Yeah, maybe you're against war in principle, but if we don't do something about the situation in Afghanistan... etc. Normally we can count on actual American politicians to help clarify things eventually by doing something monumentally stupid or in the narrowest and most obvious of self-interests, like for example invade a whole nother country completely uninvolved in the threat either real or perceived, or run an entire national political campaign around conflating being against tax cuts for the wealthy with being pro-terrorist.
So the roots of the neighbor-as-enemy political present aren't hard to discern, but it doesn't make it any easier to navigate. I've been an advocate for a saner and more sensible evaluation of our cohabitants, but it's pretty hard to do when all the ones with whom I disagree seem kinda fucking stupid. Like, I told you I wanted to be nice, why do you have to still believe bad things? I'm not sure why they don't listen. Idiots.
The election was a huge fucking bummer, pretty dispiriting for those of us who had some hope restored when Trump got his ass absolutely handed to him in 2020. It seemed at the time to be a full rebuke of a fluke election four years prior, where one dummy accidentally became president after getting whomped in the popular vote, who didn't really want the job, farted his way through it and fizzled in the face of a real international crisis. All of it was utterly predictable and ended the correct way, with a loser who hates losing getting his face smashed in, in the most public way possible. The narrative was correct.
In the last month, we've had to deal with the whiplash effect of not only the same loser not losing, but squeaking out a popular vote plurality. There's very little left to hang your indignation on anymore; all the irate, animating RESIST impulse of January 2017 is blobbily, wheezily absent. Maybe it really is just too soon, seeing as it's only been like 40 days, but over in our cozy bubble on Bluesky, the tone is way less "BURN DOWN THE PATRIARCHY" and a lot more <<sound of four domestic light beers cracking open in succession>> "...these fucking people..."
But nothing is as settled as it seems. There's not really a "mandate" to do anything since, as I said, this was an incredibly narrow win, historically speaking. Since Republicans also hold the House and Senate and the Supreme Court (we're well past the point of pretending it's not just as partisan a body as the legislature), it's more a window for a specific type of action, sort of like the window of action the Visigoths had when they entered Rome through the Salarian Gate in 410. Thieves who enjoy thieving on the mass-est of mass scales are about to all get their hands on the most money-rich thing in all of human history, the United States government. It's a complete capitulation to corporate interests, the kind of thing Ronald Reagan probably had in his mind whenever he had his last orgasm.
But at the same time, however, there's this one hyper-privileged dipshit Ivy League sociopath out there shooting one of the leaders of one of these extractive post-national human misery farms and... people seem to be not only OK with it, but cheering about it? The dissonance has caught me off guard a little. Are we a nation of "the government should be run like a business" dickheads who will be the death of us all, choosing to trust the people whose only defining feature as fully formed adults has been the avoidance of taxation, or are we an abused and tired conglomeration of raging proles ready to flip the table on this rigged card game, pushed by circumspection and want into literal bloodlust?
I read the thing from the NY Times I linked above about Trump voters and... yeah, it sounds like we're both. Part of the reason I'm not as discouraged as I should be is that it doesn't feel like a movement has broken out eager to hand over our livelihood chickens to a gaggle of suspiciously fox-shaped overseers, it's more just the anomaly of Trump. I'm finally past trying to understand why (probably because this was the last election he'll ever be able to run in), but nothing sticks to this fuckwad. If you don't actually have any principles and that is actually who you are, to your core, people will feel free to project whatever principles they have to you, even if they are entirely contradictory. People believe contradictory things all the time, it's more normal than not. A president with no ideas in a period of high uncertainty starts to make a lot of sense. Just to be clear, that is not the same as "a good idea."
The reason Trump is an anomaly is because he's not faking it. He really, genuinely believes nothing. Yet other people with no discernible principles--your Ted Cruzes, your JD Vances--walk around surrounded by a repellant stink cloud of inauthenticity. You can get elected locally, but understand that everyone actually hates you. Big donors understand you'll do exactly what they want and people will vote for you because you're Not One Of Those Others in a two-party system so, sure, they pop up.
The challenge for Democrats is it's a mashed together party of small ideas. You have to represent something--at least say you believe in something--to get somewhere, but not so much that you make yourself unattractive to big-money donors, whom you still need because American national electoral politics are a pageant of fiscal obscenity with no end of the upward spiral in sight. We don't have the luxury of fielding a very pudgy empty suit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The next Democrat to win (and there will be another one, I know people forget that time does march forward and the seeming inevitability suggested by the present has always proved to be a lie eventually) will have to be someone from outside the Clinton-Obama-Biden circle (we've spent them all on a combination of age and failure) who can talk a good game and mobilize some of the spite and marginalization we all experience way down, with shaky arms and legs, trying to hold this whole stupid financial pyramid up for the benefit of a tiny few way up top.
I'm never in favor of shooting anyone, even a healthcare CEO, and I don't want to be one of these people who say "killing is bad, but...", however it is edifying seeing what people respond to. The next four years are a real opportunity to build opposition to an active and unapologetic kleptocracy already forming, with no effort to hide either its composition or intent. If we can't get people behind that, we deserve to lose. Again.
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