Jill Hillary

I voted today and I have to say I was REALLY torn. First of all, I flew back to San Francisco last night from Philadelphia so I could vote, pay a few bills, and celebrate & be reenergized the New Moon with womyn tonite on the shores of our beautiful Bay.

It took me a few hours to vote, to study all the pros and cons, to decide. 4 pages, all but one double-sided, requiring me to make many choices.

It was very hard this morning to decide my presidential vote and not because I’m afraid my vote is going to be the one that allows ‘rump to win.

I have maintained for as long as I’ve heard the “vote for the lesser of two evils” or “vote to make sure the one you DON’T want to be elected isn’t” that I will vote for whichever candidate I want. And if her name isn’t on the ballot, I will exercise my right to write in who I want.

I believe that every single time we act on the above mantras, we ourselves severely undermine our democracy but we so thoroughly believe this is a valid way to select our leaders and we are so insanely fear-driven to accept the ‘lesser of 2 evils’ no matter what that I think this HAS to be the mantra of those in power.

I am as committed as any sane thinking compassionate person in this country to defeating ‘rump. I’ve spent that last month of my life, all of my financial resources not to mention wear and tear on my beloved camper truck to that end: spreading the truth across the country about that male.

But I don’t believe in defeating him by voting for another candidate that I don’t believe is the BEST person I want to lead our country.

Furthermore I’m a kickass womonist/feminist. I have voted for womyn for president since I was so very fortunate to cast a vote for Shirley Chisholm many decades ago. No I didn’t vote for Obama the first time: I voted for another kickass Womonist/feminist and total awesome leader, Cynthia McKinney.

And now for the first time in my life I can vote for a womon who has a great chance of winning, my heart aches.

This is about Hillary Clinton.

When I first heard about the fierce lawyer from Arkansas, I loved Hillary and everything I heard and read about her. She was brilliant and a trailblazer for womyn in a time and place where there were few others.

I voted for Hillary once already, way back in the 90’s when Bill was on the ticket when her name should have been there, I believed she was potentially another Eleanor Roosevelt, which I’m sure she could have been if the press had not viciously and constantly attacked her, ridiculing her plan to provide universal health care for ALL u.s.a. folks.

I then saw Hillary as a victim of assault, which she was. But unlike Eleanor Roosevelt, who was also attacked by misogyny and the FBI (do you know that Eleanor has the largest FBI file for any female in this country – pre 9/11 that is).

Picking through, attempting to filter the misogyny and find the truth about Hillary is an almost impossible job, even harder, I think, than it was wading through the racism to get a clear picture of Obama.

I often judge womyn I don’t know but just hear of the vitriolic attacks against them as the BEST – womyn who inspire such in our misogynist, racist, homophobic world must be sheras & someone I want representing me.

I want to vote for Hillary merely because of the depth and extent of misogyny her running is triggering. But Jill Stein’s values line up with mine. Hillary’s don’t.

But after hearing Hillary defend womyn’s rights so fiercely and swiftly, I wavered again. Plus several chosen family sistahs that I love and trust, believe Hillary will make a good president, that she has just had to ‘play the game’ in order to get into this position of potentially running the country.

I heard the same argument or rationality when Obama was running. I was open and hoped that they were right, that Obama wasn’t really going to increase wars and allow the undermining of the voting rights act, etc. etc. etc.

But we know where that went.

I think one would have to be a really powerful goddess to be able to lie, to fake intentions and actions, to separate what one ‘has’ to do to climb the ladder from what one ‘wants’ to do once at the top of the ladder.

The problem is that climbing the ladder demands deep and irreversible changes, a morphing inside a person, unless they’re schizophrenic  or dr jekyll mr hyde types. People are so far removed from their original selves and ideals, they’ve been shaped by the climb. I haven’t seen anyone able to pop out of that climb to claim their old selves.

But maybe the REAL problem is that this particular ladder leads to only one tableau – thereby making it impossible to reach or enact the tableau one originally intended, which is available only thru an entirely different ladder – maybe not even a ladder but a landscape.