For 30 years i was a Republican. My first vote was for Nixon (before we found out he was a crook). He was the last Republican i voted for. For 3 decades i watched the GOP become less and less a party of the people and more and more a party of moneyed fat cats, religious fanatics and deluded conspiracy theorists with guns. In '99 i couldn't take it any more and re-registered as "no political affiliation". When Al Gore lost to George W (lie you into a war) Bush, i was vindicated....and when Barack Obama became President, i was proud of my country for the first time in 45 years. Things looked like they were finally on the road to sanity....and then......
In 2016 i supported Bernie Sanders (although i couldn't vote for him in the primaries) and then HRC (because she was the only sane choice).
....and what happened? America managed to elect a half-baked reality show star and crooked businessman to be the most powerful person in the world.
To some degree i blame myself. I hadn't become a Democrat back in 1999 because i disagreed with some of their predispositions. I was essentially a political centrist. I didn't believe that all of the corporations were evil, that all of the banks were screwing us or that all white people shared the original sin of racism. I also wasn't into beating up my country for the actions of the far right. I don't see the USA as the great devil (like Noam Chomsky). I understand that we've made mistakes in the past and that paranoia and profit have sometimes dictated foreign policy. But on the whole the USA does have noble (if often misguided) intentions. I don't believe that we should never defend ourselves, i understand that some wealthy people do, in fact, deserve to be wealthy and i don't believe that all of the cops are out to kill us. So i wanted to be neutral and objective politically, while at the same time supporting sane choices for our leaders and representatives.
But nooooo! In the last election i watched in horror as the US actually elected a damn fool over an uppity female to run the country. Even given that Hillary wasn't the best choice in the world and probably was the darling of the DNC at the expense of Bernie, she was the only sane choice. Donald Trump is ignorant, inarticulate, crooked, bad tempered, narcissistic and an absolute pig of a misogynist. But somehow Americans overlooked all that because hell.....HILLARY!
So now i'm going out Monday and sign up as a Democrat. I still don't agree with a lot of their new dogma...but the prospect of a decade of Republican rule has made me do it. You can thank Donald Trump.
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