Skip to main content

Post-convention

I really don't want to spend much more time thinking about this election but with both conventions wrapped up, the moment calls for some comment.

I'm voting for Hillary.

I doubt this will come as surprise to anyone who's met me or read much of this blog but this isn't even close. I hear those who feel as though they cannot vote for Hillary because their views conflict with hers or they don't trust her or whatever. I find such arguments utterly unmoving. As Bernie himself once said, "On her worst day, Hillary is 1000 times better than Trump."

By now, the truth of those words must be obvious to anyone willing to look at the situation with clear eyes. The man has no shame, no sense of decency, and no ability to change. He is what he is.

If that was it, and his opponent was some random Democrat I would relish the chance to vote against him. I consider that act to be a powerful affirmation of everything I want this country to be and stand for.

But after Philadelphia I am increasingly comfortable not just voting for Hillary but supporting her. She has a character of stubborn resolve and tested commitment to the ideals I embrace. She has the experience and judgement to lead effectively. The convention she constructed embraces differences while seeking to project those values I consider to be the best of what we are.

Friends have cautioned me that a Hillary presidency will likely disappoint. So what? Barack Obama, a man I consider as close to my platonic ideal of an American president as I will see in my lifetime, still managed to disappoint me once or twice. I don't expect to agree with everything a president says or does. Ultimately, ideological purity is not my highest priority when voting for a leader. Their ability to lead does.

Compared to every single other major or second tier candidate, Hillary is best-prepared, most experienced candidate, and the one most reflective of the truest values of this country.

***

Whew! With that off my chest, I'll also mention that the next chapter of my web fiction novel, "Agent Shield and Spaceman," is now available. The agents finally meet the final member of their team, the mysterious and vexing Agent D. Thank you for reading!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

With the title World War Z

Early on in the mostly disappointing zombie epidemic thriller World War Z, UN Investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) hides out in a Newark apartment, trying to convince a family living there to flee with him from the hordes of sprinting, chomping maniacs infesting the city. The phrase he uses, drawing from years of experience in the world's troubled war-zones is "movement is life." Ultimately he's unsuccessful, the family barricades their door behind him and they join the ever-swelling ranks of the undead. As far as a guiding philosophy goes for a pop-action thriller like World War Z, 'movement is life,' isn't bad. And for the first half of the movie or so, it follows its own advice. Similar to other recent zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead) the warning signs of what the rest of the movie will bring are subtle and buried until all hell is ready to break through. The television mentions 'martial law,' Philadelphia traffic snarl
I’m going to take a slightly abbreviated approach to this year’s best-of lists and mostly focus on movies. It’s not that I didn’t read or listen to music but for whatever reason I feel uninspired to talk about either topic. C’est la vie! So in no particular order are five movies I greatly enjoyed watching this year. Firstly, Avengers: Endgame. Well, I guess there is some order to this list because literally the first thing I thought of in terms of movies I’ve seen is this movie. It is inevitable! This is the one MCU flick it’s hard for me to remember as simply a super-hero film. Although I found its predecessor a bit more more compulsively watchable, I really enjoyed this film. First of all it’s tone, which veered from despair, heist hijinx, parental reconciliation, to epic mega-brawl was never boring. Even the gorgeous mess which is that final fight has its own interior logic and sports some of the best looking cinematography this side of Black Panther. With Endgame MCU found a

Stephen King's 2017

Despite the release of a single novel and a few short stories, 2017 has to rank up there as one of the more Stephen King ascendant years. No less than four movies based on his works appeared, including one of the most successful horror films of all time, the first part of IT. 'The Mist' (Stephen King) by Dementall.deviantart.com Of course, with King, for every high, there are plenty of lows and 2017 also provided a number of examples of how to do his works wrong. But let's start with the good stuff. The movie adaptation of IT, directed by Andres Muschietti and starring a number of talented young actors (including Finn Wolfhard of "Stranger Things" fame) really captured, for me, a lot of what I liked about the original novel. Being scary certainly helped, but with King, the horror slice is never really the whole cake. What makes King King, at least for me, is the combination of earthy, believable characters with lurid, "Tales from the Crypt&quo