VOTE!

Although I’ve been registered to vote for pretty much exactly half of my life (18 years), tomorrow will be my first time voting in a primary.  For probably the first 8 years that I was registered, I was registered as “No Affiliation”, and as a Libertarian for the last 10.  Over the last couple of years though, my views have been slowly moving to the left, which I believe was predicated by the birth of my son.

So, in the fall, I changed my registration to Democrat, and I’ll be voting for Bernie Sanders and John Fetterman tomorrow in the Pennsylvania primary. I do not go into this lightly.  This is the way my vote is going to attempt to assure a brighter future for my son.

• I do not want my son’s future to be filled with endless wars in sandy hellscapes over fossil fuels.
• I don’t want my son to have the crippling anxiety of how he’s going to afford food when medical bills or student loan payments come due.
• I want the planet to continue to live and thrive.
• I want my son to be able to be himself, no matter who that is without fear of attack or discrimination.
• I want my son to live in a nation that is not slowly creeping toward a backwards theocracy, where people do not use their belief in fairy tales and ancient myths to attempt to treat other people like shit.

While Bernie is my first choice, I will vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee in the general election. I can not in good conscience allow a Republican to appoint any supreme court justices. Do I think Hillary is corrupt?  Yes. Do I think she is tainted by Wall Street money?  Very much so.  Will I vote for her over a megalomaniac business-man and a frightening religious demagogue?  Every damn day.

I do this for my son, and the baby in my wife’s womb.

I do it for all of us.

We can do better.

We have to do better.