No one who represents me
It’s obvious from the art here that I do not like our presidential choices this year. Even more, I don’t like feeling bullied and spoken down to as both conventions, columnists and many Facebook posts have made me feel. If Trump represents your views, fine, you should vote for him. If Hillary stands for the same things you stand for, then she’s your candidate. Please respect my choice not to vote for either.The year I turned 18 was a presidential election year. It was also a re-election year for my father as county sheriff. That meant that I had to register to vote in his party, the Grand Old Party, so I could help him keep his job. Politics was always a dirty word in my family. My mother hated it, but my father had to play the game to stay employed. He was a good man, and a fair and honest sheriff, so he had no trouble winning re-election every four years until he retired. Despite that, he had to reluctantly play along with the county political machine.My family’s political reticence, and my mother’s cyclical fears that a whim could rob our family of its security, has followed me through life. Fortunately, my husband’s job is not tied to elections and neither of us have ever had to be politically active. I did, however, change my registration in 2000 when a woman I knew only through school volunteer work saw me at a children’s soccer game and announced that she had been planning to call me to help her on the Bush campaign. I was appalled. How could this near stranger think she knew anything about my political beliefs? Of course – party people get the rolls of registrants. From that moment, I decided that I did not want anyone anywhere ever again thinking they knew what I thought about anything. I changed my registration to independent even though in Pennsylvania that meant giving up my primary voting privileges. I think I have honored that designation by carefully considering all candidates and what they stand for, and voting for many different parties in every election since.My husband and I don’t usually agree on politics, however, and I dislike that a lot. We agree on social issues, but he scoffs at my big heart and leftward leanings, while I cringe at his more conservative fiscal ideas even though I reluctantly acknowledge their validity in avoiding creation of more minorities and a total welfare state.This election year has been miserable for both of us. Neither of us found candidates that fit our beliefs and ideals. We both find both nominated candidates to be dishonest, egotistical, and unfit to lead our country.As I write this, I am sitting in a coffee shop in Ludlow, Vermont, where Bernie holds the hearts and votes of many people. A spirited discussion about third party politics just about ended in fisticuffs when an outspoken third party advocate called Bernie a sellout before upsetting a man who intends to vote for Trump who was in the café with his young son. The father asked the guy, who was a veteran arguing for 2nd amendment protection (I know it seems like an oxymoron to support both Bernie and gun rights, but that was his position), to keep his mouth shut around his son. It got ugly.Never in my memory has an election been so fractious. It has brought out the worst in not only the candidates, but also the people. Neither candidate truly represents what average voters want. I’ve seen people on both sides using Facebook to scold and bully their friends whose beliefs don’t match theirs. It’s made me like some people a little less. That’s sad.It’s also sad and demoralizing that I am being pandered to as a female voter. Hillary supporters say that I will be letting down women if I don’t get behind her. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and feminist icon Gloria Steinem shamed women who supported Bernie instead of getting behind Hillary. “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” Albright chided voters in February when Bernie was surging.I’m perplexed about how Hillary is seen as a good feminist choice. In my mind, standing by and protecting a philandering husband to advance her own political aspirations does not equate with feminism. Attacking the woman with whom he cavorted while excusing him also does not advance women’s rights. Accepting money from big corporations and playing with the big boys of politics is just playing their game, which is not the same as feminism. The platform put forth by these so-called feminists is that one can only be a feminist by doing what they say – in other words by conforming. I would rather define feminism as the right for everyone to make his or her own educated and informed choices, and to vote for the person who best represents his or her beliefs and views regardless of gender. To vote for a woman simply because she is a woman is just stupid and in contradiction to everything feminism should stand for.On the other hand, Donald Trump represents all that is evil. A failed businessman, a failed husband, an inappropriate bully, he is a ticking time bomb. Yet, he represents the discontent so many Americans have with politics as usual. They want change. They want a live wire to shake it up.I am not satisfied with what the primaries have offered me. I realize that was the risk I took by registering independent, but if as I suspect – and as today’s coffee shop debate revealed before it got ugly – many others also want a third party candidate, this is the year to band together and truly change American politics. It is not shameful or a throwaway as the recent conventions would lead us to believe to register dissatisfaction with the process by voting third party. Columnists and friends who say it is amoral not to vote for one of the major party candidates haven’t considered that some voters can’t support either of the two-party candidates. Voting for one of them would be amoral to us. We shouldn’t have to feel forced to vote merely to stop someone else from winning. We should be able to vote for a candidate who represents our ideals. If all others who feel the same way followed their beliefs, we could change an outdated two-party and electoral college system. It’s time.Photo credits:Hillary photo: http://www.cafepress.com/+no_hillary_clinton_circle_slash_calendar_print,1636878052Trump photo: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2016-Anti-Donald-Trump-2-1-4-Satirical-Dump-Trump-Political-Button-Pin-01-/262107277013