My name is Cody. I am gay, multiethnic, multiracial, athiest, lower-class, and carry significant student loan debt after graduating with an English degree. Oh, and I am hopelessly of the Millenial generation. Most people would look at my pathetic introduction and tell me that nobody wants to read that as if I were drafting a personal statement for college, but I remind you: I am not. I am writing this account because a few people have shown interest in my story of how I came to support Hillary Clinton for presidency while so many of my peers are burning for Bernie Sanders. I began my pierce the way I did so you can picture me–perhaps create an image of me in your head–as most people, myself included, understand things better with visual aids of sorts. Just as a bonus, if you wish to fire shots at me for sharing my beliefs, I just happened to load the gun for you with an abundance of ammunition.

To begin, I love Bernie Sanders. Dearly. Among all the hate speech people share daily between the Clinton and Sanders’ campaigns, an announcement of love for the competition seems strange. But it is true. While in college, I even brieftly joined the Green Party because I believed that if he ever ran for presidency, he would run as a Green Party candidate. I held onto his words and followed everything he said. In fact, I still do. At this point, the usual writer would begin to ease in how they fell out of love with Bernie Sanders–and I, too, admit that it is a great writing technique. But I do not profess to be a great writer, just an honest one. I never fell out of love with Bernie Sanders because I still love him. I just happen to love Hillary Clinton a little more considering the particular state of affairs the world is in right now.

As often prefaced on in the internet, in my humble opinion, no one can beat Bernie Sanders in a fight for national civil liberties. No one. Raising the minimum wage, breaking up Wall Street, and closing the gap in income disparity are all things I like to hear. I also know he will work his darnest to make all those things come true. Let us not forget that he championed rights for the LGBT community long before Hillary Clinton ever did so publicly. So why do I stand where I stand? Did his tireless fighting for my rights as a gay, multiethnic, multiracial, lower-class debt-ridden self not resonate with me somehow? Of course it did. But here is a twist, that literary device that writers love so much: I am more that a checklist of different identities that one can just check off. Beneath the body that the world chooses to see is a deep mind and a heavy heart.

This mind of mine is often at war with my heart. I am not ashamed of that as this internal struggle is what makes me human. More importantly, this struggle–inherent in all humans–connects me to you. When I listen to Bernie Sanders speak, my insides go to war as I have come to expect. Most often, my heart beats with the passion he flows through me. My mind, however, says that something is not quite right.

“I want to break up Wall Street. We need to break up Wall Street.” My heart says adamantly to my mind. “It is time for the wealthiest of this nation to redistribute the wealth to those who work equally hard but are only fractionally successful.”

My mind stops to think for awhile, and responds, “Philosophically speaking, I agree. But technically speaking, how will we go about doing this?”

“Well the largest financial institutions should be divided into smaller institutions. It needs to be done as there is far too much power out there for single institutions to have.”

“I agree. How will we go about doing this?”

“… There is nothing hard about breaking big businesses up.”

“Cody’s heart, you know taxation fairly well. When the companies are broken up, how are things, like ownership interest, decided? Can one individual be the chief executive for all the fragmented companies? If so, did we really disturb the distribution of wealth, power, or agency in this country? If not, then how are the chief executives decided? Either way, it sounds as if we are allowing even more individuals to claim business deductions and such on taxes as we would have–in one fell swoop–created thousands more owners, executives, and shareholders. And would these broken pieces have new ticker symbols? What happens to existing stock?”

“It needs to be done somehow! Eventually, at least!” My heart fights on.

“I know you, heart. And in some ways I know you to be right. But there are questions than answers right now. Furthermore, just think of the stock markets: China’s stocks affected the world as they plunged and plunged. How would the world be affected if we also reorganized our stock? Could this one act of breaking up Wall Street in order to hopefully put more money into Cody’s hands actually destroy the economies of different countries? Is that not incredibly selfish that you would make other people suffer for your own success?”

I tell you, those two could go at it for hours. I want to reassure you, my heart is there with Bernie Sanders but I need more. I need a plan that I can see working, preferably with visual aids. Even something basic and straight-forward as how taxation would be administered for the broken up Wall Street. Something explaining who gets what, who is in charge, how large the fragments should be, and so on. I need this because my heart wants my mind to join together under Bernie Sanders. I need all of this because without this information, breaking up Wall Street does not sound like a good idea. Dare I suggest that breaking up Wall Street does not even sound like a solution to the problem as much as it sounds like a restructuring of the problem.

When I listen to Bernie Sanders, I find that the amount of questions I have grow faster than the amount of answers I receive. Raising the minimum wage to $15.00 is an example of an initiative that generates more questions than answers for me. Mostly because I have a difficult time seeing how something of that nature is possible, especially in states where the $15.00 per hour rate is more than double the rate allowed by a few states currently. I do not see how that is sustainable if a company’s payroll expenses were suddenly double, in some occassions, while the revenue does not significantly change. Even considering that the raise would be gradual, over the term of his presidency, I cannot logically see how that would work unless the federal government were to somehow guarantee a consistent growth of business revenue.

I know I wrote an awful lot about Bernie Sanders without even once mentioning Hillary Clinton. But, like I have said before, I love Bernie Sanders. Love him. It is just that when I think about him and his experiences, they begin to seem awfully limited in its scope. I think this may because most of his experiences as a leader come directly from his experience leading Vermont which is different, vastly, from leading the country and nurturing the bonds with differing countries. I do not think that Bernie Sanders can lead the country because I do not think he considers the far right, moderately right, moderate, or even the moderately left populations. I think Bernie Sanders as an enforcer and I do not think that bodes well with some countries, especially the countries where America already shares a bruised relationship.

Probably one of the biggest reasons why I prefer Hillary Clinton in this role is that she knows America’s international relationships all too well. In fact, she has been the face of it as Secretary of State. She knows ISIS, she knows China, she knows foreign policy. As the countries become increasingly codependent, we need someone who can unify all of these powers. On paper, she is the one and Bernie Sanders is not.

My heart and mind can agree on her. In fact, my mind agrees with her on the basis of her resume alone compared to the resume of Bernie Sanders. I am not even sure that we ever had someone more qualified to be President than her. Out of all the candidates I can think of, I do not think that there is anyone more qualified to deal with an organzation like ISIS than her.

My heart is with her because one day I want to take my happy family to Paris, the city of love, and share with them the things I love. Music at a local venue, soccer at the stadium, or simply walking down the streets that bear so much history. More than anything, I want them to feel safe. The terrorist attacks on Paris hurt me. Not physically but emotionally. It hurt me because the dreams held by my heart–to take my little gay family to Paris and share my love with them–was destroyed. Murdered. Martyred.

Forgive my selfishness but I want my dream to be rebuilt and I want to feel safe having that dream. Hillary Clinton’s experience makes me feel safe as she knows ISIS. She knows how they work and she knows how they operate. She knows them so well that she correctly predicted that they would use Donald Trump as an ISIS recruiter. My heart and mind agree that we need someone who can predict their movements so that the people and places that I have come to love can exist as monuments of human progress and not the remnants of my memory.

That is why I say, selflessly, that the next President needs to forget about me a little. I know that on the matters of civil rights, LGBT rights, and what-have-you, we are far from done. And these are the matters that Bernie Sanders simply excels at. But I want the next President to forget about me a little because I am fine, I am safe. Do not think that these national issues concern me because believe me, if I were a checklist the entire list would be checked off. But the world is more than me and the world needs more help than I do. I struggle, like most people of my generation, but I am happy and content. In the grand scheme of things, I could not ask for more. Would I be happy if I made more money? Of course. Can my heart handle another attack like in Paris? I am not so sure.

Barack Obama did wonderful things for the economy, LGBT rights, and so on. My wish is to build on those things which I believe is something that Hillary Clinton will do faithfully. The economy is growing steadily and a big part of that is Obama’s stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is actually still ongoing to this day. For this reason I say we should forget about Wall Street for the time being and let the massive stimulus plan work the way as intended. One of the great unknowns of dismantling Wall Street is the effect it will have on things like the stimulus plan. I would rather not potentially undo one of Obama’s greatest achievements in office which is why I agree with Hillary Clinton saying that, as President, she will reel in Wall Street if they ever get out of hand but does not intend to break it up.

Similarly, I feel the same way about healthcare: Obama made many changes–of course, to mixed success–to our healthcare system. Instead of tossing it all aside and revamping everything as Bernie Sanders would like to do, I am more so in favor of expanding the current system because it needs much, much more work.

Interestingly enough, Barack Obama’s story reminds me much of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. They both were extremely well-liked by the young voters and minority groups. They both spoke in detail about overthrowing current systems in favor of more socialist models. And they both were thought of as “too far left” for the political atmosphere at the time. History does, indeed, seem to be repeating itself as Bernie Sanders’ campaign continues to make impressive strides. But, as I have said before, I feel good about myself. The state of our nation could use a great deal of improving but the rest of the world appears to have grown more chaotic and that needs to be addressed.

With North Korea supposedly perfecting their weapons of mass destruction, with the rise of ISIS, and with the drug wars going on south of our border, I think we need the most experienced leader to control the situation. I think we need someone who already has exisiting relationships with foreign countries. I love Bernie Sanders but I think he is far and away from having the ability to handle ISIS or North Korea, or any other threat for that matter with the same compromise and resolve that Hillary Clinton would bring.

So, yes, I do plan to vote for Hillary Clinton despite my admiration for Bernie Sanders because I think the state of affairs abroad needs to be stabilized and controlled; I also think that we do not need an overhaul of existing systems and institutions that Bernie Sanders promises to bring. Barack Obama’s plan have been working and I do not wish to create a situation where our trillion dollar investment is thrown away suddenly on a whim that is not well-planned or even well-researched. Maintain and, where necessary, develop the current existing plans and focus on international affairs–that is all I want from my next President