A plea for civility and respect for other DU members.

[JDPriestly]

14. I'm all for civility, but the stakes are too high in this primary season to cause me to value

being polite over getting the right Democratic candidate.

You pointed your finger to the crucial issue in this primary season when you wrote:

Can't someone look at Hillary Clinton and see someone with a lifelong dedication to helping children, women, and the middle class? Someone who is obviously very smart and tough? Is John Lewis suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? Is Howard Dean corrupt? Is Wendy Davis not thoughtful?

Can't someone look at Bernie Sanders and see a highly principled public servant who is focused on reversing the great inequalities in our society? Someone who is untouched by the dirty money that sloshes around our political system? Someone who is drawing huge crowds and who has made true-blue liberalism mainstream again?

This election is about the corruption in our government.

Bernie Sanders is the first candidate in my lifetime to strongly and positively oppose corruption. Not only is he opposing the corruption that our campaign finance customs and laws encourage, but he is living his opposition by refusing contributions over $2700 per person and campaigning without the backup of one or more superpacs.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, although strong on certain issues like women and children (Bernie is just as strong on those issues and stronger on the race and prison and many other issues) is mired in the corruption right up to her neck. She is taking the money from the wealthy, the Wall Street billionaires, anyone who will cough it up.

Bernie is, in my opinion, our last chance to maybe get clean government at least for a few years.

I want a Bernie appointee heading the Department of Justice. I want a Bernie appointee heading the Commerce Department, the Agriculture Department, the Labor Department, the Treasury and every other department in the government.

The TPP would not exist; it would not be a question to argue about in this election, were it not for the extreme corruption throughout our government.

We would not have gone to war in Iraq and would not be concerned about war in Syria were it not for the corruption in our government.

We would be dealing with climate change in a rational way and would have reduced our carbon emissions to far less than they are now had it not been for the extreme amount of corruption in our government -- and especially the influence of the oil and gas and coal industries.

I know it is troubling for nice people to come to a website like DU and find so many nasty posts, so much argument, so much turmoil.

But, I am a 72-year-old woman, and I tell you, the stakes have never in my life or the lives of my parents and grandparents been this high.

The industrial revolution, the advent of the automobile and all the wonderful inventions we enjoy -- hey, the internet and cell phones and medical advances, and on and on, have given us great lives, great opportunities but the energy we burn when we use those amenities are killing our planet.

And it is the corruption in our government that prevents us from dealing with the slow destruction of our planet that is happening as we type.

Corruption. That is the issue in this election.

You pointed to it yourself.

Hillary represents business as usual. Her huge financial backing, her big donors, they represent the polluters of the world, those who view the future of our planet as not their problem. There is no way that a candidate can amass the sums that Hillary has pulled together without taking from the polluters and the destroyers of our earth.

Corruption -- that is what I am voting against this primary season, and that is why I am voting for Bernie Sanders.

We each have to make up our own minds.

I have made my decision.