Originally Posted by
Spoonsky
Clinton?
I envy you, your vote counts a fuckton.
Honestly I did end up going with Trump but it honestly wasn't easy at all.
I have found myself seriously considering Hillary in recent weeks because she does have a pretty good record when it comes to caring about children and families in general. But that was the best I could do when it came up with reasons to vote FOR her.
I kept coming back to "But can I really vote for Donald Trump?"
The reasons I ended up voting for Trump are:
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1. While I accept that being a world superpower comes with great responsibility to mankind in general, I don't really feel we should have to take the lead when it comes to humanitarian issues, such as the immigration of displaced refugees.
While I certainly sympathize and could never imagine the horror those people are going through in Syria, for me, the responsibility of government is to take care of our own people that are already here. If the entire population was living comfortable, healthy lives, that would be one thing.
But then I stop and think about all of the times I see our Veterans (and you know America's penchant for the military) standing on street corners begging for change... When I hear stories from my cousin who works at a Veterans Administration hospital about sick, dying Veterans who should be getting much more expansive coverage to help them deal with the debilitating issues that they have to deal with. When I, at my own hospital, see people who have worked their entire life and given their hard-earned dollars to the government in form of taxes being basically left for dead once they reach retirement age or their bodies stop working for them in such a way they can make a good, honest leaving because they barely can put $50 in their pocket after Social Security pays out their Medicare premiums... and on top of that, Medicare only covers 80%, so they're left with 20% of the bill and only $50 to make payments toward their medical responsibilities. Often leaving them afraid to utilize medical facilities in general.
And I think about how, while it's not a bad thing to help people, but how we spend so much money subsidizing other country's poor people who come to this country. This has nothing to do with how hard-working or honest they may be, as someone who works in public benefits I realize more than many that everyone just needs a helping hand every now and then.... but by giving them that leg up through different programs and subsidies, taking government funds that are paid for by the current tax-payers in this country that could in turn help the very people who are either from this country or have legally immigrated to this country and are hard-working, tax-payers who believe in our system.
But the fact of the matter is, in most cases, people don't emigrate to America because they are coming from a decent situation in their own country. Usually these people are dirt poor, have little to no opportunity whatsoever, and that is quite frankly awful. But as I mentioned before, the responsibility, in my eyes, of the government is to it's own people. The governments of these countries' that we experience this type of illegal immigration from should be held more accountable.
I also realize it's not that easy at all, but maybe if these leaders had to actually answer to their own people it would start political uprising in those very countries' and help kickstart the rebuilding of those countries themselves.
I'm not saying we should deport everyone who is here illegally. I would much rather give people better, more inclusive avenues to legally migrate. Once legal, these people will be able to pay into the tax-pool and help us fund more expansive programs that can in turn help our poor, disabled, and disadvantaged.
2. Jobs, I really don't think we do enough in this country to keep jobs in it. Trump is no stranger to this, considering most of his products are made in Cambodia, China, etc. I'd like to imagine (read: dream) that Trump understands the constraints of business and would be able to open avenues in order to help businesses keep and create jobs in this country. The downside to this, of course, is what we saw with the GM / bank bailouts, where greed wins and the people at the top just take a bigger slice of the pie for themselves. Unfortunately that was a risk I was willing to take. While our unemployment rate is at it's lowest in years, that doesn't really paint the entire picture. The division between upper and lower class (there is no middle class in this country now) has never been wider. Raising minimum wage simply isn't enough.
3. Healthcare, specifically Obamacare. As someone who has been a licensed "navigator" for Obamacare and had worked in medical insurance my entire adult life (which only amounts for 9 years of experience but..), Obamacare is the biggest scam I've ever seen. Basically, people with this Obamacare coverages have coverage that barely covers anything at all. There's all this language written into their plans that allow the insurance to deny different bits of the bill.
For example, if they give you a typical aspirin, sometimes they can write that off as a "self-administered drug" (even if the nurse literally gave it to you) and they can write that off. Obviously aspirin isn't wildly expensive, but that's just a very small scale instance.
Plus, if you have insurance, this can keep you from applying for programs at the hospital that help alleviate the bill.
In fact, most times hospitals and providers have specific contracts that allow monetary adjustments of bills themselves. So for example, if a patient has a 30,000$ bill but has Bruh Cross Health Insurance (made up obv.), the contract can say "Okay, we'll only make you pay 10% of that in exchange for being an 'in-network' facility. So, in reality, patients and consumers end up paying the insurance companies thousands upon thousands of dollars more than they have to pay out, which of course is the point of running a business, but at the same time it's not actually helping the previously uninsured.
On top of that, this initiative does little for veterans whose VA benefits have been drying up for decades now.
4. Lastly, abortion. This is a little more personal for me. I grew up actually very much pro-choice, because I thought more "what business is it of mine to tell a woman what to do with their body?" and that's all fine and well, but then I found out my cousin (we have a small extended family as well) was adopted.
Now she has two beautiful children, a happy marriage, a great life, etc. etc. All I ever think about is how none of that would be possible without the courage of her mother to at least follow through with the pregnancy and give us this bundle of joy.
On the other hand, I realize that not all adoption/orphan stories end up this way. A lot of said kids grow up with psychological issues because of abandonment and things like that, which of course is awful, but I can't help but think giving those kids at least a chance is better than not giving them a chance at all.
Also, I recently found out 32,000 rape cases in 1996 (couldn't find an update number) resulted in pregnancy. I could not imagine the trauma of that and I feel abjectly awful again for these women. Personally, I could understand the want to have an abortion in that regard, but would still hope that maybe these women could find the courage to push through and realize the potential of life that the kid may have, even if it's not with that woman in particular.
If anyone actually read all this, thanks for your time. I just feel really comfortable sharing here and hope my perspective is entertaining at the very least.
tl;dr:
1. Immigration / Doing more for our Vets
2. Jobs
3. Healthcare
4. Abortion
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