Why I'm Reluctant to Vote for Hillary.

I’m a long-time Democrat. My philosophy of government is that it has two major roles: provide for the common defense (emphasis on defense) and to build infrastructure. Aside from the usual definition of infrastructure that would include bridges, roads, airports, transportation, etc., I go a bit further and include health care. Health care plays an important role because it provides a stable environment for the work force and allows industry and business to compete more freely and without having to deal with forces they cannot control nor are good at understanding as the workers and management are often at odds over what it constitutes whereas both can understand what makes a quality product dickering only on what should be a fair recompense for delivering that product. Those three aspects are often at war with my libertarian side which dictates that government should have as little to do with what I do at home as possible, i.e. the social aspects, religion, sex, personal behavior that has no impact on anyone else, that both parties want to control, albeit from different sides. That side also dictates support for a free market, capitalist society, which government has an obligation to keep as level as possible.

Hillary is a believer in the status quo. She, like most politicians, doesn’t like to rock the boat, and she’s very good at telling assorted groups what they want to hear (no doubt a major reason why she continues to refuse to release transcripts of her speeches to the Goldman Sachs tycoons.) She’s also enamored of money, if not for the luxuries it can provide, but mostly because of the power it affords. So if she were to be elected, we can reasonably expect that government will remain pretty much the same as it did under both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama (the differences are mostly cosmetic - war as an instrument of national policy and a health care system designed by and for insurance companies not to mention continued attempts to control the social fabric.) A static environment where the powerful (defined today as those with lots of money) decide what becomes law and make sure that law benefits a very small segment of the population; continued United States presence all around the world with its concomitant budget busting expenditures in money and lives at the expense of infrastructure; and where those in power move the seats of that power to the Cayman Islands and other places overseas.

I’m not sure we, as a country can continue to afford that trajectory. It seems to me that the electorate senses that this year, but is not quite sure how to alter that path, hence the rise of the anti-establishment candidate (even though some of them are fraudulently so.)

All candidates preach change and that’s the problem. No one believes the standard lines anymore. This election is much more about the failure of the status quo and achieving real change and what direction that change will take, and trying to decide who offers the most authentic conviction for change.

Hillary lacks that conviction.