Bernie or Bust
Please consider choosing another hill to die on
I began following politics closely during the 2000 election. I was 13 and precocious and in Catholic school, where I clearly didn’t belong and where we were made to watch each presidential debate.
I’ll be honest, I found this very boring and tedious at first. However, I enjoy any problem with a clear right and wrong answer, and by the second debate it was very clear to me that there was a right and a wrong answer here. I vocalized that opinion loudly in school, because it seemed obvious and because, being the ‘smart kid,’ I was usually right when I spoke up with an answer.
So, you can imagine my absolute horror when Bush won first our school’s mock election and then the real one that November. How could this be? It was so obvious: Bush was an imbecile. Why would people vote for someone who was clearly less intelligent, less competent, and less able to do such an incredibly important job? What was happening?
I would, of course, go on to experience similar moments many more times in my life, but this was the first time I was made to understand that intelligence and competence don’t matter to people as much as they should. This is not and never will be a meritocracy. I was devastated.
