elections

History and Morality

/ momshieb / 16 Comments

This has been a very stressful time for political junkies like me. My conservative friends have been aghast watching the Republican Party devolve into civil war. They have found themselves facing the awful thought they’ll need to either vote for Donald Trump or defect from the party.

And they can’t stand the thought of voting for Hillary.

And my progressive liberal friends have been disheartened to see Bernie Sanders come So. Close. and yet fail (in the absence of a miracle) to get the nomination. Now we are faced with the same distasteful choice. Vote for Hillary or defect from the party.

In my world, this has lead to a lot of arguing and quite a bit of bitterness.

“If you don’t vote for Hillary, you are voting for Trump!”

“If you vote third party, you are wasting your vote!”

And on and on. I get it. I do. I profoundly fear living in a country lead by an egomaniacal, power hungry, delusional tyrant.

But after a LOT of thinking, soul searching and historical research, I am convinced that I just cannot vote for either candidate. I want to try to explain why.

First of all, I do not believe in a two party system. The Constitution does not mention political parties at all. In fact, George Washington said this in his final address as President:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

So political parties could allow greedy, power hungry people to take over the democratic process and use it for their own power?  Huh.

And John Adams said this in 1789:

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

I humbly agree. Two parties in opposition to each other means total gridlock, constant swings back and forth, no compromise. Which describes our government perfectly.

But of course, the U.S. doesn’t really limit itself to two parties. There is a Libertarian running for President. There is a Green Party candidate running.

So why aren’t they in the news? Why haven’t you seen Gov. Gary Johnson on CNN? Why hasn’t Dr. Jill Stein been on Meet the Press?

And why haven’t they been at even one televised debate?

Here is my second reason for not voting either D or R.  These smart, capable, sane candidates are not being heard because the two parties are owned and operated by Big Money. And Big Money wants to keep its Big Profits.

There is an election debate commission that is dominated by Democrat and Republican leaders. THEY decide who gets on the debate stage.

And here is my third reason. The media and the two parties are completely enmeshed and intertwined. You can find stories about huge media company donations to Clinton on conservative sites and you can find the same about donations to the GOP on liberal sites.

I went to the site “OpenSecrets,” which I highly recommend. It exposes the donations made to all candidates by all donors. There are a whole bunch of articles about the ties between media and the two big parties.

So here I am. Faced with pressure from the left to vote for the Democrat. Faced with the fact that I truly fear a Trump Presidency.

But also faced with the fact that as long as I continue to play the game with the two corrupt parties, I am part of the corruption. As long as I refuse to stand up and say “Enough!” and cast my vote for the person I believe will be best for the country, I am part of the problem.

I wish that the millions of people who plan to “hold their nose” and vote R or D would join me in choosing a third option.

We do NOT have to be stuck in this corrupt system. But we have to work together to take the process back.

John Adams would thank us.

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Pardon my political rant

/ momshieb / 28 Comments

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Pardon me, I beg you.

I completely understand the fact that I have become a sweet, docile Nonni, the chubby old lady who rocks her darling Ellie to sleep and gives her a bottle and walks her around this bucolic country neighborhood.

I have sworn to myself that I will step back from the political activist world, (in my blogging at least). I will hold my tongue. I will not use words like “liberal” or “conservative” or utter the D or R labels.  I have sworn to be non-partisan, but today’s events have overruled my very best intentions.

Paris is under siege at this very moment. Paris: the City of Lights.  The City of Lovers.  Isis is bombing, shooting and holding hostages. The war between the west and Isis has come to a place that is known for its gentle hospitality, its love of wine and music, its embrace of the arts.

The world has come to a very, very dangerous place.

I will absolutely not make any attempt to explain how this has happened.  I will not weigh in at all on any foreign policy issue that may or may not have lead us to this terrible place.

I am not a military person. I am not a diplomat. I can make my ill informed guesses about the middle East, but I am smart enough to know that I do not truly have anything to say on this subject.

How to stop this type of terrorism is a question that is simply far, far beyond my feeble areas of expertise.

But here is what I do feel duty bound to write:  I believe that it is incredibly important for me to acknowledge the limits of my knowledge.

I believe that it is incredibly important for us, as Americans, to elect a President who can also recognize the limits of his/her expertise.  I believe that we have a serious duty to elect a President who IS in fact an expert of international relations and international law. Or at the very least, we must elect someone who will listen to those who are true experts on this incredibly convoluted matters.

Right now, at this moment in time, I am the mother of three young adults and the grandmother of one fragile little girl.  I want them all to live in a world where peace is a possibility, no matter how faint.  A place where reason has at least a chance to triumph over bombast.

And this is why I must write this post.

I am absolutely horrified and sickened by the words of Donald Trump, a man who seems to truly believe that he is an expert on every topic in every area.  This is a man who believes that he is capable of single handedly solving every complex problem that faces the entire world.

And how would Mr. T solve all of these deep and complicated problems?  To quote the man himself, although I am very reluctant to do so, he would “bomb the shit out of them.”

This is a man who finds it acceptable to call people “stupid”, “fat”, “ugly”.  He routinely uses simplistic and meaningless words like “nice” and “crap” and “OK”.

This is a man who truly believes himself to be smarter than anyone else on earth. He truly believes that he can bully and insult his way to world leadership.

Tonight, as I sit here watching the terrible news unfolding from Paris, I am very very afraid.

But let me be very clear: I am more afraid of how the world will look if Donald Trump become President than I am of terrorists striking a major European city.

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If you reading this, and you are a Trump supporter, can you please try to explain to me what it is that you see in this man?  What is it that makes you believe that he would be a reasonable and thoughtful world leader?