Protest Voting is White Privilege

It’s White Privilege to vote for Jill, because you can’t have Bernie. Why? Because, Trump’s win wouldn’t affect you so immediately, as it would a poor, black woman, who couldn’t afford a now illegal, safe abortion, and in desperation would go to a butcher and die in an alley.

You say: Hillary’s just as bad? 

That was the argument Nader used to attract Democratic malcontents away from Gore in 2000. Despite Nader’s ‘Not a Dime’s Worth of Difference,’ if Gore had been elected, we would NOT have had the Iraq War, our reaction to 911 would NOT have led to torture and the surveillance state. We might not have had the 2008 collapse. And we would NOW have a plan in place to mitigate or reverse global warming.

Whether Nader threw the election to Bush, Bush’s victory over Gore, who received more votes, changed the political dynamic in the US until at least 2006: strengthening the Republicans, so the Left, probably still a majority, was shoved aside. Bush’s ascendancy also strengthened the Republicans’ right wing, hence the emergence of the obstructionist Tea Party, after Obama Democrats asserted their majority in 2008-2010. The Tea Party wing of the GOP has played a major role in Obama’s inability to push through most of his progressive agenda.

Compare the 2016 Party Platforms of the Democrats and of the Republicans. You will see radical differences. Neither are ideal, but the Democratic platform was written in part by Bernie’s appointees; the Republican platform was written by Tony Perkins, the head of the right-wing, anti-gay Christian group, The Family Research Council.

The overriding philosophies of the two party platforms couldn’t be more different: government as a tool to respond to people’s needs, versus government should do as little as possible in the economy, and as much as possible to reverse social change: the “free market” will solve almost all economic problems, except security: internal as well as Defense, although both can be privatized much further, like more for-profit prisons. But government, according to Trump’s platform, can, maybe even must, intrude into your bedroom.

Democratic Platform

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/papers_pdf/117717.pdf

Republican Platform

https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL[1]-ben_1468872234.pdf

Gender and white privilege: voting for Jill will not protect my LGBTQ adult children, certainly not if Jill’s vote tips the balance as Nader’s may have done for Bush.

Voting for Jill won’t protect the African American man or woman who is guilty only of walking or driving while black. Because half a vote (in effect) for Trump, makes it that more likely that all their protections will be destroyed, and no reform will be possible. Trump’s appointment of Breitbart’s head to chief honcho of his campaign will only exacerbate his extremism. The man’s a racist, supported by racists. 

And we’re not talking just about 4 years. A Trump Supreme Court would cement an extreme right-wing, pro-corporate, pro-authoritarian, anti-abortion majority of Justices that would last for the next generation. It might even enable a Trumpian dicatorship, if only for 8 or so years.

Hillary is definitely not a racist, although she’s a white lady, who may not always have a clue about the lives of African-Americans, or other people marginalized or oppressed. But she wants to understand, like her famous ‘listening tour’ of upstate NY, in her run for the Senate and then her attempts to help.

It is White Privilege that allows you to think that your ‘conscience’ can’t permit you to vote for someone “flawed” like Hillary. You’re closing your eyes to what her defeat would mean to the Hispanic and Muslim communities and to all undocumented. Trump has promised mass deportations, a wall and an absolute ban. 

Hillary may not be perfect: she is hawkish, but she’s not a racist, a would-be dictator,or a proto-Fascist, (Trump argues that the United States should have seized Iraq’s oil assets after the 2003 invasion and deployed American troops, presumably indefinitely, to protect them: NY Times 8/18 Mussolini acted like that, and Hitler, too.). Do you want someone with an itchy trigger finger controlling the nuclear trigger? 

Hillary is on the left to wishy-washy center, but not the right, and she has proven to be responsive to leftwing pressure (hence her changing positions). She was supposedly more leftish than Bill, when they first entered the national stage.

If you look at Hillary’s record, instead of believing right-wing propaganda, you will see that she has tried to help a lot of people, people of all different kinds, and she’s adopted a large part of Bernie’s agenda.

However, a vote in this election is not really about Hillary or Trump—or Bernie, as he said himself—it’s about what people need, and it is about what people can lose, big-time.

A vote for Jill might just tip the balance, so all could lose, just as with Brexit. The Brits have learned: votes like that can’t be undone.