When we’re deciding who to trust with the keys to nuclear war, we should ask about their childhood wounds and how it might impact them as adults.
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When the election season began most people believed that Hillary Clinton would be one of the final three still in the race in May, 2016. Few people thought that Bernie Sanders would be in the picture and a viable candidate to win the Democratic nomination. Fewer still thought that Donald Trump would be scowling out at us as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.
Although I think Donald Trump would be the worst choice the American people could make as our next president, I suggested in a recent article that there were a number of reasons he was garnering as much attention and votes as he has thus far:
Our Presidential Candidates Reflect the View We Hold of Ourselves
When we’re depressed and in pain we don’t always make good choices, in our own lives and in our choices for President.
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I suggested that many Americans have a feeling that the world we are creating for our children, grandchildren, and future generations is profoundly damaged and we don’t feel kindly towards ourselves. As Charles Eisenstein says in his book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, “Who could have foreseen, two generations ago when the story of progress was strong, that the twenty-first century would be a time of school massacres, of rampant obesity, of growing indebtedness, of pervasive insecurity, of intensifying concentration of wealth, of unabated world hunger, and of environmental degradation that threatens civilization?”
It’s no wonder that rates of depression and suicide are on the rise, particularly among older, white males. Further, more and more people are suffering from chronic pain and are overdosing on pain medications.
When we’re depressed and in pain we don’t always make good choices, in our own lives and in our choices for President.
Many of us Have Suffered Abuse, Neglect, and Abandonment as Children
Those who have suffered abuse, neglect, or abandonment as children grow up to express their pain in various ways. In my own case, I grew up with a father who was depressed and tried to take his own life when I was a child. My mother was worried and anxious her whole life.
When we’re deciding who to trust with the keys to nuclear war, we should ask about their childhood wounds and how it might impact them as adults. When we elect someone who can send our sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters to war to kill other people’s sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters, we should understand how their wounds might affect their judgments.
In a Complex World, We Want Simple Solutions, Even If They Are Wrong
The world is increasingly complex and it’s difficult to know what we can do to solve the major problems we face. When we study civilizations in the past that collapsed, the underlying cause wasn’t that they didn’t understand the problems they faced, but that they couldn’t focus their attention on solving the problems. They would simply push the problem into the future and hope someone else would figure out what to do.
We’d rather believe in a magical future we know doesn’t exist, than live without hope.
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No one has better articulated this problem of complexity and how to solve it than Rebecca Costa. In her book, The Watchman’s Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse Costa posits that the escalating complexity of our personal lives, technological capabilities, and government policies have led to conditions—worldwide recession, global warming, pandemic viruses—that have outpaced our ability to manage them. After identifying and articulating this dynamic, Costa offers an opportunity to address it. She reveals scientific evidence that the human brain can be retrained to comprehend, analyze, and resolve massively complex problems.
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Mr. Trump taps into the anger and pain people feel about world-wide problems that we don’t seem to be able to solve and offers simple solutions that most people don’t truly feel are realistic—build a wall on our border and make Mexico pay for it, keep all Muslims out of the country, defeat ISIS simply and make America great, once and for all. But we want to believe that our problems can be solved. Without hope of a better future, we sink more deeply into despair. We’d rather believe in a magical future we know doesn’t exist, than live without hope.
How do we decide who to vote for? I think it will get down to this simple question. Who do we trust can deliver on their promises to make a better world for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren, and future generations?
But no matter who wins in November, we’ve got a long journey ahead of us in getting our country working for all the people.
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Here are a few other questions to consider. If you think the system is broken and needs a complete overhaul, who can do that without throwing our country into chaos? Who truly cares about the needs of all the people, not just the rich and powerful? Who gets their money from billionaires and who gets their money from the average person?
The truth is, in a world that is changing so rapidly I can’t say with certainty who the next best president should be. I can tell you how it looks to me now. With everything I know now I would vote for Bernie Sanders. If he drops out and my choice is between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I’d choose Hillary Clinton.
But no matter who wins in November, we’ve got a long journey ahead of us in getting our country working for all the people. I could imagine a number of interesting scenarios:
Revelations come out that shift the Democratic party away from Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders gets the nomination and defeats Donald Trump.
Donald Trump defeats the Democratic nominee and proves, to everyone’s surprise, to be a better President than anyone expected.
Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, defeats Donald Trump, and struggles for four years to bring the country together. In the following election cycle both the Democrats and Republicans bring forth candidates that are better than any who are running in 2016.
I look forward to hearing your own scenarios and reasons you’re voting for the candidate of your choice.
Originally posted on MenAlive
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Photo: Getty Images
On domestic policy, the Constitution makes the office of President relatively weak, compared to other countries, held in check by the Congress and the Supreme Court. But on foreign policy, the President is incredibly powerful, especially since Congress has abdicated its role in declaring war. What that means is that I will never, ever vote for Hillary Clinton. She was wrong in Yugoslavia, wrong in Iraq, wrong in Georgia, wrong in Libya, wrong in Yemen, wrong in Syria, wrong in Ukraine. Before she claims the mantle of “women’s candidate,” we should ask the women clinging to their children on overcrowded… Read more »
Jed, what I’d hoped would be a non partial article turned out to be not so. You set the stage, “I look forward to hearing your own scenarios and reasons you’re voting for the candidate of your choice” but with your partisan opinion, you’ve made it so that many will not respond. This is clearly and admittedly a left leaning site which has little acceptance for those who are not. You’ve put some people in a defensive position rather then one that could show an open discussion. someone who may be leaning toward trump is now having to have to… Read more »