Comparing Apples and Oranges
An Objective(-ish) Observation
The perfect candidate does not exist. The perfect candidate never existed. We have the Internet so lying or hiding the truth has gotten a lot harder to do. Though we deserve the perfect candidate, because humans are flawed, we’re stuck with imperfection. That said, some flaws, that lead to certain actions, are much less damaging than other flaws. So let’s compare #CrookedHillary to #CrookedTrump for, let us say, “perspective”.
Some could argue that Hillary is a sketchy ass political figure. She is. She definitely has no idea how to use e-mail, and more so, she does not understand that hiding the issues does not make them better, it makes everything worse.
Here’s the thing, though: A distrust of Clinton does not mean that Trump is trustworthy. Disliking one person does nothing to affect the value of another person; that is the biggest trick of this election -- trying to convince you that if the apple has a bruise on it then the rotten orange must be good. The rotten orange is still rotten.
Trump is a hate monger who plays off the fears of some citizens and spreads lies to push his cause. The thing that digs deep to Trump’s core is he is a great salesman and the biggest thing that he sells is his image, because the truth of his business acumen, the truth of his intelligence, and the truth of his actions is almost entirely a source of disappointment.
But, let’s be objective(-ish) and compare the two candidates and their respective lies, corruption, and malfeasances. As you can see, pulling punches isn’t my thing, and idealizing any candidate and pretending that he or she has no flaws is a huge flaw in and of itself, so let’s take a look at what is really going on.
Let’s start with Hillary Clinton. Here is a list of what shadiness she has perpetrated and links to back up the truth of the claims:
1) Hillary gave donors preferential treatment, in one case putting an unqualified donor on a sensitive intelligence board.
One thing to note is that the Clinton Foundation has helped millions of children and adults in medical need and other life-saving ways. It does amazing things, but it does not justify shadiness and doing such shadiness and lying and saying that it does not happen. Hillary has done that repeatedly.
2) Hillary mishandled how she should have dealt with sensitive and classified emails while Secretary of State by using a server outside of the government server.
To note: NO EMAIL has reached anyone that they shouldn’t have, but the issue is that it COULD’VE, given the way they were handled. Most recently, after emails related to her aide were found, the FBI again
issued a statement saying that Hillary was STILL no longer culpable.
Special Note: See Giuliani and FBI leak note under Trump.
3) Hillary called young black men “super predators” while her husband was president. This is both naive, racist, and pushed the private prison model and the incarceration of young Black men further during the mid-1990′s.
4) Hillary was only for gay marriage long after it was accepted nationally. Before that, she said that marriage was between only a man and a woman or only talked about civil unions.
5) She is extremely hawkish when it comes to foreign policy and military use. She supported the Iraq War and, while Secretary of State, sided with military action more often than President Obama.
This said, I watched Colin Powell present the evidence on Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, and, at the time, since we did not know it was not actually true evidence, I thought we should have invaded Iraq as well.
That’s pretty much the most of it. You could add the shadiness of the DNC collaborating with Hillary in the primaries with the Hillary Victory Fund and directly trying to undermine Bernie Sanders. Or the CNN analyst who leaked primary debate questions to the Hillary campaign. But that is the crappy DNC, or a crappy pundit, not Hillary Clinton so I leave it as a side note.
Now let’s look at Trump. His shadiness would only be shady if he hid it, but he does not. So Trump is not shady; he is just horrible at what he does. But don’t take my word, look at the truth of what this son of a KKK member has done:
1) Trump is a horrible businessman, and he lies to try to make himself seem good at it:
He claims he made hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years, and that was a lie. He reported his business’s gross income (total money received from sold products) and NOT the correct amount of the business’ net income (total money received from products minus total cost of making/providing those products). Most of the time he claimed huge gains, he either lost millions, or did just better than break even. Most of his money is balanced by huge loans or huge debt.
He has had dozens of failed businesses.
His businesses have filed for bankruptcy 6 times.
At least one of his businesses is in a lawsuit for being a fraud: Trump University.
Trump says that one of the biggest problems with American businesses is sending work overseas. BUT, Trump almost exclusively uses overseas workers for his businesses.
Trump doesn’t pay the contractors who work for him. He cheats hard-working Americans out of their money AFTER they do the job for him. He refuses to pay the pollsters his campaign hired. He is even being sued by the USA Freedom Kids dancing troop that opened his rallies.
Here’s a breakdown of the most egregious corruption that Trump has instigated in a single article.
If Trump runs the United States like he runs his businesses, he will lie about how well it is doing, it will fail, he will cheat US citizens out of their hard work, and/or he will drive it into bankruptcy. This is supposedly his best quality.
2) The Trump Foundation is a horrible foundation, if it can even be called a foundation:
It got caught by the IRS illegally donating to the political campaign of the Florida attorney general who was in charge of deciding if Trump University would be charged with fraud. (Trump then also threw her a fundraising party at one of his golf courses.)
It did not pay taxes properly on the funds that were diverted to the Foundation.
It spent Foundation money on purchases solely for Trump or Trump businesses, including $20,000 dollars for a 6 foot painting of himself.
The Trump Foundation used $258,000 to settle Trump’s own legal fees (also considered to be illegal).
It lacks the certification to even be considered a real Foundation in a number of states.
On top of that, the Trump Foundation’s main “donation” has been to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, which is led by a former head of the New York FBI who was the main force in pushing for Comey to send a letter to Congress about re-opening the Hillary Clinton emails story.
3) Trump cheated on his current wife in 2006 (after cheating on his first wife with his second wife), though a key attack of his campaign has been on Hillary enabling her husband’s sexual aggression towards women.
4) Trump believes that women who have abortions should be punished.
5) Trump believes that sexually assaulting women is okay, and his right.
6) One of Trump’s biggest platforms is his strict stance on immigration and illegal immigrants. HOWEVER, his own wife, Melania Trump, violated immigration law by working in the US as a foreigner without a work visa. By Trump’s standards, his wife should lose her citizenship and be deported.
7) Melania Trump recently gave a speech about how “Bullying is Bad”. I agree with that. However, it was done on the back of her publicly saying that the death threats and anti-Semitic attacks against a reporter (who truthfully reported on lies that Melania made about her past) were justified. And one look at Trump’s own Twitter feed and all you see is bullying by name calling and attacking individuals’ physical attributes.
8) Trump has ZERO political experience. ZERO. Even President Reagan was the governor of California, and the only previous presidents with no political experience were officers in the military. Trump dodged the draft by getting deferments for college and then claiming he was not physically fit to serve.
9) Trump recently claimed that voter fraud is rampant. To Note: 31 cases of voter fraud have been found from all 2000 to 2014 elections. That is approximately 1 billion votes. 31 out of 1,000,000,000. That is 1 in 32,258,064. There were 129,085,410 who voted in the 2012 presidential election. The estimated number of voter fraud votes would be 4 for this election if the same voter turnout occurred. Yes, 4 whole votes. 0.0000003% of the overall vote. As in, completely non-effective. The chance of being struck by lightning TWICE in your lifetime is 1 in 9 million. So, to be clear. It is greater than 3 times more likely that someone will be struck by lightning in their lifetime, two separate times, than it is that they will commit voter fraud. And yet, Trump then told his supporters to vote twice, because they could not “trust the system” ... which IS voter fraud.
10) Trump has repeatedly told supporters that after they vote, they should go to polling stations and “watch” who votes. His rhetoric is tantamount to telling his supporters to commit voter suppression. Given that his rhetoric and his supporters have been extremely anti-foreigner and anti- many other groups, the watching of the polls is synonymous to unlawful racial profiling of the past.
11) Rudy Guiliani, former New York City mayor, and top Trump advisor said on national television that he was told by current FBI agents of the forthcoming Hillary emails on Huma Abedin’s email account on Abedin’s husband’s computer. Why is this important? Guiliani, in essence, said that current FBI agents passed along confidential/classified information on a current investigation to him. Yes, Hillary’s emails COULD’VE potentially been compromised (though they were not), Guiliani is saying that CURRENT FBI AGENTS who were Guiliani’s friends DID release classified information to someone outside of the FBI and outside of the security clearance. That is a federal crime. That is the claim that Trump’s campaign has been saying could’ve happened related to Hillary’s emails, and how that potential was so horrible. Immediately, an investigation was asked to be initiated and immediately Guiliani changed his story.
12) Trump lies. He lies a lot. Here is the list that I could come up with in just 5 minutes:
- He claims he was never for the Iraq War even though he is on tape as saying he supported it. The only record of him being against it (before this election) was a private conversation he said he had while alone with one individual.
- He repeatedly says he has no ties at all to Russia. It’s a lie. Definitely a lie. (I wrote “lie” twice because I wanted to include a second source.)
- Crap, forget my long list, there are websites dedicated to it:
PolitiFact, which says only 15% of all public “facts” Trump has said can be considered at least “Mostly True”;
The DailyWire put together 101 of his lies ... in April;
Here’s a list of his biggest Debate lies, the list is endless.
So, now, you decide. The apple with the bruise on it or the rotten orange. You are right, neither is the most ideal, you want a perfect piece of fruit, but Hillary has tons of political experience, the foundation she is associated with saves millions of lives, and she knows what the fuck she is doing. Trump has no political experience, is NOT GOOD at the one thing he claims to be superior in, and preys on human fear. I end with the brilliance of Michael Douglas in The American President, because, shit, how close is it to talking about Trump?
Now most people’s perspectives aren't going to change on who they are voting for. So what can you do? The highest voter turnout for a US election was in 1960 with 63.8% of registered voters voting. That means that even if that number was matched, 36.2% of registered voters did not vote. CHANGE THAT. Get out and vote. We live in a Representative Democracy -- we vote for representatives and they make decisions on our behalf. GET OUT AND VOTE, and not just for president but for state and city representatives as well. Gandhi said that, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” and one way to enact that change is to VOTE! No excuses. Make the time. VOTE. And if you don’t vote, and you can, then you better STFU going forward and not have any opinions about anything because when someone gives you a voice, you waste it. Do you want better political choices in the future? Then make that happen, because the world does not just make magic on its own, you have to put in the work. Hashtag VOTE.
