It begins tonight.

The Republican voters are caucusing in Iowa tonight, starting in a couple of hours and finishing sometimes before midnight. And the expectation is that Donald J. Trump (Is it meaningful at all that it just took me three tries to type his name correctly? Probably only indicative of the fact that I’m pretty tired right now, and I haven’t done a lot of typing in the last few weeks. Or it’s an omen.) will win, thereby “signaling” that he is “most likely” going to be the Republican party’s nominee for President this year.

Seriously, guys? I mean, come on.

So here’s the reality. Trump is definitely going to win the Iowa caucus tonight, despite the absurdly cold weather, despite the hilarious fact that some unknown number of Iowans registered as Republicans specifically so they could vote against Trump in the caucus, and, of course, despite the fact that Trump has been indicted in four different criminal cases, along with currently being in court for two civil cases, and fighting off who knows how many other claims against him personally and against his businesses. He’s going to win the Iowa caucus for the same reason he’s going to win every single Republican primary in every single state: because Republicans love him.

They love him for a variety of reasons. Some think he did a phenomenal job as President. Some think he projects an aura of strength, which they think we need with so many problems going on in the world today. Some think he is just like them, and they want to see him succeed because that implies that they, too will succeed. Some love him because he’s a racist, sexist piece of shit, and so are they, and they think he will help them to achieve the racist and sexist dreams they hold close to their hearts.

(All of these people are wrong, by the way. But they believe they are not. Don’t judge them too harshly: we all believe lies. Many people reading this believe that Barack Obama was a great man and a great president. Many people reading this believe this country is a democracy, and that we are free. Many people reading this believe that things will turn out all right in the end. None of those things are true, either.)

And then there’s the biggest group: the people who will support Donald Trump despite knowing that he’s a racist, sexist, corrupt, narcissistic piece of shit, because they believe he will be better for the country than the Democrats, and specifically Joe Biden.

Those people might be right.

All right, hold on; no, I haven’t lost my mind, and no, I haven’t surrendered to the cynicism that did definitely increase thanks to the pretty awful situation my family has gone through over the last year or so. I am probably trying to be more honest in this post than I frequently am, because normally I shape what I’m saying for my audience, and I am rethinking that. I am also certainly looking to shock some of you with this opening; and now that I have your attention and you are maybe a bit off balance, I will explain further, and see if we can come to a consensus.

Unlike Americans.

See, there has never been a single majority opinion held by Americans. Not by the majority of us. The majority of Americans do not vote, so no election has been decided by the majority; and the majority have not been consulted in every non-democratic decision made in this country, which is the vast majority of them. We don’t all agree, and we never have. What we do is comply, and accept.

We accept that the two-party system is what we are stuck with, and then we comply with that system. We accept that capitalism is the system we are stuck with, and then we comply with that system. We accept that we cannot eliminate racism from the American consciousness, and then — and this is the difficult part, but it is a true thing — we comply with the system of racism that exists in this country. We may not do it, depending on who we are, for racist reasons; I am not a racist, and I hope and trust that most people reading my writing, therefore, are not racists. Though I was brought up within a racist system and a racist culture, so there are definitely racist ideas in my head and racist feelings in my heart, and there always will be, because we do not, ever, escape our childhood and upbringing, a fact that has been brought home to me recently. But I am not a racist because I do not subscribe to those thoughts and feelings when they arise: I question myself constantly when I think about race, and I question whether my instincts are reasonable, or racist; and if they are racist, I try not to listen to them.

But I comply with a racist system. Take, for example, de facto segregation in this country, which is almost universal. I live in a less-desirable area in Tucson, Arizona. I used to live in a much more desirable area, but we rented there, and we own our home here. We own our home here because this is what we could afford: we had an area we wanted to buy in, and an area we were willing to buy in — and then there was the area we could afford to buy in. Which is where we bought.

Now: guess which, of the desirable area and the less-desirable area, is more diverse racially. You already know, don’t you? And because we want to move to the more desirable area, we will be moving out of the racially diverse area and into the racially homogenous area as soon as we can afford to. And there are plenty of good reasons for us to move — one of which is, honestly, entirely unrelated to race, and it might even be the best reason to move: our commute is too bloody long, and we’d really really like to live closer to school — but all of them, all of them, comply with and therefore encourage and maintain the racist system that is the status quo in this country. There is more crime where we are now, and less in the desirable area. The property values are better in the desirable area. There are fewer homeless people, and less trash on the street, in the desirable area. There is more open space and more green space in the desirable area to walk our dogs. Those are all good reasons for us to move, and they are why we will move. But when we do that, we will be moving our white selves into the white area, and out of the more racially diverse area. We will be maintaining the segregated status quo in Tucson.

Why? Because we can’t change it. And because we have enough other shit to deal with in our lives without spending what energy and passion we have in a futile effort to change Tucson’s, or Arizona’s, or America’s, or the whole world’s racist systems.

But, see, that’s where we’re wrong. We do impossible things by doing them. Not by recognizing that they are impossible, and then walking away without fighting. We decide to try, even though we know it is impossible, and we try, and we fight — and that’s how we win. That’s how things change.

Does it always happen that way? Of course not: impossible things are impossible for a reason, and that reason is usually enough to overcome efforts to change things that cannot be changed.

But sometimes? Sometimes things change.

And on this day, named in celebration of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I think it is only appropriate to recognize that sometimes, it is worth fighting the impossible fight, because sometimes, you win.

Even if you then get assassinated and much of the country goes right back to the same racist status quo.

It’s worth fighting for change because even though that happened to Dr. King, he still made things different. He moved the needle. Trump is no worse a racist piece of shit than half of the past presidents of this country, but the main difference now is that we recognize that he is a racist piece of shit. And that is a problem for him. He needs to fight that perception, he needs to talk in dog whistles. Not always, because there are plenty of racist pieces of shit who support him, and they like when he says shit directly like “Immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country.” (And then defends it by saying he didn’t know that was a racist piece of shit thing to say.) A century ago, he wouldn’t have had to defend that, he would have repeated it and made it part of his stump speech. So: progress. Change.

Why hasn’t the change been larger? Simple: because not enough of us fight. That’s why it hasn’t lasted longer, and why it hasn’t spread farther, and why so many of us don’t see positive results. Not enough of us fight that fight.

I want to fight. I intend to fight. Probably for more than one thing, more than one cause, more than one change. I do want to fight systemic racism: but not only that. But I want to do it right. I want to do it strategically, and intentionally, and thoughtfully — which has never been how I’ve written, or how I’ve done anything. I vastly prefer flying by the seat of my pants.

But I just spent the last eleven years writing a single story, The Adventures of Damnation Kane. And while I think I’ve written some excellent pieces on this blog, and I’m proud of everything I’ve written on this blog, that story — those books — are better. Because I spent even more time thinking about them than I did writing them.

So I need to think more about this, and I need to strategize and I need to plan. Then I need to get to work.

This post is intended to make that public, in order to give me more motivation to do this thing the way I need to do it. It’s sad that I need an additional push, but that’s the truth: I do. Otherwise I’m just going to fly by the seat of my pants. (By the way, I’m also still going to write about teaching and school, and to review books and all of that. But there will definitely be more political speech in this, and more attempts to drive and enact social change. That’s the fight. And I’m going to get into it.) And I suspect that I will continue to fly by the seat of my pants, and to write extemporaneously, while I work on my strategy and my plan; because writing is how I form and crystallize my thoughts, and this is a good way to do that; and because I am loath to try to conceal my plans. I think it will be more convincing if I can be open about what I am doing and why, all the way. Here’s hoping I’m right.

So let me bring this back to where I started: now that it is nearly 4pm MST, and that means the Iowa Caucuses are probably starting to cast their votes for Donald Trump.

I, like everyone else who opposes Donald Trump becoming President again, wish that he would just go away. I wish that he would die (and I won’t apologize for wishing that, not when he talks openly about killing people as a joke), or I wish that he would be convicted and go to jail.

But I realized something in the last week. That’s wrong.

Trump should run in the Presidential election. He should run: and we should fight him.

And we should win.

We need to have that fight, in this country, and we need to shoulder our part of that fight, and do what needs to be done. That’s what will make the greatest change.

So: I want Trump to win the caucuses tonight. I want him to succeed in putting off all of his trials until after the election. I want him to hold rallies, and say every shitty thing that comes into his little hairball of a brain, and I want millions of Americans to laugh and cheer and agree with him. I want him to win the GOP nomination and have every Republican line up behind him, and I want him to run in November.

And then I want for all of us to fucking destroy him at the polls.

Then I want him to go to jail for the rest of his miserable traitorous life. I want him to die in prison. And I want the history books to describe his legacy in actual, factual terms: I want historians in the next fifty years to write about how lucky we all were that Trump never got a second term, because of the existential danger he posed to democracy and to the rule of law and to America as a nation and as a people.

I do not want people to turn him into a martyr and pine about what could have happened if the Democrats hadn’t put him in prison (or killed him with COVID vaccines, which is, I don’t doubt, what millions of dipshit Americans will believe whenever Trump dies, however he dies) and he had been allowed to run, and they had been allowed to cast their votes the way they wanted to. I want them to vote for Trump.

And I want them to lose.

I want to fight.

I hope to convince you all to join me in that fight.

And in the next one.

Thank you for reading.