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---
# vim: set tw=80
layout: post
title: I'm losing faith in America
---
I recently quit my job at Linode and started looking for something else to do.
For the first time in my career, I'm seriously considering opportunities abroad.
Sorry for the politically charged post - I promise to get back to tech stuff
right away.
On November 8th, I'm going to step into the voting booth and will be presented
with the following options:
- A criminal who cheated her way into a spot on the ballot
- An egotistical racist maniac
The next president of the United States will probably be Hillary Clinton. I'm
sure I don't have to tell you how ridiculous this is. This is a person who has
pulled all of the stops to get her name on the ballot, including *voter fraud*
and disturbing amounts of corruption within the Democratic party. Not to
mention that she's probably going to start a war with Syria, mess with the
already fragile geopolitical relationship we have with Russia, and likely
deserves to be incarcerated for mishandling classified information. Say what you
will about the Republican party - at least Trump won his nomination fair and
square. Bonus: not voting for Hillary is sexist.
Not that I'd prefer it if Trump wins. I have a free sandwich waiting for me at
the deli nearby if he doesn't win. He got his nomination fairly, but that
doesn't mean he deserves it. This is a guy with little political clout who is
incapable of handling international relations or commanding our military. He
staunchly advocates committing war crimes to deal with ISIS. He makes racist,
sweeping generalizations about anyone different from him. He's a misogynist.
Even worse, he's all of these things and seems to actually represent a fair
portion of his supporters.
Neither of the independents are serious contenders, so I won't bother with why I
don't like them. They haven't earned my vote, either.
Congress is composed of many of the same sort of people. Corrupt politicians who
answer to the checkbooks of lobbyists who work against the interests of the
American people for the sake of their own. We're facing climate change and our
politicians are taking money from rich fossil fuel lobbyists and damning our
species to extinction. The wealth gap between the rich and the poor grows deeper
and deeper as absurdly rich people get absurdly richer at the expense of the
poor and middle class - through the support of the politicians whose pockets
they've greased. Their excess wealth could pay for programs to improve our
failing infrastructure and provide hundreds of thousands of jobs in doing so. We
could provide free healthcare for all Americans too, if it wasn't for the
ongoing debate about whether or not being alive and healthy is a fundamental
human right - many thanks to the pharmaceutical interests for shaping this
debate to maximize their profits. It'd be less of a problem if many companies
weren't getting rich off of the ever widening waistlines of Americans, too.
Mass surveillance remains in full effect even years after Snowden's revelations.
The ridiculous war on drugs keeps putting people behind bars for lifetimes for
victimless crimes to support the financial needs of private prisons and local
police departments, who themselves are now better armed than most militaries,
based on drug policies that have no basis in reality. 97% of trails end in plea
bargains instead of justice, and minimum sentences ensure these people spend
ridiculous amounts of time in prisons that punish them rather than rehabilitate
them into productive citizens. A judge will hold a defendant indefinitely in
prison without a conviction for refusing to disclose their disk encryption
password in accordance with their 5th amendment rights - though if many
political players had their way, encryption would be illegal anyway.
There's a word for what America is: **corrupt**. What the fuck is going on in
this country? We aren't a representative democracy by any stretch of the
imagination. We have become an oligarchy. We are ruled by money.
I love America, honestly. My whole family is here and I connect most with the
American people. We have an incredibly rich land and great cities full of great
innovators and interesting people. I hate that it's become what it is today. I
don't expect anywhere else to be perfect, but we should be ashamed of how we
look next to some other countries out there.
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