The Devils You Know

white house
The political world is a jungle and politicians have historically been the lions that rule it. The last two decades, however, have seen the American government riddled with scandals, questionable ethics, and a mismanagement of both resources and trust. The lions have become pests and parasites.

Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are the front-runners in the current campaign. Each of them is vying to replace the ineffectual Obama administration and each of them is unpredictable, unreliable and completely loony tunes crazy in their own frightening way.

Hillary Clinton has consistently proven herself to be an irredeemably pathological liar. She lied about her daughter’s whereabouts during the World Trade Center attacks to play on the emotions of empathetic Americans, she lied about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia, she lied about her family’s economic situation after Bill’s white house tenure, hell, she even lied about who she was named after.

Clearly, someone who pedals misinformation on a daily basis has questionable ethics, but Hillary’s moral compass is grotesquely out of line, even for the sleaziest of politicians.

The Clinton Foundation has accepted extravagant million dollar gifts from various countries like Qatar (an unabashed Hamas sponsor), Saudi Arabia and the UAE. On a personal level she is paid hundreds of thousands for speaking engagements at organizations like Goldman Sachs and big ticket oil companies. How can she be accountable to the citizens of the United States when she, in a very real sense, has a vested interest in other nations and big corporate entities?

Hillary’s family might be an American political institution but that doesn’t make her a reasonable candidate. She was a callous lawyer (laughing in an interview about winning a plea bargain for a child rapist) and her handling of the email scandal shows that she is an equally callous politician who is willing to skirt the law whenever possible.

The sad part of all this is that she is the most reasonable of the front-runners.

In 2013 Ted Cruz led the movement to stall the political process regarding funding of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the result was that no federal budget was agreed upon for after September 30 and, in October, the majority of American government operations ceased to function. The vast majority of supplementary government institutions (including NASA, National Parks, memorials, and libraries) were closed for 16 days. He, again, threatened to cause a government wide shut down at the expense of Planned Parenthood – an organization he has rallied relentlessly against.

Cruz’s beef with Planned Parenthood is a petty, low brow attempt at attracting the evangelical right vote. His tirade is alienating many of his constituents though, because Planned Parenthood doesn’t just offer contraception. The organization is also one of the primary providers of cancer screening, pregnancy testing, and sexually transmitted disease treatment and testing for Americans. Ted Cruz knows about the benefits of Planned Parenthood but, to get votes, he is willing to see hundreds of thousands of hard working Americans put out of work in a shutdown – just like he was in 2013.

His Christian roots platform has led to his participation at gay bashing rallies advocating the death penalty for homosexuals. And still he isn’t the most xenophobic candidate. Not even close. That accolade belongs to Donald Trump.

“The Donald” has polemicized some very extreme concepts during his campaign, not the least of which is his proposal to build a wall dividing continental USA and Mexico while pawning the bill on Mexico’s government. He also has referred to several women as “dogs” and “fat pigs”, suggested that we ban Muslims (roughly 30% of the entire world) from entering the USA, and supported the violent assault of a lone protester by constituents at one of his rallies. The man even suggested “shutting down the internet”, whatever that means.

The business mogul has been bankrupt on four separate occasions. He now claims that these financial disasters were intentional, in order to, ultimately, expand his wealth. We can extrapolate that one of two things is true from this, either:

1. he isn’t actually the business genius he claims to be
or
2. he intentionally cheated the system. Several times.

His scientifically established third grade literacy level is even lower than that of George Bush’s seventh grade standing, which would make him, if elected, the dumbest president ever… by a lot. Yet, despite his laughable list of shortcomings, he is the leading GOP candidate.

The leading candidates in this race are not only frighteningly under qualified and unethical but absolutely unashamed of their immorality. The democratic front-runner is a liar and the republican leaders say things that terrify both intellectuals and economists the world over. In good conscience I cannot justify joining either of these parties and so I am running as an independent.

Voting for Art Drew is voting for sanity.