TeleRead doesn’t have a company line, and I’m glad that TeleRead Editor Chris Meadows felt free simply to urge Americans to vote.
Now, as publisher, I’ll offer my own take. Just because you can vote for Donald Trump doesn’t mean you should. Virginia allows me to photograph my ballot, and above the image documents my vote for his main opponent, Hillary Clinton.
All of us at TeleRead are for literacy and tech. Donald Trump is a proud nonreader who would wreak havoc on the global trade that makes Kindles and iPads so ubiquitous.
This isn’t to say I’m happy with the notorious treaties of the Bill Clinton years and other agreements without sufficient protection for working people and unions in the United States and elsewhere. We must hold Hillary Clinton to her promise to change. I’d love to see the U.S. gain more bargaining power for workers everywhere on Planet Earth by backing off from an insistence on consumer-hostile copyright laws. Yes, Clinton must prove she will be more responsive to the needs of the nonelite.
But Trump—an anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic, anti-Black, anti-Semitic xenophobe without the slightest qualms about the use of his name to push sweatshop-made goods from outside the U.S.—is not the solution.
Even more cosmic
Of course, while mass literacy is a must for genuine democracy and tech is no small part of my own life, I would argue that the ultimate issues are even more cosmic. An authoritarian like Trump, a would-be dictator eager to carry out personal vendettas, must not be the new normal. Do we really want Trump and friends controlling America’s nukes, setting economic policies and reshaping the Supreme Court? Of course Clinton has her favorites. But Trump comes with his own cronies. Some of them in the past have had Mafia ties—for example, the late Roy Cohn.
I myself wanted Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton’s flaws are nothing compared to Trump’s gargantuan negatives, and your vote won’t go all the way if you support a third-party candidate. Please. Vote. For. Clinton. Against. Trump.
At the same time I’ll remind TeleRead community members that within the rules of civility, everyone is welcome here regardless of politics. One of the most enthusiastic supporters of my vision of a well-stocked national digital library system for the United States was William F. Buckley, Jr., who at my request wrote two “On the Right” columns on behalf of the idea. That said, I suspect that WFB, as a traditional conservative, would have been an ardent foe of Trump and Trumpism.
Note: Perhaps half our readers live outside the U.S. That includes some in authoritarian countries. I’d hope that they, especially, would understand my anti-Trump sentiments.
I cast my Clinton vote in Pennsylvania this morning!
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@Anne: Well, in that case, thanks for (1) living in a crucial state like Pennsylvania and (2) your pro-Clinton vote. Meanwhile I’m of course open to rebuttals from Trump people as long as they’re within the bounds of civility.
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My 19 yo son voted for the first time, too, Hilary in this house!
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Washington state is vote by mail, and I sent in my ballot for Clinton in last week. She wasn’t my first (second, third, or even forth or fifth) choice, but she’s better than Trump by any means. Trump has no realistic chance of winning here, so i guess that that makes us part of the sold blue wall.
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I didn’t say who to vote for in my post, because I’m hopeful that too many citizens have too much common sense to vote for the Donald…
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What’s interesting here is that Trump received no major endorsements from newspaper editorial boards. Most conservative newspapers refused to endorse him. Maybe people who read newspapers (both digital and print) are a self-selected bunch, and the majority of Americans don’t seem to be impressed by what journalists have to say. That is both a striking and alarming development.
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Thanks for your thoughts, Robert. More to come on Trump. It isn’t going to be a rant against him. People already know my feelings. David
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My sister-in-law and her husband were both Trump voters in Virginia. Neither reads much. The husband likes to brag that he has read THREE books in the last twenty plus years. Way more than his buddies. Anything a newspaper says is moot to them.
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Oops… well it is a little too late! America seems to be in crisis with the trump having won. I cannot believe all the immigration palava right now!!
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