Note--If you're a Hillary supporter, please contact me by e-mail, camfield@olympus.net, as soon as possible. I need your help with something.--Tom

.

I trust Hillary all the way, and I’m going to talk about her. I’ll also speak of  Trump (small mind, small hands, etc., big mouth)--the blustering, bull-artist who likely will be her general-election opponent—and inject a few comments on his authoritarianism, fascism, narcissism, arrogance, bullying, sexism etc. Bernie Sanders, a lesser and first-stage opponent, I will bypass for now and get to in my next blog.

I won’t have to call much on the words of notable pundits here, as I’ve followed Hillary’s life since well before her husband Bill took office as president in 1993. I’ve continued to admire her strength, resiliency, intelligence, efficiency, loyalty—and yes, altruism—all along the way. It’s more than a minor side-benefit to my personal philosophy that she’s a woman. I have a great respect for strong, intelligent women who care about others and have been married to one for 64 years.

Hillary has the experience of 12 years as a governor’s wife in Arkansas, a First Lady of the U.S. for eight years, a Secretary of State, a U. S. Senator . . . a mother.  While some would like to hang “establishment” on her as if that were dirty a word, I prefer to applaud her dedication—through good times and bad--to her family and her country. I like her soul and I like her style.

My own qualifications as a judge of talent at the presidential level include the fact that I was born early in 1929 at the beginning of the administration of Herbert Hoover, on whom I was clued in  by my father in subsequent years.  Hoover, a Republican, led the nation into the Great Depression after the stock market crash occurred on his watch. I was raised under Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 until his death during his fourth term in 1945. I was 34 when John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in 1963. And I’ve lived through 11 other presidents. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Diplomacy would disappear under Trump. And I also wouldn’t sleep well nights with him in command of the U. S. military and our nation’s nuclear arsenal. I cannot think of a single virtue with which to associate him. His ability to amass great personal wealth is not a virtue but rather epitomizes greed, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. He disparages women, belittles the handicapped, treats refugees like muddy footprints on his polished hardwood floors.

In a couple of the GOP candidates’ debates—and, I understand, during at least one news/talk show--he has alluded to his small exclusively-male body part, with which he seems to be obsessed. Real class. It also opens the door to a familiar euphemism that might be applied to him.

He treats empathy as a weakness and altruism as a social disease. He is not strong and heroic as he apparently envisions himelf to be but rather is incomplete in spirit. Obama drove racists into a frenzy in which they continue to be embroiled. Hillary is similarly driving sexists around the bend—while xenophobes sing the praises of Trump and his ilk.

While there is no substance or detail to Trump’s vague boasts that  “I will do this” and “I will do that,” Hillary laid out some time ago detailed plans for creating a better world for all classes of society. She is down at the grass roots figuratively and literally—in both body and spirit. One of the particular planks in her platform that immediately resonated with me was her planned attack on Alzheimer’s disease. That’s a far more realistic foe in our society than the specter of foreign terrorists beheading us in our backyards that is being used by the GOP to gain support by striking fear into the minds of the voting public.

An estimated 5.3 million Americans of all ages had Alzheimer's disease in 2015. Of that 5.3 million, an estimated 5.1million were 65 and older, and approximately 200,000 individuals were under 65 (younger-onset Alzheimer's). 

I have viewed Alzheimer’s up close and real as it claimed both my mother and my mother-in-law. It can b e long-lived (10 years for my mother) and is one of the most heart-rending things imaginable for its victims and their loved ones. I will continue to carry that prolonged pain of the 1980s and ‘90s with me until I die. Hillary would seek a cure for Alzheimer’s and fund the search for same with a reasonable goal of 2025. And I recently read an opinion elsewhere (in Great Britain) that, properly addressed, that goal might be reached as quickly as 2020. Try selling that sort of forward thinking to obstructionist, self-serving Republicans who refuse to be distracted by science.

Hillary would begin by investing $2 billion in research for Alzheimer’s and related disorders. This past year, the National institutes of Health (NIH) invested $586 million in Alzheimer’s research, less than 1% of the annual cost of the disease. She would appoint a top-flight team to oversee this initiative. Her plan would embrace a range of approaches to discovering and advancing effective treatments.

Go to hillaryclinton.com/issues for a briefing  on Hillary’s comments on and plans for various issues. Some 28 are listed there, far more than I will be able to handle blog-wise.

However, I will pause here on one subject, Disability Rights. While Trump has mocked the disabled (including the Parkinson’s affliction of Michael J. Fox), Hillary has spent her life fighting for the rights of Americans with disabilities. Such things are what should be in our minds rather than all the propagandistic blather in the media about such things as Benghazi and e-mails. Basically, she will realize the promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act, improve access to meaningful and gainful employment for people with disabilities, provide tax relief to help the millions of families caring for aging relatives or family members with chronic illnesses or disabilities.  It should be noted that as secretary of state, Hillary worked to build strong support for the United States to join the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But despite a broad, bipartisan coalition, the Republican-controlled Senate blocked its passage.

.

Next: Guns, the NRA and the American Way

.

.