This is my first diary, and 2016 will be the first year I can cast a vote for an American president, after legally residing in the country for 18 years.
I am deeply disappointed that I will, most likely, be casting that vote for Hillary Clinton. Aside from all the valid points against her candidacy, many of which I learned from the knowledgeable people on this site, I have one perhaps philosophical, slightly personal reason not to support her.
I do admire Mrs. Clinton. She is highly successful, extremely intelligent, courageous, strong and an amazing mother. She is certainly more capable than any of the republican clowns for the job, and probably as capable as any other Democrat, but.... but I came to America dreaming of a true democracy, not the blatantly fake one I left behind.
I grew up in Taiwan (Republic of China), mostly through the fake democracy era. The year I was born, President Chiang Kai-Shek died after being the President for 25 years. The presidential "election" had always been indirect and ceremonial, with Chiang Kai-Shek getting over 95% of the votes every time. Rumors were that he was barely conscious toward the end of his life. A couple years after he died in office, his son Chiang Ching-Kuo was "elected" President and remained in office for ten years until he also died in office. To be fair, Mr. Chiang Ching-Kuo was widely accepted as a phenomenal leader who contributed to the "Taiwan Miracle" of economic success and the beginning of a transition to true democracy. Nevertheless, it was by pure luck that Taiwan was not stuck with more generations of dictatorship and nepotism.
When Chiang Ching-Kuo died I was in middle school. The entire country had to mourn for the President. All the students were required to wear a strip of black cloth on the sleeve for a month. When his coffin was transferred from Taipei to the "Resting Place", all the schools along the way forced every student to stand along the route to bid farewell to his corpse. I remember sitting on the side of the road for an entire morning waiting for the funeral procession, and when they did pass by us we all stood up and saluted. The neighboring school "showed more respect" by making all the students kneel by the road as the convoy drove by. This was of course nothing compared to Tian-An-Men, which happened a year later, and we were constantly taught how lucky we were to be living in Taiwan with our democracy, our freedom and prosperity. It was not until decades later that I realized that the democracy part was all a lie. Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.
In the same era, Singapore had Lee Kuan Yew as Prime Minister for 31 years, and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, has been Prime Minister since 2004 till now. Again, Singapore was lucky for its leaders like Taiwan was, but do they have a real democracy? The Philippines got rid of Ferdinand Marcos after 21 years in office, but their current president is Benigo Aquino III, son of former president Corazon Aquino. These are merely a few examples of heritable kingdom dressed up as fake democracy in the corner of the world I grew up in. I am sure there are hundreds more similar situations in modern world history.
Because of our recent experiences, it is common sense to us that the presidency should not be passed around within the same family. Another side effect of growing up in Taiwan is to idolize (almost) all American systems, laws and policies. The way they do it in America must be the right way. This is why it is so shocking to me that George W. Bush was elected president back then. Do the American people not see that electing the son of a former president is, in general, a bad idea? Do the American people not know that power corrupts, and keeping power within the same family corrupts even faster? America was supposed to be the beacon, the standard for democracy for the rest of the world: how can you make the rookie mistake we made in the 70s and 80s?
America is a big country with over 300 million people. Let's say roughly half of those are Democrats: why, out of the 150 million people, do we want to invited the wife of a former president back to be our president? Do we have no one better? Do we have no one similarly qualified without a president in the family? In an ideal world, perhaps the existence of a former president in the family should not hurt or help the chances of Mrs. Clinton's presidency, but in the real world, we should err on the side of hurting than helping those chances. Because we are all human, and power corrupts all humans, and passing presidency around in the family inevitably leads to too much power within too small a circle of people.
It took me 14 years to gain my citizenship in this country. I do not wish that the first time I vote for an American president, I would be casting my vote just to avoid a Jeb Bush presidency. I guess, after all, 2 presidents in one family is better than 3 presidents in one. At home we call this kind of voting "voting with tears and shit". I thought I was leaving all of that behind me.