You never know what's going to upset the Deplorable basket, and understand when I say that, I'm not being insulting; I'm talking about the self-identified Deplorables.
This actually happened to me:
A reporter tweeted about a WikiLeaks thing about the Podesta emails. As with all of them, it was something that was 1) nothing out of the ordinary and 2) presented to be something nefarious. The details aren't important, so I won't go into them.
I replied to the Tweet, asking "So?"
And the response was stunning. Over the next two days, my feed received nearly two million impressions and I received literally thousands of mentions. Most of them coming from people who had "Pepe" as their profile picture and/or "Deplorable" in their name.
Their well thought out responses included various creative uses of the "p-word", references to the Obamas eating bananas, and original jokes about how "Kelly is a girl's name."
And those were the friendly ones. Most of them were profanity-induced charges referring to my ignorance, references to how Clinton should be in jail, that Bill Clinton was a rapist, and just general asinine levels of hostility. Most of them I just blocked without even reading.
I had to block over 500 people in two days.
And the irony was how many of these people were in agreement that I (and people like me) are the reason America is so divided right now.
No. I am not the reason. Nor is America falling apart as a certain sexual predator on the Republican ticket would have you believe. But it sure would if Trump won.
But there's a question a lot of people asked me that I want to answer: Why would you vote for her?
I would literally vote for any 35-year-old, American-born citizen who hasn't been convicted of a felony and who is able to function in polite society without groping women before I would vote for Trump because he can't even clear that bar.
But let's clear up things on two fronts, here. First, I couldn't find a hoot to give about WikiLeaks. Shockingly, they also show that Podesta is her campaign manager, and he's managing her campaign.
Yes, the WikiLeaks prove Hillary Clinton is a politician running for office. But there is nothing in there that makes me contemplate putting a racist, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, despot-wannabe, fear-mongering, pedophile, sexual-predating narcissist in the White House. Sorry.
I'm not going to waste time arguing about that because I find there's never any progress made in those discussions. People who make their minds up when they read click-bait headlines tend to be closed-minded anyway.
But I do want to explain is that I am not just voting for Clinton because she is "not Trump." She is not "just as bad" or "the lesser of two evils." She didn't run an illegal charity that she robbed from to buy self-portraits and bribe politicians not to investigate her for scamming hard-working Americans out of their money with a fake university.
She didn't run business after business into the ground and fail to pay her bills while literally pooping in a golden toilet.
She didn't brag about groping women and then call the women who said he did it liars.
Trump is a slimeball. Pure and simple. Let's not confuse normal politics with the moral bankruptcy of Trump. But there is no Chapter 9 for that.
But I am not just voting against him. I am voting FOR her. I voted for Sanders in the primary, but I still find a lot to like about Clinton.
I think we need an in an increase in minimum wage. So does she.
I think we need to continue growing the economy, and the way to do that is not to make irresponsible tax cuts which correspond with irresponsible spending cuts; so does she.
I have LONG thought the greatest asset of any society is its people, and as such, everyone's education should go as far as their abilities and ambition will carry them. I don't think that secondary education should be something that should be available only to some. So does she. She would give free college tuition to anyone from a family making $125,000 per year or less.
I think that the over-incarceration of blacks is a massive problem in this country (and an irresponsible burden on the tax payers). So does she. She would like to turn the "school-to-prison" pipeline into a "school-to-college" pipeline. And for those who want to know how she pays for that, college is cheaper than prison.
I believe that while most police are decent people, trying to do their jobs, unconscious racial profiling is real, and is a big part of why we have so many problems in that area. So does she.
I believe that the next supreme court justice needs to be someone who will protect the rights of ACTUAL people and not corporations. So does she.
While I believe the second amendment protects the right to own guns, I also think that those who commit violent crimes lose that right and responsible government should prevent those people from gaining easy access to them. So does she, and that's why she is for closing loopholes that allow that to happen.
I think that global warming is an actual threat. So does she.
I believe there should be a path to citizenship for people whose families have become integrated into American society. So does she.
I believe that the Affordable Care Act needs to be improved, but it needs to be tweaked, not repealed. So does she. A bit selfishly, I admit, this 49-year-old man likes the idea of expanding Medicare to 50.
I believe women deserve equal pay for equal work. So does she.
I do not agree with everything that Clinton has done. I don't agree with everything she says. I don't think I'll agree with everything she'll do.
But perfection has never been my measure of any candidate because no such candidate exists. The only one I always agree with is me, and I wouldn't want to live in a country where I was president.
In sum, I think that Hillary would be a good president. I think that she has a life of working hard to help people, and I think the totality of her biography proves that. If you look past the debunked scandals, you can see that.
She would be a good president. She has a history of successfully reaching across the aisle, which when you consider the sheer scope of derision she's born is massively impressive.
When Trump had to answer two consecutive negative questions in a debate, he couldn't handle it. He is STILL complaining about it. Can you imagine him sitting in front of the senate for 11 hours bearing up against the snide questioning Rand Paul?
Perhaps what this divided nation more than anything is a president who has self-control, and Clinton has that in spades. After all, she's had to live in a world of condescending Trump-like doofuses her whole life where she knows more, has done more and still has had to explain herself.
Trump can't even reach across his own party. Is he going to reach across the aisle?
So, no, I'm really not just voting or Trump's opponent. I'm actually voting for her.
To wit: I'm with her.