[recorded and transcribed to email]
Tuesday 8no16 – 7 PM CST
Dear Family & Friends —
It has been my custom every 4 years since 1972 to put a shout out just before the election and tell you all how to vote. That year I recall telling Aunt Cookie that Tricky Dick Nixon was a crook with spooks snooping Dems… she was taken aback, couldn’t believe such a thing of the President. Of course it was true, and I’ve been right every time since, regardless of the outcome. 😉
This time I’m late, embroiled in a wrenching project that crashed and burned just yesterday, so this essay is composed on a digital recorder as the polls are closing, en route to a friend’s place to watch the returns. Too late to change anyone’s mind, but it’s a panoramic view of this loaded moment… in a few hours we will know.
[[]] This unprecedented presidential election presents a double-bind between the two most distrusted candidates in history. On these sentiments, I agree with both sides. Pundits have ployed to explain this on the waves and fads of voter passion, preference and indifference — the media these days are fixated on popularity contests, but i have hard political answers.
•• Hillary rode the entrenched ‘Centrist Democratic Machine’ that has been in place since hubby Bill strangely united the Blue-collar South and the Blue States in 1992. Their emergent fallacy was to conjure up a statistical mean between liberal and conservative views, to capture the presumed masses of “average” voters on some calculated common ground, where nobody really lives: They have kept playing to the non-existent middle in a polarized country for 25 years, as if to revive that coalition that Bill Clinton embodied — but it’s not 1992 after 12 years of Reagan & Bush I, and they are not Bill.
Bernie Sanders understood this and mobilized the forsaken progressive base to win 21 states in the primaries… Hillary pivoted left to co-opt him and used the Machine to stop him, then predictably veered to the right against Trump. I’m no fan, but I don’t hate her either: She’s not a criminal, just an ambitious overripe yuppie who has attached herself to populist ideas of others and dressed for success.
I don’t forget that she was on-board when Bill pulled a 180-reversal on NAFTA 5 months into office, then pushed the Omnibus Crime Bill, ramped up police forces, filled up prisons, and deregulated the banks — abandoning his base and giving Repugnicans everything they wanted, while they crushed health care initiatives and impeached him over Monica’s blowjob. I am very concerned that she will continue to appease Wall Street and warmongers in some construct of compromise.
•• Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a demonstrated narcissist and sociopath. Some who pose as comparatively “sensible” Repugnicans have tried to cast him as an anomaly in the GOP… Not So:
In fact his antics and hyperboles are no more than the same right-wing dogma in bizarre caricature. He echoes the same sanctimonious buzzwords, dog-whistle racism, law-&-order paranoia, and oligopoly economics that they have espoused for years, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Of course the media has never pierced through to the issues — on which basis no election would ever be close, because they need a phony horse-race to clean up on political ads. But the fact that Trump caught on at all is a frightening mystery of American culture and ontology: If nearly half of the voting public actually believes that this pathological liar “tells it like it is”, we are in deep trouble.
[[]] Given the choice between Hillary and Donald, decide between the mundane and the insane. Gripe about her flaws & faux-pas, but she is competent and has been known to listen to reason, and to those in need. This cannot be said of Trump who hears nothing but the echoes of his theatrics and self-adulation. He is obviousy adept at playing to the sentiments of the lunatic fringe on the right, and they have elevated his candidacy. Between the two of them my choice is clear:
Yeah, Hillary’s hackneyed banter is boring, the ‘New-Age’ spin on old ‘New Deal’ polemics, but there is a sense of common good and a chance of holding her accountable. Stakeholders will have to lean on her hard; she’ll have no long honeymoon, as loyal followers foolishly extended to Obama.
I do not want to wake up to Trump’s vigilante feudalism. If he somehow ascends the throne, I will man the barricades because it’s going to get ugly — he will crank up police powers against speech and quell dissent in the name of antiterrorism. We will have to fight for this freedom again.
If anyone’s still confused between these two miscreants, just think about who their friends are… Hillary’s are a lot nicer, more generous and interesting, and much more fun at your barbeque.
Of course in California it will not even be close, and with no risk of tllting electors to Trump, you have the luxury of actually voting for what you believe in — hopefully a conscientious future, not a mindless past or more of the same. To this end I would put forth the media-neglected Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein — strong on rights, environment, climate, energy, education, and Peace.
http://www.Jill2016.com/
I am a bit partial to this stand-up Sister because I’ve known her since we were 11, studied, partied, and graduated together from Highland Park H.S., Class of ’68. i can attest to her brightness and earnest stellar character, going on to Radcliffe and all… but she was also the lead singer in the first all-girl rock-&-roll band ever, all classmates in 1966! — a great qualification for high office.
We all figured she might be President some day… I voted for her.
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By the time you read this, the election will be over, you will know the results and my notions will be moot. With apologies, I’ve been in a desperate legal fight to save a non-profit community site in St. Louis, and we just tragically lost — because lawyers screwed things up, as usual.
Right now I am shattered, and acutely aware of the opportunity costs incurred when doing the right thing suffers defeat… the whole nation faces such a moment now.
Love and Respect,
_scottie addison__
St. Loo, Mizzoo
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“Today intelligence is neither recognized nor rewarded, but is being systematically extinguished in a growing flood of brazenly flaunted irrationality.” – Ayn Rand