Pro-Hill: Or why I refuse to jump on the Barack Bandwagon

I have a confession to make. I [deep breath] am a twenty-something, educated person who is pro-Hillary. I know, I’m breaking with so many demographic studies in this admission, but I don’t care. I really like Hillary. I’m really uneasy about Barack.

Now, some might be wondering how I could possibly be uneasy about Barack. “He is such an amazing public speaker,” you say. “His message of change is SOOOoooo inspiring.” First of all, I don’t care. I don’t need a president to give me goose bumps, I need a president to give me real policies. Public speaking is a useful skill. I, as my mother so frequently reminds me (at least a couple of times a year), have been known to bring tears to my listeners’ eyes. Does that mean I should be president? I would think not. For one, that’s not even legal, due to my young age. Second, public speaking just means you can work a crowd. We have a president who can work a crowd and I don’t like him. He’s been awful.

As for the message of hope, here’s why it doesn’t work on me. The system is in place. It has been for 200 years. Yes, there are things about it that I’m not fond of. There are flaws. But a good portion of those flaws and things that annoy me (minus things this administration has done, which can’t be blamed on the system but only on their assedness) are flaws within the Congressional system. How is he going to change those? He’s in an entirely different system (executive versus legislative, for those of you who don’t remember social studies well). He can try, but I don’t think it’ll work, and really, his energy should be elsewhere.

Then there is the dearth of experience. Foreign experience is hugely important to me right now. The world hates us. I’d like to change that. Navigating the treacherous waters of foreign politics is hard and takes practice and knowledge. He listed living abroad as part of his foreign experience (I mean, seriously. Another reason I should be president. I too have lived abroad. Twice. TWICE.)

Add to all this that I genuinely like Hillary, and it’s not surprising I hope she overcomes the numerical odds and gets the nomination. She makes me feel safe. She’s experienced. She’s tough. She’s proven herself willing to take on challenges, willing to try hard even when failing is likely. And for the argument of how divisive she is and how Congress won’t work with her. She has managed to get a remarkable number of bills through for a junior senator. Conservatives in New York love her. And she has worked her butt off for her constituents. What more do we need? Change? Hah. Call me bitter, but you can’t change the system. We vote on a message of change and we will be disappointed.

Of course, according to the History Channel, the world is ending in 2012, so I guess it doesn’t hugely matter anyways.

Where are the weirdos?

Victoria’s Secret apparently is attempting to rebrand itself, as the CEO says they’ve gotten “too sexy,” and people have stopped shopping there. Which I think is somewhat true. I’m tired of commercials and ads screaming “IF ONLY YOU LOOKED LIKE US,” with the quiet, subliminal text “too bad you don’t.” I mean, it’s not like VS’s stuff is cheap. If I’m going to spend that much money on a flimsy piece of gauze, I want to do it in a place that makes me feel good about myself, not self-conscious and judged. Besides, three-fourths of the stuff is impractical. I don’t have money to waste on stuff I can’t wear on a regular basis. So my advice to VS is brand yourself to all women, not just tiny 17 year olds, stop with the sickeningly pink design scheme, practical it up, and try to make women feel better about themselves, not worse.

Not that I buy anything there anyways. Like I said, they are too rich for my blood. Plus nothing there fits me right. And I don’t like the cashiers.

Of course, that doesn’t seem unusual as I seem to be liking people less and less these days. Which I’d be okay with (after all, people in large clumps ARE insanely annoying, and teenage girls giggling loudly are a bit ear-piercing), except it all seems to be accompanied by a loss of my weirdness. Not that I’m not still strange, but I used to find the strangest things funny. I’d smirk walking around the streets, all by myself. Now… I just walk. And I’m not okay with this. I mean, you can say it’s just a part of growing older, but I don’t believe that. I think it’s just that the people who brought out that side of me are all spread out over the country. (You quirkies know who you are… J) I’m tired of talking about serious stuff, like politics and global warming and budgets and taxes. I want to be giddy, to say things and have people look at me oddly (I know that’s a strange thing to want, but that’s a part of my point). I want to hang out with a bunch of people and wind up making a hat out of a knife and a napkin again. Basically, I need to find the weird people here who can make me laugh and remind me about that part of myself. You’d think my program could do it, but no… we’re all shockingly normal, besides the whole being completely nerdy thing. (I mean, really. I would hate to come to our parties as an outsider. Three fourths of the conversation is literature or class related, and the other quarter leads back to classes or literature.) I wonder where they are all hiding….