I have been reading again the Harry Potter series, which I am increasingly convinced may be the best series of books written since the Bible. In the wizarding world there are three unforgivable curses, for which a wizard will go to Azkaban: the Imperius curse, in which one controls another person; the Cruciatus curse, in which one causes another person unspeakable pain; and finally the Killing curse (Avada Kedavra), in which one kills another.
I am starting to wonder whether our country is living within this wizarding world and whether or not Voldemort has taken over. Consider: the people who are excited about either candidate, Trump especially, must be under the Imperius curse...is there any other explanation for the behavior that people have in supporting these candidates? Their actions and the actions of the candidates is casting upon the rest of us the Cruciatus curse...it's really painful to watch; we are all scarred by what is happening. And if Trump should happen to win, dare we say that we will all be under the Killing curse? I really fear that if Trump wins this country will be irrevocably broken, and if he loses his supporters will soon break it. Death to America seems to no longer be the chant of Muslim extremists.
Fortunately those books and those curses are not real, are they? Yet right now they certainly feel real.
Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Monday, October 10, 2016
Unavoidable
Four weeks ago I was sick of the election, not just the candidates but the social media crapfest in which we heard nothing but the very worst about two of the worst candidates of all time. And so I decided to jump off Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to take an eight week 'fast'. Perhaps it was also a recognition that I was looking at these things too much. I had thought it would be a total social media fast, but of course I am still blogging and checking email and reading the news. A mini-fast, I suppose.
Of course, I have found out that my plans were naive. Nowhere can I get away from this election...waiting around hospital surgical waiting room C-Span feeds from political rallies were on the TV. Every news story is about the most recent abomination that Trump has spouted, or about some new potential scandal of the Clintons. A friend of mine was telling me about therir vacation cabin having new TV and I was at first envious, before I recognized that I get most of my news from elsewhere.
I used to have this dream back in my single days ending up in some unelectrified cabin and living out my days as a hermit...maybe that still should still be a future bucket list goal. As it is now, I'm just as annoyed as I was a month ago. Let it be over.
Monday, September 26, 2016
A Poor Pool of Potential Presidents
Do you feel qualified to be President? Sure...you may be over 35 and born a citizen. Constitutionally, you are qualified.
But going by more than just a legal definition, I am becoming increasingly convinced that there are not a lot of human beings that are capable of handling this job. How many? In a nation of 300 million, maybe 300.
Think about what it means to be President...you have to have an intimate knowledge of all workings of government, not just the stuff that ends up on the news every night. You have to have a temperament that allows you to multi-task, work hard, not get frustrated, not quit, and again multi-task to the point that you can juggle a hundred balls in the air at once, because, you are the Decider. You have to be relatively free of scandal, both real and perceived. And you have to have the intelligence that only a few people have, tempered by the wisdom of age and experience.
For all the cries that people have that 'I don't want a politician!' to be president, don't we want somebody who knows what is going on? Somebody who has paid their dues? Somebody whose life has not been a celebration of self-interest but public service? I know...it's easy to say we don't want somebody who knows what the job will really involve. But would you want a CEO who has no knowledge of their industry and thus only sees the bottom line, not customers or products or employees? Would you want a major league baseball manager who doesn't know the techniques of bat control or the ins and outs of handling a multi-national clubhouse? Would you want a preacher who just recently started to study Scripture?
Being qualified matters...and likely there are very few who are truly qualified. The biggest mark against Obama was his lack of experience, and while he has done well given his inexperience (remember, he had been a state senator less than 10 seasons before becoming president!), one wonders whether or not he might have been a great president with a little more seasoning. I am thinking that being a Governor, Senator, or Cabinet secretary should be the minimum requirement; more than one of those is likely needed to get both the executive experience and the overall knowledge needed. So how many are left who have done this...300? This doesn't even begin to phase out those who were dunderheads or bad at their job; these usually get sorted out quick enough in the primaries.
And so this leads us to our election...we have two people who have a chance to win. I am voting for neither, instead deciding to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who was once a governor. I wish he could win, but he can't get above about 12% so he has little or no shot. The other two candidates are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. One has vast experience, as a first lady (don't tell me that doesn't help somebody know what to expect), Senator, and Cabinet secretary. Is she scandal-prone? Absolutely. Do I like her? No. But compared to the alternative, who has no experience, no willingness to learn, and nothing to indicate anything beyond a concern with himself, and I'll take Hillary any day of the week, even when I don't always agree with her policies.
A Hillary presidency will be...not fun. But a Trump presidency? Get the fire extinguishers ready, because the mother of all dumpster fires is coming.
But going by more than just a legal definition, I am becoming increasingly convinced that there are not a lot of human beings that are capable of handling this job. How many? In a nation of 300 million, maybe 300.
Think about what it means to be President...you have to have an intimate knowledge of all workings of government, not just the stuff that ends up on the news every night. You have to have a temperament that allows you to multi-task, work hard, not get frustrated, not quit, and again multi-task to the point that you can juggle a hundred balls in the air at once, because, you are the Decider. You have to be relatively free of scandal, both real and perceived. And you have to have the intelligence that only a few people have, tempered by the wisdom of age and experience.
For all the cries that people have that 'I don't want a politician!' to be president, don't we want somebody who knows what is going on? Somebody who has paid their dues? Somebody whose life has not been a celebration of self-interest but public service? I know...it's easy to say we don't want somebody who knows what the job will really involve. But would you want a CEO who has no knowledge of their industry and thus only sees the bottom line, not customers or products or employees? Would you want a major league baseball manager who doesn't know the techniques of bat control or the ins and outs of handling a multi-national clubhouse? Would you want a preacher who just recently started to study Scripture?
Being qualified matters...and likely there are very few who are truly qualified. The biggest mark against Obama was his lack of experience, and while he has done well given his inexperience (remember, he had been a state senator less than 10 seasons before becoming president!), one wonders whether or not he might have been a great president with a little more seasoning. I am thinking that being a Governor, Senator, or Cabinet secretary should be the minimum requirement; more than one of those is likely needed to get both the executive experience and the overall knowledge needed. So how many are left who have done this...300? This doesn't even begin to phase out those who were dunderheads or bad at their job; these usually get sorted out quick enough in the primaries.
And so this leads us to our election...we have two people who have a chance to win. I am voting for neither, instead deciding to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who was once a governor. I wish he could win, but he can't get above about 12% so he has little or no shot. The other two candidates are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. One has vast experience, as a first lady (don't tell me that doesn't help somebody know what to expect), Senator, and Cabinet secretary. Is she scandal-prone? Absolutely. Do I like her? No. But compared to the alternative, who has no experience, no willingness to learn, and nothing to indicate anything beyond a concern with himself, and I'll take Hillary any day of the week, even when I don't always agree with her policies.
A Hillary presidency will be...not fun. But a Trump presidency? Get the fire extinguishers ready, because the mother of all dumpster fires is coming.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Hillary, her haters, and my vote
So this week Hillary Clinton was declined to be prosecuted for not getting her email server security up to snuff. Her haters have been having a field day with this...'If she were anybody else she'd be in jail right now!', even though the FBI director is a Republican appointment and has nothing to lose by going after her. I get the hatred, though...25 years of the Clintons, and it seems like they keep getting away with stuff. Whitewater, Monica, Vince Foster, the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi...forget Reagan, these are truly the teflon presidents! Clinton fatigue has already set in, and she's not even president yet.
Of course, once again we have a situation in which people are outraged because they things they have been told on Breitbart or Fox News or Rush Limbaugh have once again been false. They have a sense of reality that is not really real, and so they believe that the system is rigged. But just as you may have a right to your own opinion but not your own facts, so also you do not get to believe absolutely that your view of the world must be so.
What's funny about this is that different polls have been done asking essentially, "Do you believe that a leader sometimes needs to break the rules to get things done?" And almost universally Trump supporters say yes, even as they are screaming for Hillary to go to jail. Hillary broke rules about the proper protocols for her email servers...shouldn't conservatives be praising her for going outside Big Government rules? In the end, this is a about 2 (1-10 scale) in the world of real scandals. The Donald smashes that number each week.
Yet this week has also made me realize something...as much as I despise Donald Trump, and think that Hillary Clinton in a vacuum would be a decent president (though I think she's too much of a hawk and is too close to big business), I just can't support her. This week was a preview of what the next four years is going to look like with a Hillary presidency...scandal after perceived scandal after near scandal. If this presidency is a rerun of Bill Clinton's presidency, it's a wonder that anything can get done between all the damage control. 2020 would likely be set up to be a Republican landslide.
So, who will I vote for? Four years ago I declined to vote since this is the reddest of red states. But this year I think there's a chance that many of the right-wing policies of Brownback and the Koch Brothers in Kansas may get beaten...mostly I will vote for non-incumbents, meaning Democrats since they are about the only options in most elections (though I'm not a big fan of the party). Yet for Presidency, there are many options...and at this point I am leaning towards Gary Johnson & William Weld, the Libertarian ticket. Generally I am sympathetic towards libertarianism (when it doesn't go crazy with free market economics and nakedly support the wealth class), and they have a chance to make a real difference this election. They still won't win...but it would be nice to not have to support the lesser of two evils.
Of course, once again we have a situation in which people are outraged because they things they have been told on Breitbart or Fox News or Rush Limbaugh have once again been false. They have a sense of reality that is not really real, and so they believe that the system is rigged. But just as you may have a right to your own opinion but not your own facts, so also you do not get to believe absolutely that your view of the world must be so.
What's funny about this is that different polls have been done asking essentially, "Do you believe that a leader sometimes needs to break the rules to get things done?" And almost universally Trump supporters say yes, even as they are screaming for Hillary to go to jail. Hillary broke rules about the proper protocols for her email servers...shouldn't conservatives be praising her for going outside Big Government rules? In the end, this is a about 2 (1-10 scale) in the world of real scandals. The Donald smashes that number each week.
Yet this week has also made me realize something...as much as I despise Donald Trump, and think that Hillary Clinton in a vacuum would be a decent president (though I think she's too much of a hawk and is too close to big business), I just can't support her. This week was a preview of what the next four years is going to look like with a Hillary presidency...scandal after perceived scandal after near scandal. If this presidency is a rerun of Bill Clinton's presidency, it's a wonder that anything can get done between all the damage control. 2020 would likely be set up to be a Republican landslide.
So, who will I vote for? Four years ago I declined to vote since this is the reddest of red states. But this year I think there's a chance that many of the right-wing policies of Brownback and the Koch Brothers in Kansas may get beaten...mostly I will vote for non-incumbents, meaning Democrats since they are about the only options in most elections (though I'm not a big fan of the party). Yet for Presidency, there are many options...and at this point I am leaning towards Gary Johnson & William Weld, the Libertarian ticket. Generally I am sympathetic towards libertarianism (when it doesn't go crazy with free market economics and nakedly support the wealth class), and they have a chance to make a real difference this election. They still won't win...but it would be nice to not have to support the lesser of two evils.
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