Election Quality Engineer: Welcome to the 2016 Election Complaint Department. How may I help you?
Disgruntled Voter: I’m an undecided voter with some complaints. First of all, we have such awful candidates. Trump and Clinton are both horrible.
Election Quality Engineer: We’ve heard that complaint from many disgruntled voters recently. But the facts show that only one candidate is actually awful. One has a long history of questionable and possibly illegal business practices, a rude demeanor, possibly racist views, clearly misogynist tendencies, very little knowledge of the issues, no government experience, and a propensity for lying and then claiming that the system is rigged whenever his lies are called out. The other is Hillary Clinton.
Disgruntled Voter: Yeah, sure, Trump’s terrible. Everybody knows that. But Hillary isn’t any better. I saw on the internet that she’s criminal who murders her enemies and ran a fake charity and sold top-secret emails to the Soviet Union.
Election Quality Engineer: The internet is filled with many psychologically disturbed people who make claims with no connection with reality. That’s what these attacks on Clinton are. Meanwhile, back in reality, she has never been arrested or even seriously suspected of any crime. She never sent or received email messages properly marked as classified in private emails. Her family foundation is a real charity that helps millions of people around the world. Clinton is actually a well-respected public servant with decades of experience and countless accomplishments who has been relentlessly attacked by people who oppose her. Also, the Soviet Union dissolved a quarter century ago.
Disgruntled Voter: But isn’t Hillary just as rude as Trump? Didn’t she call his supporters “deportable”?
Election Quality Engineer: She called half of his supporters “deplorable.” But she also said that many of his supporters are frustrated with their economic condition and deserve our empathy. Surveys show that 65 percent of Trumps supporters think President Obama is a Muslim, 59 percent believe he wasn’t born in the U.S., 49 percent believe blacks are more violent than whites, 40 percent believe blacks are lazier than whites, 31 percent believe gay people shouldn’t be allowed into the U.S., and 20 percent believe Lincoln shouldn’t have freed the slaves. That’s clearly “deplorable” and borderline “deportable.”
Disgruntled Voter: So, isn’t Hillary so old and sick that she almost died last month? Maybe we should replace her with Bernie Sanders.
Election Quality Engineer: Clinton is actually younger than both Trump and Sanders. She had a brief battle with pneumonia recently and showed remarkable strength to campaign while she was sick, but she eventually took a couple of days off. When you call in sick, does your employer replace you with the less-qualified person who you beat out for the job? I hope not. Clinton looked far more energetic and healthy than Trump at their recent debates.
Disgruntled Voter: Yeah, I saw those debates. I heard that Hillary had an earpiece so she could get answers piped directly into her brain and used hand signals to communicate with the moderator and ordered Trump’s microphone cut off so no one could hear him. What’s up with that?
Election Quality Engineer: The earpiece and hand-signal conspiracies come from the same pitiful people who believe she’s a murderer. And Trump’s microphone seemed to be working well enough that we heard him interrupt Clinton multiple times, lie repeatedly, and sniffle more often than a sickly infant.
Disgruntled Voter: Doesn’t Clinton own all those fact-check thingies? That’s why they picked on Trump so much.
Election Quality Engineer: The fact-checkers who called out Trump’s many debate lies are nonpartisan information services. They “picked on” Trump because he lied about 10 times as often as Clinton did in the debate. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump lives on another planet.
Disgruntled Voter: Trump must have said something right because he won all of those debate polls, didn’t he?
Election Quality Engineer: Those “polls” are actually just online surveys that allow anyone to vote, often multiple times. Right-wing activists have a long history of flooding these surveys to promote a dishonest narrative. In the polls conducted using reliable methods that yield accurate results, Clinton beat Trump like a dusty rug.
Disgruntled Voter: Oh, come on. Trump can’t be that bad.
Election Quality Engineer: Well, in just recently we’ve learned that Trump may have violated the Cuban embargo, had dealings with a bank that supports terrorists in Iran, was exposed for his racist “birther” les, attempted to fat-shame and slut-shame a former Miss Universe, tweeted about a sex tape in the wee hours of the morning, used his foundation as a personal and campaign slush fund, implied that veterans with PTSD aren’t “strong,” lost nearly a billion dollars in one year, may not have paid federal income tax for many years, and questioned Hillary Clinton’s marriage even though he has bragged about his multiple infidelities in his multiple marriages.
Disgruntled Voter: Okay, I see your point.
Election Quality Engineer: So, what was your original complaint? Something about Trump and Clinton being equally bad?
Disgruntled Voter: Never mind. I’ve decided to do the only sane thing. I’m voting for Hillary.
John Sheirer is an author and teacher who lives in Florence. He will read from his most recent book, “Make Common Sense Common Again,” at Northampton’s Forbes Library on Oct. 22 at 12:30 p.m.