“Busy, busy, busy” – what a Bokononist whispers whenever he thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.
I’ve traveled over 10,000 miles in the last two weeks, which sounds like a lot, but to be honest I mostly sat in a seat while it happened so it isn’t that impressive.
If you follow me on social media, which I’ve told you not to do, you know that I have been doing some campaigning for Hillary Clinton, part of operation Do Whatever It Takes To Prevent The Worst Human Being Ever To Run For Public Office Yes That Includes Joe Arpaio And David Duke From Being Elected.
I have so much to say about that, but I feel like I can’t do it in less than an hour, and we’re past the point where anyone is going to change their mind so it’s not really worth the time and effort, and I really want to get to work on today’s writing, so I’ll just say this: there are hundreds of reasons to vote against Donald Trump, but I have some very good reasons to vote for Secretary Clinton. Everyone has their primary reason, from equal pay for women, to family leave, to college debt relief, to electing a massively qualified woman, to simply keeping Donald Trump out of the White House. My primary reasons are The Supreme Court, and Hillary and Tim Kaine’s support for mental health care. As most of you know, I live with chronic depression and generalized anxiety disorder. I suffered for at least ten years longer than I should have, because I was ashamed and embarrassed about it, and I felt like it was something I should just get over. I felt weak, and I was afraid that getting medication would change who I was at a fundamental level. But when I heard people who I respected, who were successful and amazing, talk about how they lived with their own mental illness, it gave me the courage to seek help for myself.
It’s a really big deal that people in positions of power and influence, like Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, talk about removing the stigma associated with mental illness that prevents people from seeking help. It’s a really big deal that she has made mental health treatment and access to affordable mental health medication a part of her plan for her presidency. It’s a really big deal that they look at people like us who live with mental illness and say, “We see you. You matter. We’re going to do what we can to help you help yourself.”
So I could go on and on, but l’ll wrap up with this: you all know that I was a massive supporter of Bernie Sanders in the primary. I’m proud of what we did to help him, and I still believe in his mission and his revolution. I can’t vote for him, but because Hillary listened to Bernie and to people like me who voted for him, I can vote for nearly all of the policies he promised to fight for. And if Democrats take a majority in the Senate, he’ll be in charge of the Budget Committee which is a really big fucking deal to borrow a phrase from Joe Biden.
Also, what scalzi said.
Anyway, I’m home now, and working really hard to finish a short supernatural horror story before Halloween, so I can get back into the short story that turned into a novella that is creeping up on becoming a novel.
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Would you consider joining Joss Whedon’s Save the Day campaign to elect Hillary Clinton? It’ll be aaaamaaaazing!!! Seriously tho
YUSSSS we need the nerd kings to unite!
To fight the forces of evil. Also it is incredibly important to have people in power who are sensible and know what’s important. Mental health is an underrated issue.
Hi Wil, I’m not following you on the twitter-verse as you have me blocked(my fault, was a jerk), so I didn’t know you were helping to campaign, but as someone who has to constantly juggle medical debt, a pre-existing condition and student debt, the choice is clear to me. Someone who isn’t just going to repeal the affordable care act day one in office without a replacement lined up is a massive selling point to me, as having access to Healthcare due to Obamacare saved my life. Secretary Clinton isn’t perfect, and I have my concerns, but they are dwarfed by the walking talking racist spray tan advertisement. Thank you for using your voice to help influence reason into the minds of the masses.
-Chris
You’ve inspired me to finish my crazed story. It creeped me out last week when I started it. Ha!
I just missed you in Madtown. Even when sitting, travel can be exhausting. I’m glad to hear you say you won’t try to change anyone’s mind at this point. I predict a landslide. Fingers crossed…
Happy Halloween!
I appreciate your time and efforts, it’s a lot of work on your part and I hope it makes a difference. How does that work? Do they assign you places to go? Just curious.
I was pretty stoked to get to meet you after a decade of being a blog reader. Yes, a decade.
I’m cringing for introducing myself like a dork, as you clearly knew who I was. I guess it seemed polite? Oh well. I’m glad I respected your personal space. I know how that makes you feel.
You rock, keep on keeping on.
Hi, Wil. As someone who also lives with depression and anxiety I can understand why you would want to have good mental health coverage. However, I have to say that I don’t trust Mrs. Clinton with this issue. I don’t trust “The Donald” with it either. There are many reasons why I don’t trust her with it, but the main one is her ideological stand point. She said that she is an early 20th century progressive. After doing some homework on this, I found out what they believed in, and people with mental issues were someone to be ignored or wiped out. If she truly is like those from the last century, then her rhetoric about wanting to help people with mental issues is just that….rhetoric.
However, I am willing to give her a chance (IF she is elected President). And like you said, we are way past the point of changing people’s mind on the subject. We are ALL entitled to our OWN OPINIONS. This happens to be mine. But I wanted to let it be known that as people with depression and anxiety (and other mental health issues), we may be in for one hell-of-a shock IF things go south instead of north. I truly hope there will be better mental health coverage available and that the stigma won’t be as it is now. But I’m not holding my breath on it. History has taught me too much to do that.
Anyway, no matter how this election turns out, I hope we will be able to come together instead of tearing each other further apart.
Thank you, thank you, Wil, for ALL your efforts!
Hillary is better than Trump, no question. But not talking about HRC’s warmongering side seems dishonest. Maybe I am being too harsh, but that is a really big side to Clinton. As well as getting Bill Clinton into the white house again, which I disapprove of.
I’m voting for Hillary for many of the same reasons. I do miss Bernie Sanders, though.
I love you. And I agree with your pint of view. Right on, Mister. Wil
I just finished a post that has NOTHING to do with what you’ve spoken here, but I HEART THIS POST SO MUCH, and bits of it did somehow manage to take me back to what I’ve just written. Weird. Maybe because the people in my post did/do also suffer from mental illness? I dunno. I HEART THIS POST SO MUCH, I’m going to tweet it (or R/T it, as the case may be).
It is so amazing to know that there are people like you, in the middle of all your busy busy busy, still taking time to do the things that matter. You rock.
Okay, so I follow you on social media, I admit, but what can I say, I’m an old rebel!! Wil , I’m glad that you have convictions and stay true to them. It is important to support leaders that care about the things that are important to you.
I’m also voting for Hilary.
If you’re trying to “Prevent The Worst Human Being Ever To Run For Public Office” out of the White House, why are you campaigning for her?
Here’s hoping Mr W, fingers crossed and best of luck to H, /hugs Andy (and the rest of the UK and EU (whilst we are still in…))
I appreciate your enthusiasm, Wil, but my health insurance just went from $370/mo to $550/mo. That is a 48% rise. The year before it went from $320/mo to $370/mo. Going back to pre-Obamacare, it was in the low two hundreds. I am a healthy non-smoking vegan with no history of significant illness and I’m not old (unless you consider yourself old – in which case, feel free to call me old)
I voted for Obama twice as I am a Democrat and believe in other aspects of his platform, but let’s realize that we’ve broken insurance even though it is the thing that Obama touts as his major achievement.
There is no other way to say it. We’ve broken insurance. Why do I speak with such confidence? I have an masters in business and economics and my first career out of college was underwriting financial instruments including insurance. That’s what I did before returning to my nerd roots and going into engineering where the bulk of my career played out. I worked like a beast, did well, retired young, and then started a small business which often amounts to “a hell of a lot of work for a guy who is supposed to be retired.” But to the point, I understand insurance in ways few ever will as a result of years in that industry. This is not an opinion but an informed observation from someone who understands the insurance eco-system. We have broken it by attempting to cap the ends of a closed system without attenuating its size and dynamics. We (and I mean Democrats) had great intentions no doubt, but still, we have broken it. Whatever else we do, we must un-break insurance or we will break the economy.
That being said, i cannot in good conscience vote for Trump and as a result, it is an untenable voting year. Take that note of sobriety with you as you campaign.
Clinton is up 31 points in my state, so I hope you forgive me for voting third party. I’m sure Clinton will make an okay president. She’ll do some things I like and some things I won’t, but since she’s getting all of the electoral votes from my state no matter what, my vote won’t really matter.
Now by voting for Stein or Johnson, I can help those parties gain state recognition and ballot access in the future. The Libertarian party has more progressive stances on social issues and war than the Republican party, and the Green party has more progressive stances on economic issues than the Democratic party, so I feel that a vote for a third party, especially in a “safe” state, is a vote to show support for progressive causes.
This is mostly a response to Bob, a few comments back.
I realize that premiums suck. They suck for you, they suck for me, and clearly we need to do more work on this whole thing. That said, I can say, without hyperbole, that voting for Trump is voting for me and millions like me to die.
Before the affordable care act, my premiums were $0. Not because I had some magical insurance company, no. Because I could not get insurance. I, like many others, suffer from actually being sick. When I was diagnosed with Chrons Disease, my insurance suddenly went away. Because I absolutely positively will be drawing money every month ($2500 for medicine that keeps me from dying, although I am sure that insurance companies would never pay that much, that’s just how much it would cost me to get it myself), I was told that no insurance company would ever take me as a client, since, as someone who would require they actually pay out money, I was no longer a good investment, by which they mean “person likely to pay in and almost never need any significant payouts”. Keeping in mind that I made only ~$2700 a month at the time, that essentially meant that my choices were death or poverty (actually mostly death; the medicine is required by law to be delivered, so if you have no address, you can’t take it). And keep in mind, that amount is only the maintenance medication; there are other expenses too. Fortunately, shortly after that diagnosis I went to college, which came with a student plan that was not subject to individual deferment, and while I was there the ACA was enacted, so now I can get insurance, even if it is pricey. So my life LITERALLY depends on the republicans not getting back control of the government, because the first thing they will do is kill me.
So obviously I will be voting for Clinton. Fix the problems, instead of going with the Republican plan, which is a blanket repeal (and covert mass-murder) with a promise, which they have never fulfilled in even the slightest outline for years, to EVENTUALLY (by which time millions will be dead including me) issue what will probably be an even worse “trickle down market based” approach to fixing the issue.
If a person or company who doesn’t know or love you refrains from paying for your medical care, they are not committing murder.
That said, I’m sorry that you are challenged by a serious medical condition; you sound like a nice, intelligent and rational person.
It should be noted that we have a significant medical costs issue that is a direct result of administrative overlay which focuses on profit over care. But the solution is not to cap the ends of dynamic risk pools. (Insurance) The solution is to raze, by law, the hospital management and high-pressure drug sales industries. If you are a student now, then you were born into a messed up medical system and have never known the system that we lost with the advent of the HMO and the modern incarnation of “Big Pharma”. Before HMOs, medicine was an industry run & self-regulated largely by physicians who shopped out specific business tasks to business people and who collaborated with universities on research projects. Now, both hospitals and pharmaceuticals are run by huge corporations which exist to enrich shareholders, the most influential of which are investment fund managers. If you’re looking for the set of people who don’t care whether you or I or anyone other than themselves die as long as profit goes up, look there. Trusting investment bankers to oversee cotton-candy sales is unwise. Trusting them with the structure and direction of medical care is an act of criminal stupidity. How we allowed this to happen is beyond me. There are quite a few doctors in my family. Based on conversations with them over the last 20 years, I’m confident that I speak for all of them on this point.
Eventually, diagnostic AI, personal mobile medicine and molecular-level medicine printing and intelligent insertable devices will lower the cost of medicine. You may live to see that day if you’re young enough. But until technology is smart and small and efficacious enough to radically lower the cost of personal medical diagnostics and treatment delivery, we’re in for a rough ride. But it’s not impossible to extricate business sociopaths from an industry. When Enron caused significant damage to the energy industry and the customers of some large California cities, people demanded legislative change and got it. My S.O. is an energy consultant and she is a bona-fide tree-hugger, as are many of the people with whom she works. There are still some evil bastards in the industry, but legislation and industry structure seem to be holding them at bay for the most part. (at least for now – knock on wood)
no thanks. The era of the voter confidence trick of getting people to vote against the very slightest difference instead of FOR what they want is over.
neoliberalism places importance of the invention called money over that of people which is a dehumanizing process.
The choice of neoliberal or neoliberal or neoliberal isn’t political choice. And the minimum requirement for democracy of any type is political choice.
I refuse to vote for more neoliberalism and have decided to my political act is to abstain.
Chump or Klingon is the same monster.
Hi Wil, I too have anxiety issues and I’m tech-averse so I’ve never posted to anything in my life before but it’s 4:30 am after the most damaging night in our country’s recent history and I have to do something to reach out to someone on a positive note. Since you strike me as a guy who is receptive to positive outreach I thought I’d suggest something all Californians can do to effect change literally in your own backyard: plant native plants. Seriously. Did you know Southern California actually does have seasons? If you had barberry and manzanita you would see “fall color” in new leaf growth. You would see the very end of the buckwheat bloom and the last of the fuchsia. And you would know that Toyon was getting ready to give you a winter show of “holly berries” (hence the name “Hollywood”–which used to be covered in it). Those bare hills you see all around are not natural, they are the result of 400 years of damage and it makes every calamity we face worse. Deep rooted plants like scrub oak and coffee berry should be there to anchor hillsides and help redistribute water to other plants. Beautiful blue-green Ceanothus is infinitely more fire resistant than ice plant and is even recommended by Calfire for planting in fire breaks. And where you find scrub intact you will tend to find temperatures are cooler. Your garden can be a small bulwark against climate change aggravated by suburban heat islands. And it’s easy to garden native if you pick the right plants for your area because they don’t want amending or very much tending once established. They want to be there. A great place to start browsing is Calscape http://calscape.org/. Or, if you want your info with a touch of dry humor, the Las Pilitas Nursery website isn’t very slick but it is legend among native plant nerds as a trove of knowledge. Okay, that’s the pitch. I know it’s a small drop in the ocean of angst we’re up against, but’s it’s 4:30 am and it’s what I’ve got. Be well. Oh, and don’t actually brew the coffe berry beans, they’ll give you the trots.