’t really mind that.

The Case for Jill Stein: Stick to Your Principles.

I really like Dr. Jill Stein. I like her take on…just about everything. She’s a badass. She’s been an activist almost as long as I’ve been a human, and although she’s never held elected office, it’s not for want of effort.

The point of voting is to vote for the candidate I want the most. Any other vote is dishonest. And I really want Stein for president. Even if she can’t win, even if she’s unlikely to pull the votes needed for anything beyond a moral victory, my vote for her will be principled stance in an election dominated by lack of principle.

From there, I can do the groundwork to make real change happen.