You know what? Screw it… Maybe Donald Trump is the president America deserves.
I was asleep. I was sound asleep tonight. I actually went to bed at a reasonable time. I thought to myself, “The world is a goddamn mess — I should probably write something tonight,” but instead I watched a couple episodes of Big Mouth on Netflix, and I faded off to sleep. I had a dream of being chased… I was in a “bad part of town” (that means a BLACK part of town… because I’m a white person, and as hard as I may try, I will NEVER escape the racism and fear at the heart of me) and these dudes were chasing me through dark alleys, and I was saved by making it to a well-lit soccer game with a whole bunch of white people watching. Now all of a sudden, I am wide awake… And lying here thinking “WHY CAN’T PEOPLE SEE THAT TRUMP IS A LYING, SELF-SERVING, NARCISSISTIC, RACIST, MISOGYNISTIC TOXIC DUMPSTER FIRE??” And my lack of an answer to that question results in my heart being somewhere between a persistent state of deep sadness and a persistent state of deep outrage. It’s taking a toll on me. So here we are…
I keep wanting to believe people are better than this. I keep wanting to believe that if the majority of people had accurate information, that they would make good choices and vote for better people. I’m not so sure. We might just be outnumbered. In 1979 Jerry Falwell and others started a movement called “The Moral Majority,” where they paired the “Christian Right” with the Republican Party. It turned into an unholy union which forever damaged both brands. Now the Christian Right and the Republican Party have completely abandoned principles like Honesty and Integrity and even Morality in favor of a corrupt and immoral leader who promises them POWER. And there might be more of them than there are of us… a new win-at-any-cost IMMORAL MAJORITY.
The new feces… sorry, FACES of the Immoral Majority.
And people will CERTAINLY build false equivalencies between parties, and say that “BOTH parties are win-at-any-cost” and “BOTH parties are total garbage.” And it’s true that the democratic party has a lot of flaws and things about it which need to be changed… But we are in a situation right now where one of two sides is going to win, and one side is objectively worse. And for some reason, SO MANY people people in this country are unable to see that. That is a problem. And it needs to change.
I’m trying to pragmatic about this… I’m trying to figure out WHAT WORKS, and then do THAT. And I understand no one likes being called an asshole. We are in a time where “You are wrong about this” is interpreted as “You are a bad person.” We live in a time of deep fragility, where people are clinging to their privilege with everything they have, and any step toward equality feels like an attack. I realize that white fragility is a very real thing, and that sometimes when you push back at people, they dig their heels in even harder… I’m NOT saying “You are a bad person without any hope of redemption.” But maybe what people need is a dose of the TRUTH. And here is the truth: If you can’t tell that Trump and this whole GOP administration is corrupt and dishonest and immoral, there is something very, very wrong with you. Even if we are friends, I need you to know that I believe this.
We have a president whose NAME IS SHOUTED AT MINORITIES TO INTIMIDATE AND HARASS THEM… and it’s almost always shouted by white people. This is where we are as a nation. And even with that level of clear depravity in front of us, we still have a “tight race” between a good man like Beto O’Rourke and spineless liar like Ted Fucking Cruz — a man whose wife was called a dog and whose father was called “in on JFK’s assassination” by the man who won the presidency, but who still manages to so thoroughly kiss the man’s ass that his breath smells like Trump’s Diet Coke farts. And Texas seems to have more people in the state who are willing to vote for a cowardly dishonest idiot than an impressive and articulate persona like Beto O’Rourke. It is mind boggling…
Sure, there are some white nationalists who are all in on white supremacy, proud of their Hitler tattoos, and are working toward some dream of some white ethno-state. And then there are the “everything is a conspiracy” people who are so easy to manipulate. And there are the ones who are VERY UPSET about “PC Culture” (boo fucking hoo)… People who are mad about being told they shouldn’t say “retarded” anymore… People who are angry enough to vote for a villain just because they don’t want to apologize for calling that Asian kid “Fatty Fatty Chink Face” when they were in 6th grade. But there are always fringe groups and crazies… It’s also the uneducated masses, unable to distinguish a credible source from outright propaganda. It’s ignorance and anti-intellectualism. It’s “My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” It’s higher education seen as indoctrination. And it’s everywhere. But even all that is not enough to get us to where we are.
A big part of the problem is the Political Left eating its own… The people who view themselves as so “principled” that voting for anyone but the VERY BEST candidate is seem as some sort of abandoning of their integrity. And so they would rather self-righteously vote for a third party candidate who has no shot of winning, even if their third party votes are what ends up giving the power to the ones trying to disenfranchise People of Color. And believe me, I know these folks are exhausting. They are the sort of people — when Taylor Swift steps up and finally makes a political statement, putting her support behind Phil Bredesen and calling Marsha Blackburn out as the horrible person she is — who decide to focus their attention on how she should have stepped up earlier. But “haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate,” right Taylor? Someone taking a step in the right direction doesn’t deserve to get dragged because they didn’t do it sooner.
Anyone with eyes or ears can see that Marsha Blackburn is a less principled, female version of Trump. And what that information SHOULD spur inside of you is this: REVULSION & SHAME. Instead, I seem to be surrounded by people who are spurred to put “Blackburn For Senate” campaign signs in their yards and on their cars. Marsha Blackburn has had millions of dollars spent on advertising and making attractive commercials, and yet she is so full of shit that she literally can’t get it together long enough to sound believable for the FIVE SECONDS at the end of the commercial where she says, “I’m Marsha Blackburn, and I approve this message.” And still Tennesseans line up to vote for her…
All the money in the world could not make this woman look like she knows what she talking about or gives a crap about anyone but her corporate donors…
I see people waving their shitty privilege around like a shiny flag and “boldly” declaring that Trump is the closest thing to burning it all down, so that’s how they’re voting this year: They’re voting Burn It All Down. But these people are voting to keep people in power who are STILL tearing immigrant families apart… And now their “solution” is to put those parentless kids up for adoption rather than reunite them with their families. What kind of person does something like this?
And maybe the worst of all are the group of Americans who don’t care enough to get their lazy asses off their fucking sofas once a year to vote for people who aren’t committed to hypocrisy, deception, and burning the fucking planet down in our children’s lifetime. The people SO APATHETIC and INDIFFERENT that standing in a line in November is too much of an inconvenience… Even if that inconvenience means moving our nation in the direction of more gender and racial equality. Or civil rights for LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters. UGH.
There is one party — the republican party — whose leadership is trying very hard to destroy confidence in the American system of government. Do you know WHY? Because the government is the only thing standing between an actual oligarchy (where the RICH rule instead of the people). And so they fill the courts with judges who are sympathetic to the “rights” of rich people and corporations to pour unlimited money into dishonest political campaigns… all while calling that dishonesty “Free Speech,” regardless of the harm those lies and unlimited monies do to the nation. And they push through an evasive and dishonest man into a Supreme Court seat… Not because there wasn’t anyone else who was qualified, but because they knew that in their attack on The Rule of Law, deteriorating the public’s trust of the impartiality of the Judicial Branch would make a powerful ally.
I understand seeing all this disfunction and just wanting to give up. Or burn it all down. It’s this devastating combination of Hopelessness and Apathy that grows with every new victory the Immoral Majority wins. We are surrounded by stories of objective unfairness. All over the country, republicans are trying to make it harder to vote… ESPECIALLY for minorities. In Nebraska, the Supreme Court just made it much harder for Native Americans to vote, and probably affecting the Senate race there. In Georgia, the republican man who is running for Governor (in a tight race with Stacey Abrams, a black woman) just put the voter registrations of 53,000 people in jeopardy — 70% of which are black voters.
And all of this is backdropped by a U.N. study made by the world’s top climate scientists showing concrete evidence man-made climate change and global warming is growing at such an unprecedented rate that we are headed for a world-wide disaster in OUR LIFETIME… But you dip shits don’t want to believe it, because you have GOOGLE ON YOUR FUCKING iPHONES!!! And so you vote for the man who is doing everything in his power to roll back the steps and preventative regulations our country has taken toward being more environmentally conscious and averting this crisis. And this is the reason I can’t just say, “Screw it.” If we keep heading in the same direction, millions of people are going to die. 50 years from now no one is going to care about liberal vs. conservative. We cannot afford to continue to elect people from a party that denies that climate change is happening and the science showing humans are responsible. If the immorality of the Trump administration isn’t enough to inspire you to vote them out, perhaps a looming cataclysmic climate event is enough. God damn it… What will it take??
I am low on hope right now… I hope that’s okay. I want to be honest. Thank you to those of you who support me. If you want to be a Patron, YOU CAN DO THAT HERE. If you want to leave a tip on PayPal, YOU CAN DO THAT HERE. Maybe leave a comment with some reasons to be hopeful…