This is a true statement - I don't actually have to tell people that I think they're wrong. It's obnoxious. So I'll stop posting on people's Jill Stein posts. Instead, I shall take to my blog.
To wit: I can't with Jill Stein. I just cannot. The more people tell me why they hate HRC, the more convinced I become that to her haters she is what they've decided she is more than she is what she is (that was a deep statement. I am a deep person). In various exchanges on social media, I have been assured that HRC is a war criminal and that she is corrupt and soon to be indicted any day now. She is not a war criminal and people have got to stop throwing that term around so liberally. Furthermore, the Republican party has dedicated their considerable resources for over 25 years now, with laser-like focus, to indict or charge her in some way. They've been unsuccessful because she is fundamentally honest. Hillary Clinton listens to people and adapts and changes when she is convinced to do so. She is brilliant and she is open-minded. She has changed positions, just as we all have. The fact that she does not remain entrenched, eternally convinced of her own correctitude, is a feature not a bug. Hillary Clinton is good at working with people. She is good at getting shit done.
But even more that that - even if you think I'm fundamentally wrong and that a vote for Hillary Clinton is nothing more than a vote for a status quo that will make the rich richer and the poor poorer - y'all, we have Done This Dance Before.
In the year 2000, I had many friends and colleagues who refused to vote for Al Gore because they were not, by god, going to play into this lesser-of-two-evils, neoliberal bullshit anymore! And, yes, I know that there is a case to be made that the ensuing eight years were not the fault of the Nader voters, that the election was actually stolen (unlike, not for nothing, the 2016 democratic primary vote), and that Al Gore should have fought harder.
But the Nader voters didn't help. Had they cast their votes for Al Gore, he would have won. Imagine now where we'd be now. Imagine what the world would be like without Cheney's Excellent Adventures in Iraq. Think of where we could be now if we hadn't lost eight years on Climate Change. Think about that.
And now think about this: Donald Trump is so much worse than George W. Bush. Even outside of his vile racism and vile misogyny, this is a man who is radically unconcerned with anything outside of his own enormous (yuge!) ego. You would risk - and Jill Stein would have you risk - putting the nuclear codes into the tiny hands of Donald Trump.
Remember this?
Even if you think we're standing in an open grave (and I do not think this is a valid assessment of America), let's not invite the rain in on top. Shit, let's not invite the ground to open up and swallow us into a sea of combovered effluvia and self-tanner. Also nuclear winter.
Do you believe that you can maintain the purity of your vote and we'll still end up without President Trump? Is that it? If so, I have some friends over in Great Britain you might want to talk to.
If you think the democratic party is insufficiently liberal and you want a third party, then, for the love of god, work on this at the municipal and state level. Look to your politically opposite (if, I'm just gonna say it, dispositionally similar) pals from the tea party. They didn't get their political power by putting someone in the White House. They got it by putting lots of someones in lots of city, state and congressional seats and now they're driving the clown car.
Do not, for the love of the entire Mel Brooks oeuvre, help to make Donald Trump our Commander-in-Chief.
This is, perhaps, an apt metaphor:
