I’m Voting For Hillary, Because I Am Not A Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller (Nor Do I Want To Become One)

(Note: style of title shamelessly cribbed from Sara Benincasa, who is the best. Go read her article, I’m Voting For The Democrat In November Because I Am Not A Human Tire Fire.)

This is not news to anybody, but I’m voting for Hillary Clinton.

And I hope you do, too.

I’m voting for her first because I’m not a CHUD. I am not an irradiated creature who lives in the sewer, and I don’t want to become one, so I’d rather not elect the sentient orange patch of anal leakage to the Most Powerful Office in the World, because, as many have noted, if the guy can’t be trusted with a Twitter account, he probably can’t be trusted with the nuclear codes. He’d be the first (and last) president to start a nuclear war over a dismissive tweet from a world leader. He’s a sexist, racist Narcissist with skin so thin it’s like the frost on the outside of an ice cream container — it melts under a puff of hot breath. Would he destroy the world? I dunno. He’d crater the economy, at least temporarily, and spin us back into a recession or depression. He’d also send a message to pretty much everyone but white, wealthy males that they should expect to be dismissed, or even punished, for who they are and what they believe. And the moment the media backs up that narrative, he’ll punish them, too. Because Trump wants everyone to pay for his mistakes. That’s his life: a cascade of failures, a series of debts, none of which he pays for. He always sticks someone else with the bill.

That’s Trump. We let him be our president now, one day he’ll emcee the first Hunger Games.

But Clinton — see, you’re thinking that a lot of us are voting for her because she’s Just Not Him, and certainly, that would be true for me no matter who the candidate was. If the Democrats had as a candidate a bowl of tapioca pudding, I would vote for that bowl of pudding because at least I know the pudding hasn’t insulted someone’s disability, or their weight, or their skin color, and I am damn sure that the pudding would not suddenly develop pseudopods with which to enter in the nuclear codes in order to bomb the New York Times at 3:30 in the morning because of a dream the pudding had where the NYT editor called that bowl of pudding “a short-tempered, small-dicked glop of gummy treacle.”

So, sure, I’d vote for the lesser of two evils, because that’s sometimes how elections are, and I’m a fucking adult who lives in the real world and knows that shit is sometimes hard.

But I’m also an adult who is legitimately excited about Hillary Motherfucking Clinton.

I’m excited about Hillary because she is wildly experienced — she has held a number of roles at various levels of the Operating System known as the United States Government. She is a champion of children, and disability, and healthcare. She is pro-science. She is an advocate for women’s and LGBT rights. She wants to address systemic racism and inequality.

I’m excited to elect our first woman president.

I’m excited about how excited she is to see some balloons.

I’m excited because of how well-vetted she’s been — in part by a GOP who has wanted to destroy her for decades, and yet every time she’s all bad-ass and walking away from it all in a white pantsuit, refusing to flinch as the whole building explodes behind her.

I’m excited to see the panoply of pantsuits.

I’m excited because she’s devoted a lot of her life to public work.

I’m excited because she seems snarky, and also like she’d fucking shank you behind the schoolyard wall if you messed with her or her country, and I want her on our side.

I’m excited because of the way she baited Trump during each and every debate, leading him around like she had a finger up each of his nostrils, turning him this way and that way into every damn trap she put down.

I’m excited because her advice to deal with Putin was, “Snub him.”

I’m excited for someone to carry on Obama’s legacy, which has been on the whole a positive one for the American public, and again and again we’ve seen the metrics for a healthy country not only stabilize, but move in the right direction.

I’m excited for someone whose message is about how we work together, not how we build walls both real and figurative in order to isolate, alienate, and eliminate one another.

I’m excited for common sense gun regulation, and for someone to tackle student debt and college costs, and for someone who wants to protect animals and who correctly notes that “the way our society treats animals is a reflection of our humanity.” (This is all at her website.)

I’m excited for her shimmy.

I’m just excited, godsdamnit.

Here, I’m sure someone’s all like, no but wait, she’s not perfect, which is true. She is a politician, and on the whole, politicians tend to have blood under their nails. They also tend to play politics with things, which means her response to issues that are important to us (like, say, DAPL or climate change) is sometimes far less assertive than we’d like — but, that’s the great thing about our world leaders. They, at least in theory, work for us. We can urge her to do more and do better. (Good luck getting Trump to think he works for us. In Hotel Trumpmerica, we work for him.)

This is a fundamental election.

Tomorrow we either make history —

Or, we repeat it.

I’m sure nothing I’ve said here has changed your mind. Maybe it’s reconfirmed your biases and strengthened the walls of your echo chamber, or it’s given you new (or resurrected) reason to dislike me and not read my books. I hope no matter how you vote, you go and vote (or have voted already if you live in one of those great states that allow early voting, as mine does not). Participate in your democracy. And hopefully you also vote to continue our democracy by voting for Hillary. See you at the polls, America.