It’s 2016, and I live in a nice house, in nice suburb, of a nice town, in the Southeast region of the United States of America. I have an awesome husband and two awesome college-age daughters, and a cat who is definitely trying to kill us while being super cute. I’ve been told that I would ‘see the light’ and become Republican once I had ‘real money’ and was an adult. Well, here I am pushing 40, living in a six-figure income household, and paying more in taxes than most Americans earn in a year.
And here I am wondering if there were citizens of Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s who were already starting to wonder about the direction that their fellow countrymen were being led? People who were already coming to the conclusion that Martin Niemöller eventually came to?
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
It’s worth noting that Niemöller supported Hitler initially. While he had a few misgivings about certain points, he believed himself a patriot who was advocating for an overall betterment of his nation, and he believed it when the Nazis said that there wouldn’t really be anything extreme against any group. It wasn’t until he found himself locked up in a concentration camp that he had plenty of time to reflect on his life choices. He candidly admitted later that Hitler had certainly “betrayed him”, and he wrote the lines above after his release.
So, I can’t help but wonder about those who fervently cling to and defend Trump despite all evidence that he is a truly awful example of humanity. Is it due to hatred of “those people”? Is it just some deep-seated fear of “the others”? Is there some deep emotional motivation that makes them buy into the propaganda spewed by Fox News these days?
I admit that I’m alarmed that we seem to be promoting some sort of family legacy type business in choosing our leaders. I mean, are we really just going to trade out Bushes and Clintons and have a couple of ‘ruling families’ for years? Seriously? So, I wasn’t exactly tickled when we ended up with these two candidates.
I also think the two-party system is downright ludicrous for a country as diverse and large as America. It makes no sense to suppose that the opinions and needs of 260+ million people can somehow be distilled down to two platforms. The Electoral College also bothers me – most people can read now (even if they choose not to), and we live in the information age – so, there is just no valid reason to keep on with such foolishness. Personally, I tend to identify more closely with the platforms of ‘third party’ candidates, and I think labels only damage and divide us. I truly DESPISE the two-party system which only serves to keep money as the main component of our political process.
But, here we are. With the system we have, flawed though it may be. Since I have a REALLY hard time dealing with a pompous ass who doesn’t even speak in complete sentences, I had to get busy and do some research to determine just what I could cope with. This turns out to be a shockingly time consuming endeavor. I should go ahead and admit that lately, my house is a wreck, and laundry is piling up. While neglecting all that, what I am doing is reading the entire report on Hillary’s emails, compiling statistics on embassy attacks (yes, I know that’s already been done by others), and trying to really determine if I’m the one being duped these days. This stuff is all public record, and you can get it yourself, without being fed little tidbits by pundits and ‘news’ outlets.
I then moved into the ‘wait, is this for real?’ phase. I realize that the Benghazi issue is a heartbreaking and tragic case of numerous people (not only Hillary) in high-powered positions making judgement calls based on the information at the time, which obviously turned out to be not the right calls. It upsets me, and all of the objective evidence (some of which is, ironically, contained in ‘the emails’) indicates that those involved are also deeply upset. I’d like to challenge anyone who has been in the same profession for over 30 years, in a position of any power whatsoever, to tell me that there has never been a point where they looked back and thought they might have taken a different approach if they’d only had a crystal ball.
The email report is even more ridiculous. It might be an HR issue, as it does appear that some guidelines weren’t followed, but no laws were broken. The report even explicitly acknowledges that these lengthy guidelines weren’t well communicated and certainly had never been consistently enforced. Indeed, the servers on which Hillary’s emails were hosted may have been MORE secure than what the government had available at the time (there’s no evidence of a hack, but there is evidence that the administrator shut things down when there was even a threat).
The deeper issue is why hadn’t our government policies yet evolved to allow our leaders to be able to conduct business and communicate in the modern way at that point? Why hadn’t our government already taken steps to both get work done and be able to enforce those guidelines? It wasn’t until after Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State that some of these guidelines became law, and some of the systems were brought into the modern age of technology. Guess who pushed for that to happen? It certainly wasn’t an obstructionist and largely Republican Congress. Speaking of technology in our government, check out Obama team member Haley Van Dyck. This is the kind of innovation and progress we need to be ‘great’ as a nation, and one big reason I did not vote for the ‘old, established’ candidate in 2008 or 2012.
My real question is this: why on earth AREN’T we scrutinizing ALL of our politicians and elected officials to the same degree as Hillary? Maybe it’s because we’d rather not take the time to read all of this. Perhaps we’d rather be entertained by drama and mud-slinging, and scripted ‘reality’. It is so much easier to have nice little comforting lies told to us that allow us to blame someone else for all of our problems than to have to analyze the complicated realities of life as flawed humans. It is indeed uncomfortable to have to face up to our own shortcomings and selfishness. It is quite uncomfortable to be told that we should be better, and that we should put in the work to do better.
Maybe we’d all be bummed out if we had to get busy and actually think. It’s so much easier to just believe it must be ‘the immigrants’, or ‘the Muslims’, or ‘the Mexicans’, or ‘the refugees’ to blame for everything we don’t really like in our lives.
I mentioned that I live in the Southeast United States. So, I’m used to disagreeing with the majority of my colleagues and neighbors and extended family. I accept this, and for much of my adult life have mainly held by tongue and let it go – I won’t change their minds, and they won’t change mine. I care too much and get too upset to engage with the kinds of attitudes I often encounter around here. So, I’ve ‘agreed to disagree’ many times. And I’m still good with disagreeing all day long on many things, like whether we should increase the minimum wage, whether it’s the consumer or the business owner who ‘creates jobs’, on the proper tax policies, etc. I get that are some folks who have been convinced that their religion should be imposed on others. I disagree with that too.
But this time, there’s so much more than ‘disagreement’. My conscience won’t allow me to just shut up anymore. I can’t respect someone who will vote for a person who blatantly brags about using his power to attack and violate women. Especially when his defense against those who come forward to tell their stories is something along the lines of ‘she’s not pretty enough for me to have attacked her’. My conscience won’t allow me to stay silent when someone advocates building bogus walls, or locking up millions of American citizens because they are Muslim or some other label he’s chosen to lash out against.
Especially when this is the same guy who can’t even muster up basic sympathy, let alone actual respect, for the brave men and women who signed up to do their duty and defend our country and the right of all of us to disagree as we see fit. We have a Presidential candidate who regards a Purple Heart medal as a trinket he’s ‘always wanted’ (cue my WWII vet grandfather who earned three Purple Hearts rolling over in his grave), and has no qualms about belittling the sacrifice of one who gave all. If you can’t even PRETEND to have respect for our soldiers, what kind of Commander in Chief might you become?
What makes America “great” is that we are supposed to be a nation where people can live their lives as they see fit, without fear of retribution from our government or our fellow countrymen. This doesn’t mean anything goes, and we draw the line at the point where it affects the freedoms of someone else. That’s why we’re NOT OK with murder, theft, rape, assault, slavery, lynchings, and internment camps. To me, being American means not only exercising our freedoms, but defending the freedoms of others. We are not truly free until we are ALL free. A candidate for the top office who is only interested in the fate of a select few is not truly American in my book.
I’ve learned that I sure can wholeheartedly support Hillary Clinton. Years and years of witch-hunts, innuendo, propaganda, and lies have turned up nothing other than the fact that she’s an actual human being with all the flaws that entails. She’s consistently rated among the most honest of the politicians we know these days. You can find all of the conspiracy theory and spin in the world, but none of it holds up to actual fact-checking and analysis, especially when you go out and find the full story, or the full speech, or the full report.
To paraphrase Mr. Niemöller’s hindsights:
First he came for the Mexicans, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Mexican.
Then he came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Muslim.
Then he came for the refugees, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a refugee.
When he comes for me—there may be no one left to speak.
So, #ImWithHer, because I don’t want to wait for hindsight.