The Problem with Hillary Supporters, My Vote and Reality

At the time of writing this, Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States and will address the nation this evening as she prepares for an electoral showdown against what may be the world’s most obnoxious, bigoted, trust fund baby.

While choosing between the two feels so clear to so many, it feels less so to me. This is not to say I’m considering voting for a peeled sweet potato in a toupee. I may be a bit disenchanted, but I’m not fucking nuts.

I am, however, irritated. Irritated not just by an electoral system that leaves the modern voter to choose between downright dreadful and insidious, but by the supporters of what is supposedly the “good side,” riding around the moral high ground on high horses, preaching at me not only what I am supposed to think, but what I’m supposed to do with my vote as well.

It is my vote. Not theirs. This is not public property and in America, I will do with it what I wish. The Hillary clan can covet that vote, but I do not owe it to anyone. Not the unborn children of tomorrow, not you and certainly not either of these ridiculous candidates.

In America, my vote should reflect what I want for this country. But it is here that I face the issue of the day, the issue that so many Americans are wrestling with as the countdown to November 8 continues. What I want, what I see as a logical progression into the future for this country, is poorly represented in the candidates of the two major political parties, if at all.

And so, this election feels like the right time to finally support something I have felt passionately about since my first opportunity to vote in 2004. That is, the idea that this country needs more than two political parties that are taken seriously.

As George Carlin once said (boiled down version): “the things that matter in this country are reduced in choice. There are two political parties in this country, but if you want a bagel, there are 23 flavors. It’s an illusion of choice.”

As the two major parties continually polarize ordinary people who have so much in common behind issues that are often contrived, trivial and subversive to anything that is truly in the public’s best interest, I sit back and marvel at how so many people have become blind to nuance.

I often express this as the death of the gray area. Everything today is black and white, because that is the narrative our politics and the media have created for us. You can believe in Second Amendment rights and also feel that what a woman does with her body is her choice, but finding a candidate to vote for that holds those same views as part of their platform is a lot harder. You can believe in Medicare for all and the death penalty, but show me a Democrat that genuinely supports both and I’ll show you someone who has very little hope for holding the highest offices in this land.

This is what the two-party system has done. A healthy democracy has two options in my view. Either a party dies off and gives rise to new powers in the political discourse, or the people stand up and have the guts to create a new power that can go head to head with established powers and thus, change the conversation.

In a truly free society, the spectrum of views runs the gamut from the darkest of metaphorical black to the lightest of theoretical white with a whole lot of logical people living in the gray areas in between, free to decide through critical thinking what they believe on each issue, creating a nuanced array of points of view. But today, representation of nuances in American beliefs is dead or dying and the approach to discussing them is noticeably less measured, be it in sensationalized media or among people on the street and in online discussion threads.

Everything is done in extremes, in full voice and with zero regard for any way of thinking that does not echo our own beliefs. What psychologists refer to as confirmation bias is rampant and anyone who chimes in with something else to say is not an opportunity to have meaningful discussion, but rather, a reason to scream louder.

This is something that Bernie Sanders supporters have been called out for and certainly are guilty of. But what started as calling out has now shifted to shaming and derision before the Bernie bros can even wipe away the tears of their political disappointment and move on from his failed campaign.

While the Right has its fun, posting memes of Bernie supporters clad in Soviet flags, nowhere is the shaming more prevalent than the attitude and approach of Hillary Clinton’s supporters. One by one they’ve taken to social media, comment threads and the Democratic National Convention stage, to deride people they view as naïve idealists because they actually believed in someone or something different than them. Fools!

Rather than taking a measured approach toward coveting the vote of Bernie Sanders’ supporters, Hillary’s gang of political and Hollywood elites have felt entitled to it, as have the Millennial history chasers on Facebook comment threads, itching to say they made the first woman president a reality after they made the first black president a reality.

Their lectures and condescension are an odd approach for a group of people claiming to be in the pursuit of party unity. Their disdain is as palpable as the anger of Bernie supporters and it comes in the face of evidence that Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee did what Sanders supporters thought all along. They colluded to undermine American democracy by rigging the Democratic primary.

Now, I know, I have male genitalia and that makes me completely incapable of understanding Hillary Clinton, or having an unbiased view of her. She’s so strong, and her overpowering strength undoubtedly has a psychological effect on me that makes me incapable of making a fair judgement of the woman’s character. Surely, I need Lena Dunham and Sara Silverman to make it clear for me, and so they have tried.

For the record, I am not and was not an avid Bernie Sanders supporter. I agree with some of the things he said, but also saw many of his positions as unrealistic and if elected, he likely would not have gotten anything done as standoffs with Congress would have ensued, much the way they have plagued our current president’s administration. But I respected his message and admired the enthusiasm he created among progressives for real change.

It was a good effort, but one that, like most jaded Americans, I knew was never going to succeed. Describing himself as a democratic socialist, no matter how often he attempted to put that term into context, was never going to fly. And in an age of youth and shallow progress, electing an old white guy to office was less than fashionable, even if he is Jewish, or agnostic, not that it’s really any of our business if the guy prays or who he does it to.

But did Hillary’s inevitability excuse the DNC’s actions? If the e-mails are an accurate reflection to the DNC’s approach to the primary, which they appear to be, does that not show that there was collusion to make a democratic primary into little more than a charade? I think it does, and I’m sorry Clintonites, but that is not something I can shrug off as people venting in office e-mails the way The New Yorker did earlier this week.

I work in an office, and yes, we say things in e-mails about co-workers who piss us off and we play out our little office dramas from time to time on the electronic record. This is true, but the difference is, my office doesn’t exist under the pretense of complete neutrality to all parties when deciding the leadership and direction of the entire company.

I would expect that if it did and my e-mails displayed that my co-workers and I as well as people of influence within and outside the organization colluded to put management in place that many within the company don’t feel has the organization’s best interest at heart, we’d all be fired. And if that management candidate had colluded with us, then they would be relieved of their position as well.

In the case of this election, the press and everyone within the party are not focused on the incredible mishandling and corruption of a Democratic primary, but instead spending their time worrying about who told us about it. Was it the evil Russians? Was it China like Trump says? Was it Julian Assange and Wikileaks putting together a campaign to destroy Clinton?

Who cares? The real question is, is this stuff true? Let the FBI figure out who hacked it, your tax dollars pay them to do that very type of job. What rational Americans sitting on the voting fence need to do is have a real conversation about what this says about this candidate’s viability and the Democratic Party as a platform for progressive views in the future.

Look, I don’t care about Hillary’s e-mails despite the fact that she seems to have lied about having sent or received classified information and at the very least, conducted some seriously questionable business in her time as Secretary of State if you believe, I don’t know, congressional hearings and an FBI Investigation.

It doesn’t matter, because that is as much a cultural problem with how the State Department does its business as it is an indictment of Clinton. That doesn’t make her a criminal or worthy of facing charges, but it does call into question her judgment when seated in a position of authority, as well as her professionalism and the way she then handled the matter thereafter.

None of this makes the white man’s Louis Farrakhan over there any more attractive as a presidential candidate, but we do have to ask ourselves: If my vote is going to reflect my conscience and what I want for the country, is Hillary really going to be my choice?

I wanted to say yes, especially since I live in a swing state and have a reasonably high chance of my vote meaning something, assuming they bother to count them this time. But then….

Immediately after Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s resignation from the DNC chair position due to the e-mail leak, Hillary hired her to “continue as a surrogate” for her campaign. She actually said that. Continue as a surrogate? That’s not even subtle. At this point, Hillary’s like a Wall Street bank, she’s too big to fail. She can literally come out, wag her middle finger in the public’s faces and fall back on a scare campaign that says “what are you gonna do? Vote for him? Bwahahahahahaha.”

Is using a Trump scare campaign really any better than him using a fear of brown people to covet votes? Either way, you’re exploiting fear to garner support from the electorate.

Maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe Hillary is just misunderstood somehow, and my male genitalia is blocking my line of sight toward enlightenment concerning American politics. But her supporters need to understand that I’m not alone. Mrs. Clinton has some major image issues and her dodging questions about it in typical politician fashion isn’t helping her.

You’ll have to excuse those naïve idealists if they are having a hard time swallowing the reality that Clinton is now the opponent with the best chance to stop the unimaginable possibility that America is indeed dumb enough, or apathetic enough (does it matter?), to elect the grotesque, soulless set of overbearing vocal chords that is currently leading the polls in this election.

The apathy of most of America is gut wrenching and the fact that the people charged with sparing the rest of the planet from having to deal with this monster taking charge of the most powerful country in the world, rigged an election so that a woman whose manipulative powers make my grandma look like Mother Theresa is sickening. I’m sorry, but it is.

And if you’re like me, and you’ve believed for a long time, that this democracy needs more gray area to make sense, and needs more than the illusion of choice, this election is the most tempting time of your life to finally step out of the role that the Democratic and Republican parties have cast you into for years as a progressive or conservative voter, and vote for someone who represents a more accurate portrayal of your nuanced beliefs.

Maybe it’s a fiscally conservative Gary Johnson and his desire to end the drug war that does it for you. Maybe it’s left wing Jill Stein and her stance on environmental issues that attracts you. Whoever it is, the sentiment that other options not only need to exist, but already do, is alive and well and the only thing stopping it from picking up steam and adding real substance to this election is a passive refusal to recognize it by people who have caved to the notion that you vote red or blue or you shouldn’t have bothered.

Yes, the stakes are high, I get it. When was the last presidential election where the result meant jack shit? Never, the stakes are always high, but if we’re going to live in fear of the stakes, are we really ever going to try anything new or make any progress? If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, isn’t this the time to do something different? Cause things are pretty insane.

At this rate, in 2020, will we be looking at even worse options? Is that actually possible? Will Hitler be reincarnated as a Cersei Lannister look-alike and run alongside Michele Bachmann? I don’t know anymore, maybe! Cause we’re seriously running out of ways for it to get any fucking worse.

Trump cannot be president, Hillary and her supporters are right about that, but if they’re serious about being the ones that kept it from happening, they’ll need to change their approach.

They say if you scratch a cynic, you’ll uncover a disappointed idealist. Well, call them Bernie bros or whatever you want, but their transition to cynic will soon be complete if Clinton and her supporters keep coming at them with that condescending, pretentious tone. When the cynic steps into the voting booth this November, Democrats might not like what happens.

This is America, a society built on ideals. You have to excuse some of us for being idealistic.