How are you so sure?

Tomorrow a majority of people will go someplace and vote for who should be the next leader of our country, and at the end of the day about half the country will think we've gone nuts. After tomorrow our new President will either be:

a.) A 70 year billionaire who is definitely a pig, and may be a whole lot worse or...

b.) A 69 year old millionaire who might be one of the leaders of a fairly significant criminal enterprise, and who might be either hiding a serious illness or a substance abuse issue.

The 69 year old has portrayed the 70 year old as racist, sexist, xenophobic, and an imminent threat to our country's well being, while the 70 year old has portrayed the 69 year old as a career politician, career criminal (although the two things have become virtually synonymous), and an imminent threat to our country's well being. Facts and political issues have become immaterial, as both sides have people working for them who have determined (correctly) that people are less swayed by issues than they are by emotions, so basically at the end of the day the person of grandparent age deemed least scary overall will be your next President.

Some people are complaining that both candidates are terrible and wondering how these could possibly be the best two options available. One of the candidates looks half-dead half the time and is always falling over or shaking uncontrollably, but has managed to parlay that into wild amounts of success politically including the DFL nomination. The other one is a weird looking, orange colored person who hardly ever says anything of substance, except to periodically mention that as a billionaire he can wander into changing areas for the Ms Universe pageant and grab women by their pussies with no reprisal, but has managed to parlay that bizarre form into billions of dollars in the business world and the GOP nomination. It is frankly remarkable, but I think this is exactly what we wanted. The debates were not much more than 4 hours of insults being hurled back and forth, a geriatric "Real World" if you will, and people loved it, even if they told you they didn't. Check out the ratings as proof. It was good entertainment.

Some people have gone out of their way to post item after item on Social Media about how their chosen candidate will make things wonderful while the other candidate will bring upon certain doom to us, and quickly. Some people have said things like, "If you're voting for X, unfriend me now!!!" Friendships have been ruined, people have been assaulted, the country has been even further divided because of the certainty some people have that one candidate is absolutely necessary, and the other is pure evil, and we're fairly split on who the evil one is.

My question since day 1 has always been, "How are you so sure?" I mean, you are certain enough to post 10 things a day on Facebook, how did you get there? As far as I can tell, you have two candidates who are certainly flawed in some respects, but so is everybody, and with the advent of Social Media, no candidate will ever be an angel again, but I cannot say with any degree of certainty based on their past transgressions that either candidate should be disqualified from my consideration, especially considering the other candidate may be just as flawed. How are you so sure? I know only what has been provided to me from various forms of media, and I know that the media can have it's own agendas, so I have to assume that many of the things reported may be half-truths, or spun to make somebody look worse or better. How are you so sure? My political views don't really align with either party's platform (as far as I can tell because issues have been buried), so to say we're really voting for control of the Supreme Court down the road doesn't have a big impact on me because chances are I'll agree with their decision about half the time. How are you so sure? I would like to have a President who, at the end of 2020 I can honestly say that I think we're better off than we were, but how do I even begin to qualify that? I'm considerably wealthier than I was in 2008, and my life is a lot more stable, but not everybody feels that way, and does that have anything to do with Barack Obama, or is it more about my choices, and would I be in the exact same position if we had President Romney or President McCain? I'm not certain I guess, and there's no alternate dimension where Mitt Romney is the president so I can check. It seems impossible for me to know as I don't feel like I have enough information, so how are you so sure? And does it really even matter who the President is, or is he/she just a figurehead, smiling politely while trying to implement the policies of the highest bidder. I mean, there's a narrative out there that this country has been run by a few extremely wealthy businessmen for quite some time now, so is all this party siding pointless because the power won't be changing hands regardless of whether we choose blue or red? I don't know. How are you so sure?

Here's the good news though. I think we've reached a tipping point, and I think a lot of powerful people will get together and make sure we do better next time. Irrespective of how one of these candidates does as President, I think the process from here on out, from the early vetting of candidates, to the debates, will improve. I hope so. We need it to. Be safe voting out there, I still like you no matter who you cast your vote for.