I don’t know how we got here, with Presidential Candidates like Donald Trump and Joe Biden as presidential candidates.

Well, actually, I do have an idea, but I don’t know that it’s right or true. What I do know is that both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are not attractive in any way. I remember a similar time with Gore and G.W. Bush, and look how well that turned out – we invaded Iraq for no good reason, the manufactured consent being about weapons of mass destruction and the only ones we found were the ones we brought with us.

Many of we veterans were against that. Nobody really listened. Look how well that turned out.

Trump is… well. An ambulatory legal disaster. Biden is… at best, conflicted. Both candidates can’t keep things straight because they are old. There’s a line somewhere between experienced and old that they have both crossed some time ago. One harnesses the anger at an establishment that doesn’t work for them while doing nothing about it, even making it worse, while the other is running on not being the other guy.

Reproduction rights – oh, who are we fooling, they’re women’s rights – will be a part of the campaign. The overturning of Roe vs. Wade does not make sense to me. If you’re religious, you believe in God, and God is supposed to sort out things at a personal level according to a variety of scriptures. Legislating away choices that are supposed to be between a person and their deity of choice or lack thereof seems peculiar to me. I don’t have to agree with someone else’s choice that doesn’t affect me.

In fact, that particular choice regarding abortion only impacts taxpayers when there is no abortion. That’s where we then have the need for social programs for humans that one day will become adults for at least 18 years. Do I agree with abortion personally? Sometimes, sometimes not, but it boils down to it not being my choice and I won’t force someone to have a child they don’t want or cannot support. That just sounds like a bad mix. So in my mind, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade seems… stupid. Meanwhile, in Alabama, things got really weird.

People do things I disagree with all the time. I’m not special enough to dictate to anyone else how they should do things. I wouldn’t want to be. My own life is weird enough. And how is this an election issue?

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has no real oversight, which is just astounding when you see how much lobbyism impacts the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is hardly ‘supreme’ unless in a Taco Bell Burrito sense, with similar effects to the dietary tract.

What else is there. Oh, growing socioeconomic divides that neither candidate speaks to in a meaningful way.

We have the “I wish Israel would listen” issue with 65% of Americans against what Israel is doing to some degree. Neither party wants to take on that, and when most decisions cannot be explained in politics it usually becomes about money. Around the world where the wars are, we see corporate needs. Ukraine – oil, minerals, and farmland. Where the Palestinians are – were, hopefully still are – oil. Let’s not forget what’s going on in the Congo.

I like capitalism. I do. The system we have now, though, is overreach without a reach-around. There do not seem to be checks and balances. The masses, upset, are told what the issues are, the candidates are told what the talking points are, and the lobbyists keep everything lubricated to get the interests of those with more free speech than others to center stage.

Dystopian fiction doesn’t have a market when we live it, so unless you plan to do some time traveling to sell your book, forget it.

There are third party candidates. The major parties will have people decrying them about splitting the vote, but I have something to tell you. Voting for a bad candidate to win is just that. That is a wasted vote, and if you don’t like your candidate, you’re telling your political party of choice that you’ll keep taking it. That you like it. And they won’t change.

I know the blind followers of political parties. The rhetoric is the same, the names and issues changed or inverted to just keep the herds going on the paths chosen for us. I do not like their choices, but like abortion, it’s not my right to tell them how to vote and in the same vein, it’s not their right to tell me how I should vote.

Somewhere along the way, people might vote for their interests again rather than playing a fabricated tug of war on issues that goes out of it’s way to dehumanize the ‘others’. ‘Trump Supporters are stupid’, ‘Libtards’, etc – not the way to have a meaningful discussion about the future of a nation, and implicitly, the world – a world that is watching, with enemies that are probably laughing at the whole thing.

They should. It’s idiotic.

Whatever part of the political spectrum that you fall on, all I have to say is that you should do better with your candidates – and I’ll throw the third party candidates in there as well.

If you can’t be critical of all the candidates, you’re not a voter. You’re a sheep.

That’s what I have to say about the 2024 Presidential Election. I don’t expect to write about it because I’m not interested in politics, I’m interested in doing better, and it doesn’t seem like politics is a part of that.