Well here we are again. I’m inclined to talk (ask my husband), so there is little point in trying to silence me. You have no doubt made your decision already about me.
I’m not one of those persons who people are casual about. You either like me or you hate me, seldom anything down the middle.
So I don’t give a rip’s roaring ass which one you adhere to frankly. I can come down on that both sides of that issue too, depending, so welcome if you are reading, screw you in absentia if you aren’t.
I don’t figure myself to be that much different than the rest of ya, a bit smarter than the average, a tad wiser given my age than a thirty-year-old. I know myself better than most people bother to inspect their innards, and I’m comfortable with what I find. Not always happy with it, mind you, but comfortable.
I grew up privileged. Not in super rich mind you, but privileged nonetheless. Most average kids from working class families don’t believe that, but it’s true. It was a hell of a lot easier than growing up African-American or Hispanic. It would have been better to be male given the times. But I never went to bed hungry or didn’t have a pair of shoes. I had the opportunity of a pretty decent education back when it was still affordable for the working class kid.
It’s a small but constant wonder to me that I ended up being a bleeding-heart liberal. I shouldn’t have, at least as I measure it from examining the lives of those I went to high school with. Some of them are loons. Some of them are just immersed in their own lives of grandkids and whatever one is interested in if it ain’t the state of the world and all who inhabit it. A few are liberal, a few pointedly conservative, but I repeat myself–the loons.
But I pride myself most about being a rational thinking individual who manages to blend a sophisticated metaphysical belief system along with a logic based political view of the world at the same time. They conflict, my angelic side and my devil as you would expect, and when the conflict comes, I wrestle with it, I seek to escape from it, but I rarely can ignore it.
Back in 2008, I supported Hillary Clinton, until it was obvious she was losing to Obama. Then I switched allegiance, since John McCain and his Alaskan albatross proved to be unacceptable as leaders of the free world.
So we are now 2015, and Hillary is running again. And I am supporting her again. And. . . .
I’m conflicted.
Bernie Sanders and I disagree on very little. I was frankly surprised that he gathered so much money so quickly.
I am sensitive to the notion that if all of us smart people read the tea leaves accurately and accord him no real chance, we in fact insure he will have no real chance. Yet Hillary is more than competent and it’s so time for a woman to take the leadership.
Yet Hillary and I don’t agree on a number of things, and I am more than aware that she is more conservative (by nature) and certainly by design than I am. She is more comfortable with Wall Street than I would prefer. She is more hawkish that I would prefer.
In some ways Bernie has made this easier. At least his has the good sense to run under the Democratic banner, which means he is no threat to siphon off votes in the election as a third party candidate.
So I’ve been quiet about Hillary for the most part, hoping to let Bernie’s run peter out as it is expected to, and let the conflict within my head die a quiet death. And yet, I’m mindful that if he has no chance, it can surely be in part because people like me, his natural allies, won’t switch.
I am more than aware of my conflict of interests, which devolve down to a moral choice or a loyalty choice. Both are important I suppose, but one is compelling.
I am, as I say, pretty much clear on what motivates me.
An example.
The other evening, my husband admitted, “I have no opinion on the President’s trade agreement. I simply haven’t read hardly anything about it, so I don’t know who has the better argument.”
“Same here,” I replied, “but my reasons are quite different. I have deliberately avoided reading about it. I know at the end, I’ll either have to diss Elizabeth Warren or the President, and he needs all the support he can get against the crazies, so I’ve avoided the cognitive dissonance becoming informed would cause.”
See? I can and do act to avoid issues I don’t want to deal with.
And as I scrolled through my Facebook feed, I basically stayed fairly quiet when the discussions turned to Hillary or Bernie.
Yet the nagging continued.
This is not a time to merely support the candidate who can win. At least not until we get to the crossroads. Until the primaries are completed and one has withdrawn, I figure I am required by my moral compass at least to support the candidate whose dedicated to doing the most for the average person.
So I find myself feeling all sorts of traitor in leaving Hillary’s side and offering my small donation to Bernie. I still figure he doesn’t have a chance, but if that happens, at least I can sleep well knowing I did the right thing. I followed my conscious and not my cynical political savvy self.
Nothing will change in this country before it is too late to matter unless we as citizens, victims of the government machine, stand up and stop this madness. I’ve truly had enough of those who promise a better future while continuing to “play the game”. The game at this point is simply rigged, and so clogged with illegality and personal greed as to make even Satan blanche at the sheer chutzpah.
Perhaps it’s always been this way, with a small but vocal group warning of “the end” but with climate change and income inequality, I don’t see planet earth surviving much longer with humanoids being at the top of the ladder. Unless that is, we make drastic changes.
They say that the uber wealthy in the world now routinely have bunkers build beneath their luxury homes, guarding against what they know must surely come, the uprising of people who have nothing left to lose.
I fully expect Hillary Clinton will be the next president. I hope however that she is not. Not because she wouldn’t be okay as president’s go. But because following Bernie, would be a fine time for Elizabeth Warren. And at least with Bernie, we have an honest chance to turn the page to a new way of doing democracy.
But enough of fantasy politics.
Back to reality.
Where’s my checkbook?
Existential Ennui 