Originally Posted by
JDogindy
For you, I'll discuss. I just get tired of people whose arguments essentially boil down to "You voted wrong, you made everyone suffer with your selfishness", even after I explained the reasoning for my actions.
Honestly, my reasoning was that, at the time, my interest in Hillary, Trump, and Stein was like looking at some "fruit in yogurt" cup at a local coffee shop where mold was actually growing inside, and I went and grabbed a biscuit sandwich from a fast food joint instead, which was Johnson. Trump was obviously the obnoxious man-child, so there was no way I was going to support a sideshow attraction. I had trust issues with Hillary, and the fact that I had voted Bernie in the primaries might have hindered my opinion to Hillary if you wanna look at it, but my logic at the time was that I was looking at the overall health of the two main candidates and the possibility they might keel over within four years. Trump's obviously the antithesis of health, as he only eats steak and McDonalds, sleeps four hours a day (which is too much for him), and golf isn't a physical activity if you drive to the ball after each shot. Hillary had recently dealt with the stroke, and given that my brother himself was a stroke victim, that gave me some mental trepidation. Obviously, this may sound silly to you, but that's how I reacted.
And Stein... in addition to being a total basketcase, what pissed me off the most was she was an anti-vaxxer. As an autistic person, the NOTION that somebody would refuse to vaccinate their own children out of fears they'll get this disorder as if it'll be the end of their lives makes me angry and I choose to do absolutely nothing with an individual who accepts this quackery. It's the 21st century, which was supposed to be an Age of Wisdom, not the Age of Foolishness.
Johnson seemed the most fundamental to my overall beliefs, and YES, I knew he had no chance, but I was voting in a presidential election in a state that I knew was automatically going to go one way by default because that's how Indiana works, so I threw my support to Johnson. I just assumed that more people would actually have voted in states that did matter for Hillary instead of letting voter malaise set in. And, honestly, I'm only angry at the non-voters who just assumed that it was in the bag for Clinton to win that they took it for granted.
Look, I'm sorry if I got angry, but the bottom line is that I rationalized my decision at the time based on merits, and didn't just go to the voting booth all "I'm voting for this person because this political party".
As for what'll interest me in a candidate in the future, my beliefs are that you need to regulate the commercial side of American industries, as the recent tariff war with China and the deregulation of environmental mandates (clean coal, my ass) have shown what happens if you decide to go "Capitalism Cures All", but only because companies will not make decisions based on best interests for everyone as a collective and simply for their own bottom line. For social issues, I believe in firmer gun control, but not a total takeover, as I want to make sure competent Americans who understand how to use and take care of their firearms instead of getting them to show off imaginary dick sizes or, say, ringing in the New Year are able to keep their guns because they have shown responsibility. I believe in encouraging a low-cost insurance plan that puts more effort in preventative care, such as free check-ups and programs for weight control, smoking, substance abuse, and what have you, as well as a total overhaul of the mental health industry, considering that we only followed through the easy part of JFK's mandate from 1962 about shutting down the archaic asylums and bringing care to the 20th century. On social issues, I believe in a more pragmatic approach rather than a Biblical approach, because if you dissect the Bible, there's a lot of inaccuracies and stuff where people were assholes. And those were just the good guys.
The only thing I'm definitively conservative is drug usage. For some reason, the idea of marijuana becoming legal bugs the hell out of me, and I still don't feasibly understand the benefits of smoking pot.