I’m voting today in the New York Democratic Primary, I love going to our little town hall – our City Hall and Town Court –  to vote, I feel there like I’m in Kansas at the birth of the Republic. The clerks  recognize us on sight.

A friend came over yesterday and I asked her if she was going to vote in the Democratic Primary, and she said yes, and I said I would be voting for Hilary Clinton. She wasn’t pleased.  I kind of know never to talk about politics, but I was curious, she has a good and interesting mind, and Maria is not yet certain about her choice, we are talking about it.

Our friend got a bit excited, she told me Hilary Clinton was a monster, a war-monger, and a thief. She said if Hilary was elected, she would start a nuclear war almost immediately. She was dangerous, she said.

I was startled by this outburst, but should not have been. when I lived in the hip and very Democratic and media-savvy town of Montclair, N.J., it was George Bush’s role to be the standing demon. His evil nature was the magic password there, if you didn’t think of George Bush as a monster, you were cast from society, like one of the Salem witches. I never met anyone there who didn’t hate George Bush, it was a kind of religion, the primary dinner table topic, along with obsessing over the kids.

When I moved upstate, Barack Obama was the monster. He still is, to many. My mother-in-law, among others, assured me that Obama was assembling a militia in Texas that would soon rise up and seize power. My farmer friends assured me that he was planning to seize all of their guns.  Hilary was a monster also, but she faded a bit while Obama was planning his coups and takeovers.

I try to take monsters out of my politics, one way or the other. As the grandson of immigrants, I could not ever vote for Donald Trump, he reminds me of the little devil that sits on one shoulder and plays the piano keys of our dark side. He speaks to the awful impulses I have learned to hide, suppress or outgrow. And Ted Cruz makes me uncomfortable, he sounds more like an Ayatollah to me than an American political leader. Hard for me to support a politician whose only single accomplishment has been shutting down the government.

I don’t wish to live in Iran.

If you have monsters, then you must have saints, and that is where we are in our political system. We have to hate what we disagree with, and revere and blindly defend who we choose. Our friend has found her saint in Bernie Sanders, he will, she promised, bring the revolution that will change the country and lift the poor. Only a revolution will do it, I am told, and sometimes believe myself.

I am out of sync with the times. I don’t think any of these people are evil, or god-like.  Trump and Cruz love their kids too. Next Spring at this time, the Republic will still be standing. I don’t see the world in black-and-white (this may change when my new camera comes), I see it in many different shades.

I covered politics as a reporter, and I met few monsters and saints, just people trying to get by and make their mark on the world. Most of them, like most of us, did not make it. I do not argue my political views ever, nor do I feel the  need to persuade other people to vote the way I do. I share my vote because I share my life, but I do not really think it is my business or need to know who you will be voting for or why.

I don’t write this to persuade you or argue with you, and in my digital world, we try not to hate the people we disagree with. Seems like an infectious disease to me, that. Disagreement and difference is our fuel, the system runs on it. I guarantee you, the cowards and outrage addicts on Facebook will have some things to say when they read this, not listening to them or being intimidated by them is a joy and moral obligation,  one of my contributions to democracy.

To me, arguing over politics is even more pointless than whining about taxes or the price of gas. Americans no longer listen or change their minds. Our friend, a good person we are very fond of, was not really wanting a conversation, and did not wish to listen. It was more of a lecture, the cousin of an harangue. And even if she had wished to listen, I had no lecture or argument to make in return. She should vote for whoever she wishes, it is not for me to try to change her mind. I don’t see myself as being right, and others being wrong, it is just the way I feel.

I am not called to buy a bumper sticker, or wear a button.

Whatever happens, I hope it works out. I feel comfortable voting for Hilary Clinton, she is no monster to me, and no saint. Like me, I suppose, in that way. She seems confident and steady and experienced, it just feels right. I favor tough and determined people, in my own life I have found stubbornness is a good substitute for talent and riches.

I suppose politics has always been this way, it has always been about fear and monsters, wrote H.L. Mencken, my political spiritualist and guide, a half-century ago.

Fear remains the chief attribute of the voter under democracy, Mencken wrote. “The demagogues, i.e., the professors of mob psychology, who flourish in democratic states are well aware of the fact, and make it the corner-stone of their exact and puissant science Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugagoos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting “Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum!”

My polling place opens at noon. This year, I feel called to vote, and proud of this American franchise. I’m not into flag-waving, but the American experiment, for all of its flaws, is still the best one I know of, and my immigrant roots are still deep enough that I appreciate the chance to participate.

I remember my grandparents telling me they were the first people in our family ever to vote for the leader of a country. The czars did not campaign for office. They did not ever take it for granted.