“You mean, I won't have healthcare?” I asked incredulously when my mom gravely outlined our lives under Trump rule. I intend on graduating in December. She intends on retiring in June, after forty years of devoted work. I took her healthcare and other largess largely for granted, but in June, I go on Obamacare?

“They’ll dismantle it!” she yelped. “You kids need to wake up!” Mom was at full froth. Her social security rests in the balance, too.

I’ve resolved that president Trump will be at “best” an indifferent puppet of the right wing elites, at worst Shiva the God of Death. Either way, I’m screwed. As mom and I stare out into an abyss of young adulthood and, well, “senior” life, we both would like to think the safety net she helped knit won't be yanked away at the most inopportune time. That’s why we’re voting for Hillary Clinton, not out of admiration, but fearful self-preservation.

I’m not with her because she’ll halt indiscriminate drone murder. Or challenge the social control of our nation’s poor (e.g. the drug war, private prisons and war). Or recognize the human rights of the Palestinians and hold Israel accountable for its illegal occupation. Or shutter the Washington-Wall street revolving door and rebuke the 40 years of neoliberal exploitation it has wrought. I’m not because she won't, no matter how much she panders to the Bernie flank of the party. Her first allegiance will always be to her benefactors and partners: the moneyed elite. It just so happens her corruption appears to offer a slightly less turbulent four to eight years for me, my family and our anxiety prone middle class ilk. And despite our universalist pretensions, when the going gets tough, we tend to stick together.

Behind my brave bluster lies a scared, selfish little boy bewildered by the big bad world. My slogan: I’m a little less insecure with her.