Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Thoughts on the 2016 Presidential Options

I can agree that Trump has all sorts of faults, what I can't agree with is that Hillary is a better choice.  She has publicly committed a long list of felonies, removing classified information from a secure environment, destruction of evidence, gross negligence, obstruction of justice, etc.  There are lots of records of her lying about things, even Democrats appear to know that she can't be trust.  I don't know if Trump can be trusted, but I KNOW that Hillary can not be.

Conservatives have not been focusing their attacks on Hillary supporters, only Hillary herself.  Liberals have been attacking Trump supporters throughout the campaign.  By labeling anyone who supports Trump as a racist bigot, liberals have dismissed any of the other legitimate issues that those people are concerned about.

Trump may hold some racist views, but I don't care too much about that, and apparently MOST other people don't either.  He probably represents views prevalent among those his age, and while people may disagree with those views, that obviously doesn't disqualify him from being president.  Racism is not an important issue to Trump's supporters.  It is to Democrats, but they make the incorrect jump to conclude that anyone who doesn't think that racism is an important enough issue to disqualify Trump must be a racist.  I make a similar claim about Hillary being a criminal.  If anyone doesn't think it matters that Hillary has openly violated laws, we can see that they don't think that criminal behavior is an important disqualifying issue.  But it would be incorrect to conclude that all Hillary supporters must be criminals themselves.

Besides the issues with Hillary personally, which I see as potentially canceling out the issues with Trump personally, let's look at their claimed visions for America.  Hillary wants the US government to try to take control of everything from your paycheck to your healthcare to your guns to the global climate.  Trump wants to bring jobs back to the US, he wants to stop illegal immigration, and scale back government regulation.  Whether he will be able to accomplish much of that is subject to debate, but at least he claims to be trying to move in that direction.

Ironically, as a resident of California, my vote doesn't count anyway, as Democrats will win this state by a 2:1 margin until something even more dramatic happens.  I voted Libertarian, primarily to protest the two party system, not because I think Gary Johnson would be much better of a President.  I would have voted Republican to show support for their more conservative platform if there had been a shred of evidence that it could possibly make a difference.