I haven't read the diary with the headline, "I'm Perfect, and Everyone I Hate is Wrong," but the headline got me thinking.

It's OK to not be perfect. It's perfectly normal -- healthy, in fact. What is life if not a constant striving for perfection? If I were perfect, that would be gone, and I'd be good as dead.

No, I'm not perfect, but I damn sure am right about a few things, facts mainly. I'm not looking for the perfect theory. I'm trying to sift through a flood of information to find a few chunks of factual gold to guide my decisions in life. One of the things I like about Bernie is that he is dealing with facts, paradoxically enough. He is not saying that our country sucks like Trump and the Republicans and even some purists on our own side are saying. He's saying, "We can do better, and we should. Here is what seems to be wrong, based on the facts, and here is how I propose to help fix it."

As rich and bountiful as our country is, 22 percent of our children are living in poverty. Most of their parents are hard working people who can't make ends meet. Do the math. If you have a 40-hour per week job at $10 an hour, well above minimum wage, you're making about 20 grand a year. That's poverty level. But a lot of people aren't even doing that well. They aren't getting 40 hours or ten bucks an hour. They're getting 30 hours at eight bucks an hour, maybe working two 20-hour gigs at that rate.

Even if we accept the Republican fantasy that all these poor people are just lazy (they're not -- most Republicans would die of a heart attack two hours into any shift at McDonald's), can we blame those millions of children for being born to such people? Shall we just throw them all to the wolves of poverty?

So we have a problem here. The good news is that we can fix it. We can raise the minimum wage. We can ask the more fortunate among us to contribute just a bit more to help fix this. This is only fair. They are the ones who benefit most from the bounty of this nation, and they are the ones who stand the most to lose should our social fabric tear at the seams.

I don't hate people for thinking that this is a communist fantasy. I don't begrudge people their wealth. I feel pity on them because they don't have the facts or if they do, they view them through a very warped lens. Or maybe they just see things differently. As a fact-seeker and panning the river of truth, I always have to allow for the possibility that maybe I've got Fool's Gold in my pan or maybe there is a beautiful gem encased in one of those ugly pebbles. Maybe I'm wrong.

I don't hate Kos for endorsing Hillary and censoring us from his site. I don't hate Hillary. I don't even hate Trump. What's the point? How would hating any of those people accomplish anything? What good could come of it?

So, I have my flaws for sure. I've been wrong in the past. But I'm pretty damn sure that 22 percent of children in poverty is not a good thing and that it's worth trying to fix. I'm pretty damn sure that getting power from the sun is preferable to leaving behind a million years' worth of unbelievably toxic nuclear waste. I'm pretty sure that hate is not worth it. I'm pretty damn sure about a lot of things, and it seems to me that so does Senator Sanders.