I do.
And you should, too, no matter who you're voting for.
Because that's the only choice... Cory Booker is right.
Love your neighbor. That's step one.
Calling them stupid, racist, or anything else isn't going to change their minds. It's only going to reenforce the very reasons why they're voting for Trump in the first place.
They've been left out by nearly every politician they've ever come across. They've fought for our country and they're now out of work. They've worked hard to instill a set of values in their families and they see a world where those values are changing rapidly.
They fear for their safety--and for anyone who hasn't turned off the news in disgust, wouldn't you, too?
Sometimes I think that's the real enemy, by the way... Not Trump, not Hillary, but the fucking television.
Do I really need to know about every single time someone gets killed in a terrible way in the world? I hate the news for making me think of the world as a terrible place--and making money off of it.
You want to hate someone? Hate CNN for profiting off our fear.
Some of Trump's supporters align their values with what Trump talks about, but a great many simply do not feel comfortable voting for Hillary Clinton--or they don't like Bill Clinton.
They're disgusted by Bill's extramarital affairs and his behavior in the White House. I can respect that--but I would respect it more if they held Donald Trump to the same standard.
I love the fact that they feel a strong sense of moral obligation and that this election for them is about trust.
They don't like hearing about lying, about e-mails, about cover-ups. I wonder what they think when they hear that Trump won't show us what's on his tax return? I have to imagine that makes them upset--because that's the kind of covering up they don't like about Hillary.
For once, they just want someone elected to come clean and be honest. I respect that.
And it is because I do care about *all* of the people in this country that it made me sick to listen to Donald Trump speak at the RNC last week--because I knew that his supporters were being lied to.
You may have worked in a *real* job--building something--not something ridiculous like I do where I invest rich people's money to try and find the next Facebook. I get that probably shouldn't be a job and you might not respect me for it. Sometimes, I don't believe it myself that I get paid to do that.
You toiled hard on a line making the very things I use everyday and then, one day, your plant closed. Or, maybe you worked in one of those places that collapsed when the town's major employer picked up shop and moved away.
Foreign countries and executives looking after their bottom line "stole" your economic security and that of your friends, family, and neighbors.
So when Trump says he's going to bring those jobs back, that sounds great. I get it.
Only... it's never going to happen. That's just not the way the world works.
The stock market pressures companies to look after only their bottom line, our current capitalist, public market system makes it impossible for corporate CEOs to look after anything different.
They get fired when the stock goes down.
If you don't like capitalism--well, that's a different story. We could go with socialism, but I'm pretty sure you don't want that either.
And in fact, since the 1970's, that kind of bottom line thinking is pretty much why you've been getting screwed as a middle class. Someone came up with the notion that the point of a company wasn't to employ people or care about the community--it was to make its owner's money.
It's not China's fault or trade agreements. Those are just the *effects* of this kind of thinking. They're not the cause. You were getting screwed long before anyone signed any kind of trade agreement. Your wages haven't been going up for a long, long time. You were simply being screwed slowly.
Your plant closing just made it more obvious.
You know what else screwed you? Technology.
We make machines that allow companies to do more with less. It happened in the 1800's with the industrial revolution. It happened when we built farm machines.
Here's a scary thing: It sure as hell is going to happen to the trucking industry.
If you drive a truck for a living, you are going to get replaced by a machine sometime in the next twenty years--because that's just how fucking crazy good technology has become. They can make robots who beat humans in chess, and now they make 'em better drivers, because they don't need sleep and they're always looking in every direction at all times.
Deny it all you want or hate me for it, but it's going to happen.
That's not the fault of the Democrats or Republicans or China or anyone else.
The only solution is for you to get help--for someone to reach out and say "Hey, we care about you and your lost job, so we're going train you to make those robots or run some other kind of thing--to be a drone pilot or help rebuild our crumbling infrastructure or some such thing."
Who knows what the jobs of the future will be like.
Whatever it is, you and millions of other people are going to need someone to care about you.
The Republican party isn't the party of that kind of care. They'll treat you like you're lazy or don't want to work--that you should be able to just "find a job" if you're able. That's been the party platform for years--everyone for himself.
I have to imagine you're voting for Trump because you're pissed off the way this country has worked or not worked for you--and that you feel like you're getting the short end of the stick.
So do you really want to elect a man that made firing someone--telling them they can no longer work--into *entertainment*?
If you've ever been let go at a job--if you ever thought your boss took the least bit of pleasure in letting you go, in telling you that you could no longer support your family--wouldn't you think of them as the sickest most vile human being on the planet?
You'd hate them.
Yet, that's exactly what Donald Trump has made a career of doing--exploiting the bankruptcy system, pulling millions of dollars out of all his companies while they fold time and time again.
It's the saddest thing in the world to hear these stories of small business people just like you who were told to accept pennies on the dollar for their hard work for Donald Trump's companies or to try to sue him in court.
He plays bankruptcy like it's a game. He thinks laying people off is a game to be played and he's very good at it.
I don't wish being fired on anyone. It's nothing to joke about and nothing to make into entertainment.
What I want you to experience, and what everyone should experience, is hope. I have to imagine that's what you want for your kids, too.
Hope motivates. It inspires.
Can you honestly say that the Republican National Convention made you and your family hopeful? Did you think of the world as a place you wanted to live in?
There is a reality in the world that probably isn't as good as the Democrats painted it to be, but I know it isn't as bad as the Republicans are making it out to be either. If future generations are even going to bother to try to make the world a better place--they have to be hopeful about it.
They have to want to go into it and reach out to it.
No one is going to solve the problems in the Middle East without learning a little Arabic--and if the idea of your kids learning Arabic in schools freaks you out, I totally get it.
But, I'm sorry, the bomb thing isn't working.
The Middle East has been blown up so many times we've lost count. We need someone to figure out smart solutions, not just assume that blowing people up fixes everything.
That's what religious extremists want to do to us!!
Ever stop to think that maybe had anyone loved or cared about any of these kids willing to blow themselves up and just talked them off the ledge we could change their minds?
Isn't that the definition of stupidity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?
The world isn't made better with locks and walls.
You know who locks keep out? Honest people.
Bad people will do what they'll do. They can't be eliminated or destroyed. Evil will always exist. We've never ever made it go away--but we've created a lot more of it by following those who told us they could.
That's been our biggest downfall, actually--following people who told us they were going to beat the bad guy and that we should suspend our civil liberties to do so.
Don't believe a guy that he'll protect your Constitutional right to own a gun when he's willing to violate someone else's right to free speech by suing the heck out of them if he doesn't like them.
When you start fucking with the Constitution, everything is game. Everything.
July 4th is my favorite holiday. I love fireworks and summer and I like seeing all the flags. I love this country. I like seeing us run over other people in the Olympics, and I can watch Rocky IV over and over again, because I grew up in a time where it was cool to beat the Russian guy.
I grew up liking when the military wins. I was in junior high when I remember being pissed off that Bush wouldn't let Stormin' Norman go all the way to Baghdad to take out Saddam.
I was also a kid, and the world isn't a game anymore.
What sucks the most about the world is that it's a lot more complex than winning or losing.
Anyone who says otherwise is treating you like a child--and that pisses me off.
Anyone who says it's all about law and order and blowing people up who want to kill us doesn't understand that you can't blow a bunch of people up without making someone hate you. So you think you can blow every last ISIS member up--but then some other nutball riles up a group to gain power by telling them look at all the devastation the US caused. And they'll believe it, because their lives will suck. Extremists are desperate and hopeless.
Not all of them will turn to violence, but that's the nature of violence today. You don't need armies. You just need to push one or two people over the edge. You can't stop that. It sucks, but you'll never snuff out every single last extremist with a conventional army.
It only takes one person to show up in Times Square with a bomb strapped to themselves to give CNN something to make money off again.
But you know who *is* going to stop those people?
That kid who bothered to learn Arabic--or who grew up speaking it after his family immigrated here, who loves this country because we let his family escape the shit hole situation he came from in a Syrian civil war.
Anyone who thinks it's easy to find solutions to terrorism or the economy is treating you like you're stupid. They think nothing of you and they're willing to tell you anything to get the power that comes with your vote.
I care enough about you to say that, even if you don't agree.