Hillary Clinton for President

The party nears a Trump rally.

   

I know, I know. I can hear the groans already. "Politics doesn't have any place on this kind of blog." "Stick to writing about RPGs, addict." "I'm never going to read your blog again."

This election cycle has broken all boundaries, snapped all taboos. And what hangs in the balance is important enough that it ought to be talked about everywhere. When so much depends upon the outcome of a small handful of Americans, there is no place in which politics should be off-limits. If I help convince even one person, it was worth it. If I lose your readership because of these comments, I didn't want it in the first place. 

The New York Times recently called Donald Trump the most unqualified person to ever run for the office of president. They were spot on. The man is a living embarrassment to the United States of America, and a nightmare to contemplate as a president of the United States. The idea that the presidency is even within his grasp--that nearly 50% of voters plan to cast their ballot for this immoral, ignorant, unfeeling horror of a candidate fills me with shame and despair for the future of this country.

I don't have to recount all of the things that make him a terrifying candidate with terrifying policy proposals--just read The New York Times or USA Today (which has otherwise never taken sides in a presidential race). Don't trust papers in such liberal cities? Try the Dallas Times Herald, which hasn't endorsed a Democrat in 75 years, or the Arizona Republic, which has never endorsed a Democrat. Or, frankly, read the endorsement of any newspaper, because only six newspapers in the entire country have endorsed Trump, and together they serve a population of about 25,000 people. "Why should I trust what newspapers have to say?" you ask? Because they're run by people who spend every day researching what's actually going on in the world. But my own arguments against Trump don't rely on newspaper endorsements; I'm just pointing you there because they make the arguments better than I could. You could also listen to the opinions of nearly 400 economists, both liberal and conservative, who call him a "dangerous, destructive choice." Are you a pro-business Republican? Listen to the opinions of literally every single CEO of the Fortune 100. I mean, I'd point to endorsements from the Harvey Milk Club, the Humane society, NARAL, the NRDC, and the Sierra Club, too, but if you care about those, you're already voting for Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is far from a perfect candidate (although she is also far from the corrupt, criminal monster that Republicans have made her out to be by simply repeating the same accusations over and over). If you are a Republican, she might enact a few policies that you disagree with. But she won't dissolve NATO, wreck the world economy, cancel the health insurance of 40 million Americans, appoint lunatics to the Supreme Court, reverse progress on minority rights, give a national voice to racists and misogynists, and do god-knows-what with the nuclear football. You can suck up 4 years of a Clinton presidency to avoid the end of American civilization as we know it, can't you?

If you're an American citizen and eligible to vote, I beg of you, go out on Tuesday and vote for Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. Vote for anyone else that you agree with down ballot, but don't turn the presidency over to a callow, egotistical monster. And don't increase the chances that he'll win by voting for a third-party candidate. When we can get true election reform, including ranked-choice balloting, I will welcome the golden age of third parties, but this is not the election to screw around with.

I could end with something dramatic and say that if Trump wins, I will cancel this blog in protest. While this isn't true, I will probably be forced to give up the blog because Trump has already pledged to cancel my health insurance and de-fund the government organizations that hold most of my contracts. I'll have to go get a real job, maybe move, and won't be able to play Fate: Gates of Dawn in the middle of the day. So, if nothing else, vote for Clinton to keep the CRPG reviews coming. [Edit: for anyone who misunderstood this, I didn't mean to suggest that I play games during the time I'm supposed to be working a government job. Rather, the nature of my contracts gives me the flexibility to work when I want to work--nights, weekeneds, whenever--so I can better manage both my work and leisure time. I've always given the government an excellent product for the money that they pay me and have never misrepresented my hours.]

Back to our normal programming tomorrow. I don't intend to make this a debate, so I won't be responding to comments, but I'll leave commenting open because it's only fair. Just as in the regular posts, offensive comments with obscenities or insults get deleted.

******

Three follow-up comments, two short, one long:

1. Where are all you people when I post about RPGs? I don't mind that you commented on this post, but if you chose this post to make your first comment, whether supportive or not, I'm a little disappointed.

2. For everyone saying something like, "I come here to read about RPGs, not politics," please note that I only post about RPGs every 2 or 3 days. You may notice that I posted about an RPG on Wednesday. You'll see another one later today or early tomorrow. The cycle of RPG postings was not interrupted by my support of Hillary Clinton for president. If you like this blog because of my RPG reviews, you have lost nothing. You could have just skipped this entry.

3. Let me clarify a bit more on what I meant by, "If I lose your readership because of these comments, I didn't want it in the first place."

In some ways, it's nice that we live in a world in which not everyone has the same values. It would be boring otherwise. Our combinations of values make us unique. But then again, you want a certain limit on the deviations of those values. I'm happy to be your friend if you tip 15% or tip 25%, but not if you leave Jack Chick tracts in place of a tip.

If we all had the same values, political debates would come down purely to facts, and they would be boring. They'd go:

Debater 1: We need to stop taxing Americans and spending their hard-earned money on foreign aid. The foreign aid budget makes up 25% of government spending!

Debater 2: No, the foreign aid budget makes up 1% of government spending.

Debater 1: Oh, I see. I misread the chart. That's not so bad, then. Never mind.

But it doesn't work that way. Instead, Debater 1 simply does not agree with the value that the United States ought to give any of its money, raised primarily from income taxes on its citizens, to other countries, no matter what percentage it makes up. Debater 2 thinks that there is strategic value in foreign aid that pays off in an improved world economy and global security. They might still fight over the "facts," but only as weapons to promote their specific values.

We often argue over facts because we don't want to admit our values. Right now, there's a debate going on about how much election fraud there is. The general consensus among people who know seems to be that there's hardly any, and all these laws meant to deter it are a waste of money and a clear attempt to disenfranchise voters. But here's the underlying value that we don't often say: I would oppose voter ID laws even if voter fraud was quite common because I think the greater evil is in disenfranchising voters. The death penalty is another one. It doesn't deter crime and costs more than keeping someone in prison for life. But what if it did deter crime and cost less? I'd still oppose it. My value is the harm of executing a single innocent person outweighs any possible cost savings or deterrent effect.

People on the right do it, too. We have arguments about how many people are killed with guns versus how many are saved with "defensive gun use." But admit it: even if the number people killed were far, far, higher than the number saved, you still wouldn't support gun control because your value is to preserve gun ownership rights. That's fine. I might not agree with the value, but I at least respect its existence. We should be more open when it comes to admitting our values. It saves time. No point arguing the facts if the facts don't matter anyway.

The problem with values, though, is that they're deep-rooted, hard to change, and often very personal. And every so often, when the divide in values is strong enough, you have to take a stand. This is how wars happen. The American Civil War came down basically to values. It ended up wiping an entire value from American society. I've heard presidential candidates say some pretty odious things, but I've never heard one advocate a return to a slave system. What if one did? What if an entire pro-slavery movement sprung up? Right or left, north or south, you'd be willing to stand up and fight against that, wouldn't you? I mean, physically take up arms. What if a group of people in the mid-west believed it was okay to stone a woman to death for adultery? You'd join a march out there and put yourself  between the stone-throwers and her body, wouldn't you? Maybe throw a few stones back at them? I'd happily join you.

Fortunately, most values divides aren't so great that we'd be willing to resort to physical violence (although that itself is a value, and some people are willing to engage in it more readily than others). Instead, we have a host of lesser "solutions" on a fairly long scale. If you think that creationism ought to be taught in schools, I'm not willing to go to war over that, but I won't be marrying you, either. If you believe in de-funding Planned Parenthood, you'll probably be invited to the larger post-Thanksgiving party that my wife and I throw on the following Saturday rather than the more intimate "real" Thanksgiving. If you rail against gay marriage, I won't show up at your house with a baseball bat, but I will unfriend you on Facebook.

If you tend to vote Republican, you're already on the other side of a lot of my values, probably. It's tough to say, because there are a lot of political issues and it's a fairly arbitrary combination of them that coalesce in to the Democratic and Republican platforms. But generally speaking, I don't respect someone's decision to side with a party that seems eager to suppress minority rights, promote religion in schools and government, deny climate change, and slash social programs, not even if you agree with their energy policy. Still, I will and do work with Republicans. I won't get up and leave the table if I find out my dinner companion is a Republican. I'd give one a ride if his car was broken down on the highway.

Supporting Donald Trump, on the other hand--that takes how I feel about supporting Republicans and multiplies it by 10. I'm still not so far on the side of the continuum that I'll go to war over Trump's election, but if you support him, you're cut out of my life. No, it's not because I don't "get" him; it's not because I've been brainwashed by the liberal media; it's because he has shown that his values are so different than mine that we can't coexist in the same America. I'm perfectly happy to admit that he's not the worst person in the world. He doesn't believe in killing gay people, for instance, or hanging people for witchcraft, or re-instituting slavery, or (I don't think, despite what some other anti-Trump people might say) seizing the presidency for life, or refusing to allow women to drive. There are some world leaders that do believe these things. They are demonstrably worse than Trump. But Trump may be, in my sense of values, the worst person to ever receive a major party nomination for president. I say "may" because I'm fuzzy on some of the candidates in the late 1800s. He is as un-American to me as I'm sure I am to him. There is a huge values divide between us. He won't even be invited to the post-Thanksgiving party.

Where does that leave us? I spend a lot of time on this blog. I try to keep it informative and entertaining. It occupies more of my life than it probably should, frankly. It's personal to me. And it's free. You don't have to pay for anything. I make you watch like one ad. You don't know who I am, and I don't know who you are, but when you read my blog, I'm extending a kind of friendship. I'm doing you a kind of favor. If we knew each other in another way, I might connect with you on LinkedIn, or lend you $50 if you needed it.

If you honestly support Donald Trump, then your values are so different from mine that I would disconnect from you on LinkedIn, I wouldn't be inclined to lend you $50, and I don't want you to benefit from the effort that I put into this blog. You are hurting America, hurting the world, hurting me, and thus don't deserve to benefit from a free favor that I'm doing you. I'd help you out of a burning car, but I don't want you sharing this personal part of my life, this personal journey with me. Obviously, there is nothing that I can do to keep you away, but if you support Trump, you are not welcome here. You are not welcome to the fruits of my labor. So keep telling me how I've lost you as a reader. It makes me feel that, if only for me, this post really did some good.