Mental abuse is not justified by a desire to secure a victory for Hillary

I just read an inspiring article by one former Bernie Sanders supporter, now a Jill Stein supporter. His name is John Ennis and he wrote, "No Means No — Stop Trying to Mentally Abuse Me Into Voting for Hillary Clinton", which you will find on Medium, another great blogging website. He describes with precision, the kinds of abuse his friends have put him through to get him to change his mind and vote for Hillary Clinton. This is just one story of thousands and I've seen quite a few.

All of that insulting, name calling, mocking...wait. Let me provide a useful excerpt from John Ennis himself, the author of the article I am referencing:

Even though I have explained my reasoning on being unwilling to vote for Hillary Clinton — and have written an article on why I believe that electing Hillary to stop Trump is not an effective long term solution for our country — the bullying, badgering, shaming, scaremongering, insulting, belittling, mocking, and abuse of all varieties continues to assault me both on social media and in real life as my supposed liberal friends just don’t seem to be able to respect my “no” on this topic.

The desperation in the Clinton camp is becoming so thick, that a coherent response simply doesn't register with Clinton supporters. I know because I've tried. They usually leave in a huff of disgust rather than accepting my decision for what it is. My decision.

If had to sum up a response in one sentence, it might go something like this, "If you have to abuse me to get me to change my mind about voting for Jill Stein, you're voting for Hillary Clinton for all the wrong reasons."

For me, it's a simple proposition. As noted by Mr. Ennis and millions of other voters, Bernie Sanders ran a clean campaign. He took no big money from anybody. He brought in huge crowds. He raised $222 million in campaign funds. He won 1843 delegates and a few superdelegates to boot. All without any help from the DNC, the press or entrenched wealthy interests.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton colluded with the DNC, a supposedly neutral forum for selecting a nominee. The DNC in turn colluded with the press to sandbag Sanders from beginning to end. Clinton surrogates got all the free air time and press where Sanders' surrogates got little to none. Clinton bagged more than 400 superdelegates before even the first primary. There is evidence of election fraud and corruption all to benefit Hillary. Even as the illegitimate "nominee", Clinton can't draw a decent crowd. I could go on and on about this, and I have. Read any article on my blog for the last year and you'll see reason after reason why I supported Bernie Sanders.

The reality is that Clinton could not have won the primaries without cheating, cajoling, bullying, and hiring a legion of paid trolls that so far as I know, have not bothered me. If anyone ever tries to bully me into voting for Clinton online, he or she is going to get a rash of links that will only drive adverse information up in the search results.

I think it's important to really bring this home to the point. If you need to abuse anyone to get them to do something you want, you have a much bigger problem. In recent months, I have come to the conclusion that all abuse, all crime, and all corruption stems from one very basic problem: child abuse. Solve that problem and you bring peace to the world.

If you are a Clinton supporter and you have descended into the habit of abusing your friends with manipulation, insults, mocking, scaremongering, whatever, you might want to ask yourself why you're abusing *anyone* to get them to do what you want them to do. As far as I'm concerned, when you abuse someone else, you're retelling the story of what happened to you. If you're voting for Hillary out of fear, you're still retelling the story of what happened to you.

Yes, we get it. Trump is a bully, a coward, a liar, and God only knows what else. But Bernie supporters had a stronger candidate who was polling 15 points above Trump before the convention. The only way that Hillary was going to win and has won, is by cheating. Her supporters wanted a victory at any cost. That cost may include Trump winning this election.

Now there may be a few Bernie Sanders supporters who have used abusive tactics themselves. But the vast majority I've seen online have responded with the facts and links, just like myself. I had no interest in abusing others to get them to vote for Bernie Sanders when he was running. If you're a Clinton supporter and you want to vote for someone who, in my view is morally corrupt and dangerous, go ahead. I'm voting for Stein. There is only one circumstance that will change my mind. That's if somehow, Bernie Sanders runs for president again.

Clinton supporters simply do not have clean hands in this election. You can't tell me to vote for Clinton to stop Trump when the Clinton campaign cheated to win while Sanders was polling far better than Clinton. More to the point, if you need to abuse people to get them to vote for Clinton, then you've defeated every argument you've ever put forth to support Clinton.

You'll have no abuse from me on this subject. I simply don't care who you vote for, because that's none of my business. I'm voting for Jill Stein and every Berniecrat I can find down ticket, and that's it.