I don’t vote for Kamala Harris because she deserves it. Nobody deserves to be president. There is not one person in America who knows everything and is right about everything. I really like Harris, but the more I learn, the more it’s truly alarming that we’re electing anyone for this position, especially someone who WANTS it.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Harris is cheerful, smart, good at her job, and seems like a wholesome human being who wouldn’t – just as an odd example – threaten to use the military on their own constituents or it talks about all the ways Hitler was really involved. But that’s not the main reason I’m voting for her. Actually, it’s not about her at all.

I’m voting for Kamala Harris for what it’s worth.

I deserve to have the right to make decisions about my own body. I deserve to be able to travel while being a lady without worrying that – depending on my condition – they might let me die. I deserve not to worry that the dumbest people we know will outlaw both birth control and IVF.

I deserve not to have to explain to young girls that I chose sexual abuse to hold the highest office in the land.

I deserve not to have a vice president calling people like me “sociopaths” who “have no direct stake in this country” because I don’t have children.

I deserve not to have to worry about my gay friends not being able to get married if Trump appoints even more justices to the Supreme Court. I deserve to attend those gay weddings! They have better music and decorations. (The food can go either way, depending on the couple’s feelings about carbs.)

I deserve a president who taxes billionaires instead of inviting them to their rallies.

I deserve not to pay about four hundred million dollars for a drug that costs drug manufacturers fifteen cents.

I deserve to know that if I live through a natural disaster, the government will provide help, not to have a president who withholds disaster relief help from suffering human beings who happen to live in states where he thinks not enough people voted for him.

Now do I agree with Harris’ policies on everything? Absolutely not. Guns scare the hell out of me, and so does fracking. And, as of now at least, we have an incredibly significant policy disagreement. Like a “keeps me up all night” level disagreement. And I don’t want to seem off-the-cuff here or make jokes. If I thought voting for a third party would end what is happening in Gaza and now much of the Middle East, I would do it in a minute. If I thought not having this choice would stop the massacre of innocent people, I would stay out.

It’s not that the issues I disagree with about Kamala Harris don’t matter. That’s the choice Donald Trump it won’t solve them. In fact, as with everything I can think of, he will make them worse.

I’m voting for Kamala Harris at least in part because I actually remember what 2016 was like until 2020, and god, we all deserve to never go through that again.

Huge parts of our country seem to have gone through a kind of collective amnesia. It happens when you go through something terrifying. It’s like after giving birth, women forget how painful it was, except at the end of it you don’t have a baby – you have a dictator. Ok, yes, I hear you. BUT IT WILL NOT GROW OUT OF IT WHEN IT ACHIEVES OBJECT PERMANENCE.

Just a few visceral memories from the Trump years:

• He named the justices who ended Roe v. Wade and said women should be punished for abortion.

• He called those who died in battle, fighting for our country, “captured and vanquished.”

• He gave Vladimir Putin, a dictator who has repeatedly threatened to bomb us, with COVID testing equipment before it was widely available to our own citizens.

• He billed taxpayers millions and millions of dollars, making government employees stay to his own properties.

• He committed at least 34 crimes while he was president. What is this world where “he’s a criminal” is really that low on the list?

• He separated thousands of immigrant children from their parents with no plan to bring them back together. He put the babies in cages.

• He tried to buy Greenland

• He lied about winning the election, sent a mob to the Capitol, and created a plan to send fake voters to overturn the will of the voters. It’s weird how you hear something enough times that it starts to sound normal, but it’s still complete and utter madness. This is how countries are overthrown and turned into dictatorships. He called election officials and told them to SWITCH THE VOTES.

The fact that he failed this time doesn’t make it any less horrifying that he tried.

There are so many ways I wish the system was different. But I don’t vote for the system. I’m voting for Kamala Harris because I’m voting for myself and the people I care about. And, if I’m perfectly honest, because it’s my best chance to never hear about Donald Trump again.

In addition to all the other things we deserve, we deserve a break.