Upon closer inspection, even Gary Johnson and Jill Stein aren’t people I want to vote for. I have therefore decided I am not going to vote for president this year, at least not as myself.
My mother can no longer vote. She would want to vote for Hillary Clinton. I will, therefore, cast a vote for H.C. on her behalf.
This problem reaches its worst levels during presidential campaign years. It’s particularly bad during 2016.
I don’t like to use terms I did not make up myself for things as important as questions such as these, and so I don’t. Attempted Orthoism rests on a foundation of skepticism, which is a metaphorical lens I try to apply to everything. Skepticism is, of course, essential for anyone who works in science and/or science education, and I am a science teacher. This is why science plays a role in both definitions above.
If you live in one of the states shown in gold, congratulations — both the Trump and Clinton campaigns want your vote, for you live in a “battleground” or “toss-up” state, or at least one that only slightly “leans Democrat” in polls, or “leans Republican.”
The states shown in purple, on the other hand, are taken for granted by one campaign, while the other campaign regards them as “lost causes.” My own state, Arkansas, for example, is solid Trump territory, even though I can’t stand the man. These states don’t offer a competitive race.
In a presidential campaign where most people are voting against someone, rather than voting for anyone, this map is important for strategic voting. In my case, for example, I see the two major parties as offering me a choice between bad (Clinton) and worse (Trump). If I lived in a golden state, I’d probably hold my nose and vote for Clinton, for, in such a state, the urge to stop Trump would compel me to vote against the person with the best chance of beating Trump.
However, my state is purple. It’s solid Trump-turf. Hillary Clinton herself knows she won’t carry Arkansas. My anti-Trump vote is largely symbolic, and, as such, I want to use it to send a message to both the Republican and Democratic parties. It’s a simple message: “give us better choices.” To send such a message, I need to vote for someone else, and there are two major alternatives: Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate (his website is at https://www.johnsonweld.com/), and Dr. Jill Stein, the Green candidate (her website is at http://www.jill2016.com/). To make a statement that the government needs to pay more attention to carbon emission and climate change (and the major parties need to give us better candidates in elections), I’ve decided to vote Green this year.
This same logic would hold true were I in, say, New York, also purple. New York is purple because both candidates know it is a “safe” Clinton state. If I lived there, Clinton would carry that state with or without my vote, so, again, I would cast my protest vote for Jill Stein.
To the majority who live in purple states, and dislike both Trump and Clinton, I ask you to consider casting your vote for either Johnson or Stein. Voters in the golden states, on the other hand, are involved in competitive races, and (pragmatically) should vote for Hillary Clinton if they want to do anything to stop Trump, or vote for Trump if they are willing to vote for anyone to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
It is a shame that votes matter more in some states, and don’t matter as much in others. For this reason, I would favor an Amendment to the Constitution to abolish the electoral college, and choose our presidents by direct popular vote, with a two-person, nationwide runoff election a month later, if the candidate with the most votes only wins a plurality of the popular vote in November.
The current American election cycle was predicted, with amazing accuracy, in the late 20th Century, by Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes. Evidence will follow. We’ll start with ignorance and apathy, both of which are certainly involved in American elections.
Not wanting to vote and not being allowed to vote are, of course, two different things to Calvin.
While he’s being ignorant and apathetic, Calvin is, at least, honest. Honesty is something which we definitely need, and currently do not have, in American politics, from the left or the right.
If only this fictional duo qualified under the Constitution, we’d be facing this choice, which certainly seems better than the choice we actually have:
Watterson understood, well, the corrupting role of money in politics.
The big issue politicians do not talk about enough is the environment. Why do they not devote more energy to that? Money, of course. The love of money drives people to do harmful and irrational things, and this includes things with obviously-negative environmental impact.
He also created numerous cartoons about pollsters and lobbyists, taking them every bit as seriously as these people deserve to be taken.
America has a lot of single-issue voters. They are not safe from Watterson’s satire. This cartoon is as on-target today as it was when it first appeared.
For what purposes was Calvin willing to do research? Could his spray-painting ambitions include negative campaign ads?
I certainly think so.
The next cartoon applies equally well, in my opinion, to the words and actions of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
If the next cartoon doesn’t remind you of the Trump-or-Clinton choice we face, and what an amazing waste of time and energy it is to have to make such an absurd “choice,” please read it again.
![ch110419_thumb[1]](https://robertlovespi.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ch110419_thumb1.gif?w=584)
Finally, here’s Calvin’s invention of the perfect bipartisan slogan for this campaign season, and its nausea-inducing choice between bad (Clinton) and worse (Trump).
“So what?” Indeed.
[To obtain all these cartoons, and many more, I recommend purchasing this boxed set: the complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes.]
This has nothing to do with those other e-mails tied to Hillary Clinton — the ones which have recently been under official investigation, and in the news. It’s a completely different thing: e-mails sent out by her campaign for the White House, and unrelated to her time as Secretary of State.
Other e-mails, entirely too much like this, preceded the “I need you” e-mail I received yesterday. I’ve been making fun of them on Facebook for quite some time, but hadn’t brought them to my blog until now. I’m simply using cropped screenshots from my e-mail account for these pictures, and keeping the e-mail senders, subject lines, and dates together, for each e-mail. If anyone wishes to check the authenticity of these e-mails with the Clinton campaign, that’s fine with me. You’ll find that these e-mails are real (or they’ll lie to you; I can’t rule that out). If lies are told, I’ve got the evidence in my e-mail account, as do many others. This is not a complete set, either; it’s just the most recent of these, um, strange e-mails from her campaign minions.
I don’t know how I got on Hillary Clinton’s presidential-campaign e-mail list, but I am not complaining about it. If I wasn’t on her campaign’s list, after all, I wouldn’t know that all these e-mails are going out, with her name (and sometimes others, as seen above) as the sender, and such things as “re: last night” in the subject line. That would deprive me of this opportunity to use real campaign materials to ridicule a major-party presidential candidate, or, in other words, prevent this particular bit of fun. There were other such e-mails before June 29 — long before, actually — but this is all of this kind of thing I can stand to put on my blog.
To Hillary Clinton (the person, not her campaign staff): Really, H.C.? Do you not monitor your campaign flunkies at all? These e-mails could bring new meaning to the term “madame president,” and I really don’t think they will help you at the ballot box, either.
To Donald Trump, and his ilk: don’t think this means I support you. I don’t.
For whom will I cast my vote, some may wonder? Well, I have it narrowed down to two candidates, but neither of their names appear in this post. For more information regarding where my vote will go, simply click here.
I’m bringing a new topic to my blog. I’m going to attempt to explain things about China, the largest nation in which the Han (that’s the way to write, in English, the Chinese name for the Chinese people, as an ethnic group) form the majority, as well as the largest nation on Earth, by population. The map above comes from this website. If you’re wondering why, in the map above, Taiwan is the same color as the People’s Republic of China, this series of blog-posts is definitely for you. In a future post, I will deal with the historical reasons for the China/Taiwan puzzle, and the current state of that interesting situation. (“May you live in interesting times” is not a nice thing to say directly to any of the Han, by the way, no matter where they live. It is considered by many people to be part of an ancient Chinese curse, although the veracity of this claim is disputed — a topic for another post, later in this series.)
If you find China, Taiwan, puzzles in general, mysteries which are not fictional, history, current events, and/or the Han to be interesting topics, then this irregularly-published series of blog-posts is for you. If you aren’t interested in any of those topics, my assumption is that you wouldn’t have read this far, anyway. To those who miss the other topics about which I blog, don’t worry: posts in this series will not be the only topic I blog about, by any means, for the fact that I am interested in many things, and blog on many topics, is not going to change.
The People’s Republic of China is also known as mainland China, Red China, the PRC, Communist China, or simply “China.” The government of the PRC is often referred to simply as “Beijing,” the city which is the capital of the PRC. Taiwan, by contrast, is officially known as the Republic of China, or the ROC, or even, by some people, “Taiwan, China” (a term I tend not to use). The ROC’s government can be referred to as “Taipei,” the ROC’s capital, to distinguish it from the government in Beijing. My preferred way to refer to the nation-state which is actually under the control of the Beijing government is to call it the PRC, and I use ROC, often, to refer to the nation-state actually under the control of the Taipei government, which most people call Taiwan, a term I also use. When I only write “China,” I mean the PRC. I also use the term “Greater China,” which is explained below.
The Han are in the majority in both the PRC and the ROC, and these two regions are collectively known as “Greater China,” which sounds like, and in some ways actually is, one nation with two governments, since both governments claim to be the only legitimate government of the nation which is all of Greater China (and, yes, that is confusing, along with “China Proper” on the map above). All of these topics: the nations, governments, regions, and people, are mysteries for most people on Earth — and topics for future posts in this series.
I am not of the Han. I do not speak, read, nor write any variety of the Chinese language. Also, I have yet to visit any part of Greater China. By contrast, I am known as a teacher of both science and mathematics, as someone who does “math problems for fun” (as my blog’s heading-cartoon, which I did not write, puts it), as well as a blogger on many topics that have previously had little to do with China, until this post, from yesterday, which analyzed current events worldwide, starting with recent developments in China. I do not want anyone to think I just started studying China yesterday, for that would not be correct. I do feel that I owe anyone who has read this far an explanation for exactly one thing: why should anyone care what I have to say on these subjects? I will explain that in Part II of this ongoing series . . . and tackling the PRC/ROC puzzle will be coming later, as will other topics.
On numerous occasions, I have repeated this experiment, in keeping with the scientific method. I have obtained the same null result as Carlin obtained, each and every time.
Many Americans are experiencing the same dilemma right now — we’re trying to decide whether to vote against Donald Trump for president (by casting a vote “for” Hillary Clinton), or vote against Hillary Clinton (by casting a vote “for” Trump). Voters who actually want to vote for either of the major-party candidates are much rarer, this time, than is typically the case, as recent news stories have documented.
I’ve said for months that I would vote against Trump (again — for I already voted against him once, by voting in my state’s G.O.P. primary election). As November gets closer, though, I am finding the idea of voting against Trump in November, by holding my nose, and casting a vote for Clinton, to be a progressively less palatable idea. I like to have both hands free when I vote, you see, so I’d need to use a clothespin, for my nose, to actually do this. The problem is, of course, that I’m far from alone with my opinions about this election — and I’m not sure exactly how many clothespins we have in the USA. There might actually not be enough for all the “against” votes people intend to cast.
In the face of this potentially-devastating, nationwide clothespin shortage, I finally decided to do something else: look for someone I can actually vote for, in good conscience, without fear of being horribly embarrassed by my vote within days of our new president taking the oath of office.
I didn’t find one such person. I actually found two. (Image source: here.)
I’m not a Libertarian, nor am I a member of the Green Party. Having examined both of these candidates, though, I find that I agree with each of them on many things, and disagree with them on a smaller number of issues. The major thing they have in common is also their major political “selling point” in this election — not being Trump, nor Clinton.
Once I make a decision between Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, I will have accomplished two things which are important to me: (1) finding someone to actually vote for, rather than casting a 100% “against” vote, and (2) finding a way to vote against the two major-party candidates — both of them — at the same time.
While comments on this post are welcome, please don’t simply point out to me that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will almost certainly win the election in November. This is something I already know, and it does not affect my decision. Either of them could win in November . . . but neither of them will get any help from me to do so.
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