On the Presidential Election of 2016

Anyone who has read my book or read a serious number of my blog posts knows that I tend to avoid writing about "politics" or the art of winning elections or the Page Six of our democracy.  I am content to leave this chatter to those who are amused by it.

But I DO have opinions.

Once again, those who have read my words can probably guess what those opinions are.

First, I have a stake in the death of our two party system.  So, why would I urge a vote for Clinton or Trump, who are peculiarly bad examples of what our two party system can produce?  Clinton is no liberal and Trump is even less of a conservative.  And both are more dishonest than the typical dishonest national politician, and that ain't easy.

I like Gary Johnson and the Libertarians as they partially represent real conservatism without its crazy religious bigotry.  But they are crazy as loons regarding economics; you cannot just eliminate the IRS without a) publicly renouncing our $19 trillion of indebtedness to other countries and to millions of our own citizens and b) without putting another tax collection agency to work with another name.  If you seriously believe that a nation-state can exist without taxation, you are thoughtless.

As for Jill Stein and the Greens, I like a lot of what the Greens stand for, but I am more than a little put off by their professed lack of a foreign policy – with the singular exception of wanting Israel to go away.  Am I accusing Jill Stein (who was raised Jewish) and the Green Party of being anti-Semitic?  How about anti-Israel?  Or anti-Zionist?  Anti-Semitism has many shades, and the Green Party and their candidate for President are too dark for my taste.  I believe that even the stronger party in a fight has the right to defend himself against a weaker opponent, especially if the weaker party won't stop kicking his opponent.  Israel was not the stronger party in their fight back in 1948 when she was attacked by a coalition of five Arab states; but she is now seen by many as the Goliath to the Palestinians' David.  But I find I lack sympathy for a group that was chums with the Nazis back in the day, and whose friends these days are all those other groups that cry out "death to the American Satan."

If I had to choose between Clinton and Trump, I would have to go with the nominal Democrat (Sanders is a real Democrat, Clinton is a nondescript Democrat who could nearly as easily run as a Republican), not because I am a liberal but because the ship of state has tacked Right for thirty-five years, and she is well over-due for a serious and long-term Left-ward correction (which of course will have to wait for a real Democrat, not HRC).

I have cast my vote for Pogo before and I intend to do so again.