Final Word on the Election

I didn't feel like writing about this at all, and now I have run out of time so I am not going to able to be too expansive in any event but I feel like I ought to make an account of my positions, given the amount of fury and sanctimonousness and other emotions that the race is bringing out in people, which I for the most part do not share, except against the Clinton campaign; however I cannot help feeling in many instances an object of this general rage, which would bother me less if anybody actually liked me, other than my children, who don't know any better. But at this point of my life I often feel like I am being despised by people who are generally much more beloved than I am in actual life, not to mention more successful and smarter and with much richer and more exciting pasts than I have to look back on. But that is always how I have seen things.

I have to admit, America has kind of lost me with this election. I guess I can sort of understand how some of these people can like Hillary Clinton, but I don't know why anyone would expect me to like her. I think she's awful. I think what she and her organization have put this country through in this election with all of their machinations to clear the field for her on the Democratic side as well as clearly desiring Trump, almost the most toxic political personality imaginable, as the opponent, is unforgivable to me. I still don't know what I am going to do. I will still go to the polls and vote for the state and local races, but the presidential race I am seriously thinking about taking a pass. I am really quite upset about this. The ordeal that we have had to endure to get this woman elected has not been worth it, not to me. Now I am not going to vote for Trump, whom I have known to be evil since I was about thirteen. You can argue that I am imperiling the nation, but does anybody even consider me part of the nation anymore? I don't feel part of it, or at least not this political part of it. Maybe I will write in Bernie Sanders, not because I love him, but at least he had enough gumption to oppose the Clinton behemoth. I have tried very hard to believe what everybody I know wants me to believe, that Hillary Clinton is a great candidate for president, that all--and I do mean all, for in the minds of her most fervent supporters, she has essentially become flawless and innocent of any taint of wrongdoing--all of the shady accusations and unpleasant revelations about her are lies. But I am not able to believe this, and any reassuring qualities that might compensate for the many ugly ones I am not persuaded of.  If I had any confidence that Hillary Clinton was going to lead the country in any direction that I would like it to go in, I can't believe that I would not support her wholeheartedly. But where do her loyalties lie? not with any interests of the mass American public, or at least the male part of it, that I can see. Maybe, if it is convenient to her, she will exert influence, in positive ways that mitigate some of the burdens these currently impose on people, on the health care system, the higher education system, the criminal justice system, the wage and employment problem and the cost of housing. But how can she do this if she is too beholden to interests that appear to be largely antagonistic to and contemptuous of this population at the present time?

While it is true that the older she gets the more grating is the effect Hillary Clinton's persona and manner of speaking have on me, as is the case with many men, I was not always so averse to her, or to the whole Clinton political operation, as I am now. In the 1990s I think they were to some extent right for the times. My impression is that Bill Clinton ushered in a more recognizably modern and corporate approach to governing and the Washington culture, with a lot of emphasis on raw brainpower and talent and innovative approaches and workaholism as a badge of in-groupness. This was not a favorable group of traits for me to have to compete against as a young man, but it has certainly set a tone for this whole Clintonian era, which seems however, as if it should be running its course. I actually wanted Hillary Clinton to run in '04 very badly. I felt that that election, getting George Bush out of office, was the critical one as far as preserving the country--Trump to me is a joke, a sign that things are too far gone to be taken too seriously anymore--and I thought the Clintons would have been able to beat him, and those four years would have made a huge difference. Too many things have been done since that cannot be undone now, especially with the Clintons' evolving worldview and overarching political philosophy, which I have doubts about being what is needed at this particular moment. So I was very disappointed in 2004.

I had a lot I was going to write about the outcry about the revelations of Trump's behavior with regard to women, and the pointlessness of hapless and sensitive men trying to denounce the attitudes and actions of their less sensitive and more entitled brethren in order to appease or reassure or show solidarity with women or whatever they mean to do, raising feminist daughters, and what I worry about in these matters where my own children are concerned, and all of that, but I am out of time, and maybe I will write about that in another post. When I am less tired.