Wasted Votes

I have been working on this post for a few months at this point, but finally got around to finishing it.

I have not decided who I am voting for but it is going to be a third party. Apart from my disagreement with a lot of her policies, Hillary Clinton is either a) extremely stupid or b) a crook and I don't believe for a second she is really as stupid as she acts sometimes; I have noticed her "stupidity" only shows up when it is convenient. Her most recent relevant job experience resulted in an investigation that cost millions of dollars and resulted in the conclusion that she didn't do what she was supposed to do. Furthermore, whether she did what she did because she is a) extremely stupid or b) a crook can be debated, but what cannot be debated is that the behavior is extremely dangerous to our country and after she did it she lied about it. Furthermore, either reason (stupid or crook) does not inspire any kind of confidence that she won't do something like it again. In all the time she has had her eye on the White House, Hillary Clinton has never been less electable.

Not to be outdone, however, the Republicans looked far and wide to find someone equally as repulsive and un-electable and found it (where else?) in reality television. Donald Trump is an all around disgusting individual who spreads hate, cares about no one, and evidently has no idea how life works. I cannot figure out how people would ever want to vote for him. When he first announced his intentions, I thought there was no way he would be nominated. I have decided my view of people in this country was evidently much too optimistic. I strongly disagree with him on foreign policy, and watching him, I just can't shake the feeling that the chances that he would either a) fly off the handle and send nuclear bombs somewhere, or b) fly off the handle and offend someone who would send nuclear bombs at us are quite high. He is a loose cannon and I can't feel confident he will do anything he claims he will do, so not even the things he says that I can agree with make me want to vote for him.

I have heard from several people that the above points of view are just me being unforgiving. But this is an absolutely ludicrous argument. I am not refusing to vote for them because I am just upset by some mostly irrelevant thing that they did that I am holding against them. For instance, while I find adultery reprehensible, I am not refusing to vote for Trump over it. I am refusing to vote for Trump because I disagree with a lot of what he has said and done during his candidacy. Hilary similarly stands for a lot of things I disagree with in policy. And as for "forgiving" the server thing--while I am not going to be bitter and angry about what she did, I am not going to vote to put someone so completely unapologetic about such a serious breach of law and security back into a position of power. That would be like moving back in with an abusive spouse who doesn't even claim to have changed. 

I haven't decided who I am voting for, but there is a large part of our population that would have me believe that the above are my only options--that anything else is "wasting my vote." I respectfully disagree. 

But first I want to respond to people who claim that not voting for A is the same thing as voting for B. No it isn't; voting for B is voting for B and not voting for A does nothing to how many votes B gets. Furthermore, I think people who use this logic are misunderstanding something very important about the current political situation; neither A nor B is preferable. I have no obligation of loyalty to any candidate or party and neither does anyone else. I am not going to be inspired to support a candidate I don't agree with based on peer pressure. If you must know, if you held a gun to my head at the polls and made me vote for one or the other, I would vote for Hilary, but if you are holding a gun to my head at the polls and no one did something about it there isn't much hope that anything I did would actually mean anything anyway.

I view my ability to vote as a responsibility to be taken very seriously. It is my opportunity to give my input. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't see it this way and begin to enter this complicated and truly unpredictable realm of election strategy. We are told our opinion only matters if we have others who agree with us. Our government is admittedly set up in a way that sucks people into this since the electoral college certainly complicates matters. Furthermore, once an individual is elected, he or she often has to engage in this kind of behavior to get what they want done--essentially by trading votes. Trading votes makes sense for public servants with public votes, but there is no way to ensure you will get what you want by agreeing to vote for someone else's candidate because they assure you that you agree on the so called important stuff.

I do understand the idea behind a party; after all the likely reason Trump received the nomination was that too many other individuals were splitting the rest of the vote. It makes sense to find people who agree with you and you can all agree to vote for one candidate. Otherwise, a more organized minority could win. Unfortunately, I don't identify with either party at the moment, and if my understanding of the situation is correct, neither do most of my fellow Americans.

Here is the thing: the reason we have only the two ridiculous candidates that we have is because of the ridiculous mindset that we have to vote for someone who we judge has a chance of winning. That means that before we cast a vote, instead of researching candidates and issues and judging with our own intellect who best represents us, we spend our time figuring out who our neighbors are voting for.  The entire election system is based on peer pressure, not policies. And then when someone of a particular party (or basically clique) wants to do something else from what was once decided (nominations), the rest of the party pressures them back into conformity, just like high school. This is a ludicrous way of deciding who you are going to vote for and is exactly what got us in this position in the first place. The majority of the country doesn't truly want to vote for either Trump or Hillary and could by numbers actually elect someone else if we dared to use our votes, but this ridiculous structure has us holding our noses and handing our votes over to someone else. If you are holding your nose to do what someone else is telling you to do with your vote, don't do it. Otherwise, you are basically Karen and Gretchen from Mean Girls.

When inauguration day comes and Hilary (most likely) begins doing the stuff I disagree with, I want to be able to say I didn't vote for her. If by some strange turn Trump takes office instead, I want to be able to say the same. I want to have put my voice behind something I agree with, not followed the sheep and taken part in electing who I was told I was supposed to like better (or dislike less). The time for trying to agree with a group to get someone I agree with mostly has definitely passed and something needs to be done about these two parties that obviously no longer represent a majority of the population (even together). That can only be done by people striking out on their own. It might not make a difference to the outcome of this election or even any elections in my lifetime, but I will cast my vote for the candidate I judge most worthy; Anything else would be wasting my vote.

Saving Money

I am always seeing articles "25 Easy Ways to Save Money" or "10 Simple Things to Stop Doing to Get Out of Debt." I keep finding a frustrating problem with most of these articles: I am already doing most, if not all, of the things in the article. Of course, that might be the reason we are not in fact in debt, but as we are trying to save money for a house and car, I am searching for good ways to save.

Evidently, I can save a lot of money if I just stop going to Starbucks and make my coffee at home. Of course, when you don't drink coffee in the first place and can't really remember for sure the last time you went to a coffee shop at all, this tip doesn't really get you anywhere.

Turning your heat down 10 degrees at night will really rack up the savings--unless of course your pipes freeze because you already have it down to 60 and it is below zero outside.

Packing your lunch to the office will really save you money as well--except for when your husband already just takes last night's leftovers anyway.

Making a meal plan and shopping list and going to the grocery store only once a week will reduce impulse spending. Does most of the world only get enough food for a day or two and pick up random stuff that looks good in the moment? I guess this really must be so because I see things about this on pretty much every list. I understand that a lot of people (myself probably included) don't meal plan well, hence the number of articles written to help people do it better, but the idea of not doing it at all is a little crazy to me if for no other reason than I just don't want to spend time going to the grocery store every day.

And, my personal favorite: cutting back your haircuts from once a week to every other week will save you half the money you spend on haircuts--unless no one in the family gets a haircut more than once a month, if that, and said haircuts are done in the bathroom. (To be fair, the last one was only in one article. Are there a large number of people who really get their hair cut once a week? Really?) Also, I don't think it is bad to spend money on haircuts, but once a week is more than a little excessive.

I have every so often happened on some good tips I can incorporate and have sometimes found suggestions I am not doing, but am not willing to do either (I keep my house at 68 during the day during the winter. 60 is too cold). But most of the time, I just get a list of things I pretty much consider plain common sense, especially if someone is in debt.

In all fairness, there are a good number of frugality blogs and such that have all sorts of great suggestions, it is mostly the list articles that I find unhelpful, probably because anything that requires little effort--which most of the things on these lists are--I started doing long ago.