Written by Paulina Ukrainets
As we get closer and closer to election day, I am unfortunately discovering that politics are seeping further and further into my topics of conversation, regardless of how unrelated they may seem. Everybody knows that if you want to retain your relationships with people, it is best not to venture into the territory of politics. Perhaps I am brave and fearless, or perhaps just stubborn and opinionated, but in recent conversations with close friends of mine, politics has been joining the conversation without fail. In one of these conversations, I asked my fairly anarchist friend and her boyfriend whether they are going to vote. They replied, “If we are going to vote, we are going to vote independent.”
I sat stunned in the back of my friend’s car. Words had temporarily left me. Visions of Donald Trump leading an enormous army across the ocean in order to conquer the whole world flashed across my mind. “Doesn’t the possibility of Trump becoming president, and commander-in-chief terrify you?” I asked. They replied, expressing something along the lines of fearing Trump but being too dissatisfied with Hillary Clinton to vote for her.
I can’t say I disagree with them entirely. All the research on Hillary that I did prior to her becoming the democratic nominee (i.e. in the heat of the Bernie campaign) led me to believe that she was inconsistent in her opinions and policies and not necessarily someone I could fully stand behind. I still hold the same beliefs, but we face a scarier reality—if she doesn’t become the next president, it will be Trump, who would lead to many worse conclusions than policy inconsistencies.
I feel sorry for my friends and the new generation of voters who can’t help but be disappointed with the system—young people who want to use their voice for not only changing the figurehead of the government but also the model of the government itself. Still, in this particular election, not voting or voting for anyone but Hillary (i.e. Jill Stein) is a vote for Trump; and a vote for Trump is a vote for the system potentially becoming more skewed and corrupt, for more tax breaks for the 1 percent, for less free movement between countries, and a vote for homophobia, racism, bigotry, and chauvinism. A vote for Hillary may, perhaps, not seem like a vote for a change in the system, but it’s the only vote that allows the possibility of possibilities.