Mrs. Clinton, you have a choice.
I want to talk to you about that. Person to person. I don't want to insult you, or fight with you. I just want to talk about the choice you have before you. You have, very likely, the most important choice in mankind's history to make. And I am not reaching for hyperbole here. Really truly and literally, you have a choice that will decide the future of the human race.
It's not a glorious choice. It will not ensure any kind of enduring legacy for you. It will make the sacrifices of a lot of people meaningless. And in the end, you may fade into historic obscurity because of it. Remembered fondly only by friends and loved ones and family like any of the teeming billions of us on our small beautiful world. But your choice can make you the savior of the world.
Heroes do that. Legendary exemplars of all the best angels in our natures. People who looked at the hard choice to sacrifice everything for the good of the world and did what they had to do. Knowing their star might fade and fall forgotten to the ground in the end. Unremembered. Maybe even unloved.
Given the wealth and position you have commanded for the last 30 years, you will pass from the earth comfortably and taken care of. You have already won the best possible thing any breathing animal on our world can wish for themselves. You can rest assured in the knowledge that what you have done will surround those you love and care for with wealth and security for generations.
But back to the choice before you. Before all of us. And the enemy you face.
You have a nemesis, Mrs. Clinton. I have seen it. It follows you everywhere you go. It is present with you in every appearance you make. You may know it too. You're not a stupid person. Stupid people don't achieve what you've achieved unless it was given to them to ruin.
I have to believe that a certain amount of self-awareness must come with what you do. So when you lie down to sleep every night like all of the billions of the rest of us, I do wonder if you've treated with your nemesis in the dark. I use the word precisely, Mrs. Clinton. I do so intentionally because I want to raise this thought up into the realm of a legendary tale. A story that encompasses the entire human race. The battle with your nemesis is a heroic one. Not one that sagas will be written about. It's merely one you will fight in the dark of your bed every night.
Your nemesis... I don't want to name the thing as ego or pride. Because that makes what you must face a base thing. And we reject the baser things within us. We don't want to believe they are there. Like I said. I don't want to insult you. But there is a drive in you that isn't an uncommon one that you must defeat in order to make the decision that will save the world. And you can do this. The self-awareness that must come with your intelligence and achievement precludes your not being aware of it.
Maybe no one has brought it up to you. It's an easy possibility to imagine, really. When one has achieved the status you have, an echo chamber, or perhaps a vaccum forms around you. Power does that. Suddenly, people stop contradicting you. They get agreeable. They stop saying no. They try not to upset you. When you have it, the world is your oyster. And those around you who are tasked with keeping you sane and unruffled make sure uncomfortable ideas do not reach your eyes and ears. Like the idea that your baser nature may be blinding you from realizing what your nemesis is making of you.
Blinding you from a choice you could make to save the world.
And again... I have to repeat myself here because the idea of the world and every person and animal on it is too big. The idea that the fate of every living thing on our planet could rest with any single one of us is almost the height of delusion. And yet, here we are. The decision you have it within your power to make will save the world, or doom it. It very literally means the difference between the possibility of mankind truly harnessing the powers of nature to bring peace and benevolence to every living thing, or dying of thirst and disease in a filthy waste.
This is not fantasy or science-fiction. This is the moment in history we inhabit. The fate of our country, the world, every breathing organism on it, and the future they are promised waits on your bravery. It is the stuff of legend. The stuff of dreams to find one's self in the position to change everything... literally everything... for the better. And finding one's self in that moment with the power to make that happen. And that moment in history, this unprecedented awesome moment and the responsibility to decide its course has fallen to you. And the actual doing of it is easy. It's the easiest thing you will ever have to do. But given the impression I have of you... it may be the hardest thing to decide to do.
Given your intelligence, you already know what I am going to say.
Resign.
Thank everyone for their hard work and sacrifice. Do the round of pundits who will demand to know just what the hell you think you're doing and tell them whatever will ensure that vengeful people will not condemn you or come for what is yours. Send everyone home. Pay back anyone that needs paying back or keep the money if you feel you need to. Do what you have to in order to survive afterward because having done this, you will have earned every comfort remaining to your days on this earth.
You will be the person who had the power to take everything, but had the strength to know when to turn aside and go home. The person who knew she'd never have more power in her life, or in anyone's life in our history or future than she did when it was her decision to seek the oval office or resign.
I don't know what motivates you. Many of your motivations are likely always going to be beyond me. It's easy with a person I don't know personally to want to boil them down to stereotypes. Archetypes of heroism or villainy. Saints or sinners. It's lazy thinking to want to just dismiss someone as a fanatic, a traitor, a lunatic, a bleeding heart, a criminal mastermind, a democrat or republican. Capitalist or Communist.
But if power motivates you. This is your moment of absolute power. Again. I use the word precisely. In this moment, you have absolute power to decide for the good or ill of the world. Your decision to run for the presidency or stand aside is the most important decision any human being will make in our planet's history. No decision has been so important. And given the brink upon which our future teeters... no presently imaginable decision will ever be as important afterward.
Think about the weight of history. Think about every living being that has breathed, cried, loved or died trying to make their way. Each believing what they were doing was the best they could do at the time with what they had. Think of the blood and effort we have spent again and again, crawling out of ignorance into knowledge and achievement. Think of what we have achieved for good or for ill throughout the centuries. The fruits of every toil and sacrifice are now in your hands.
I mentioned the self-awareness one must have in order to do what you do for our country. What you have done. What you can still do. I cannot pretend to know the difficulty of some of the decisions you've had to make. The consequences you have to live with. The hard decisions you've made that brought you to this point in history. You have done what you had to do at the time. You did what you thought was best with what you had. Either for others, or yourself. This is what each and every one of us do to survive, you and me included.
It's what's motivating me to try to talk about this with you right now. It's not something I want to do, or how I wanted to spend my evening. I'm doing what I feel I have to. We humans aren't an inherently good or bad creature. What we are inherently... are people. It says something about us that we aspire to the better in ourselves in the end. That we deserve to survive in spite of those who fall to the baser drives within them. Their nemesis.
Without that aspiration to be better than we are, we are simply cancer with legs that learned to count.
I am not saying you are a bad person. I imagine your husband and your children would contest that point rather vigorously. What I'm saying is that the people in your own personal echo chamber, or vacuum of power do not have the good of the rest of us at heart. I think perhaps you have come to the point you are at in history because of people who would see us all burn tomorrow if it meant another day where they were not answerable to any law of mankind on earth. People who would suck every drop of water from the ground only to sell it back at a profit and poison the rest. These are the kind of people who own more than the rest of us combined, treat it like an open sewer, and don't feel there's anything wrong with that.
You didn't just wake up one morning and decide to put on a handlebar mustache and be a villain. No sane person makes such a decision. And it's not like you at some point decided to be a willing accomplice to a plutocracy dedicated to murdering the world and all the people in it. Another precise term. They are poisoning our planet and all people in it, and behaving in a way that will bake us in our own juices or drown us, or whatever other hideous unthinkable horror may descend as our environment careens beyond our ability to survive in it.
You may think you can negotiate with these people. You cannot. They will take until we wrest their ability to take away from them. They will never surrender the knife they hold to the world's throat. And they will only surrender such power over the mutilated corpses of the rest of us. The grotesque falsehoods and lies their creatures tell in the halls of our leaders to achieve their aims in the face of plain evidence to the contrary only confirms this.
The self-awareness I mentioned earlier? The intelligence I perceive to be within you? I want you to turn it to within yourself. Do you honestly believe these people care for the rest of us? Do you think that you can change them, or make our situation better? Do you think you can turn aside the tide of their destruction? And you cannot put off this observation. We are out of time. Like the song says, "this is not a false alarm, this is not a test. nowhere we can fly away, nowhere we can rest." This is a signature of the kind of historic moment and choice you face. It's a decision that must be made now. No further deliberation.
Do you believe you are the right person for a job in which the fate of mankind will be decided? Do you think you can be a force for all of us, and not just the 20 who can lay claim to more than the rest of us will ever see or own in our lifetimes? Do you think you are the right person to save the world? Do you care enough to make decisions to heal and repair us all instead of selling it to those that will murder it for the merest chance of another coin in their pockets?
All I can see is what I'm seeing in the news, when it comes to you. Your history as is available online. The decisions you've made. The people you've worked with and represented. From what I see... and this is not a judgement of you as a person. Remember. You're not a good or bad person. You're just a person like the rest of us doing what you have to with what you've got like any of us. From what I see... if you achieve the presidency, I believe you will continue to do what you have done. Basically what you feel you have to. And if what you've done is any example, what you will do is doom us all.
I want you to look inside yourself. Focus your intelligence and bravery and any honesty you have with yourself. Use all the insight you have in your heart and mind and look within. Survey what you see there. Then tell yourself honestly if you believe you can save us from a seat in the oval office?
If you see what I percieve... then you can save us. You can save the world. All of it. All the history that's led up to this moment. And the entire future of everything that will ever breathe.
Turn aside.
Resign.
It will not be easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is. It will be the hardest decision you will ever make; the decision to step aside and let someone else have the power you now posess. It is your privilege to make the most important decision ever made in mankind, for the benefit of all, or the few at the cost of all. The facts of our situation are clear, despite the lies of those who presently hold everything in the world in a literal deathgrip. You at this moment have it within your power to defer to people with the will to fight to the death to save us all.
I don't know how literate you are. How versed you may be with our mythologies, legends, literature and history. The trope is one seen over and over again. One where someone has all the power in the world. ...and is wise enough in their own limitations to give it away for the good of the world. There is no shame in this. These are the characters and heroes that are remembered kindly and with affection. Their legacies endure.
You can win this for yourself and every human that will ever be.
You can do the right thing here.
You have, literally, all the power in the world right now.
When faced with this immense decision, do you have the wisdom, the strength and the self-awareness to give it up?
I urge you, before it is too late for everyone.
Everyone that has been.
Everyone that will be.
You have a decision to make.
Please.
Choose wisely.
-Edward WinterRose is a dilettante, an actor, a writer, artist, a self-proclaimed activist/anarchist, and a wage guy. He welcomes a response and/or a conversation with Mrs. Clinton, whom he thinks may not understand the gravity of her situation, or the grave choices she faces.
