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COTM October: Election Meltdown

COTM October: Election Meltdown

This month we decided to talk about what, well, everyone is talking about.  The US presidential election! All the princesses weigh in on what this election means to them and how they are managing to stay sane in an insane world. 

 

cindy smallWell hi there, blog world. I’m sorry we’ve taken such a lengthy hiatus. There are many excuses of course. Work. Trying to get pregnant. In the case of Ariel, finishing her Ph.D. AND getting married. You know, the usual twenty-something stuff.

I’m glad we’re back together again on the blog to tackle perhaps the biggest, most pervasive current event of the day: America’s 2016 presidential election. This “democratic” shitstorm has been sending shockwaves around the world, so even I, living thousands of miles away in Saudi Arabia, can’t ignore the latest soundbites, commentary, and scandals.

So what do I think about all this? I think it goes without saying that this is probably the worst choice of candidates America has ever had to face. Hillary has some skeletons in her closet and more than a few scandals under her belt, despite being (on paper) quite qualified for the job. I don’t agree with her on more than a few issues, and I’m not entirely comfortable with her alleged crimes, but…Donald Trump.

The sheer magnitude of Trump’s ineptitude is staggering. He is a textbook narcissist, behaves like an impudent child regularly on national television, makes racist, bigoted, and misogynistic comments left and right, is accused of child rape, and has been caught on tape more than once bragging about sexually assaulting women. He is not a true conservative. He is not a respectable statesman. He is not smarter than a fifth grader.

In the face of such a deplorable man attempting to represent our country to the world and drag us down to his level, the choice couldn’t be clearer. I’m voting for Hillary. I’m voting for a Democrat for the first time in my life, and I have absolutely no qualms about that decision. Because…Donald Trump.

I actually believe this is a moral imperative. Evangelicals have struggled, in the worlds of Trump, “bigly” in this election cycle because their default mode is to support Republicans, but Trump so obviously embodies many evils that Christians supposedly stand against. I know people on all sides of this issue. Many, like me, have rejected the Republican party this year (and who knows, perhaps for longer. My disappointment in the party is ‘UGE!) because they dislike and reject Trump, and they are voting for Hillary instead. Others cannot stomach either candidate and are voting 3rd party or abstaining. I respect that option a lot, but the one brand of Evangelical Christian voter I simply can’t abide is the one who continues to stick his head in the sand and support Trump, out of the misguided belief that he will give us the Supreme Court justices we need or repeal Roe v. Wade (HA!).

To me, the moral collapse of the Evangelical voting bloc is the saddest thing to come out of this crazy election. The damage has been done. Let’s just pray Trump is defeated so our country can pick up the pieces and start to move on.

I know I didn’t really answer the question, but maybe I just needed a chance to rant. I actually haven’t had too many interactions with others on this topic, because most people I know hate Trump as much as I do. For those that are still voting for him, I already know there is nothing he could say or do that would make them change their minds. That’s sad, but it’s true. I know my parents and in-laws are still on the fence. We don’t talk about it that much. I hope they make the right decision.

And in case anyone out there cares, here are some links to articles that articulate my feelings about Trump better than I possibly could.

http://www.shannondingle.com/blog//im-pro-life-and-im-voting-for-hillary-heres-why

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/evangelicalpulpit/2016/08/pro-life-strategic-voting-in-this-election/

http://theresurgent.com/coming-to-terms-with-trump/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/07/donald_trump_brags_about_committing_criminal_sexual_assault.html

http://www.christianpost.com/news/trumps-offer-to-christians-is-same-offer-devil-made-christ-168993/

 

snow

Mostly I’ve been dealing with the craziness of this election by not dealing with it. I definitely care about voting but I’ve always hated how divisive politics is and so I generally don’t bring it up with people unless I know that I can trust them to have a civil and polite exchange of ideas.

The problem is,  there really aren’t enough people that I can trust to be civil. All I see typically are people who pick one out of many issues and yell at me that I have to pick or not pick one candidate because of this one thing. That’s what really irritates me the most. Because politics are complex and I like to try and look at the whole picture,  not just one part of it. Every candidate has things that I don’t like or completely agree with,  but I try to think about how the whole system will work with them at the head and who in Congress they will be able to work with and what sort of role they will try to play on the international scene.

However,  I feel like most people that talk about politics around me do not appreciate that complexity( my fellow princesses excluded of course).  What bothers me the most actually is some of my fellow Christians who tell me I have to vote for Donald trump just because he is the pro life candidate. I don’t buy that for so many reasons.  First of all,  he has lied so much,  who knows how he really feels about anything,  including abortion. Second, even if he is pro life, I’m not going to ignore everything else about him to vote for him.  And third and most importantly, there is no such thing as ‘the Christian candidate’. I don’t believe that my church should tell me how to vote. There is a separation of church and state for a reason. I don’t know if anyone remembers this,  but Jesus never got involved in politics. That’s not what he came to do. Obviously, your beliefs are a part of you and they probably influence the way you vote on some things,  but that does not mean that if someone doesn’t vote the same way, they are  not as Christian as you.
In conclusion, I am,  like many people,  sick of this election and ready to move on. I will say the one part I really did enjoy was the act of actually sitting down and filling out ballots with my husband. We sat and took turns reading about different candidates and issues and debating the pros and cons. At least I married someone who I can respectfully talk to about politics.

 

sleeping booty tileThere are so many things that are discouraging about this election season, and it has taken everything in me to fight against them. Once I think I am over one disappointment, I’m faced with another and end up teetering on the verge of saying ‘oh well, I don’t care who wins’ or “my vote doesn’t really matter anyway,” or “maybe there is no hope for any of us.” But I don’t really believe any of those things, and I always come back to the fact that I want to be able to encourage my child or my students or my friends to emulate and take pride in our President.

Whether it is a speech during a tragedy, a boring state dinner, or a shaking hands with the national champions in science projects- I want a President who is thoughtful enough to be kind and composed in those situations, because that is 90% of what a President does. Hillary Clinton would be one of the best at those things, and Donald Trump would be one of the worst, my choice is as simple as that.

For the last year I’ve been actively talking with people about my views, engaging nicely on Facebook or in person because I felt better when I was trying to help. But since spending the last ten days with my grandmother who watches CNN on a loop, I’ve found myself significantly  less willing to engage with others. Listening to the commentary on both sides has been troubling, and I’m exhausted with the pivots and exaggerations that I’ve heard from both camps. There were moments when you could tell that the commentators themselves knew their points on specific issues were weak, but forged ahead anyway because they were getting paid to argue for one side, individual issues irrelevant. When five or so of my relatives all agreed that they weren’t going to vote at all because they didn’t know what to believe, I was at a loss for words to convince them to try. How can I tell them it is worth it to sort through the mess and make a choice when I’m also frustrated with the headlines and bias and all out lies on both sides?

So as a result in these last weeks of the election I’ve found myself more reserved than I’ve been. I avoid the Facebook exchanges and I stay quiet when people say they hate both candidates, even though I’ve wanted to see Hillary Clinton as our president for years. I hate that a small part of me is resigned to the fact that we’ll know either way in a few weeks and it will be over.

But When Donald Trump said he may not accept the results of the election it shook me to my core, as I pictured his threat of revolution and conspiracy theories becoming a reality. How terrible would it be for half the country to be incited to violence and fear and aggression just because of on man’s ego? It just hit me that for the first time in history our election won’t be over in a few weeks, all because of a delusional man who never should have run in the first place.

cropped-little-merskank-tile-e1419318294481.jpgThis election has been insane. As I wrote about before, I have felt some of political stances to have been quietly changing in the last few years- at least partially as a result of living abroad and getting a little distance between myself and American politics. However, if these changes were happening slowly, this year has effectively turned the whole world upside. My new position of sitting in the middle, able to see some good and some bad in the positions and candidates of each party, is just not able to handle the figure of Donald Trump.

Perhaps I am an elitist intellectual but I have a hard time dredging up a grain of respect for this figure. I do have sympathy for some who support him, especially those who feel disenfranchised and forgotten within the current political climate, but I have no sympathy for the man himself. To me, his ideas never appear well thought out and his natural inclination seems to be to ignore reason and to employ the lowest level rhetorical techniques, including yelling, insults, crude jokes. What scares me the most about Trump’s approach is his reliance on telling bold faced lies. There can be evidence on tape of him saying or doing something and he will claim he never did it. He will be told proven facts about something and he will claim that evidence is not true without appeals to any authority. William James, the father of modern psychology once said, ‘There’s nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.’ I recently read an article in the economist which argued that we are moving into a post-truth world, and as scary as that sounds, when figures like Trump are nominated for president of the United States (and supported by at least 40% of the population), I am really worried it’s true.

What makes this election so difficult for me personally, however, is that my mom (and her side of the family) support Trump. I don’t think she has a huge affinity for him and didn’t vote for him in the primary, but she is deeply partisan against the democratic party and definitely thinks that Trump would be better in every way for the good job. My dad’s family has always tended to be liberal and my mom’s conservative. As I said above, I don’t see either side as the chosen or perfect party and I think it has been good for me to grow up exposed to different sorts of opinions. However, it has been difficult for me to watch a person I love and respect support someone whose rhetoric is so vulgar and unreasoned. Honestly, it also scares me, because I value my relationship with my mom a lot and don’t ever want something like politics to put a wedge between us. Right or wrong, I have been doing what I can to avoid talking of politics with her during this election season and hope it can pass without her ever needing to know that I voted for Hilary. Yet I have a sinking feeling that ,no matter how much of a conflict-avoidant coward I am, sometime whether now or sometime further into the future the game will be up, and I am going to have to deal with the fallout. Luckily I have a blog family to sort it through together with!



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