it may seem at times like I am. I get pretty mad about politics, and I say some aggressive and accusatory things, and also some pretty damn insulting things. We disagree, very strongly, about a number of issues; and you may see some of my opinions as representing a threat.
For instance, you see Donald Trump as the best choice for the next President. I see him as an orange fascist, a shit-flinging gibbon, who may be a threat to this country’s continued existence; though I admit, Trump’s not actually the threat; it’s the people who come crowding in with him, who, while we’re all staring at the shit-gibbon, are sneaking around in the shadows trying to make our lives worse so they can gain more of what they already have, wealth and power and the protective bubble of privilege. I don’t understand why you can’t see the threat of those people behind Trump. Though I understand why you’re staring at Trump: we all are. I went to the San Diego Zoo when I was a kid and watched a chimp pee in its own mouth. We like watching primates fling excrement. It’s wild.
I know that you think Kamala is the threat to our country; or, even more likely, you see her the same way I see Trump: you think she is a low-IQ failure, a Communist/Marxist liar who got her start in politics by spreading her legs for Willie Brown, and who never even won the nomination, just stepped in when Joe dropped out, conveniently for Kamala too late for the DNC to run a new primary but not too late for her to take the money he raised; and you think she is mainly a distraction whose job it is to open the door for those same shady characters I mentioned before, who, you think, will strip away our freedoms and the things that make us who we are, that make us the greatest country on Earth.
You worry about what she’s going to do to the economy, and how that will affect the people of this country.
I worry about what he’s going to do to the people of this country while we’re all focusing on the economy.
So, we disagree. Strongly. Often.
But we’re not enemies.
Neither one of us is trying to destroy the country, though we both accuse each other of doing exactly that. I think the threats you see, the things you believe will destroy the country, are absurd non-issues — like preventing trans people from playing sports — and I can’t understand why you don’t focus on the real threats that I see — like climate change. And yes, you guessed it: you can’t fathom why I believe in these things that are barely even real, like climate change, and why I ignore the moral collapse of this country, caused by the rise of DEI and drag queen story hour.
I know that the issue of trans rights is not the biggest issue on your mind, I know that it is the economy, immigration, and crime, in that order; I’m trying to show the starkest differences between us — because people on my side are also concerned about the economy and about immigration in ways I personally don’t agree with. So look on the bright side: you already won both of those arguments, as you won the argument about defunding the police. Whoever gets into office, Trump or Harris, Democrats or Republicans, they will cut taxes (though they shouldn’t, they should raise taxes on corporations and use it to fund Medicare for all, which will then save us more money and, more importantly, more headache than any tax cut ever could — but I also recognize that you think this is socialism gone wild, and you can’t believe I would ever trust the government to do anything important like provide real health care to real people; and I can’t believe you would trust corporations to do it instead of the government — and here we are.), and they will definitely pass that hard-on-immigration bill that the Dems handed the Republicans before Donald Trump told them not to pass it. He’s been taking shots for months, now, about that bill, so you better believe he would pass that same damn bill — except with the wall stuck in there somewhere. So you will get a tougher stance on immigration, and you will get a tax cut, and you will get a better economy (Because the economy during any presidency is largely built by the one before, so whoever wins this election will be hailed as a brilliant economic president because of the work that Biden has done for the last four years. But we can disagree on that, too.). One of the other places we disagree is trans rights, and that one I think is still up in the air; that’s why I used it as an example. I could have picked abortion: but I don’t think we actually disagree on that, not substantively.
I’m explaining this because I don’t want you to think I’m trying to paint you in a terrible way by talking about trans people playing sports or reading to children: I am not. I disagree with you. (If you are a trans person, or an ally and a supporter of trans rights as I am, and you think I am cozying up to people who want to remove your right to exist, hold on. Trust me. Read on to the end. I am not your enemy, either. [I’m just going to go ahead and assume that anyone who actually is trans is not on the Trump side politically. Not really.]) I do not think you, whom I disagree with politically, are my enemy.
I would like you to recognize the same thing about me.
Let’s talk about our disagreements a little more, and see if you can see this my way.
What makes someone your enemy? For me, it boils down to one thing: your enemy intends you harm. They wish to harm you. People who are not our enemies may (and often do) harm us, but they don’t intend it; that’s the difference. Anyone who intends you harm is your enemy.
So look at where we disagree. Start with immigration, because I don’t mean to ignore what many people think is a very serious issue. Here’s my opinion on it: there are too many illegal immigrants coming into this country.
Ha. Didn’t expect that, did you? Want me to really blow your mind? I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, too.
Where we disagree is what should be done about illegal immigration. I do not think illegal immigrants are bad people. I am tempted to explain that position by saying that I am not a racist, because I think a LOT of people who oppose illegal immigration hold that position because they are racist; but not everyone does, by any means. Many people oppose illegal immigration because it is illegal; many people oppose it because they think our country doesn’t have the room or the resources to support countless immigrants, and priority should be given to those who come here legally. I disagree with the first argument because laws can be changed: what matters to me is harm, not the fact of a law prohibiting specific behavior. I talk to my students about laws and morality all the time, and every single one of them thinks that some laws should be broken when the law is bad or the need is severe or the cause is righteous; I presume we agree on that, as well. I don’t like holding one position in one context and then changing it in another context; that is hypocrisy. So the issue is, if illegal immigrants are doing harm, their actions should be illegal, and they should be stopped; but if they are not doing harm, then it doesn’t matter that their actions are illegal: harmless actions that are illegal imply the laws should be changed, not that the actions and the people are bad somehow despite the lack of harm.
The harm illegal immigrants may be doing is taking limited resources. And as I said: I think there are too many illegal immigrants. (I kind of think there are too many people in this country, period, but then I don’t like people, so I’m not going to pay much attention to that thought of mine.) I will only say that illegal immigrants may be taking limited resources because it isn’t clear to me that illegal immigrants are the problem: they are emphatically not the cause of inflation or the housing crisis. But it is possible they are taking too many limited resources, and if so that should stop: one way would be if they should be reduced in number.
Here’s how I think we could do that, if it is the right thing to do: work permits and the right to migrate freely across the border, in either direction, for employment. Doing that would eliminate as an area of concern all of the people who immigrate and reside permanently in the US simply for economic reasons: because they could travel here, work, and then go back home with their families for vacations or when they have enough money. They wouldn’t bring their families here, because they would only come to work and send money home. Most people don’t want to move their family to a whole new country just for a job: they do it because if someone comes to the US for a job, they can’t ever go back, because then they could never return to work more. People used to cross the border to work when the agricultural season called for more workers, and then return to their native country when the season ended. We are the ones who stopped that, and it was stupid, and it caused millions of people to immigrate here with their families, permanently, reluctantly, because they had no economic opportunities in their home country and they didn’t want to be separated from their families forever. But go to the U.S. alone, just to work for a couple of months for picking season? No big deal. And then the only people who migrate here permanently would be those actually seeking asylum, seeking an entirely new life: a MUCH smaller number.
So. That’s my view on illegal immigration. I think immigration does no harm when it is handled reasonably; because of that, I think handling it reasonably is the best thing to do. Not build walls, not deport people, not militarize the border. (We are not, by the way, talking about fentanyl trafficking or human trafficking: one of the ways that we get twisted in politics is by conflating multiple issues that should be considered separately. This is just the immigration discussion.) Work permits and freedom to cross for work.
Maybe you still disagree with me. Maybe you think illegal immigration is illegal and so there should be a penalty involved, because breaking a rule is in itself harmful; okay. Maybe you think that immigrants with work permits would still take jobs that should go to Americans; okay.
Can you see that, even if you hold these opinions, or some other opinion that makes you disagree with my idea — can you see that I don’t intend you any harm? That I don’t mean to harm anyone? I want to make it easier to separate those migrants who want to work and then leave, from those immigrants who want to come here permanently, and I want to make it easier for both to get what they want. I believe that will do the most to decrease harm. (And, not coincidentally, it will reduce the harm done through human trafficking and drug smuggling, because much of that is done through exploitation of desperate people, and if we reduce desperation we reduce exploitation. But this is just the immigration discussion. I just want you to know I’m not ignoring the other problems.) That’s my full intent: and so even if you think I’m missing a critical concern of yours with my solution, I’m not planning anything that is intended to cause you harm. Or to cause anyone harm, but we’re talking about you.
That’s why I’m not your enemy.
Want to do another one? Take climate change. You may oppose the Green New Deal because you think that it will make everything too expensive, and that climate change can’t be affected by making you buy an electric car. You may think that Democratic politicians are using the Green New Deal to give kickbacks to the shady people standing behind them (Though if you do, you are ignoring that one of the biggest recipients of sweetheart environmental laws and policies is Elon Musk, who is not a friend to Democrats.), and you may think that electric cars suck and you don’t ever want to own one. (You may tell yourself it’s because EVs don’t have the range, or that the batteries are dangerous and lithium mining is toxic, or that the power to charge them comes from fossil fuels used to generate power in the first place — but it’s really because EVs don’t make the cool sounds that gas cars do, and you know it. Right, JB?)
I do not believe in a Green New Deal. I think it is a political statement that is now toxic. I wish it weren’t, because I believe in what it represents; but I don’t need the statement, I just want the results. I believe the government should support and encourage the US to move towards a greener economy and a greener infrastructure. I do not want Democrats giving kickbacks or sweetheart deals to their corporate cronies; they are bad at picking them, because they picked freaking Musk and made him the richest man on Earth, and he then fucked up Twitter. I really liked Twitter, so now I hold a grudge. (Mostly against Musk, who sucks for a plethora of reasons.) I believe the government has a role in educating the public, and especially in making sure that the corporations which profit from causing climate change do not get to lie about climate change, as all of the oil and gas companies have been doing for generations now. I admit I think that EVs are better and cooler than gas cars, and specifically because they don’t make the same noises that gas cars do.
It’s okay if we’re enemies on that score.
But again: can you see how I don’t intend to cause you harm? We may have different ideas of what should be done, and how it should be done. I want education. I want encouragement and support, but I want the change to come from the people and the companies of this country, not to be imposed by the government. I want that because government imposition of changes so vast and momentous doesn’t work: and I really think our actions on climate change need to work, and they need to work now. But I’ll bet you anything that we could find a reasonable compromise on the specifics of this issue.
Because I am not your enemy.
Go down the line: you will find the same thing, again and again. I hear pundits and people on both sides say that we are all Americans and we are not that different; I don’t actually agree, I think we are that different. I think we disagree on a whole lot of stuff. But I don’t think we are enemies, because I don’t think we intend each other harm. I don’t think most people intend anyone harm, other than those they see as enemies. I don’t think people who want to deport illegal immigrants want to harm those people, I think they just want to protect this country and they think immigrants are harming the US, and that deportation (and a wall) are the best way to prevent that harm. I know that people who want to impose EV mandates and so on are not intending any harm for those who might get affected; they want to prevent the much greater harm of the onrushing environmental collapse. Talk to citizens who support the idea of a Green New Deal about something like subsidies for those who can’t afford to buy an electric car, to make it possible to switch to an EV, and I guarantee they’ll agree immediately; and if you think that’s socialism, well. Tell me who it harms, and how.
You know what made me realize this? It’s abortion. Over 60% of this country’s citizens support abortion rights. That’s more than all of the people in either party, Democrat or Republican. The people I sometimes think of as white supremacists, the people I sometimes think of as religious fanatics (Don’t blame me for thinking that, you guys have Mark Robinson on your side.) — large proportions of them, of you, support abortion rights. And yet there are whole states — which may not have 60% support for abortion rights, but sure as hell have more than 0, which is the number of abortions some states seem to want to allow — trying to ban abortion entirely.
Even those people, most of them, don’t intend harm. They are trying to prevent harm. I think, vehemently, that they are wrong, that they are causing more harm than they are preventing; but I can have that debate with them. And other than the fanatics who actually want to murder people, I think they would be willing to have the discussion with me, too. Because we’re not enemies.
Now: let me say that there are people who intend harm. There are people who oppose immigration because they are racist; they want to militarize the border because they want people to die trying to cross into the US; they want there to be camps built to hold immigrants because they want immigrants to suffer and die. Those people are my enemies. As I think they are yours. There are people who want to prevent trans athletes from playing on teams with their identified gender because those people hate trans people, and think trans people shouldn’t exist. Those people intend harm to trans people: therefore they are my enemies. But I don’t think that’s you, either. I think most people who oppose trans rights think that it’s fine for trans people to exist; they think trans people shouldn’t play on sports teams, and they think trans people shouldn’t be around children. I disagree with those ideas — but I don’t think the people who hold them intend harm. I think those ideas actually do cause harm, quite severe harm; but I don’t think it’s intentional harm. Where it is intentional harm, where people think trans people — or those they mistake for trans people, like drag performers — should be killed? Those people are my enemies. And they should be yours. Murderers, even would-be murderers, do not get a place in the debate.
But I really don’t think that most people want to commit murder. And I think if you don’t want to kill people, we can talk.
So this, I think, is how we should think about this going forward. I disagree with you, a lot, and I will fight you, tooth and nail, over political points — but not literally, because I do not intend you harm, and you do not intend me harm. We are all Americans, even though we are very different. We are not enemies.
But you know who is my enemy?
People who try to convince you that I am your enemy. People who say that I am, intentionally, destroying our country, which I love dearly. People who say that I should be destroyed, that I should be jailed, or killed, for my beliefs and my political ideas.
So understand this: I don’t hate people who vote for Donald Trump — though I don’t like you, either. But I don’t think that most of you are my enemies. Some are: the racists are, and the anti-trans bigots, and the ones who want people to suffer and die because they disagree politically with Trump and his ilk. Donald Trump, however, is my enemy: because by trying to make you think that I am your enemy, he intends me harm. If you think the same thing about Kamala Harris, then I accept that she is your enemy — though I doubt you think that unless you think that all Democrats are out to kill all Republicans, and if you think that, you’re probably my enemy already. Trump is Kamala Harris’s enemy, and so she says things about him you wouldn’t say about people who aren’t your enemy: and he deserves them.
Because he is the enemy.
You’re not.
So if my enemy wins this election, I’m going to oppose him, and I’m going to be fighting those who supported him because he is my enemy, and I think he intends harm. But then after he is gone — and even if he wins this election, he will not destroy this country, because he has too many enemies and not enough allies — we will need to come back together, and hopefully find a new set of leaders to elect who do not tell any of us that we are each other’s enemies. Hopefully that type will never rise again.
Hopefully it won’t be you.
But I don’t think it will. Because we’re not enemies.
I don’t actually remember when I learned it: but I remember learning the fact about Presidential debates that we probably all remember learning. The fact that they didn’t used to matter, until the first televised Presidential debate, in 1960, between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. That debate was important, I was taught, because Kennedy won it: because Nixon looked bad. Nixon was recovering from the flu, and refused makeup, and so he looked flushed and sweaty, where Kennedy looked dashing and charming. I remember learning that, while people who watched the debate on TV thought Kennedy won, people who listened to the debate on the radio thought that Nixon won: because Nixon, for all he looked sweaty and nervous, actually gave better answers to the questions. (By the way: I have to point out that the Kennedy-Nixon debates started with opening statements that were EIGHT MINUTES long. Can you even imagine either one of these two 2024 candidates giving a coherent eight-minute speech? I assume the 1960 candidates had a teleprompter for that opening statement, but still.) I remember that when I learned that, I thought it was funny; and I was sort of glad of it, because, of course, Nixon was an awful President, and Kennedy was much better — so it was a good thing that Nixon lost that debate. Right?
Right?
I was reminded of this recently when I watched Biden lose his debate against Trump: and then — only then — did it really hit me. No, it was not a good thing that Kennedy won that debate. We should never select our leaders based on appearances, based only on the surface level qualities — based on style over substance. Sure, I guess Kennedy was a good President; he was certainly a better person than Nixon, so I’m glad that Kennedy won the election — though I will say that Nixon actually did a number of good things while he was in office; just not enough to counterbalance the bad, mainly because he was the one who pushed the Southern Strategy on the Republican party, ensuring that they would lean hard into both the evangelical vote and the white nationalist vote, and because of Watergate and the deterioration of norms and standards like “The President should FOLLOW THE FUCKING LAW” — but the fact that Kennedy “won” a debate, despite having presented the lesser argument, because he was better-looking on TV? I hate that. Because that’s style over substance: and that’s bullshit.
And while I was watching the Biden-Trump debate, and cringing, and cradling my head in my hands, and cursing both under my breath and out loud, while I watched Joe Biden reveal the depths of his infirmity, I realized: that’s style over substance, too.
And it should not determine our choice for who gets our vote in November.
No, it’s not that simple. Yes, Biden did more than look bad, he revealed that he has weaknesses; I’m not about to excuse them — I wish he would step aside because of those weaknesses. He won’t, though, and it’s a problem. It’s a problem both for the election and for the administration after it: because if he wins, we will have a President with diminished capacity for four years. Let’s not imagine that no serious crises will happen in that time which would require more immediate resources of cognitive capacity than Biden apparently has.
But see, that’s where the problem lies: in appearances.
As I said, Biden should step aside. He should bow out with dignity, accepting that his best effort isn’t good enough, what we need is an actual candidate who can actually beat Donald Trump, someone who can energize — hell, anyone. Some independents, some core blue voters, some non-white non-majority groups; anybody. Biden excites literally no one. Which puts us all at risk: and why? Because ol’ Scranton Joe “truly believes” that he is the best person to beat Donald Trump.
I don’t doubt that he believes it, with all his heart, quite sincerely. He’s just wrong, is all. He may be able to beat Trump: but he’s not the best person, because right at this moment he’s gone from kinda losing in the polls to definitely losing, and there’s no clear way for him to make up that ground in time to win the election. It still might happen, he still might beat Trump: but he’s not the best candidate to do it, not any more.
The election isn’t actually about soothing Joe Biden’s ego, and it isn’t about helping him prove to the whole wide world that he’s still got it. This election is about stopping the MAGA movement that actually literally wants to destroy the country as it exists currently; and for that, Joe Biden should not be the nominee. I know he wants to fight Trump, and he wants to beat Trump: but if he helps the Dems to transition to a successor — most obvious is Kamala Harris but I’m open to other suggestions — then he is helping to beat Donald Trump, and he would absolutely be remembered for being instrumental in winning that fight. He should withdraw from the race, make a speech, and go down in history; and the Democrats should hold an open primary at the convention, then pull out all the stops for whoever wins the most delegates. I don’t care who it is (As long as it isn’t Marianne Williamson), because the excitement coming out of that convention, and the change from Biden to a younger, more vigorous person will help bring out the votes to beat Trump. That’s what should happen.
But you see, the reason why that should happen is because of how bad Joe Biden looked at the debate. That’s why. It’s not the only reason: he’s uniquely unpopular, because he’s a shitty candidate and always has been; but the truth is he’s done a good job as President. The Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS act, restoring the economy after the pandemic, supporting NATO and Ukraine — he’s done a really good job, especially in comparison with his predecessor and current opponent. Putting that record against Donald Trump’s should be more than enough to win the election, in the end.
It’s not. Because he looked bad. Not because he said bad things: but because he looked bad — while saying (mostly) good things.
It’s style over substance. It’s his appearance that is actually making the difference in the campaign going forward; if he looked better, sounded better, if the number of his age was about five lower (And age is just a number, so the number is part of appearances as well), he’d be able to overcome his drawbacks and he’d win, I’d have no doubt. Now I have doubt: and it’s because of what I see people saying about the race because of how Biden looked. How he sounded. His appearance, at the debate. Not his ideas, not really what he said: just how he looks, how he sounds, what we associate — what we assume — with someone who is his age.
That is unacceptable. Always. It was back in 1960, and it is now. We should be willing to look past how someone looks and how someone sounds, and examine carefully who they actually are: what they stand for, what they will do to and for the country. We do it all the time in other areas of our lives: we buy fixer-upper houses and project cars; we choose life partners who are good companions, not simply the hottest person available; we buy discount and clearance items that might be slightly less than perfect. Some of us — like, say, Donald Trump — only go for the surface appeal, but that should tell you how empty and terrible it is to do that: do we really want our country to be in any way like the relationship of Donald and Melania Trump?
But then, when it comes to choosing people to run the country, almost everybody picks based on surface traits: and we just accept it, don’t we? We just say to each other, “He looks terrible — he probably can’t do the job.” We watch videos of people stumbling and tripping and fumbling, whether it is over their words or over their feet. We make fun of how Donald Trump stands, how he dances, what his looks like, what his skin looks like. We mock both men for how they speak: not what they say, but how they say it. We talk, with all seriousness, about which candidate looks Presidential.
I don’t even know what the fuck that means. What is it to look Presidential? Wouldn’t it be true that anyone who was the President automatically looked Presidential? Does it really come down to who has a neater haircut and cleaner clothes? Who has a bigger nose, or a squarer jaw? Do we care about the President’s tailor, or their clothing budget? Do we care about their weight? About their height?
Apparently, we do. Because that’s how many of us make our voting decisions. No considerations: just vibes.
Not gonna lie, I kinda want this on a T-shirt.
Here. Let’s try an experiment. Let’s try the other side of this equation. Let’s look at the substance.
**I am not going to ignore the signs of cognitive decline, like that moment that has been soundbited (Soundbitten?) so universally, when Biden froze and then ended by saying “We beat Medicare.” We’ll get to that. But stick with me for now. Don’t focus on a single soundbite.
This is the transcript of the debate. Please read all of it, if you are interested and concerned about the actual issues in this election; but here I’m just going to quote the responses to the first question. (Let me note here, as I have noted elsewhere, that our willingness to blame or credit the President alone with the state of the economy is freaking ridiculous; nothing the President does makes much of a difference in the economy. Congress passing laws regarding taxes or regulations have more influence, but the economy is much larger than most tax laws or regulations can encompass, and while some parts of the economy may be strongly affected by specific actions in Washington, other parts will be entirely separate. Also, things that the government does often take years to actually have an impact: so every time, a President’s economy is mainly the economy of his predecessor. The economy of the Trump years was built by Obama; Biden’s economy was built mainly by Trump; the next economy will be the result of these last four years. And still not really because of the President’s actions alone. The President does nothing alone: please remember that. But regardless, good actions for the economy are good actions, so here it is.)
JAKE TAPPER: President Biden, inflation has slowed, but prices remain high. Since you took office, the price of essentials has increased. For example, a basket of groceries that cost $100 then, now costs more than $120; and typical home prices have jumped more than 30 percent.
What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?
BIDEN: You have to take a look at what I was left when I became president, what Mr. Trump left me.
We had an economy that was in freefall. The pandemic are so badly handled, many people were dying. All he said was, it’s not that serious. Just inject a little bleach in your arm. It’d be all right.
The economy collapsed. There were no jobs. Unemployment rate rose to 15 percent. It was terrible.
And so, what we had to do is try to put things back together again. That’s exactly what we began to do. We created 15,000 new jobs. We brought on – in a position where we have 800,000 new manufacturing jobs.
But there’s more to be done. There’s more to be done. Working class people are still in trouble.
I come from Scranton, Pennsylvania. I come from a household where the kitchen table – if things weren’t able to be met during the month was a problem. Price of eggs, the price of gas, the price of housing, the price of a whole range of things.
That’s why I’m working so hard to make sure I deal with those problems. And we’re going to make sure that we reduce the price of housing. We’re going to make sure we build 2 million new units. We’re going to make sure we cap rents, so corporate greed can’t take over.
The combination of what I was left and then corporate greed are the reason why we’re in this problem right now.
In addition to that, we’re in a situation where if you had – take a look at all that was done in his administration, he didn’t do much at all. By the time he left, there’s – things had been in chaos. There was (ph) literally chaos.
And so, we put things back together. We created, as I said, those (ph) jobs. We made sure we had a situation where we now – we brought down the price of prescription drugs, which is a major issue for many people, to $15 for – for an insulin shot, as opposed to $400. No senior has to pay more than $200 for any drug – all the drugs they (inaudible) beginning next year.
And the situation is making – and we’re going to make that available to everybody, to all Americans. So we’re working to bring down the prices around the kitchen table. And that’s what we’re going to get done.
Okay: there are some stumbles there, but this is a man with a stutter. Ignore those little slips, as long as he got back on message and made his points.
Look at his points: he was handed a shit show of an economy, coming out of the pandemic (True), which Trump fucked up royally. But they went to work, and created millions of jobs, including 800,000 manufacturing jobs (Both true, the 15 million figure and the 800,000, though it’s also true that many of those jobs were layoffs from the pandemic which people were re-hired for. But also, successfully getting people back to work? That counts, for me.) He knows there is more to be done: he speaks to his own past growing up in a household that had to make ends meet, so he understands the pain we’re all going through, and then he identifies, correctly, the cause of the inflation apart from the pandemic: corporate greed. He points out other places that he has fought corporate greed, specifically big pharma and insulin; and it’s a damn good point.
That’s a good answer. That is an answer with substance.
Now here’s what Trump said.
We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We had never done so well. Every – everybody was amazed by it. Other countries were copying us.
We got hit with COVID. And when we did, we spent the money necessary so we wouldn’t end up in a Great Depression the likes of which we had in 1929. By the time we finished – so we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good.
But the thing we never got the credit for, and we should have, is getting us out of that COVID mess. He created mandates; that was a disaster for our country.
But other than that, we had – we had given them back a – a country where the stock market actually was higher than pre-COVID, and nobody thought that was even possible. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounceback jobs; they’re bounced back from the COVID.
He has not done a good job. He’s done a poor job. And inflation’s killing our country. It is absolutely killing us.
Greatest economy in the history of the world, huh? Since our current economy is better, that’s false. Every time Trump says “Everyone was amazed by it,” assume it’s a lie; it is. Everybody wants our wealth: but our economy is actually a shit show, as evidenced by the income inequality and wealth disparities. Most other countries know why that’s bad, and they work to avoid getting into the hole we’re in. I appreciate that he owns up to spending trillions of dollars to keep the economy afloat, but if you’re going to argue (I don’t agree, but Trump has argued) that money from the government increased inflation, then you should own your own contribution to the inflation. “No wars” my ass; warlike actions and policies likely to increase tensions leading to war are not the same as being peaceful. Trump assassinated an Iranian general, after ending the pact that kept Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons; he backed Israel over Palestine, which, along with pissing off Iran, exacerbated the tensions that helped create the current situation in Gaza (which he blames Biden for); he personally tried to start wars with North Korea and with China by insulting their leaders; he threatened NATO and fucked with the Ukraine while supporting Putin every way he could, TO THIS DAY; he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and promoted fossil fuels while destroying the environment: which will most definitely help create wars in the future as people grow more desperate over climate change; he continued the wars in Afghanistan and in Syria. Trump did not get credit for getting us out of COVID because he fuckin didn’t: his administration put in place the shutdowns and promoted the creation of the vaccines, which were instrumental in coming out of the pandemic — but that was despite Trump’s best efforts to fuck everything up; and you don’t get credit for solving a problem you created, which is absolutely the story of the pandemic that Trump blew off for the first three months, when a more careful and rational approach would have saved thousands of lives.
And apart from the lies (But not more important: because while no politician tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the quantity and sheer unreality of Trump’s lies are unmatched by anyone else in public life, let alone in American politics), look at what he says here. It’s fluff. The “greatest economy.” That shit he always does about adding how other people perceive and talk about his actions — everybody was amazed by it, we got credit or didn’t get credit, nobody believed that was even possible; nobody gives a shit what other people thought about how awesome you are, Donny, we care about what you actually did. And what did he say here about what they actually did?
He says they spent the money. That’s it. The rest is vague opinion. And talking shit about Biden, also unfounded — sure, pal, it was the vaccine mandate that was the disaster, not THE ACTUAL FUCKING DISASTER.
Rebuttal, Mr. President?
BIDEN: Well, look, the greatest economy in the world, he’s the only one who thinks that, I think. I don’t know anybody else who thinks it was great – he had the greatest economy in the world.
And, you know, the fact of the matter is that we found ourselves in a situation where his economy – he rewarded the wealthy. He had the largest tax cut in American history, $2 trillion. He raised the deficit larger than any president has in any one term. He’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover who has lost more jobs than he had when he began, since Herbert Hoover. The idea that he did something that was significant.
And the military – you know, when he was president, they were still killing people in Afghanistan. He didn’t do anything about that. When he was president, we still found ourselves in a position where you had a notion that we were this safe country. The truth is, I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have any – this – this decade – doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world, like he did.
All true. The bit about Herbert Hoover is a weird dig when we all know that Trump lost jobs because of the pandemic, not just because he was a dolt; he is a dolt, but before the pandemic the economy had created almost 7 million jobs during Trump’s term, so there’s serious context there with that statistic which shouldn’t be left out — and the comment about how Biden doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere is false, because troops have died, in Afghanistan, under Biden; it is also callous and meaningless when we are funding two enormously devastating proxy wars. Like I said, Biden isn’t a great candidate, he isn’t the best president, and like any politician he is shading the truth to serve himself.
But he is speaking the truth, and answering questions, and sticking to the subject. And as I hope you’re seeing, when you look at the words and don’t listen to his voice or look at his face, then these are good answers.
As for Trump?
TAPPER: President Trump, I want to follow up, if I can. You wanted…
TRUMP: Am I allowed to respond to him?
TAPPER: Well, I’m going to ask you a follow-up. You can do whatever you want with the minute that we give you.
I want to follow up. You want to impose a 10 percent tariff on all goods coming into the U.S. How will you ensure that that doesn’t drive prices even higher?
TRUMP: Not going to drive them higher. It’s just going to cause countries that have been ripping us off for years, like China and many others, in all fairness to China – it’s going to just force them to pay us a lot of money, reduce our deficit tremendously, and give us a lot of power for other things.
But he – he made a statement. The only thing he was right about is I gave you the largest tax cut in history. I also gave you the largest regulation cut in history. That’s why we had all the jobs. And the jobs went down and then they bounced back and he’s taking credit for bounceback jobs. You can’t do that.
He also said he inherited 9 percent inflation. No, he inherited almost no inflation and it stayed that way for 14 months. And then it blew up under his leadership, because they spent money like a bunch of people that didn’t know what they were doing. And they don’t know what they were doing. It was the worst – probably the worst administration in history. There’s never been.
And as far as Afghanistan is concerned, I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we were getting out with dignity, with strength, with power. He got out, it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life.
As for the Afghanistan withdrawal, which Trump keeps hitting Biden about, everyone should know that Trump negotiated it, not Biden. Biden abided by the agreement Trump signed with the Taliban. Maybe he shouldn’t have — the Taliban hadn’t kept up their end of the deal — but it’s pretty goddamn sticky to discard your predecessor’s treaties and deals, and to escalate tensions by so doing. Only an asshole would do something like that. More to the point, Trump set up the problems with the withdrawal by negotiating only with the Taliban, not the Afghan government, and not setting enough conditions on the withdrawal of troops, just dropping a hard date for the total withdrawal, which made it impossible to accomplish the task smoothly — or as Trump put it, getting out with “dignity, strength, and power.” If Chump had wanted to make that happen himself, he should have negotiated a withdrawal date before he left office — or else won the election.
I’m not going to comment on the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life. But I will post this link.
I don’t want to go through the whole debate, but largely it was like this: Biden answered the question — often shading the truth to benefit himself, sometimes speaking straightforward untruths — while Trump straight-out lied, often avoiding the question while continuing to make shit up about migrants and inflation and Biden’s effect on the US’s international reputation. Here’s a detailed fact check that is worth at least skimming, to see the difference in the candidates’ truthiness.
It is definitely worth noting, without using it to excuse all of Biden’s lapses, that Trump was certainly guilty of using the Gish Gallop to overwhelm Biden with bullshit: and it is particularly effective against an opponent with a stutter, who may get frozen in trying to respond to all of the lies all at once, and being unable to pick a specific starting point while also providing a substantive answer of their own. And, of course, the CNN moderators’ choice to not fact check anyone on anything certainly helped Trump more than Biden, since Trump uses bullshit more often and far more aggressively than Biden.
Let’s just finish up this piece with one more question: the question Trump got about accepting the results of the election. As he failed to do the last time he lost, in 2020, and as he essentially did when he won, persistently claiming that he won the popular vote if you don’t count the illegal votes, which of course do not exist.
DANA BASH: To you, a specific concern that voters have about you. Will you pledge tonight that once all legal challenges have been exhausted that you will accept the results of this election regardless of who wins and you will say right now that political violence in any form is unacceptable?
TRUMP: Well, I shouldn’t have to say that, but, of course, I believe that. It’s totally unacceptable.
TRUMP: And if you would see my statements that I made on Twitter at the time, and also my statement that I made in the Rose Garden, you would say it’s one of the strongest statements you’ve ever seen.
In addition to the speech I made, in front of, I believe, the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to, and I will tell you, nobody ever talks about that. They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol. And in many cases were ushered in by the police.
And as Nancy Pelosi said, it was her responsibility, not mine. She said that loud and clear.
But the answer is, if the election is fair free, and I want that more than anybody.
And I’ll tell you something – I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself. I wouldn’t be under indictment because I wouldn’t have been his political appoint – you know, opponent. Because he indicted me because I was his opponent.
I wish he was a great president. I would rather have that.
I wouldn’t be here. I don’t mind being here, but the only reason I’m here is he’s so bad as a president that I’m going to make America great again. We’re going to make America great again.
We’re a failing nation right now. We’re a seriously failing nation. And we’re a failing nation because of him.
His policies are so bad. His military policies are insane. They’re insane.
These are wars that will never end with him. He will drive us into World War Three and we’re closer to World War Three than anybody can imagine. We are very, very close to World War Three, and he’s driving us there.
And Kim Jong-Un, and President Xi of China – Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, all of these – Putin – they don’t respect him. They don’t fear him. They have nothing going with this gentleman and he’s going to drive us into World War Three.
BIDEN: If you want a World War Three, let him follow (ph) and win, and let Putin say, do what you want to NATO – just do what you want.
There’s a thing called Article Five, an attack on one is attack on all, a required response.
The idea – the idea – I can’t think of a single major leader in the world who wouldn’t trade places with what job I’ve done and what they’ve done because we are a powerful nation, we have wonderful piece (ph), because of the people, not me, because of the American people. They’re capable of anything and they step up when they’re needed.
And right now, we’re needed. We’re needed to protect the world because our own safety is at stake.
And again, you want to have war, just let Putin go ahead and take Kyiv, make sure they move on, see what happens in Poland, Hungary, and other places along that border. Then you have a war.
BASH: President Trump, as I come back to you for a follow-up. The question was, will you accept the results of this election regardless of who wins?
TRUMP: Just to finish what he said, if I might, Russia – they took a lot of land from Bush. They took a lot of land from Obama and Biden. They took no land, nothing from Trump, nothing.
He knew not to do it. He’s not going to play games with me. He knew that. I got along with him very well, but he knew not to play games.
He took nothing from me, but now, he’s going to take the whole thing from this man right here.
That’s a war that should have never started. It would’ve never started ever with me. And he’s going to take Ukraine and, you know, you asked me a question before, would you do this with – he’s got us in such a bad position right now with Ukraine and Russia because Ukraine’s not winning that war.
He said, I will never settle until such time – they’re running out of people, they’re running out of soldiers, they’ve lost so many people. It’s so sad.
They’ve lost so many people and they’ve lost those gorgeous cities with the golden domes that are 1,000-years-old, all because of him and stupid decisions.
Russia would’ve never attacked if I were president.
BASH: President Trump, the question was, will you accept the results of the election regardless of who wins? Yes or no, please?
TRUMP: If it’s a fair and legal and good election – absolutely. I would have much rather accepted these but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous that if you want, we’ll have a news conference on it in a week or we’ll have another one of these on – in a week.
But I will absolutely – there’s nothing I’d rather do. It would be much easier for me to do that than I’m running again. I wasn’t really going to run until I saw the horrible job he did. He’s destroying our country.
I would be very happy to be someplace else, in a nice location someplace. And again, no indictments, no political opponent’s stuff, because it’s the only way he thinks he can win.
But unfortunately, it’s driven up by numbers and driven it up to a very high level, because the people understand it.
BIDEN: Let’s see what your numbers are when this election is over.
TRUMP: We’ll see.
BIDEN: Let’s see. You’re a whiner. When you lost the first time, you continued to appeal and appeal to courts all across the country.
Not one single court in America said any of your claims had any merit, state or local, none.
But you continue to promote this lie about somehow there’s all this misrepresentation, all the stealing. There’s no evidence of that at all.
And I tell you what? I doubt whether you’ll accept it because you’re such a whiner. The idea if you lose again, you’re accepting anything, you can’t stand the loss. Something snapped in you when you lost the last time.
So let’s be fair: he said, directly, that political violence is unacceptable. But he also said that “only a very few people were involved in the insurrection on January 6th: “They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol. And in many cases were ushered in by the police.” And he misrepresented his part in what happened, telling them to fight like hell if they wanted to still have a country, taking three hours to post any kind of statement while people were suffering and dying in political violence instigated in his name. And no matter how clearly Bash asked for his simple yes or no answer, he would only agree to accept the results conditionally, according to his own estimation of those results — which means, of course, that he won’t accept those results, as he continued to reject the 2020 results even in these same answers about accepting the 2024 results.
That is Donald Trump’s substance: lies, misdirection, and the promise of violence in opposition to democracy.
Now go back and read what Joe Biden said here. That’s substance.
This last Thursday, we saw more of Joe Biden’s substance in his press conference after the NATO summit. And yes, he fucked up twice: he called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy “President Putin,” and he called Vice President Harris “Vice President Trump.” But please let us not think that he was actually confused who he was talking about: he caught and corrected himself on the Putin/Zelenskyy mistake, and though he never did on the Harris/Trump one, he talked about “her” qualifications to be Vice President and also President if it was necessary — he was not confused about who his Vice President is, or who the president of Ukraine is. In terms of screwing up names? Come on. I have called students by the wrong names more times than I can count. Students have addressed me with the name of literally every other male teacher I have ever worked with. Every administrator I have ever had has called me Mr. Humphreys. I had a student call me “Mom” once. This is not indicative of cognitive decline, it’s just a slip: it’s just appearance, nothing substantive. It’s a joke, a meme. Make fun of him for it: but don’t pretend it says anything about Biden’s ability to run the country. What, are we afraid that he’ll give the order to launch nuclear weapons, but instead of saying “Attack Russia,” he’ll say, “Attack Rhode Island?” And the nukes will be in the air before he realizes the mistake? Please.
Apart from his gaffes (And has been pointed out by many pundits, Biden has always been prone to gaffes: because he’s a shitty candidate and always has been.), Biden spent an hour answering questions, which he did not have in advance, from various reporters, many of whom asked him directly about how fucked up he was and if he would step aside for someone younger and if he thought he was too decrepit to finish his term — I mean, I’m a pacifist, and some of those questions would have had me yelling “COME AT ME BRO!” The rest of the questions were about serious foreign policy issues, and Biden answered them in detail. Exhaustive detail. Without notes. Without freezing. Without losing his train of thought, though as always, because he stutters, he paused a lot, stumbled and restarted, and often fell back on familiar phrases like “Here’s the deal” and counting out his points and so on. He sounded old, certainly: but he sounded like a man who knew his shit.
Because he is. He does.
All right, so if he knws his shit, what actually happened at the debate? I mean, he was so much worse that night than he was at the press conference, or at the State of the Union: or even how he was at the Biden watch party he visited immediately after getting his ass kicked by the actual worst President we’ve ever had. Why did he freeze so badly? Why did he sound so incoherent, so weak and halting even apart from his stutter? Why did he stand there with his mouth hanging open? Why did he shuffle out onto the stage like a dead man on marionette strings?
Is he actually too old and too incapable to be President for the next four years? For real: is he?
The truth is, I don’t know. Neither do you. Neither does Joe Biden. If he maintains what he can do now, then he can make it; his other appearances over the last two weeks and his substance in the debate both show that. But can he maintain his current level of ability? How far and how fast will he decline? His decline from the State of the Union to the debate was precipitous: but so was his climb back up for the events following it. So which is indicative of his real ability?
I don’t want to get into personal details about people in my life, but let me just say this: I have watched people go through very serious declines, physically and mentally. And I have watched some of those people — but not others — return to a better state, to more capable versions of themselves, after those serious declines. It is impossible to predict, in the absence of an actual diagnosis of something like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, how someone will progress or regress cognitively. We do not understand the human mind, not at all. Believe that.
The fact that Biden came back and gave better answers, and had more energy, by the end of the debate, shows me that his worst moments are not his only moments, not his full capacity, even if he was talking about fucking golf. His performance at the NATO summit press conference shows me that he still has quite a lot of ability to do the things that are necessary for doing his job — even if he can’t get people’s fucking names right.
I think there is a genuine decline in his cognitive ability. That “We beat Medicare” answer was honestly shocking to watch. But let’s look at reality: the Presidency is not a one-man show. He is surrounded by other people, aides and advisors and cabinet members and other political leaders, military leaders: all the goddamn time. People who are not undergoing cognitive decline. While the President makes the final call in critical circumstances, it’s not like standing up on stage during a debate: he is never put on the spot, with millions watching him, under a time clock, with his enemy standing twenty feet away, when he has to make a decision about peace and war, or about declaring a national emergency, or anything else that the President has to do. It’s never a situation where a man freezing for ten seconds would change the outcome. Never. Someone (I would expect it to be Kamala Harris, but I’m sure there are others) might have to grab his lapels, shake him, slap his cheek and yell “SNAP OUT OF IT, MAN!” like in some 1950s melodrama; but more realistically, Ol’ Shaky Joe would be given time enough, support enough, rest enough, and everything else he needs, to make any one specific critical decision. So long as he can come back to his ability to think and reason, to understand and — not even remember, just be reminded of the important points, hold them in his mind long enough to make a decision — then he can do the parts of the job that really matter. He’ll still be able to give shitty speeches, as shown by the several he has given since the debate. He’ll still be able to meet with foreign dignitaries, even if he just gets marionetted out for a handshake and a brief appearance at a state dinner — don’t think he’d be the first or the only world leader who looked like shit when making official presentations. He’ll continue to stumble and freeze in high pressure situations, and that will be awful to watch and make us all feel bad; but Joe Biden has no one to blame but himself for whatever happens to him in his next term, if he wins. If it ruins his legacy, if it makes him the laughingstock of a nation or a world that is focused on appearances, then that’s his goddamn fault. I think we can pretty safely say that LITERALLY EVERYONE has told him to step aside: he is the only one who decided to keep in this race. The only one. I will not feel bad for anything he goes through as he slowly destroys himself trying to do the hardest job in the world for four more years, at his age.
That doesn’t matter: what matters is how his next term, if he stays in and if he wins, will affect the rest of us. As I said, I do not believe that any critical decision will be wrongly made, or be unmade, by a man who makes the slips that Biden makes: because he never acts alone. I do not believe for a second that Biden stuttering, or freezing, or stumbling when he walks, makes Putin more likely to invade another country. Makes Hamas more likely to murder Israelis, or Netanyahu more likely to commit genocide against the Palestinian people. I do not believe for a second that anyone in this world will consider both the horrifying things that this country has done around the world, for decades if not centuries, things we continue to do — and look at Joe Biden looking confused on stage, and think, “Yep, THAT GUY is the reason I don’t respect the US any more.” No. We fool ourselves into thinking we are respected and loved. We are not. We are hated and feared. And we should be: we are selfish, and greedy, and callous, and destructive, and violent, and in every way appalling, to every other people and country on this Earth, and indeed to the Earth itself. We’ll destroy anything and everything for our immediate profit or pleasure.
Please understand that the United States, on the international scene, is Donald Trump. And we always have been.
And that’s why we must not elect Donald Trump. Why we must not double down on our own worst tendencies by giving the epitome of this country’s narcissistic arrogance the power to direct our actions and influence our society and our government for the next four years. Or for longer, if he has his way.
We’re like Joe Biden: we’re pretty shitty, and we’ve always been pretty shitty: but we can get better, or we can get worse. Donald Trump cannot get better.
The final point is this: if Biden wins, and then his cognitive and physical decline reaches the point where he genuinely cannot do the job any more, we have a system in place whereby he can be replaced, by his vice president. Since Kamala Harris would be the automatic frontrunner if Biden did step aside: all we’re risking with Biden now is however long he can last in the office before he can’t, and then we get President Harris, as we hopefully would if Biden were to drop out. If he stays in — and he’s staying in — then we get President Biden, as we have him now, for some period of time up to four years; then we automatically get President Harris.
If Biden wins.
The issue is not whether Joe Biden can do the job: he can (because he has and he is, right now), until he can’t, and then he would have an immediate successor in place who would certainly do a fine job, if not the best job anyone could do. The issue is whether Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump. And that’s not actually up to him: that’s up to us.
There’s the real question, and I’ll leave you with it — because like my above questions, I don’t know the answer.
Do we still have the cognitive capacity to win the election? To make the right choice, no matter how much we dislike the options, no matter how many concerns we may have for the future? Do we recognize the real risks at stake here, the real harm that could be done because of how we vote in November?
I watched the Presidential debate on CNN last Thursday, and I wish I hadn’t. Or rather, I wish I hadn’t seen what I saw, because I wish it hadn’t happened the way that it did. I wish there hadn’t been a debate for me to watch, because it did not go well for my side. Or, even better, I wish the sides were different: I wish the debate had featured entirely different candidates, giving entirely different answers to the questions — which probably should have been moderated by entirely different journalists on an entirely different channel.
Overall, I’m going to give that debate a vigorous No. None of the Above, please. We saw that Biden is too old and depleted to make up for his shitty moderate stances, and we already knew, and had confirmed for us, that Trump is a lying sack of crap who uses rage and cynicism to make up for his catastrophic reactionary stances. The whole thing just made me feel desperate and hopeless.
And that’s exactly the way it is supposed to be. At least according to the preferences of the people and forces which shape the politics of this country. Which, in our current state of affairs, is not the will of the people nor the votes of the majority: because this country is, practically speaking, not a democracy. The simplest understanding of a democracy is that the majority will of the people rules, and no president has ever been elected by a majority of the citizens of this country, let alone the residents. Certainly not these two specimens.
But that’s fine because this is actually a constitutionally limited republic, not a democracy. So there.
ACtually…
No, I’m fucking around, because there are internet bros who always get snotty when people in political arguments say this country is a democracy. It’s not. By the strictest definition, at least — and it’s a distinction that doesn’t even matter at all, and the fact that shitty people use their nitpickery about it to shame and silence people pisses me off: so I’m mocking those people. Sorry if it is confusing. At least the dog in that Actually meme is cute.
But here’s the real actually: whatever the intended shape of the government for this country, we are in truth currently controlled by an oligarchy: a plutocracy (or maybe a kakistocracy and certainly a kleptocracy) made up of people with too much money, who are willing (unsurprising, but still disgusting) and able (appalling and even more disgusting) to influence the political machinery of the country in order to benefit themselves, at the expense of all the rest of us. They have captured both major parties, thanks in large part to the influential power of money in our elections, particularly as unleashed by the Citizens United decision, and sanctioned de facto by politicians’ continued inability to pass election financing reform, solely because they put their own interests before those of the nation or their constituents.
Unsurprising. But still disgusting.
Because the people who run the politicians who run the country are in the business of doing business — namely using their money to make even more money, which is their sole purpose and motivation, their raison d’etre — the corruptions they create in our politics are mostly those which benefit business. They just got their personal Supreme Court to knock down Chevron deference, for instance, which will make it much easier for them — rich people who can afford the attorneys and legal costs, that is — to challenge government regulations in court, because now judges, who are definitely not experts in such matters as workplace safety or environmental impact, but who, like most people — especially these fucking people
Or at least six of them
— like to think they are experts in every way that actually matters, can knock down regulations that they personally don’t think are valid or necessary. Even if the actual experts disagree with them. And do we think that our One-Percenter overlords will be taking advantage of this process?
You bet your sweet bippy we do.
But the point is, the people in charge are best served by the continued dominance of the two major parties. Because both parties rely on enormous infusions of cash in order to defeat — each other. Elections like this one, choices like this one — like the contest between these two terrible old men, the Mummy and the Blob — serve the preferences of the ruling class, because they make us desperate, not hopeful. If we had a good candidate, one who gave us hope — and the last one such was Barack Obama (who still was not a great president, because he, like Joe, was too moderate and didn’t do enough to change the life of the average citizen of this country; though in fairness to Obama, he was trying to make change pretty much on his own, and fighting against the entire political machine, and of course he lost. Donald Trump gave some segment of the populace hope, but he’s a lying sack of shit, so that hope doesn’t count, in my opinion.) — then it would inspire people to get involved, to take action; the rulers do better, have more control, when we despair, and give up, and lie down and take it. Take whatever they give us, and hate everything — and do nothing. Most of us don’t even vote. Which makes it that much easier for the plutocrats to control the votes of those who do turn out. And they like that it is only two parties, and in every specific electoral contest, for every seat and every office, it is winner take all — the person who gets one more vote beats the person who gets one fewer vote — because that also makes it easier to control the politicians. This system means the two opponents are best served by focusing only on each other, cooperatively blocking any third candidate (who already has a named role in most three-way races: “spoiler”) and fighting to the death against their one nemesis, fighting for every single vote: and that means the holders of the moneybags, the distributors of the thirty pieces of silver — the rich fuckers who try to control everything — have a death grip on the entire system, because they have a death grip on both of the two major parties: because they offer either party a way to destroy the other party if the other party dares to try to give up that sweet, sweet dark campaign money. Their money is the best way for both parties to get one more vote than the other party.
See? If the Democrats stop taking corporate One-Percenter cash, they will lose all elections to the Republicans, and vice versa. Shit, even members of the parties who don’t continue to meet with the approval of our corporate masters can’t win elections, because they can’t win primaries in the face of huge amounts of money. And third parties can’t possibly compete with the amount of money that continues to flow to the two major parties — and there’s no need for the One-Percenters to shift their money to the third parties, because the two major parties do everything their masters ask of them, whether it is Trump cutting taxes on corporations (with a bone thrown to the rest of us in the form of a middle class tax cut which had a sunset clause, the tax cuts ending in 2025 [After the end of a hypothetical second Trump term, and no it’s not a coincidence: there ain’t no cynic like a government cynic], while the corporate tax cut did not.) or Biden failing to rein in the corporate profiteering which helped drive the inflation that may cost him re-election.
But if Biden, like Trump, fails to win re-election, that doesn’t matter, of course, at least not to the people who matter; because if Biden loses, our corporate hegemony will be perfectly satisfied with Trump in the White House. The one they couldn’t abide would be Bernie: and that’s why Bernie lost two primaries to deeply unpopular candidates. Because money. And political machinery controlled by money.
Wow. I’m sorry: I didn’t even mean to go that far down this road. Now I’m wrecked in the eternal darkness of the abyss at the end, mired in hopelessness.
No. Fuck that. You know why? Because there is hope. Really. There is hope because, whatever those racist elitist pricks who founded this country meant to do, what they actually did was create a lasting democracy. A democracy — shut the FUCK up about a constitutionally limited republic, please, Internet Bros — because the power to change the entire government rests, in the end, in the hands of the people. No matter how cynical we are, I am, about who is in charge, and no matter how we keep feeling like there’s no way anything can change: there IS a way for things to change, and it is through Americans casting votes for their choice of candidate (and in some cases for their choice of laws). Because we can choose to remove and replace our elected officials, who — money or not — are chosen ONLY by votes, according to our laws, according to our system of government. There is no tiebreaker that counts how much money the candidate has. All that matters, for determining who runs this country, is the votes.
Yes: of course those votes are generally easy to influence through money; that’s how we got to where we are. But influence is not control. No matter how many times I call them overlords and masters and rulers, they are not: the rich influence everything, and so end up getting what they want most of the time. But not all the time. Because it is still votes that change the government. All of it: obviously we could vote in a new President, and new Senators and Representatives; but also, if we stack up enough votes for congresspeople who will actually do what we want them to do, then even the Supreme Court, the one unelected branch, can be controlled: they can be impeached and removed from office, they can be outnumbered by an expansion of the Court, their decisions can be overridden by laws passed by Congress, and even, if necessary, by Constitutional amendments: which are passed by popular vote.
Make no mistake: getting people to vote for anything is nearly impossible, unless you have, at this point, billions of dollars to pour into the campaign. But if something is nearly impossible, it is still possible.
Just like my hopes. Not all dead. Not yet.
(And also, let me note in passing that we have as much money as the One-Percenters: we just spend it on food and stuff. But we could buy ourselves an election, even in the face of all the dark money in the world, if we really needed to. Just think about that.)
It’s possible for us to throw off the yoke and chains of our oppressors. It is. We’ve done it before, in opposition to slavery and the secession of the Confederacy; after the Great Depression; during the fight for civil rights. We can do it again. The way to compensate for a lack of ready money to throw around is: organization. And patience. If I may paraphrase the Doors: they got the bucks, but — we got the numbers.
But that is the long term goal. So. What do we do about this current debacle?
Clearly we don’t want either of these fucking guys — sorry, I’ve gone far afield, let me bring it back:
We don’t want either of these fucking guys to be in control of our lives. Not even a little bit. I’ve been arguing for a while now, going back to 2020, that Biden is the better choice; but I still don’t want him to be President, and I never have. He was my third-to-last choice in the crowded Democratic field in 2020 (The two below him on my list were Marianne Williamson, because combining lunacy with complete inexperience is just about the worst thing you can do, and Michael Bloomberg, because actually putting one of the One-Percenters in charge is the worst thing you can do. [Note that, Trumpers. I don’t know how you got tricked into forgetting that, but that’s who Trump really is. Actually.]), and he was my second choice even in this election where my first choices (Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — and Andrew Yang, and Jay Inslee, and Cory Booker and Julian Castro and John Hickenlooper and Tim Ryan and JESUS CHRIST FUCKING ANYBODY ELSE) didn’t run, because Dr. Cornel West would be a far better President than either the Geezer or the Groper. The Sleeper or the Shitbag. The Fumbler or the Fascist.
So do we vote for the third party candidates?
Do we boycott and refuse to vote?
We do not: because this election will put one of these two into the White House. The system cannot change between now and November; not unless we actually rise up and revolt. I don’t plan to grab a pitchfork and light a torch; if you do, we’re going to have to have some serious talks about what you plan to do and why, because violent revolution is something I can’t support as a pacifist; and as someone who both read AND understood George Orwell’s 1984 (That’s not a dig against you: that’s another one for the internet bros who say things like, “Facebook took down my anti-trans meme! It’s LITERALLY 1984!”), I recognize that revolutions generally don’t change the system, they only change the people who hold the whip: they don’t change who the whip falls on, nor remove the whip entirely. So we can discuss it, but I don’t think violent revolution is the right thing to do.
I think the right thing to do is to work on improving the system. We don’t even need to change it, to tear it down and build a new one, because as I said, this actually is a democracy in the most important sense: no, we do not vote directly on all political matters (which is actually what a “democracy” means, control by the people without representatives), but our votes have the greatest authority. We can vote to change literally anything in our system, even the system itself through Constitutional amendment.
I do think we’ll need to change a whole lot of things to make the system functional in the long term. But there are a couple of specific things that we can work to change in the fairly short term — meaning in the next, say, five to twenty years, but not before November — that will make an enormous difference, and make it much easier — even simply possible — to change everything else we need to change. Those things are the factors which give the plutocrats their ability to influence politics so powerfully: unlimited money in campaigns, unlimited advertising in campaigns, monied lobbying and the revolving-door interactions between the government and industry, the winner-take-all two-party system (and other minority-rule structures like the electoral college). I think there are politicians who would be willing to change those things for the better. Or maybe there are people who would be willing to become politicians in order to change those things for the better. Starting with money in politics: that is the simplest and most direct way we have to challenge the plutocrats, the One-Percenters. And people like John McCain existed. People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unseated a corporate Democrat using only small-dollar donations, exist and are currently in Washington. It is possible. It can be done. It may take years or even decades to get a majority of such people in Congress: but we can do it. And that’s what we need to do.
I know some of you aren’t going to like hearing this, and I don’t like saying it: but the answer is, we have to vote for Joe Biden. The arguments haven’t changed, not even with that incredible faceplant of a debate performance. Trump is still a wannabe fascist, who will do untold damage to the actual lives of real people during the four years he would be in office; not to mention the damage he would do to our democracy. Biden is a failure as a leader of our nation: both because he hasn’t done nearly as much as he should have done, and because he is a miserable excuse for a figurehead — not the most important role of a president, but not a negligible one. But he is not a threat to our nation’s continued existence. Trump really is.
Don’t stay home: the MAGAts won’t. Don’t vote for RFK Jr. (If you would otherwise vote for a Democrat, that is: if you’re a Trump voter, go right ahead and vote for ol’ Brain Worms): he’s a seriously terrible candidate in his own right (and currently only on the ballot in eight states, so literally cannot win 270 electoral votes and take the presidency) and votes cast for him would only result in the victory of Trump or Biden, with no positive effect at all; because he’s not running as representative of a legitimate third party. If you want to vote Green Party or Libertarian Party or another established third party, that has more merit, because a larger number of votes cast for a third party makes it easier for the third party to gain entry into future races, which is part of the way we break the duopoly of Democrats and Republicans; but be aware that, in this election, taking a vote away from a Democrat, even a shambling mound like Joe Biden, makes it more likely that Trump will take over, and that will be very bad for us all. Including Republicans, whatever they think about how much they’ll laugh in all those stupid lib faces once Trump is in charge. The truth is that Donald Trump is not our friend, and will not do anything to help anyone but himself, if he is returned to the White House. I promise you. For the same reason, I will not be voting for Cornel West, even though I like and admire him and would choose him over every other candidate. My vote for Dr. West will not make him win: and I cannot abide the thought of a second Trump term.
So I will do the right thing to protect and serve my country and my fellow Americans: I will not choose None of the Above, and I will not cast a protest vote. I will vote for Joe Biden.
This fucking guy.
And then I will work to make sure this kind of bullshit stops. Once and for all.
My favorite bit is that “Trump appeared to look blankly forward as jurors exited.”
Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts. Class E felonies, sure — but that’s still 34 more felonies than I’ve ever been convicted of, 34 more than anyone in my family has been convicted of, 34 more than Joe Biden has been convicted of.
So that’s that, right? Surely no one would want to vote for a convicted felon.
Except of course they will.
Notice how it isn’t “100% Trump should end campaign.” Which 50% of the population do you think said that he should end it?
Notice this number is higher than 50%: which means a good number of people who would vote for him still will even though he has been found guilty.
I really wish this said “Rootin Tootin” somewhere
This one is amazing. Though I wish I could make out those tattoos. Think there’s a swastika in there somewhere?
They’ve made him an Outlaw. Here is my statement on the tyrannical overreach targeting former President Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/adJM1lKfsy
I just think he should have gone a little lighter on those eye-bags.
And speaking of going a little lighter… ain’t nobody got hair that yellow.
I just want to know: who looks at these images and thinks, “Yes. That is a perfect depiction of how I see this man. This captures my feelings exactly.” I don’t doubt a lot of the images are intended mainly to troll the left, but also, there is literally no sense of irony in MAGA world, and since many of these kinds of images get shared mainly or exclusively in MAGA world, there are actually people there who are encouraged by them. Who nod and think, “Hell yeah!” Seriously.
I can’t imagine feeling that on the other side, not really. I mean, this stuff is insane:
(I do appreciate the strong Dr. Manhattan vibes in that image. Even more than the AR-15 Iron Throne.)
How does that even look like Biden??
I actually like this one, though.
Because they didn’t try to change his appearance. At all. It’s like an old man spontaneously combusting and really confused about it. Hilarious.
But it’s still not going to make me vote for Biden.
No, I’m voting for Joe Biden because I think he’s a decent man who’s done a decent job as president. I’ve talked about it in other posts, I will talk about it more (Now that school is out and my brain has had a chance to recover — this was a really bad year, y’all.), but that’s the reason. Full stop. Not because he’s a Socialist — he’s not, though I wish he were — and not because I fucking hate Trump that much — I do, but that’s not a good enough reason to vote for Biden — but because he’s a decent man who’s done a decent job. Do I wish Biden would step aside with dignity and let somebody else be the Democratic nominee? I do. Do I think that any decent Democratic candidate — who had reasonable credentials on reproductive rights — would kick Trump’s ass in the election? I do, especially now that Trump’s a convicted felon whom most independents already didn’t like. But Biden is worth voting for. That’s my position.
On the other hand, we have this position:
A friend of mine on Facebook shared this meme. (Actually several did; this one was popular.)
And a mutual acquaintance of ours commented thusly:
As much as I dislike both of them I think that whole court case was a crock of shit and shows how people with political power can weaponize the judicial system. That judge on this case was about as corrupt as they get smfh.
So notice how this comment starts by bringing in Joe Biden (Am I presuming too much in saying Joe Biden is the other in “both of them?” I am not. I knew his position, and he confirms it in later comments.), even though the meme had nothing to do with Biden, as the trial had nothing to do with Biden: this was a New York case, brought by the Manhattan DA, about events that happened in 2006 and 2015-2016, and were revealed to the public in 2018. Nothing here to do with Biden’s campaign against Trump. Notice how this makes some pretty extreme accusations — the whole case was a “crock of shit,” people with political power can weaponize the judicial system, the judge was “about as corrupt as they get” — but provides no evidence at all.
This is not unique, of course. This is how American political discourse usually goes. We are all inside our little tents, holding up the collapsing tent poles, ignoring the canvas (or nylon? I honestly don’t know anything about tents, I haven’t been camping since I was 14. Imma go with canvas because I think the metaphor should be circus tents. Don’t you? Uh… circus tents are canvas, right?) falling all around us, completely cutting us off from the outside world, while we yell at people in the other tents that their tent is bad and stupid and they should really be in OUR tent.
To be clear: the Democratic tent is bad, but the Republican party tent has currently been taken over by a proto-fascist cult of personality worshipping a convicted felon. (Love how that last part rolls off the tongue. No, I’m not fucking objective. There are not fine people on both sides. There are formerly fine people in the Republican party who decided to give up on being fine people in order to support the proto-fascist cult of personality worshipping a convicted felon. They don’t get to be fine so long as they are in that tent. If they come out they can be fine people again — even very fine people. There are fine people in the other tents — though not the Libertarians. Libertarians are assholes. But that’s just a joke. The Trump tent comment is not.) They are not the same party, they are not in the same situation. They are not equal, not in any way. I’m just recognizing that a lot of Democrats are blind to reality, too. Including Joe Biden, in some ways. He really should step aside. It would be better for the country.
My first response was fully inside my tent. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but it was irate. (I will also say I have a history with this fellow; while he is in some ways reasonable and open-minded, in other ways he is a lot of things I dislike. Even hate. Hence my knee-jerk reaction was not the right one.) It started with “What in the Fox News are you talking about?” (Okay, I admit I’m including that mostly because I’m proud of the phrase, and I want to remember it to use it some other time for real.) I said that there was no political weaponization of the judicial system, the judge was not corrupt, the case was not a crock of shit. I used more words, but that was all I said. And then I hit Post.
I did not provide evidence. I did not explain my arguments. I did not provide context. I just said “NO!” a lot.
It was not a useful contribution to an argument.
So I thought about it. Part of me did not really want to engage in this debate: because I know that there are people who are not worth engaging with because they will not listen and they will not take conversation seriously, they will only take the opportunity provided by disagreement to mock and yell and crow and scoff, which just makes me mad and spreads more distrust and disinformation. That’s what happened the last time I got into an argument with a Trumper (Note: this fellow is not a Trumper, as he hinted and as he said in more detail later), and I specifically didn’t engage with said Trumper because I knew he wouldn’t be an honest participant in a discussion. I said so. He got quite exercised in insulting me and lying about the state of this country — in that case, it was about immigration, because he was also a racist. Shocking, I know.
But part of me knows that this fellow, while he has said things and done things which I dislike and even hate, is also sometimes open-minded, and also sometimes rational, and also sometimes kind.
And more importantly, there is the person I am when I am irritated or angry, and there is the person I think I need to be in order to do what I can to help our society to heal.
So I deleted that comment (Not fast enough, because he was already replying to it, and noted that I had changed my comment; I apologized and invited him to bring up anything from my comment which he wanted to challenge me on. Because I want to be the person I think I need to be.) and replaced it with two questions:
What makes you say the judge was corrupt? And which people with political power weaponized the justice system?
Because I realized something in the last year or two. When I am teaching, I ask questions. All the time. It’s pretty much all I do when my students make comments or observations in discussion. Either I recognize them for their point, and thank them/compliment them/build off of what they said to continue the discussion — or I ask a question. “Why?” is my favorite, of course, though I mostly have to add more words to that — “Why do you think that?” or “Why do you think that character acts that way,” etc. — but I ask other questions, too, all kinds of them, one after another. I rarely make statements, I rarely agree or disagree with them: that isn’t my job. My job is to make them think. And the questions do that quite well. So I realized that I should ask more questions in my political discussions, rather than simply making statements or trying to disprove or deconstruct my opponents’ opinions or ideas. Usually because the positions I oppose do not have internal logic or consistency, and simply asking someone questions about their positions will frequently show the flaws in those positions, without me ever having to get into a fight about what is true and what is not.
And here’s the response I got in this instance, from this fellow. (Partly this was in response to my original combative tone, because he was replying to my first comment, not my questions; I’m not trying to cover up that I reacted badly, just trying to show that I know I did it the wrong way, and my two questions were what I think was the right way. [I will also note that while I am writing this, I am also arguing with a dude who thinks there should be a Heterosexual Pride Day because discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people is mostly gone, and in fact LGBTQIA+ people are now the real bullies, and they are picking on heterosexuals. And I am not simply asking him questions. I am being as polite as I can be, but I am also making declarative statements that he is simply wrong. So I guess I’m not perfect yet. But also — FUCKIN REALLY?!?!?!?!?!])
Theoden Humphrey a NYC DA who campaigned on the sole fact he was gonna find and convict Donald Trump of a crime. Whose campaign was also funded by none other than now ex-WEF leader George Soros.
The trial took place in an 87% Democrat county.
The judge who is a major Biden campaign donor. Also the judge’s daughter works with Leticia James who also has a hard on for convicting Trump.
Evidence of a crime that exceeds the statute of limitation since 2019 but upgraded what is normally a misdemeanor to a class E felony due to other crimes not mentioned being committed.
Corrupt judge tells jury that they do not need to agree on verdict unanimously they just have to agree that Trump committed some kind of crime. Which is a first.
And 34 counts yes. However, they will only sentence him on 1 because all 34 are considered the same 1 “crime”
I just think that this is political persecution to suppress a political opponent. And I’m not really on the Trump train any more. I really enjoy what robert f Kennedy has to offer and think that he better represents the middle isle American who supports the constitution and has left and right leaning views. He’s pro choice and pro 2A I like both those things.
Let’s be real. Biden and Trump are both equally pieces of wealthy filth and we need a big change from what we are being spoon fed. We are stuck with two dog shit choices. Either far left or far fuckin right. All the two parties we have to chose from are doing is further driving a wedge of division in this country.
If Trump is truly guilty throw his ass in prison for 4 years for committing a class E felony. But they should also go after every single politician left and right wing who’s paid out hush money and done exactly what the pos orange man did. I’m just as sick of hearing trumps bullshit as you are too. I’m also sick of genocide joe not giving a single shit about you and I. Neither of them represent us fairly.
I just think that this whole court case crap is only going to fuel the fire of his supporters. Also think it’s coincidental that the sentencing hearing is 4 days before the RNC. Honestly they should have done this 4 years ago when he left office instead of confidently waiting until 6 months before the election. And again I’m not stroking trumps ego on this but I think it’s just in time that now the biden campaign can put ads out talking about how Trump is a convicted felon etc etc.
We are all tired of both biden and trumps shit. And we the people have absolutely no say in a third party member being elected. Here in November 2024 we get two shit ass choice like we have for the last 2 decades. You get to pick corrupt left wing or corrupt right wing. And really your vote don’t mean shit anyways. If you’re a Democrat living in a red state your state is not representing your beliefs same with if your republican living in a blue state.
It’s all a crock of shit Humphrey. Can we atleast agree on that ?
My response to this comment was this:
No, we can’t agree that it’s all a crock of shit. There’s a lot of shit in the mix, absolutely: but there are things here that matter. Things like democracy and the rule of law. Truth. Simple human decency. They matter so much that I believe it’s worth digging through all that shit and wiping it away.
You’ve done something here that we shouldn’t do. That’s not an accusation; I did it too — this was my second reply on your comment, I deleted the first one, because sure I did what you’ve done here: I made statements without evidence, without even fully explaining my point; arguing only by innuendo and implication. I deleted that bad argument, and now I’m going to challenge you on yours. I hope you’ll reach across and work with me on this: because this, too, is important: communication and understanding.
Start with your first point: Alvin Bragg. How do you know he campaigned on going after Trump? And if he did, what would that show about him or what happened in this case? Did he lie? Fake evidence? Bribe the judge? Suborn the jury? Intimidate the witnesses? Same questions about Soros: how do you know he funded Bragg’s campaign? What would it mean if he did? Does that mean Bragg obeys his commands? What is Soros’s goal?
Okay: and here, though it has taken me my customary WAY TOO LONG to get to the point of this, is why I wanted to write about this. I’m not trying to embarrass or criticize my — let’s call him my interlocutor, the fellow I was having the discussion with — and I’m not really trying to argue with him; if I were, I would have continued on Facebook with him. He did post another comment (which I may turn into another post) and when I challenged him on that one, he replied to that challenge and said that he had been writing a long response with the evidence I was asking for, but it had gotten deleted; he then, quite rationally, moved on with his damn life, and the FB debate ended there.
And now here I am, continuing it.
Here’s why. I think there is a ton of misinformation out there in our world. I think a lot of it is spread in exactly this way, in comments on social media posts, which are presented as fact without any support or explanation, as both I and my interlocutor did. I think most of us do not have reliable news sources which we consult regularly, or sources of real information that explain what’s actually going on in our political world. That, I think, is why most of us have opinions that do not change according to new facts or new events: first because, frequently, we are unaware of new facts and new events; and second, because our opinions never were based on facts. I’m not really sure that mine are, either, and so I struggle, every time I write about politics, with the position I should take: should I be neutral and objective? Should I only talk about things I have researched extensively, things I can be considered an authority on? If I just share my opinions, which are not based on facts, how am I different from everyone else?
When I call Trump a fascist, for instance: what is the basis for that statement? Have I studied the history of fascism? Do I know specific instances of actions and positions taken by Trump that align with historical fascism? I have certainly read some history of fascism, and some political analysis of Trump and his GOP supporters that shows him to be aligned with fascism, so I feel fairly comfortable making the accusation: but I surely know that there is room for me to be wrong there, and I surely recognize that I could do more research and more fact-finding to support the opinion.
But the real question is: should I present the opinion? Or should I only present information that is proven to be true, that is purely factual and objective?
Okay, let’s be real. I’m a damn English teacher. And a fantasy/horror writer who likes pirates a lot. My opinions are not the ones that should be taken as proven objective facts.
But what I can offer, what I hope to offer, is what I asked my interlocutor for on Facebook, which he started to provide but then didn’t have time for — and which I now have time for — evidence. Explanation. Enough to show what we are actually talking about, and why we should or should not take it seriously.
So that’s what I want to do here. I want to engage with these talking points, and try to figure out if there is anything behind them. Not disprove them, not show that the fellow who posted this was wrong or bad in any way; but I want to explore these statements a little, and try to see if they are worth considering. If this seems valuable, then I will probably do it again with his second long comment, which I am not including here because this post is already too wordy. But, that’s how we roll here on Just Dusty, so I’m not going to apologize for my verbosity. Just gonna do my thingy.
Here we go.
First: Alvin Bragg. Manhattan District Attorney, who, allegedly, “campaigned on the sole fact he was gonna find and convict Donald Trump of a crime. Whose campaign was also funded by none other than now ex-WEF leader George Soros.”
But here’s the thing: does this matter? Is it wrong if a man running for DA, in a district that is, as was pointed out in the next statement, 87% Democratic, says he will go after the (at the time) current Republican president, who is one of the most hated politicians, especially in Democratic circles, of the past, say, twenty years? Does that show prejudice? We can certainly argue that maybe district attorneys shouldn’t campaign on going after political figures, but the question that has to be addressed is: is that respect for the separation of politics and justice, or is it suppression of justice for the sake of the appearance of respect for the separation of politics and justice? That is: if Trump was actually guilty (or could reasonably be accused, since we’re talking about decisions regarding bringing a case, not the verdict) of crimes, should the man running for DA say that he will prosecute Trump? Or should he back off because Trump is a politician?
Obviously we know what Trump would want in this case. But just as obviously, Trump’s position on this — and the same positions parroted by all of his supporters — are not about the respect for the separation of powers and the political process, because that same former President (now convicted felon) and his supporters said that Hillary Clinton should be locked up, and they’ve never stopped going after Joe and Hunter Biden with claims regarding criminality and the justice system.
Honestly, I can see the point in terms of, say, a judge, or a jury member. They need to have both the appearance of objectivity, as well as approaching as close to actual objectivity as they can. But the DA is not supposed to be unbiased. In fact, to do his or her job well, it seem reasonable that a DA should be as biased as possible: it would motivate them to work hard to find all of the evidence to prove their case in court, to prepare and formulate all the arguments and all the strategy needed to convict their target, to “Get their man.” So long as they can remain rational and uncorrupted in their prosecution, so long as they don’t intimidate witnesses, or bribe the judge, or falsify evidence, or try to suppress information or corrupt the jury, or any of the other ways that a DA could corrupt a criminal trial.
Does evidence of bias against Trump provide evidence of corruption or wrongdoing on the part of the DA?
It does not.
The same with Bragg receiving funding in his campaign from George Soros. My immediate question is: what is the impact of that funding? Did Soros call the man up and say “Here’s what I want in exchange for my money: someday — and that day may never come — I may ask you to do a service for me.” Or does his money buy access? Is there an assumption of what Bragg might have to do to maintain that level of funding in the future? Any or all of those would be a concern. (Though none of them would necessarily show that Bragg did anything corrupt in prosecuting Trump.)
But, actually, now that I think about it, my first question is, Is that even true? What evidence do we have that Soros funded Alvin Bragg’s campaign?
This is Mary Louise Kelly, from NPR, interviewing Emily Tamkin, a spokesperson from Soros’s organization.
KELLY: Let’s start with a basic fact check. What exactly is the connection between George Soros or his foundations and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg?
TAMKIN: So in this case, Soros gave money to a group called Color of Change, which is a social justice civil rights group that in turn gave some money to the campaign of District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Right, okay. So in fact George Soros did not give money directly to Alvin Bragg, which pretty much shows that none of the immediate thoughts on possible corruption would be true. They might happen at one remove — Soros pressures Color of Change, and Color of Change pressures Bragg — but that disconnect makes it harder to believe that Soros had any real influence on Bragg. It does raise a question which Tamkin brought up in the NPR interview, while responding to the important question from Kelly:
KELLY: Yeah. I mean, is there any evidence that Soros got something for this money in the case of Alvin Bragg, that his money bought influence in some way?
TAMKIN: No, there’s no evidence of that. And just more broadly, there are critiques to be made – right? – about a billionaire philanthropist who gives money to prosecutors’ campaigns, right? We could have a conversation about money in politics, the power of billionaires in American society. All of that is fair game, right? But that’s not really what this is. This is over-assigning the influence of Soros over Bragg and also dramatically overstating the agency that Soros has over this case.
But how does the existence of George Soros giving money to a PAC which then gave money to Alvin Bragg show that Soros corrupted the case against Donald Trump as prosecuted by Alvin Bragg? And by the way, where is our understanding of what Soros wants which is corrupt in the first place?
It does not show that the case against Trump was corrupted. And the fact that no one that I have ever heard or seen bring up George Soros’s name can also offer a credible explanation of how he wants to corrupt American politics shows that this use of George Soros’s name to taint one’s political opponents by association is nothing but hot air. (I’m going to leave the description of how people usually go after Soros for another time, another place. Because it’s ugly. And completely off the point here.)
So what is the point here? The point is that the argument, the accusation, being made exists only because so much of it is left out, is unsaid. The argument leaves our imaginations to fill in the gaps. Alvin Bragg campaigned on getting Donald Trump: okay… and? This was why I asked for specific evidence of specific corrupt actions that my interlocutor was accusing Bragg of, and if he had made specific claims, I would have asked for evidence. As it stands, there’s not even really an accusation. He never said “George Soros commanded Bragg, in exchange for his political donation of X dollars, to frame Trump so that Biden could defeat Trump in the election because Biden is trying to create a Socialist state and that’s what Soros wants, so Bragg tampered with evidence and intimidated witnesses to get them to lie about Trump on the stand.” See how that specific kind of claim just screams for evidence? “How do you know all of that?” would be the only thought in my head if I were to read all of that. Which is why that claim wasn’t made: because of course there isn’t evidence for that claim, because it is not true. All this fellow said was “Bragg was funded by Soros.” Never even gave the specifics about how that funding was provided (I’m sure he didn’t know), and neither of us have provided how much funding there was; he didn’t say that only Soros funded Bragg’s campaign, which of course is also not true, but that’s implied in the wording.
This is what I’m talking about. This is argument by innuendo, by hints and implications, accusations left unsaid because we all know what’s really going on here. But what’s really going on here is bad argument, bad discussion: misinformation. We are all doing it, all the time.
We need to stop.
Okay. Moving on.
Next: the case took place in an 87% Democratic county. (Not even sure if that’s true: this website shows it, but — it’s BestPlaces, a real estate website, so not the most reliable source of political information; and the info on this page alone seems to contradict that 87% figure a couple of times, so — I dunno. I’ll stipulate it. [Which is what Trump should have done with his affair with Stephanie Clifford, who uses the stage name Stormy Daniels, who therefore wouldn’t have had to testify in open court about how she spanked his ass, how she rejected his pathetic attempt to Hugh Hefner her, how he didn’t use a condom — all the salacious details which embarrassed Trump, which his lawyers claimed prejudiced the jury and tainted the verdict, all could have been avoided if they had stipulated the affair had happened; but Trump wanted to pretend he never had sex with Ms. Clifford. So here we are, with Trump hoist on his own petard. But I digress.])
The main question is: does this fact, that 87% of Manhattan voted Democrat, show bias against Trump in the potential jury pool?
You bet your ass it does. Any poll — every poll — shows that Democrats pretty roundly and universally and virulently hate Donald Trump. I certainly do, for all kinds of rational and irrational reasons, which I would be happy to list except I already have so just read this if you want.
But.
Two questions: one cynical but important, and one much more to the point.
The cynical question is: yes, and? How is this jury pool different from any other? It’s Donald freaking Trump: what else would you expect? Of course Democrats hate this guy. Just as, of course, Republicans love him (and I’m going to resist the temptation here to point out that they SHOULD NOT, and just accept that they do); it seems clear that any Republican district would have just as much potential bias in the jury pool, it would just have the opposite polarity, so to speak. Of course Trump would like to move the trial to a Republican district; he likes that bias better. But is there anywhere the trial could be moved that would lead to an unbiased jury pool? Everyone is biased when it comes to the 45th President of the U.S. of A. Do we really think there are a dozen people in any locale in these United States who don’t already have a strong opinion of Donald Trump? And here’s the cynical part: there is, therefore, no possible way to find an unbiased jury, if — if — we think that political affiliation and voting record are prejudicial in terms of a juror’s ability to come to a fair verdict beyond a reasonable doubt. Which is where Trump wants to take this argument: to the conclusion that, if there is no way to find an unbiased jury — he should simply never be tried for his crimes. He should be allowed to act with impunity, because any jury would be biased, and therefore incapable of rendering a fair verdict.
I don’t think I need to say that I would not want that situation to happen. I do not want anyone to be above the law. Especially not Donald Trump.
And now we get to the question that really comes to the point. Do we believe that people who voted Democratic in 2016 or 2020, or at any time in the last fifty years, are incapable of setting aside those political views in order to serve as a juror in a criminal case regarding the President as a private citizen campaigning for political office?
Do we really believe that any opinion, one way or another, means that people cannot be fair? Really? Because then we’re going to have to set aside all judgment in all cases, forever and ever. I mean all cases: which parent could fairly judge their child? Don’t parents have opinions about their children? What teacher could grade an assignment? We all have opinions about our students.
Shall I point out here that my interlocutor is a former student?
Look: this is important, but we all know it’s important, so it is already a carefully considered factor. People knowing about something does not mean they are necessarily incapable of fairly judging an event or person associated with that thing. People having connections to a person, or a party, or an experience of any kind, does not necessarily mean that person is incapable of being objective and judging fairly. But because we recognize that it could, that a previous opinion could create an unfair bias, the entire justice system is designed to get around that fact.
I mean: ALL of it. Twelve jurors, selected randomly, then vetted by the judge and by both sides’ attorneys. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Unanimous verdict. The right to appeal. Every bit of it, and a hundred other things I didn’t mention — rules of evidence, and admissibility in court, and having statements removed from the record, and jury instructions, and alternative jurors, and jury sequestration, and on and on — is intended to address the problem of jurors’ possible prejudice.
To dismiss that simply because someone voted a particular party at some point in the past — no, not even that; because the people who lived in an area voted for a particular party in the past, which does not include all the people in the area because in addition to the 14% or so who didn’t vote Democrat, there are the 50% or so who didn’t vote, and the people who moved into the area since then — and every single person who voted for Democrats and also voted for one Donald J. Trump.
Like this fucking guy.
Donald Trump registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987; since that time, he has changed his party affiliation five times. In 1999, Trump changed his party affiliation to the Independence Party of New York. In August 2001, Trump changed his party affiliation to Democratic. In September 2009, Trump changed his party affiliation back to the Republican Party. In December 2011, Trump changed to “no party affiliation” (independent). In April 2012, Trump again returned to the Republican Party. (From Wikipedia, emphasis added)
To dismiss every precaution built into the system, every application of judgment about someone’s potential bias, every possibility that someone could look beyond their bias and be a fair juror — that’s not cynical. It’s downright absurd. It’s bullshit.
I have thought to myself, since the trial started, that I could be a juror. I would never pass the voir dire, because they looked at past social media posts, and I’ve been pretty clear that I have strong opinions about Trump; his lawyers would strike me in a hot minute. And they’d be right to do so, because no matter how much I flatter myself that I could be impartial, I would not have the appearance of impartiality (and, honestly, probably not the fact of it either), and my presence on the jury would undermine confidence in the verdict. So even though I think I could be impartial, I wouldn’t be on the jury. Not because I have voted for Democrats, but because I have railed against Trump more times than I could count. I said in this very post that I hate the fucking guy, and I do. So, biased.
(I still kinda think I could be impartial because I do not like all of my students, but I treat them all fairly and grade them all as impartially as I can. But also, a grade on an essay is not a criminal verdict, and none of my students are as hateable as the Nazi Cheeto.)
There’s a process, a system, for finding the most impartial jury possible, and getting those twelve people to overcome any biases they come in with. It’s an imperfect system. But it’s a good system. It deserves our trust. A whole lot more than Donald Trump does.
I’m going to put the next claim, that Judge Merchan was a “major Biden donor” into the same category here; either we trust that someone can put aside their political affiliations in order to serve as a judge in a criminal case — or else we should TAKE THE GODDAMN MAR-A-LAGO DOCUMENTS CASE AWAY FROM EILEEN CANNON.
But I digress.
(Oh also — the claim that Judge Merchan’s daughter worked for Letitia James, who also “has a hard on for convicting Trump” is not true. My interlocutor is mixing up his false claims here. Laura Loomer, an idiot who pushes pro-Trump messaging on the internet, claimed that Merchan’s wife worked for Letitia James, and since it was Loomer who said it, it’s probably not true at all, and if it is it doesn’t show that Mrs. Merchan is biased in favor of AG James; I have worked for a lot of people, and most of them, I DID NOT LIKE, not even if they were as badass as Letitia James — who, if I may say, is the Attorney General of the state of New York, and the first woman and the first African-American elected to hold that post, which means she is amazing on a scale well beyond what this discussion can capture — while Merchan’s daughter is the president and partner of a consulting firm that works for all kinds of big name political clients, including Vice President Kamala Harris. So I’m not sure that any of this claim holds water at all. But if it does? Absolutely none of this shows any particular unfair corrupting bias on the part of Judge Merchan, so we’re just going to leave this one alone. Now, if the judge’s wife had raised a “FUCK TRUMP” flag over the judge’s house during the trial…)
Okay. Phew. I can see why people prefer to argue without explanations and evidence: this is hard. And time-consuming.
But this is how it needs to be: we need to actually show what the hell we are talking about, using resources from other than our own memory or imagination, and we need to actually explain the claims we make. It’s not enough to just be like “THE JUDGE GAVE MONEY TO BIDEN!” You have to go the next step: tell me how this fact (which you also would need to provide evidence for) shows unfair bias on the judge’s part, which was shown in this specific statement or action.
And if that means we might talk less and raise fewer, better points in our arguments? Well, all I can say is I know how long this post is.
But long or not, let me provide some evidence, in the shape of one quick example: Judge Webster Thayer presided over the trial of Niccolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the two Italian immigrants and anarchists who were convicted and executed for the murder of two guards during the robbery of a payroll in 1920. Here’s Thayer’s bias, which did indeed have an impact on the conviction and execution of these two (probably innocent) men:
Thayer’s behavior both on and off the bench during the trial drew criticism. A Boston Globe reporter, Frank Sibley, who had covered the trial, wrote a letter of protest to the Massachusetts attorney general condemning Thayer’s bias. Others noted the frequency with which Thayer denied defense motions and the way he addressed defense attorney Fred H. Moore. Thayer defended his rulings to reporters saying, “No long-haired anarchist from California can run this court!” According to onlookers who later swore affidavits, in private discussion Thayer called Sacco and Vanzetti “Bolsheviki!” and said he would “get them good and proper”. In 1924, referring to his denial of motions for a new trial, Thayer confronted a Massachusetts lawyer: “Did you see what I did with those anarchistic bastards the other day?” the judge said. “I guess that will hold them for a while! Let them go and see now what they can get out of the Supreme Court!” The outburst remained a secret until 1927 when its release fueled the arguments of Sacco and Vanzetti’s defenders. The New York World attacked Thayer as “an agitated little man looking for publicity and utterly impervious to the ethical standards one has the right to expect of a man presiding in a capital case.”[1] From Wikipedia
So. Get me audio of Judge Merchan saying, “Did you see what I did to that fascist orange motherfucker last month?” and I’ll say he was unfairly biased. Let him deny motions for an appeal or a new trial and then say “I guess that will hold those shitheads for a while! Let them see what they can get out of the Supreme Court!*” and then I’ll say Merchan’s actions were unfair based on his prejudices. Drop some innuendo based on the assumption that political affiliation is a universal source of unconquerable prejudice? I will simply point out that oftentimes an accusation is a confession.
*Also, what they could get from the Supreme Court is: probably any fucking thing they want, because the SCOTUS is, in my opinion, both corrupt and unethical, and also unfairly biased and prejudiced in their judgments connected to Donald Trump. But I digress.
Okay: now we get to the issues regarding the actual case, rather than the people involved. There are three presented.
Evidence of a crime that exceeds the statute of limitation since 2019 but upgraded what is normally a misdemeanor to a class E felony due to other crimes not mentioned being committed.
Corrupt judge tells jury that they do not need to agree on verdict unanimously they just have to agree that Trump committed some kind of crime. Which is a first.
And 34 counts yes. However, they will only sentence him on 1 because all 34 are considered the same 1 “crime”
CLAIM: “They missed the statute of limitations by a lot because this was very old. They could have brought this seven years ago instead of bringing it right in the middle of the election.”
THE FACTS: Judge Merchan in February denied a request from Trump’s legal team to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that the statute of limitations had passed, according to court documents.
In his decision, Merchan cited pandemic-era executive orders issued in March 2020 and April 2021 by former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that extended the limit on filing criminal charges.
New York’s statute of limitations for most felonies is five years. The earliest charge in Trump’s felony indictment was described as occurring on Feb. 14, 2017, while the indictment was filed on March 30, 2023.
(And just in case someone disagrees with this: okay, show me the evidence that this statute of limitations claim is valid.)
The misdemeanor being raised to a felony is something that should be considered; but there is a reasonable argument for the felony: the crime was committed in pursuance of committing another crime, which makes the offense more serious. Reasonably: because someone who will commit one crime in order to commit a second crime is more likely to commit a third crime. Right? So that increases the severity of the initial crime being tried here, the falsification of business records. Alone, it’s a misdemeanor; in conjunction with another crime, it’s a class E felony — which is not far away from a misdemeanor, honestly. We can and should question the step the DA took to try this as an felony, but we can see that choice as reflecting the facts of the case, and thereby necessitating a trial — because if this was only a misdemeanor there’s no way we have this trial — or we can see it as a biased DA corrupting the law in order to go after Trump.
If you think it’s the second one? Prove it.
I think it’s the first one. Not least because the jury, whom I will trust because I trust the system, in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, convicted Trump of the felonies, which at least implies, post facto, that there was validity in the argument. But let’s get into the details a little more.
Let me include the next claim, that Judge Merchan (who is, in the absence of any specific evidence, definitely not corrupt) instructed the jury that they did not need to be unanimous on the verdict, they just needed to agree that Trump committed some kind of crime.
False. Or at least unclearly stated to such an extent that it becomes false.
Under New York law, falsification of business records is a crime when the records are altered with an intent to defraud. To be charged as a felony, prosecutors must also show that the offender intended to “commit another crime” or “aid or conceal” another crime when falsifying records.
In Trump’s case, prosecutors said that other crime was a violation of a New York election law that makes it illegal for “any two or more persons” to “conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means,” as Justice Juan Merchan explained in his instructions to the jury.
What exactly those “unlawful means” were in this case was up to the jury to decide. Prosecutors put forth three areas that they could consider: a violation of federal campaign finance laws, falsification of other business records or a violation of tax laws.
Jurors did not need to agree on what the underlying “unlawful means” were. But they did have to unanimously conclude that Trump caused the business records to be falsified, and that he “did so with intent to defraud that included an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”
So the crime, the falsification of business records, was well and fully proven by the prosecution; it was what they found him guilty of. 34 times. They also proved guilt in the secondary crime which the falsification was in pursuance of, conspiracy to promote the election of one Donald J. Trump ; that was why they used David Pecker of the National Enquirer as their first star witness.
What they did not need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt was which specific law was violated in the “unlawful means” used to promote the election of Trump. It could have been any of three crimes, all of which had evidence in support provided during the trial; they did not need to prove, and the jury did not need to agree, on which unlawful means were used — or rather, on why specifically those means were unlawful — because that was not the matter being tried here; the jury’s opinion of it was enough for the sake of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed the crime of falsification in pursuance of another crime, fraud to promote the election of a specific person. So that’s the answer to the objection: this is part of how the system works. And I should point out that, contrary to the claim that this was unprecedented, this happens all the time: every plea deal involves changing charges up or down the scale of severity, even if the charge that results is not entirely apropos. And every case involving a difficult-to-try person involves crimes that can be proven, which stand in for crimes that can’t be proven but definitely happened; just ask Al Capone. So really, if we don’t like this, we don’t like the thousands of other times it happens in our justice system daily.
I will also say that, honestly, I don’t like that they did this. I have heard legal commentators on NPR saying they think this specific element may lead to a successful appeal of the verdict, and I don’t like that.
But the point here is that I don’t really understand the legal maneuver that the DA used in this case. Not that it was bad, or that it made the verdict bad; just that I don’t understand it, and therefore I don’t like it. Using the same gut-feeling level of decision making, I will say that I believe in my gut that Trump absolutely committed this crime; maybe he shouldn’t have been convicted of it, and maybe he shouldn’t have been convicted in this way — but if he got away with this, that would be a miscarriage of justice.
And we’ll leave this for the Court of Appeals to decide.
Also, not that I want to descend into whataboutism, but if we’re talking about miscarriages of justice? Trump should be on trial in three other court rooms, with stronger evidence of more serious crimes. The fact that he is not, and maybe never will be, shows a miscarriage of justice that FAR outweighs any issue about the misdemeanor felonies and the unlawful means.
Moving on again.
The last one, that Trump was convicted of 34 crimes that were all one crime and so will only be sentenced for one crime — I mean, sure, and that’s why Judge Merchan will probably not sentence him to 34 penalties. This is an area of the justice system that is quite rightly left up to judges to decide in sentencing: sometimes it matters that a crime was committed 34 times, even if it was the same crime. If someone murdered 34 people, that’s different than one murder. If someone raped the same victim 34 times, that is not one crime.
In this case, does the minor nature and the repetitiveness of all 34 counts mean we shouldn’t keep emphasizing that Trump was convicted of 34 felonies?
Sure, maybe. But also: it’s fun to say it. And I’m not going to apologize for, nor draw back, my shit-talking about Donald Trump. This is one case where I will gleefully say “Fuck your feelings.” Karma’s a bitch.
Okay: now we get to the general commentary at the end of the list of factual concerns regarding Trump’s trial and conviction.
First is this: “I just think that this is political persecution to suppress a political opponent.”
Not one thing in all of this so far connected Joe Biden to this trial. Not one thing. Okay: George Soros, and the fact that both Alvin Bragg and Joe Biden — and Judge Merchan, and most Manhattan voters — are Democrats. But man, if everything every Democrat does is in service of and part of a conspiracy involving Joe Biden, then I need to stop writing this blog: I am clearly committing political persecution of Donald J. Trump, at the behest of Joe Biden.
Now, is it convenient for Biden that Trump was tried and convicted? Sure — but let me grab another statement that was made a few sentences later.
I just think that this whole court case crap is only going to fuel the fire of his supporters.
And you’re right. I started out by saying that the verdict doesn’t change very many votes , either way. So why would Biden go after Trump in this way in hopes of changing the election? Doesn’t this show the opposite, that Biden probably didn’t try to do this in order to suppress a political opponent, because this clearly didn’t work, and polls have been showing for months that a conviction wouldn’t swing the election? And I think we all know that a felony conviction doesn’t disqualify anyone from running for president, or from serving if they win. Biden and his advisors knew that. So unless we assume that Biden and all of his political advisors are so completely out of touch or so thoroughly stupid that they didn’t know that Trump’s voters would not change their vote because of the verdict, it’s not reasonable to assume, in the absence of evidence, that Biden masterminded this whole thing. And that Biden and his team were too dumb to recognize the futility is a very poor assumption: after all, whatever else we may think of Joe Biden, the man won election to the highest office in the country. Clearly he knows what the fuck he is doing politically. Especially when it comes to beating Donald Trump, which he also did.
Going on:
Also think it’s coincidental that the sentencing hearing is 4 days before the RNC. Honestly they should have done this 4 years ago when he left office instead of confidently waiting until 6 months before the election. And again I’m not stroking trumps ego on this but I think it’s just in time that now the biden campaign can put ads out talking about how Trump is a convicted felon etc etc.
The sentencing was decided by Judge Merchan. And what exactly will it do when it happens four days before the Republican National Convention? Will they fail to nominate Trump? Will this ruin his run to the November election?
No, seriously: why not point out that it is a week after the Fourth of July? Or on John Quincy Adams’s birthday — and also Giorgio Armani’s? This is another attempt at argument just by unclear innuendo. I don’t know what Trump’s sentencing is supposed to do to affect the RNC, but my best guess is that it will rile them all up and they’ll spend three days screaming about a witch hunt while falling in line behind DJT as the GOP nominee.
In terms of the case going to trial four years ago: Cyrus Vance had to sue Donald Trump to get his tax returns. Twice. And it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And then Trumps’ lawyers delayed this in every possible way — and it was delayed quite a bit by the fact that the COVID pandemic backlogged all of the courts for years. (PRETTY CONVENIENT THAT DONALD TRUMP DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO STOP THE PANDEMIC AND IT DELAYED HIS TRIAL, HUH??? See? I can argue by innuendo too.) That’s why it took so long. I’m sure they would have loved to try it in 2019 — except for the fact that would have meant trying a sitting president, and honestly, maybe that would have been kinda bad.
Is Biden going to make hay out of Trump being a convicted felon? Absolutely. But you know who else is capitalizing on it?
And there’s another factor here, which connects to all of these points about the timing and how Biden will use this conviction, and so on. Sure: it may be convenient when your opponent’s crimes or scandals or whatever show up — but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. Your opponent’s mistakes or wrongdoings are certainly good for you, but that in no way shows that you made them up: it only shows that you took advantage of circumstances, or your opponent’s failures, as anyone would and should in a competition. Do we think the tortoise made the hare take a nap? No: it’s not your fault if your opponent fucks up. It doesn’t mean you made those scandals happen, or drummed up false charges for those crimes. It doesn’t mean the opponent was framed. Not even if you personally have the power to persecute someone, and falsely accuse them of crimes. To show that that happened, someone would need actual evidence that Trump was not guilty of doing what he was accused of.
And did you notice? The one claim that was missing from all of these arguments about this trial?
That Trump was innocent. That he didn’t do anything.
We all know he did it. We all know it was criminal. It’s just a question of whether he should pay, and how much he should pay.
The first answer is emphatically, categorically, YES.
The second question is more to be debated and determined. But it should be determined using facts, using reason, not innuendo and implication and misinformation and lies.
Then we can have something that is not a crock of shit.
I mean, leaning into the insults is one thing, but… really?
After my last post about my buddy Joe Biden, I was challenged. I was challenged from both sides: by a liberal friend who focused on my point that Biden was the lesser of two evils, and couldn’t get beyond that to my points about how, really, the election of Joe Biden is about preventing actual evil which would result from the election of Donald J. Trump, and that by comparison, Joey B. is not evil at all; and by a conservative friend who pointed out that I was far more forgiving of certain of Biden’s traits than I would be if Trump, who shares many of those traits, were to win the next election. (It is possible that both of these friends would object to my characterization of their objections [and the one for my use of the descriptors “conservative” and “friend”]; if so, I apologize now for what I am about to say regarding both of these positions as I have characterized them. Please feel free to challenge me again, and I may add a third post about this issue — or if you wish, feel free to post a comment directly on this post which expresses your objections to everyone who reads this.)
Regarding the idea that Biden is the lesser of two evils: granted. He is. Does it make any difference if I point out that every single election ever can be characterized as being between the lesser of two evils? That Abraham Lincoln was the lesser of two evils? That George Washington running unopposed was the lesser of two evils, because the other option was the collapse of this particular democratic nation, which would have been a much worse outcome than electing Washington — an appalling elitist snob and a lifelong slave owner who wore dentures made from the teeth of human beings he bought and sold?
What if I point out that every politician is evil in one way or another? That every human is evil? We all have our bad qualities. We all have our wrong-headed opinions. We all make mistakes, and even worse, we all do the wrong thing and do it proudly, and determine to repeat the same wrong action if we are given another chance to do it. All of us.
I understand the desire to have a candidate for president that matches what we really want, that has the right opinions and the right history and the right qualities and the right intentions. I understand the frustration and exhaustion that comes from a lifetime of never getting that candidate. I think it’s the same frustration that comes from never finding the right person to love, especially if one has several failed attempts at finding that person, or if one has the terrible experience of being with entirely the wrong person, and suffering because of it. And as someone who has actually found the right person for me to love for the whole of my life — and who found her early on, when I was only 20 — I can’t blame someone for wanting the same thing that I have. I suspect a lot of people who feel this way about the President are those who feel like they maybe had that person in the past; for a lot of people of a certain generation, it was John Kennedy, and when he was assassinated, Lee Harvey Oswald stole that perfect President from them.
But here’s the thing: John Kennedy wasn’t the perfect president. Neither was Ronald Reagan, or Jimmy Carter, or Barack Obama. Franklin Roosevelt interned hundreds of thousands of Japanese-American citizens. Abraham Lincoln wanted to repatriate the freed slaves to Africa. Bernie Sanders would not be the perfect president: he has a tendency to yell at people, which would not go over well in diplomatic circles. My love is not the perfect love: she is not always easy to live with, as she would be the first to tell you. I am also difficult to live with, as I will be the first to tell you. Nobody is perfect. Every relationship — romantic, Platonic, professional, political — is a compromise. Which means every relationship, always, can be characterized as the lesser of two evils.
Or it can be characterized as the best of all possible options.
There’s a saying which I am particularly fond of: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. The intent of the saying is to prevent a bad choice that a number of my students — especially my Honors students, my Gifted and Talented students — tend to make: they work on an assignment, create something they are not very proud of, that they don’t love, and they know they could do better — so they never turn it in. And they get a 0, rather than the less-than-perfect grade they could have gotten if they just turned in the thing they completed but didn’t love, because they would rather have nothing than accept something that is less than perfect: and so they suffer an even worse consequence. They lost the good, because they were only willing to accept the perfect, which then got in the way of the good. We all do this kind of thing all the time: knowing we can’t do something perfectly, we never share what we can do, so we never sing karaoke or bake a dessert treat for the holidays or share that poem or short story. Or that blog about politics: which I frequently stop myself from writing or sharing, because I’m not nearly as smart as the writers I read, as the pundits I pay attention to — so who the hell am I to post my opinions? I’m certainly not perfect, so often, I tell myself I shouldn’t write or post anything at all.
And it’s a mistake. We should do those things, because we can do a good job of them, even if not a perfect job. But the goal of any attempt is not perfection: it is a positive result. You don’t have to hit every note to sound good and entertain the people at the karaoke bar; you don’t have to have perfectly shaped latticework crust on your apple pie for people to enjoy it; you don’t have to have every word just right to be able to communicate your thoughts in a creative way. As I can attest to, and I hope many of you will agree with.
You don’t need to find the perfect person to find love. Just someone who is good for you.
Or, of course, accept that you don’t need someone to love at all, and just love yourself.
For the President, you don’t need to love him, or even like him. You just have to pick one who will do you good. And while Joe Biden could be a lot better than he is, and Bernie Sanders would be better than Biden could ever be, still Biden has done and will do good for this country. I think that’s what this argument against Biden boils down to: we can easily imagine the perfect candidate (though I suspect that when we do so, we are ignoring some aspects of the perfect person which would actually make them less perfect, more human; more evil.), and JRB sure as hell ain’t it. So we don’t want him, because he’s not perfect — some of us would rather have nobody. And I do fully recognize that nobody expects a politician to be perfect; people arguing this position just think Biden isn’t good enough to deserve a vote, no matter how bad they may agree that Trump is. Not that he’s imperfect: it’s that they think Biden sucks. If it isn’t clear, I don’t think that’s true, but if you do think that, then please, feel free not to vote for him; you can always choose to not accept any of the choices you don’t like.
Let me say it as clearly as I can: I am not saying that every individual reading this — including my friend who is sick of choosing the lesser of two evils in every election — needs to vote for Biden. You do not. I think voting third party is an excellent choice. I do think that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a vile candidate — much closer to the greatest of three evils than the least — but if that’s the way your vote needs to go, then do it. We should break the two-party duopoly, and voting for a third party candidate is an important step along the way to accomplishing that.
However. If you do choose not to vote for Biden because he is not someone you can support, but you recognize Trump is a serious problem, then I would like to make two requests of you. The first is that you do actually vote. Staying home out of frustration with the system is an emotionally appealing choice, but it does simply lump you into the great ignorant masses who don’t vote for no good reason. The parties, aware that you’re not voting, will consider you “Uninformed” or “Unmotivated,” rather than “Protesting the neverending stream of bullshit we call U.S. politics.” That means they will use their favorite strategy to reach you in the future: advertising. Lots and lots and lots of paid targeted advertising. If you choose not to vote, you are lining yourself up for even more ads in the future, I guarantee it: and that means even more politicians stumping for money, and compromising with the wealthy donors rather than trying to work with voters. Whereas if you show up and vote, and vote for a third party candidate, especially the one closer to the “traditional” party you might otherwise vote for (so if you’re a Democrat, vote for Cornel West or Dr. Jill Stein; if you’re a Republican, vote for the Libertarian or Constitution Party candidate; and if you’re an anti-vax conspiracy theorist who wants to use your family name to shill for corporate lobbyists, vote for RFK. Or actually no: if you’re in that last group, go ahead and skip voting.), you will be one of the voters that trouble them: and their strategic response might be to move closer to that third party in the future, to change their candidates or their policies to ones that you can support. I want that to happen, so if you do vote third party, thank you. Also don’t listen to people (including me in 2016, before I was corrected) who blame you for the outcome of the election. If Biden and the Democrats lose, it will be because of Biden and the Democrats, not because of the people who voted their conscience and picked third party.
What I want to do here is get people who want to vote for Biden to be excited about that vote. Because it is a good vote. For all the reasons I posted two weeks ago, with the main one being that Joe Biden has far and away the best chance of preventing a second Trump presidency: and that is something we very much need to prevent.
Which brings me to the second thing I would like to ask third party voters to do. Try to do something, other than casting your own vote for Joe Biden, which will help to defeat Donald Trump. If you are willing to vote for Democrats down ticket, do that, and try to help them get elected — because honestly, if Trump won the White House but the Democrats picked up majorities in the House and Senate, I’d almost enjoy watching TFG get stymied at every turn (Almost. Except for the Supreme Court, which will obviously back DJT even to the extent of slow-walking his criminal trial until after the election because they need to hear some absolute bullshit immunity argument. And that’s why I intend to vote for Biden, and encourage you to do the same. Even if he did fail to increase the Supreme Court to 13 members, or to work to impose term limits and ethics requirements on those corrupt assholes.). But if you want to vote third party for President and then vote for Democrats after that (And again, vote your conscience in local and state elections; third parties need to start with the grass roots, and that means getting elected to local school boards and county commissions and so on), that would be great. If you want to volunteer for the Democratic party, to help get other people out to vote for Democrats downticket — especially if you can swallow your ire and let those people vote for Biden, if they want to — then that would be wonderful. And if you can do something to impede Trump: if, for instance, you could find someone like you, too disgusted with the two-party system to vote for either of these shitheads, but who would lean towards voting for Trump because they hate Biden that much, and you could then convince that person to join you in voting third party? Well, you have just taken a vote away from Trump, and you have helped to stop a possible dictator from doing everything he can to tear down this democracy we live in and the rule of law that keeps us all whole and alive. So thank you for that, and for voting your conscience. Those are my two requests, if you can’t vote for Biden but you know that Trump is a danger.
And if you can join me in voting for Biden in November, thank you.
Okay. Now let’s turn to Objector #2, who pointed out, and maintained in the face of my rebuttals, that I had soft-pedalled certain objections to Biden’s qualifications for the presidency, which, he said, were reasonable objections that had been leveled reasonably against Trump as well; and he opined that, if Trump were to win this upcoming election, I would feel much too hypocritical because I would be making the argument that these qualities of Biden’s which I am ignoring or apologizing for now are disqualifying attributes of Donald Trump’s.
Specifically, the arguments that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are old white men who speak badly and suffer from some level of mental deterioration from age.
If I sound dismissive of these arguments, I sort of am. I did not claim that Trump was too old or too white or too bad a speaker or too far down the path of mental decline to be President; I maintain that he is a dangerous narcissistic conman who wants to profit from the destruction of this country as a modern democracy that obeys the rule of law, and who sees racist, sexist, xenophobic fascism as the best means to accomplish that and profit thereby. So I don’t agree that I will feel hypocritical if Trump wins, because I still won’t argue that he is too old and too white and too bad at speaking and too mentally incompetent to be President. I will certainly admit that I might level some insults at that shitbag, because I hate him and everything about him, and in among those insults might be comments about what a dumbass he is or how much of a fumble-mouthed fool he is; but that will be me being shitty to Trump because I hate him, not leveling the same arguments against him which I drew back from in regards to Biden. My criticism of his presidency, if he wins again, will be that he is a dangerous narcissistic conman who wants to profit from the destruction of the rule of law in this country, and sees fascism as a convenient way to achieve that destruction. If there was a young Black woman with a high IQ and a silver tongue running as a dangerous narcisstic conman who wanted to profit from the destruction of the rule of law through the implementation of fascism, I would not support them either. Honest.
But okay, let me address these specific claims. Because I did state that these things are unimportant for Biden, and that may seem inconsistent for me as I have argued in the past that we should have better, younger, and less white leaders, even if I didn’t make those arguments about Trump specifically. In 2020 my first choice was Elizabeth Warren, who I would still vote for if she ran right now; and part of the reason is because she is younger (though not enough younger) than Biden, and smarter and a better speaker, and a woman — though still too white. So how, if I argue that Warren would be better because of her speaking and her mental acuity, can I turn around and say that Biden is a good choice despite his failings in those areas?
For a couple of reasons. First of all, I do not personally believe in the power of identity in politics. For my own self, and what I see as important in a politician, I would happily say “I don’t give a shit who the person is, what race or gender or sexuality or age or any other subgroup they belong to, as long as they do a good job.” The reason I don’t say that is because I understand that the subgroup that someone belongs to is important to millions of people, and I don’t get to tell them how to feel, and because I understand the power of a symbol. Barack Obama did not serve better because of his race: but the fact of his race was important to millions and millions of my fellow citizens, and therefore the fact that he was our only non-white President is important. The thing is, our national politicians need to represent everyone in the country, and so no matter who they are, they need to look beyond their own identity; that includes politicians who are not old white men, because even they need to represent old white men with whom they do not personally identify. Biden won’t do a worse job just because he is an old white man, and if he weren’t an old white man, he wouldn’t do a better job simply because he wasn’t an old white man. Symbolically, he would be LEAGUES better as a candidate if he weren’t an old white man. But anyone who gets the job and does the job well will never get my criticism just for being an old white man.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, wants to make life better for old white men and worse for everyone who is not an old white man. (And actually, inasmuch as he is willing to let his asshole party eliminate Social Security and Medicare, he’s only serving rich white men and not old white men. Biden is largely doing the same because he is indebted to Wall Street and corporate donors. But that also has nothing to do with race and gender on Biden’s part, any more than it has to do with Trump’s identity.) He wants to do that by implementing fascism in order to break down the rule of law in this country, so that he can profit thereby. That is a much bigger problem.
So that’s the first reason: I don’t think identity in and of itself is salient in national politics. I do think socio-economic status is salient, because money insulates people from real life and that does make them less able to empathize with other people, in a way that being old or white or male does not necessarily do; and since Trump has always been insulated by wealth, and Biden has not always been insulated by wealth, I think that’s a mark in Biden’s favor. But he is certainly not in the right place policy-wise when it comes to economics. A good place, but not the right place.
The second reason I will argue that Biden’s qualities are not marks against him as a President is because I have realized, since this whole Trump debacle began, and since I have started learning more about politics and looking back on the Presidents in my lifetime, that a strong single Executive is not in the best interests of the country. The people elected to the post are not reliable. And more to the point, they change at least every eight years, and this country is now so evenly divided that half of the time, that election is likely to reverse the results of the last one — and hand that strong executive power right back over the bad guy. It’s like if Thor defeated the enemy — and then picked them up, handed them Mjolnir, and said, “Here, your turn.”
This is why I argued in my last post that Biden’s general weakness would actually be a benefit, as it would force him to surround himself with good people who would help him do a better job than he can do on his own; I think we are largely seeing that, and seeing the benefit of it compared to Trump’s administration. Trump tended to fire everyone who pissed him off, and then he was left with not enough people to do the work of government; this worked just fine for him because he wants to break government, which will then prove his case that government doesn’t work — a fine and long-established conservative strategy. Biden, however, not looking to do everything himself, but rather trying to show that government can do important work to help people, has done plenty to strengthen the federal bureaucracy, and the result has been a more efficient government that has managed to get more shit done to help people: and that’s a good thing — and it is a result of Biden being willing to delegate authority and work with other people, which Trump is not.
A simple example of this is student loan forgiveness. Biden tried to do it all on his own through executive order, and he was stopped by the Supreme Court. That pissed me off because student loans should be forgiven, and I would love to just see it done with the stroke of a pen; but also, because I do believe more in the rule of law than in student loan forgiveness, I can see the point that Biden’s argument for how he wanted to do it was flawed. I will also argue that the Supreme Court never should have heard the case because the determination of standing on behalf of the plaintiffs was fucking nonsense — “You shouldn’t get your student loans forgiven because I can’t get mine forgiven” is a neener-neener argument, not a real one — but I recognize, again, that some Court cases don’t come from good standing, because the Justices want to put their foot down for one reason or another. I can accept that. So I can accept Biden’s initial plan being struck down as part of the rule of law, and therefore a successful action by government, to stop Biden from taking too much executive power, even if he was in fact doing the right thing and we’d be better off if he had been able to do it.
But Biden then went ahead and started finding small ways, legal ways, acceptable ways, that he could forgive student loans. And it’s slower, and it’s not enough, and that leaves a lot of people out in the cold — but it’s progress.
And because I don’t want a dictator, I am more willing to accept slow progress through compromise within the rule of law than I am fast action by a strongman.
Did I always feel this way? Of course not. When I was a kid, I read Piers Anthony’s series Bio of a Space Tyrant, about a charismatic man who becomes the dictator of a planetary nation-state, and who imposes his will — all for the good of the people. He’s a benevolent dictator, and when I was young, I thought he was both cool and brilliant, and I thought his system was the right one. But see, then I grew up and stuff? And realized that democracy, while it is impossibly frustrating and also slow, and requires compromise with awful people, which then causes harm to good people — is also the best system of government possible, because it disseminates and dilutes power. And power corrupts. (I kinda want to go back and re-read the series now, because I wonder if Anthony’s intent was to show that power corrupts, and that his character was actually an anti-hero like Paul Atreides from Dune — or if Anthony was just playing out his personal fantasies of godlike power and authority, all for the good of the nation, of course. Since he named his character Hope Hubris, I think it was probably the former. But also, Hope gets laid a lot, like a lot a lot; so it might be the latter. Anyway.)
Also let me just say, out loud, that anarchy would be better than any government at all. But as long as we believe we need government, we do need it; and we should have a democratic government. You want to talk about actually eliminating government, I’m interested in chatting about it.
So okay. I realized that Barack Obama, for all of his charisma and intelligence, was an ineffective president — unless you happen to be a Wall Street banker/trader/mogul, in which case he did wonders for you. (It said a lot to me when I found out that Obama had trouble with Mitch McConnell because Obama wanted to argue and debate issues on the merits, and McConnell just wanted to cut a political deal. I hate that McConnell’s stance is more realistic, because I relate to Obama’s desire to convince the other side of his rightness with every ounce of my soul; but I get that McConnell’s stance is more realistic. This is also when I realized for sure that I would be an awful politician.) I realized that Biden, for all of his stupid-ass gaffes and his inability to give a good speech, has done more for the 99% in four years than Obama ever did in eight — and more than that charming amoral shitbag Clinton did in eight, too. I realized, as I’ve said, that a stronger executive, while it does potentially achieve more of my goals because it means someone can actually implement progressive ideas over the objections of Congress and the courts, is bad for democracy, even if those ideas are good — because I’ve watched Trump do shit that he shouldn’t have gotten away with, but he was able to because past Presidents created an atmosphere where he could do it. Like using executive orders to incarcerate migrants, for instance.
So: the fact that Biden is a weak leader? Not a terrible thing. It would be great if he was a better, stronger, smarter man — IF he also had the right ideas. And he doesn’t have enough of them, and that’s a problem; but since he doesn’t have all the right ideas, it makes it better that he’s not strong enough to implement all of his bad ideas over the objections of everyone else in the government.
The real problem in his weakness is how he deals with strongmen, which is — not well. He has been incapable of suppressing Putin or Xi Jinping, he has not been able to handle Iran, and he has given bombs to Bibi Netanyahu. I don’t know how many of those things could have been different if he had been stronger, but I do see his personal weakness as an issue with all of that.
But also? Trump would be actively worse in every single way, and we all know it.
Okay, my friend who raised this objection doesn’t seem to know it, as he said that he doesn’t see much difference between Biden’s foreign policy and Trump’s; but that’s whataboutism, and it’s nonsense –same as when he also tried to equate Biden lying about his past (Specifically this: “He lied about his attendance in a black church as an adolescent in Delaware, his work for desegregation, and his role in the civil rights movement? He has simultaneously claimed to have, and to not have marched.”) with Trump’s lies. Trump lied about winning the 2020 election, which he lost; and his continued attempts to maintain his lie about that election have severely damaged this nation in a way that Biden making himself look better than he actually is never, ever will. The two are not the same. Trump would, so far as we can tell, actively support Putin, and Netanyahu, and also obviously Viktor Orban, and Kim Jong Un, and probably several other authoritarians; because that’s who he wants to be. Because Trump is a narcisstic conman who wants to profit from the destruction of the rule of law through the implementation of fascism.
I don’t give a shit that he’s an old white man. If that means a younger, past version of me would be upset by my failure to maintain the party line regarding race and gender and age, sure, that’s fine. I’ll own that. And I would still like to see someone younger, less male, and less white running the country, because I believe in the power of symbols; I would even more like to see anyone at all in power actually doing everything that should be done to help people who are not white, not male, not old — and not wealthy, most of all.
Biden is doing more of that than Trump ever would.
There’s my guy. My buddy Joe. Pretty regular fella — other than the fact that his 81-year-old face has fewer wrinkles than my 49-year-old one, which, sure, fine, lots of people use Botox and plastic surgery and all — but Joe is unquestionably at the stage where his face has been so thoroughly Zambonied that it looks more “plastic” than “young.” But other than a flat plastic face, overly-squinchy eyes, and those too-white-pearly-whites? Very normal man. Reminds me of my dad. Especially when he talks, since most of the time he sounds like he’s kind of running out of breath, unless he is particularly excited.
I have to admit, though, that for a normal man — a regular dude — he’s sure fond of supporting some pretty fucked up things. Like Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Hopefully we can all agree that the ones really responsible for the atrocities and the genocide are Hamas, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war-loving government, both of whom benefit from increased conflict and greater frequency and intensity of atrocity, as it increases their support by radicalizing more of the population; and also creates enough confusion among the smoke and rubble for them to siphon off wealth. I do not for a second believe that my old buddy Joe could put his arm around Bibi’s shoulders, lean in real close, and whisper, “Hey, man, cut the shit, okay?” and get any kind of real result. Netanyahu is never going to stop the war, because when the war stops, so does his political career, as he is epically unpopular now — but when he leaves office, he’ll no longer be able to avoid prosecution for his corruption, which is pervasive and pretty concretely proven everywhere but in that court of law he is avoiding. (Sounds like a certain would-be Fascist dictator in this country, doesn’t it? No wonder they get along.) But on the other hand, even though Ol’ Joe can’t stop the genocide in Gaza, I would very much appreciate not having my country supply the weapons to Israel for their genocide.
And then there’s Joe’s past support for crime bills targeting African-Americans, and a lack of support for abortion access for women, and for clearing Clarence fucking Thomas for the Supreme Court, and his willingness to destroy people’s lives at the southern US border, which he backs partly because he wants to be able to blame the Grand Ol’ (Fascist) Party, the GO(F)P, for their failure to secure the border, undercutting their own main talking point; but also because he’s clearly pretty comfortable with adopting said Fascist party’s framing of the issue as a crisis at the southern border, and the problem being one of too many people trying to live out the American dream and the ideals we claim to stand for, and with the argument that punishing those people as brutally as we can is definitely the best way to handle it.
All of that is garbage. And all of it is Joe Biden.
Plus there’s the simple fact of the man’s titanic goddamn ego, which makes him look in the mirror every morning and say, in all sincerity, “The only man who can be President is you. The only man who can stop Trump is you. You have to run again, Joe. You gotta save the world! All by yourself! LET’S DO THIS!” That’s Joe Biden, too.
But you know what else is Joe Biden?
He’s the most progressive president we’ve had in 75 years — even though he failed to provide Medicare for All or a livable minimum wage or a permanent child tax credit or a Voting Rights Act or a balanced and reasonable Supreme Court.
But the focus on climate change spending, particularly in the Inflation Reduction Act, is brilliant. The Infrastructure bill was good though not enough — but it was good, no question. The change in tone and the reintegration of the US into the world’s leadership, particularly NATO, was necessary. And his administration has done a good job of making sure the US did not fall into the economic malaise that the rest of the world has fallen into. I don’t like everything about the way they did it, because like always, inflation was brought under control mainly by punishing working and middle class families by raising interest rates to levels high enough to make us stop buying houses, even though the rent is too god-fucking-damn high; and like always, the majority of the GDP gains went to the top 1% so the corporations and Wall Street mavens could keep making campaign contributions to Joe and the Democratic party; but still, unemployment is ridiculously low — and there have been some actual gains to wages set against inflation and the cost of living.
So. Considering all of that, I have a request for all of you.
Vote for him. Vote for my man Joe in November.
I mean, to be clear, the only other realistic option for someone who could actually win is the fucking Fascist. And you — yes you, person who is reading this right now, who has felt enough connection to me that you came here to read this piece that I wrote — you better not vote for the fucking Fascist.
But that’s not the issue here. Right? Millions of cultish fans, and millions of people freaking out over the scourge of Socialism, are going to vote for Trump; but he lost the popular vote in both of his elections, so I expect he will lose again. The issue is whether or not enough of the voters on the margins, the ones who maybe don’t want to vote, who don’t care enough to vote, or who are wavering between the two choices, will swing the battleground states to the right side to win the Electoral College. That’s what the issue is, and what I want to talk about: will the undecided voters decide to go the right way?
It should honestly be pretty simple for every Democrat and progressive: Joe Biden is no progressive — but the progressive movement has made major gains with this administration, and importantly, Smilin’ Joe’s worries about his legacy, and also his genuine and historic support for unions and the working class, mean that he would likely continue to move slightly to the left of center, and might be able to enact and solidify some of the gains made in this first term. Any other president, from the left or the right, would be likely to ignore Biden’s accomplishments and try to create their own: but Biden will try to make sure that Biden’s wins stay in place. And Barack Obama doing exactly that is why we still have the Affordable Care Act despite all the best attempts by the fascists and corporate interests to root it out and remove people’s health insurance. Compared to Medicare for All, the ACA is hot garbage; but it was and is progress. It was and is a good thing. The same goes for Biden’s wins. Even though we’d like to have more of them, it would be useful to make sure what we’ve got, we won’t lose; like any other leftist/progressive idea, once it is in place, people realize it’s probably a good thing — and then they don’t want to get rid of it. Just ask Trump and his Republican congress about the ACA.
So re-electing Biden would make sure that we don’t move backwards. And let me point out how important that is: both Trump and Biden did a whole lot of stuff through executive order; and because those come from one man’s pen, they can be (and were) undone by another man’s (or a woman’s) pen. That fact, and the stark contrast between Trump’s foreign policy (Which is basically this) and every sane President’s desire to remain involved with the world on some kind of good terms, are why so much of the rest of the world is now wary of relying on the US for anything. And while I definitely think it would be better for the US and the world not to have the US in any kind of leadership role, since we have fucked up almost every other country on the planet at one time or another for our own desires or aggrandizement or simple profit, I do think that inconsistency from our policies or our economy has severe negative long-term knock-on effects on the rest of the world. So keeping ourselves in check is the best possible thing for everyone: and for that, a second Biden term, with his focus on maintaining American value around the world and renewing and continuing old policies about connection and cooperation, are the best possible choice.
I understand and agree that just maintaining what we have is not enough. We need to have an actual progressive administration, and more importantly, a progressive congress to go with a progressive executive, so they can name progressive judges, and then we can do some of the things we really need to do. And the more often we are given this kind of bullshit either-or, Lesser-of-Two-Evils choice, the longer we have to delay an actual progressive movement and the accomplishment of simple but necessary things that will save lives, like a livable minimum wage and Medicare for All. But to accomplish that, we need to start at the grass roots: and that’s where progressives suck. Don’t we? Because we won’t fear monger the same way the establishment and especially the Fascists will, we can’t drive the same kind of brand loyalty that only comes with paralyzing fear of the other side. We have to educate. And the political education of the populace relies on one thing: actual policy wins. Actual things being done, by government, to help people. And you know what we need in order to achieve that? More progressives in office, which basically starts with more progressives in the world.
And you know what drives more progressives in office? Anger and frustration with Fascists and with the establishment Democrats who appease them. In the large historical sense, the longer we have to deal with these people in charge, the better our side will do in recruitment and inspiration and drive. You cannot stop the pendulum from swinging: the GO(F)P has done a fantastic job of slowing down the swings for a long time now; but there have been lots and lots of little swings — LGBTQ rights, for instance, even though we’re seeing the violent Fascist reaction to that swing — and the big swing? It’s coming. And it’s going to swing a long way.
And then it will swing back again.
Let me also point out that the reason the GO(F)P has done so well for the last twenty-five years is because they started at the grass roots FIFTY years ago, and built up slowly; and the best news I can say for the future of the progressive movement is that Trump and MAGA have completely torn down the Republican infrastructure that helped put Trump into office. So if we can stay focused, and pay attention and do the work, we can take the country back. For real. I’ll write more about that another time.
And if none of that convinces you? Let me just remind you: the guy on the other team is a fucking Fascist. And no, I won’t tone down that language or that accusation: it is appropriate, and accurate. I will express that in greater detail another time, but I hope everyone reading this is already close to accepting that, if you’re not already there.
So let me sum up.
Biden has done a genuinely good job. He should have done more, but he has done more good than harm — and that’s an important metric for any politician. The first line of the Hippocratic Oath is “Primum non nocere” — first, do no harm. Politicians should all swear the same thing. Actually, we all should. And Biden has done good, for the economy, for the country’s manufacturing and infrastructure, for climate change adaptation, and for the international rules-based world order.
The best criticisms against him are: he has failed to end support for the genocide in Gaza, which is an entirely fair criticism, and the reason why I voted against Biden in my state’s primary, as I want him to recognize that this is an issue; he has tried to meet the GO(F)P in the middle of the aisle, particularly on the border, which shows far too much acceptance of Fascism and, essentially, racism and sexism, which were already issues for Biden as they are for so very many white male Americans; and he has accepted the current framing of issues like the economy, where he has failed to support the real change that would actually achieve his “from the bottom up and the middle out” economic growth.
Oh right — and he’s old.
And he sounds kinda dumb when he talks sometimes.
Those criticisms are bullshit.
He’s old. Granted. So why does he need to be young? Because only young people understand the needs of young people? Are we really that wedded to identity politics, that we believe that nobody can understand the needs of a group to which he doesn’t belong? That nobody can be sympathetic to those needs, and supportive of them? How different are those needs, really? Do we actually think there’s that much of a gap between the basic human needs of someone who is 8 and someone who is 80, when both people are human beings? Both love their family, both want to be safe and healthy, both love cheese and naps; must we have an 8-year-old president in order for 8-year-olds to live good lives? And if not: why do we need a 40-year-old President? Or a 50, 60, 70-year-old President?
He doesn’t speak well. And? Why does he need to speak well when he can get other people to deliver complicated policy platform announcements, or to handle press conferences with the piranhas of the press corps? Do we really need Joe Biden to inspire us with his soaring rhetoric? Or could we maybe read a book, listen to a poem, watch a Rage Against the Machine concert video, and get our inspiration from those? If we have a President who needs the help of other people to run his administration, then maybe we get something more like, I dunno, a representative Republic serving democratically. Instead of a strongman who handles everything himself, and who can and might want to build a cult of personality.
Whatever else you say about Old Joe, he is not going to build a cult of personality. None of us can stand his personality. No: he will build a team of smart and capable and driven people, who will help to fill in the gaps where he doesn’t have the best strengths. One of the best things about Biden is that he realizes who he is and what he can do (Other than his enormous ego, but clearly that is a prerequisite for an American politician), and he looks to others for help. He stood behind Barack Obama completely. That says a lot. I am also, despite my criticisms of his past shitty positions, genuinely impressed with his ability to recognize when he might be wrong, and to listen to others with better ideas. The fact that he is not the same man with the same ideas he had fifty years ago? That’s a good thing.
Look. Seriously. The President doesn’t need to be young. The President doesn’t need to be strong. The President doesn’t need to be a good speaker. We like all those things in our politicians, as we like them in all of our celebrities: but the reality is that the President is a politician and a leader. And that doesn’t require strength in a physical, youthful sense. It requires determination and drive: and Biden has those. Even if he needs to take a nap every day (And don’t pretend we wouldn’t all support a President who mandated a daily nap), he gets up and still has the same absolute convictions about the right things: the goodness of America, the desire to help people, the opposition to cruelty and violence. Right? You can’t miss those things when you talk about Biden. That same ego I was mocking earlier actually shows his strength in this area: he believes he is right, and a lot of the time, in a lot of ways, he is.
Let me also note: if our President is strong-willed, so strong that nobody could stop him or oppose him or stand in his way — how do we not end up with a dictator? Hell, we almost got a dictator with the last guy, and he only thinks he is strong and commanding. Someone who actually is? There’s a real risk there. And there’s only a benefit in that if we think that this country is actually carried by one guy.
It is not. The strength of this country is not in the leadership. It is not in the White House. It is not in our politicians, at all: they are all — or almost all — weak people. Weak morals, weak wills, and a lot of weak minds, especially in the GO(F)P.
We are the strength of this country. We are smarter, stronger, braver, wiser, kinder, and better in every way than our political leaders. As we should be: because we are the ones who run this country. We are.
When we abdicate those roles and those responsibilities, when we elect politicians intending for them to carry the load for us, to do our thinking for us, to do everything for us so that we need to do nothing for ourselves — we get exactly what we want. We get controlled. We get exploited. We get screwed: because we put people in power over us, people who want to screw us, and we hand them the tools to do it.
Joe Biden, whatever else he is — old, weak, stumbling, mumbling, moderate, somewhat racist, somewhat sexist — he is not looking to screw us. He just wants to help.
I understand if you don’t want to discuss the election that will take place later this year. I sympathize, I absolutely do.
But I’m going to talk about it. And I’m going to ask you to listen, even if you don’t want to — or really, to read, even if you don’t want to. I’m going to ask that you take a deep breath, let it out, say out loud — as loudly as you can — “I don’t want to think about this” (and if you are so inclined, add “shit” at the end of that sentence).
And then read what I have to say. Because it’s important. Not because I’m saying it: I’m just a regular guy, smarter than some and not as smart as others; good with words but far from the best; aware and knowledgeable in some ways and deeply ignorant in others. Just a regular guy. But the topic is important, which is why I’m writing about it — even though I don’t really want to. I want to take a break from writing: I just finished editing my book. I want to take a break from politics: I’ve been much too closely involved in the subject for way too long now.
But this election, this November? It’s a big one. That’s not to say it is the only important election; all elections are important, to some people, for some reason. But this one is important to all of us. And I mean ALL of us: this one has literal global implications, pretty serious ones. It’s our responsibility as people to be decent to each other, to try not to harm each other, to try to help each other; and in this case, that means we need to talk about the election in November, and we need to think about it, and then we need to do the right thing. Or else we are not living up to our responsibilities as human beings. I don’t want to be that person, and I presume you don’t, either — or else you’ve already clicked away from this, and you’re not reading these words right now.
(By the way: if you clicked away, it doesn’t mean you’re not a decent person; but if you’re not a decent person, you’ve definitely clicked away. Because I’m gonna get all woke and try to shame you, and you don’t put up with that kind of shit. But getting all bunched up about being woke-shamed? That means you’re an asshole. Not to say that woke-shaming is good; I have people who try to woke-shame me, and it’s obnoxious; but I put up with it because I’m not an asshole. If you’re still here, you’re at least tolerant, and therefore not an asshole.)
I’m not actually going to woke-shame you, by the way. Because I don’t need to. You don’t need to be a woke liberal snowflake to recognize the right thing to do in this election. That’s the point of this post: I’m not even talking about my opinions about what is best for this country, or the best choice to make in November; I may talk about that some — I plan to get into the best choice in the next post. But for this one, it is simple, it is stark, it is clear: it is black and white.
Vote No on Donald J. Trump for President of the United States.
Now, I get it: I’m tired, too. I’m tired of the political game the two parties play, where you have to vote for OUR candidate because THEIR candidate is SO MUCH WORSE. We have to vote for the lesser of two evils, and it’s exhausting and depressing to never vote for anyone with some actual hope in our hearts. Honestly, that’s why the last two presidents — not the current one — got elected: because people felt hopeful about their candidacies. Obama was inspiring; Trump was energizing — for different sections of the society, of course. People who were inspired by Obama did not find Trump energizing. But in both cases, Obama and Trump offered something different from the usual kind of political candidate, and that newness had a lot to do with how they won. And I hate, I loathe, that the Democratic party, rather than taking an opportunity to back a candidate who had some new ideas, who had some integrity and consistency, and who inspired some of the same energy in their electorate — Bernie Sanders — went sprinting straight back to a 50-year Washington insider, an old white male politician who has literally never inspired anyone to do anything.
But we’ll talk about ol’ Sleepy Joe next time. This time we have to talk about the other old white male politician running for this election. The dangerous one.
This guy.
Trump will only be a dictator on Day One
No, no, I know he was kidding. Of course he was; he says that he has two intentions on day one, for which he claims he would use power dictatorially: to close the border, and to drill, drill, drill (for oil). “After that,” he says, “I’m not a dictator.” Totally harmless. I shouldn’t take things so seriously, especially not when Trump says them, right? He’s just kidding around. Just a lil funnin’.
But let’s be clear. First of all, in terms of the joke, Sean Hannity set that up as a serious question, saying “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.” When Trump drops his joke, there is a clear moment of horror, because he didn’t say “Absolutely.” He didn’t say “Of course I would never do that.” He didn’t say “In America we believe in the rule of law and in democracy, so I would never act like a dictator in any way.” He said “Except on day one.” In a moment when he was asked for sincerity, for honesty, for a promise to the American people: he made a joke. A joke about being a dictator.
And considering it realistically, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that he is sincere in his two intentions to use power dictatorially: to close the border, which would mean violating dozens of laws and international treaties and disrupting the lives of millions (because I assume by “close the border” he means stop allowing people to cross the border, including innocent legal travelers; or else he means send overwhelming military force to stop all illegal crossings at the southern border, while also defying due process in order to build some ridiculous wall covered in electrified barbed wire and anti-personnel mines filled with Sarin gas and anthrax: either way he would be breaking the law and disrupting the lives of millions.), and defying all science in order to destroy the environment while feeding money into the bottomless maw of the fossil fuel industry: also in violation of who knows how many laws and policies of our own government. Of course he is serious about that: those are two of the “policies” (To be clear, he has no policy positions or plans at all; he’s running purely on hate and lies) he is running on, which are both very popular: fuck everyone who isn’t already American (by which we all know he means “white”), and fuck the environment and everyone who cares about it.
I refuse to then believe, subsequent to misusing presidential power for these two issues, that he would not immediately misuse presidential power to do what he does not tell Sean Hannity, what he does not promise the American people, that he would never do: seek retribution against his perceived enemies. Because of course he would do that: it’s all he ever does. He did it while he was in office, he has tried to do it since; he ran on the promise that he would lock up Hillary Clinton, and he is running now on the promise that he will weaponize the DOJ and FBI and go after all of his enemies, while filling the government with people loyal to him.
You know all this, right? I mean, I know we’re all tired of listening to him speak, and we’re exhausted by the constant news cycle of the whatever is the most recent travesty he said aloud — a news cycle that has gone on uninterrupted for the last nine years, since Trump declared himself a candidate for the Presidency — but still, the information is everywhere, the facts are unavoidable.
I’ve been avoiding writing this post because I can’t think of anything new to say. Every time I think, “I need to write that post about why people should vote against Trump, why people should fight Trump’s reelection,” I then think, “But what will I say?”
What can I tell you that you don’t already know?
What insight can I offer into the threat that Trump poses that you’re not already aware of?
But if you know everything that I know about Trump, why the fuck is he leading in the polls???
Seriously, I cannot fathom this. It has been driving me nuts. I keep telling people my opinion: Trump hasn’t done anything to make himself more popular, so he can’t possibly be more successful in this election than he was in the last — which he lost, as I hope everyone reading this is painfully, exhaustively aware. But every time I say that, smart people around me say, “I dunno, man. He’s leading in the polls.” Every time I open a newsletter or listen to an episode of my favorite political podcast, Unfucking the Republic, the host is saying he expects Trump to win this next election. Trump. To win. Not cheat his way into the White House like he already did in 2016, not lead an insurrection to take control of the country like he tried to do in 2021, but win. The election. With votes. From Americans.
I know you have to sign in to watch this, but do it. For me. And for America.
This is about something else, but the lyrics are apropos. Plus it slaps.
I honestly don’t know how to deal with this. I know I’m not alone: listen to Jonathan Capeheart coming a hair’s breadth away from just losing his shit in this interview with Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, about 2:45:
(The Black, gay, liberal MSNBC host clearly has reason to lose his shit, as he expresses later in the clip.)
Okay, I understand some of the issue here. I get that if 44,000 votes, out of 150,000,000, had gone the other way, then Trump would have won reelection. And actually, I get that if he had, a number of people think things would have gone better, or at least not much worse, over the last three years; they’re wrong, but I can’t disprove a hypothetical any more than they can prove it, so I can accept that people believe it. It pisses me off that people mock the opposition to Trump by saying the only reason we don’t like him is because he was too mean on Twitter, like there aren’t a thousand reasons to despise Donald Trump and what happened during his administration (Top ten: insurrection; impeachment; second impeachment; The Big Lie; 6-3 Conservative SCOTUS; COVID non-response; tax cut for the rich and $8 TRILLION added to the deficit; “Very fine people on both sides” and also the trans ban for the military; pulling out of the JCPOA and Paris Treaty and shit-talking NATO and all other treaties; and it wasn’t part of his presidency, but I’m not going to ignore all of his sexual assaults) — but I understand that people believe lies about all of those things, or those things at least align with things they do believe. And I mock the other side for their stupidity, so I can accept that they mock me for what they perceive as mine.
I know that, in conjunction with what I’ve just been saying, the country is so divided along partisan lines that people would generally vote for a disease-carrying mosquito rather than cross party lines; and that means any GOP nominee can count on 200 or so electoral votes, just as any Democratic nominee can count on 200 or so different electoral votes, and while Trump has only gotten worse over the last four years, so has inflation, which people blame Biden for. They shouldn’t, but again, I don’t know how to prove that, either. If you don’t know that corporate profits and supply chain issues were responsible for the inflation of the last three years, then you’re not paying attention — or you’re paying attention to the wrong things. (Best line from the article at that last link: “It is unlikely that either the extent of corporate greed or even the power of corporations generally has increased during the past two years. Instead, the already-excessive power of corporations has been channeled into raising prices rather than the more traditional form it has taken in recent decades: suppressing wages.”) I know that our country is awash in lies about socialism and government takeovers. I know, also, that there are people who vehemently believe in Great Replacement theory, the conspiracy theory which claims Democrats (Or even better, the “global elite” led by Jewish people) are bringing dark-skinned people into this country to replace white people, because one of them yelled at me on Facebook not too long ago.
I know that people are not excited about voting for Biden. I hoped he wouldn’t run, too — but come on. Let’s not pretend that anyone who decides to be President doesn’t already have an ego that needs its own West Wing. You can’t be an ordinary person and believe that you would be the right individual, the only right individual, to lead this entire country. You have to think you are the greatest ever. That’s why we have term limits in the first place: because after FDR, who clearly believed himself to be the only person who could ever run this country, believed it strongly enough to run FOUR TIMES, we recognized that it was genuinely unlikely that a modern President would give up power. And look at how they all run for that second term. All of them. (Quick tip of the hat to LBJ for backing out of a second run because he thought the country was too divided over his war in Vietnam) So we all knew he would try for the nomination again — and if the DNC backed him over Bernie in 2020, why would they stop backing him now?
I want to talk more about voting for Biden, because he’s actually done an outstanding job as president; but that’s not the topic for today.
The topic for today is voting No on the question of whether Donald J. Trump should once again be President of the United States.
This is our duty. It is our responsibility, both for the sake of our country and our democracy, but also for the sake of the world. Everybody, literally, is counting on us to stop this asshole from fucking up everything in this country that he hasn’t already fucked up.
I know we don’t like voting for the lesser of two evils, so let me put it this way: I’m not asking you to vote for the lesser of two evils. I’m asking you to vote against evil.
I don’t actually care how you do that. I think the safest course is to vote for Biden, because in our winner-take-all electoral college system, voting third party is potentially dangerous; but if you want to vote for Jill Stein or Cornell West, please do so. I’d love to see the Green Party gain more national attention, and I think Dr. West is far and away the best candidate running right now. (Oh — don’t vote for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Libertarians are dangerous, particularly when they are also anti-vax. And he is the worst kind of anti-vax. Don’t give him a platform, please.) But what matters is taking away votes from Donald Trump, so if you were going to vote for the Democrat and you don’t want to vote for Biden, be aware that taking your vote away from Biden is not voting No on Trump. It is voting No on Biden. You are welcome to do that, as I said, especially if you live in a safely blue state like New York or California; but you first need to vote No on Trump.
Vote No on Trump by giving a political donation to the Democratic party. Vote No on Trump by volunteering to help the Democrats get voters out and registered and to the polls — which is still what I plan to do, now that MY BOOK IS FINISHED and now I have time to do that. Vote No on Trump by convincing a would-be Trump voter to change and vote for someone else (They can even vote for RFK, because if he pulls votes from the GOP he’ll never get conservative backing again, and that would be swell.). Vote No on Trumpism, as well, by supporting those who oppose him: vote Democratic or Green or Progressive or left-leaning Independent on all of the downticket races; pay for and consume media that does not support the Trumpiverse view of things.
Or vote No on Trump by voting for Biden, even if you don’t like or agree with him, because in our system, Joe Biden has far and away the best chance to stop Trump from becoming President again.
This isn’t a matter of picking between two identical puppets run by the same political machine. It’s certainly true that the moderates of both parties are frequently indistinguishable in their actual governance, even if their rhetoric has contrasts; but the Republican party has had to fall in line behind Trump — and they have done it. They are obedient acolytes, they are foot soldiers, drones, servants of their Beloved Leader. Trump knows it, and he pushes them around at will; he will, of course, continue doing it as President — because while he may be a lame duck president, he will continue to apply pressure to the members of his party; he will anoint the chosen and castigate the insufficiently loyal: and all of them, it seems, will dance to his tune. Biden may be a puppet of the powers-that-be, and that is dangerous; but he’s not the puppet master, and Trump is. (Even though Trump himself may be controlled by others, either autocrats like Putin and Netanyahu and Kim, whom he somehow needs to impress, or anyone with power enough to gain access, and brains enough to manipulate that goddamn idiot.) If we retain Biden and those who have influence over him, it won’t lead to the collapse of this country’s democracy. Trump’s election might. I won’t say he definitely will turn himself into a dictator and end American democracy entirely — but I also won’t definitely say he won’t do that. He is a danger to this country, and because we are the richest, most powerful, and also the most toxic country in the world, Trump is therefore a danger to everyone — look no further than Avdiivka for that.
We all know that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Donald Trump is evil. Whatever else you think of him or about him, his intentions, his corruption, and his ability to do harm through the office of the Presidency are far too great for any of us to ignore. So please: do something. \
Vote No on Donald J. Trump for President of the United States.
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.
Tomorrow is the beginning of classes, which means I now have to deal with students — but as always, though teenagers are frustrating, they are the reason why my job exists, and the aspect of it I actually enjoy. Teaching is hard — but it’s better than inservice. And since classes start tomorrow, that means inservice is over. (My district tried to extend it, pushing a two-day training on how to teach ACT prep — actually there are somehow three two-day trainings for English, one in reading, one in writing, and one in…English… but when I said I didn’t want to go, my direct supervisor said I didn’t have to go, in contrast to his supervisor who said he “strongly recommended” that ACT prep teachers be SENT to this training. But my boss said I didn’t have to go. Which means that inservice is over. And also that my boss is on my side, which is — well, it’s lovely.) My students make me laugh as often as they make me grit my teeth in rage; and they sometimes tell me that I helped them, that I taught them, even that I inspired them. And I like that.
I am typing this on my brand-new MacBook Air, which I got for my birthday as a present from my brother. Which means not only that I have this sweet new machine (Which, admittedly, I am having trouble adjusting to, but that’s only because it doesn’t have a ten-key pad on the right side of the keyboard, and because the Command key I have to use to copy and paste and so on is in a different place than it has been on the last two laptops I’ve had, both Windows machines — and because I didn’t know that you ran two fingers together over the touchpad to make the screen scroll BUT IT TURNS OUT YOU DO THAT ON THE GODDAMN WINDOWS MACHINES TOO I JUST DIDN’T KNOW IT BECAUSE I MOSTLY USE A PLUG-IN MOUSE AND TRYING TO DEAL WITH THE WINDOW ON THIS LOVELY NEW MACHINE WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO SCROLL WAS A TRIAL, BELIEVE ME but then I figured this out, and now it’s easy. And now I know this new thing, so that means I’ll never have this struggle again.
That’s amazing, isn’t it? That there can be single pieces of knowledge that you don’t have, and without them things are hard or confusing or even frightening; but then you find out that one thing — and the problem is gone. Gone entirely. Never going to be a problem again. Things can actually get solved. Not everything, certainly, but there are situations that are like that: you find the answer, and then you have it. The answer. The solution.
But also, anyway, the other thing about getting this beautiful new (EXPENSIVE) computer as a gift from my brother is this: my brother gave it to me. He and I haven’t always gotten along, sometimes even emphatically not; but that, too, has gotten better. I don’t think the relationship has been solved by a single answer that suddenly came clear, because relationships aren’t really like that; but definitely things have gotten better, and they will stay that way as long as we keep working on them — and he got me this absolutely lovely and generous gift, which I think was a very nice thing for him to do.
Thank you, Marv. I love the laptop. Though I feel dumb about the touchpad scrolling thing. Also it just autocorrected your name to Marc, so. Something to think about. And I’ll make you a deal: if you go by Marc (Or Marcin, in full), I’ll go by Dussy. Which was recently given me as an interpretation of my name at my optometrist’s office. It’s a new one.
Though to be honest, I’m not sure how it would benefit you for me to go by Dussy. Or how it would help me if you went by Marc. Nah, forget the whole thing. I’m still grateful for the gift, and glad that we’re doing well with each other.
And speaking of family, I finally mailed away my spit, in the tube my wife bought for me, to ancestry.com (That was a Christmas present, if you weren’t aware of how bad I am at following through on some things in a timely manner), and so I found out a little bit more about my family: mostly German and Scottish and English and French, all of which I knew — but also, about 3% African. Which I did not know. 1% each from Ivory Coast and Ghana, Benin and Togo, and Cameroon, Congo, and Western Bantu peoples. Obviously it is not a significant amount of my heritage — but it is significant that it is there, that I am that much of a mutt, that I have a little bit of African DNA in me. I think that’s wonderful and fascinating. I can relate even more closely to my dogs now, as they are both mutts.Which are obviously the best kind of dog.
So thank you, Toni. It was a very cool gift, and I’m sorry it took me so long to use it.
Oh — and speaking of white people with just a tiny bit of Africa in them, and also speaking of things I would spit on: Elon Musk is now not only a goddamn idiot, but he’s a goddamn idiot that has shown himself to be a goddamn idiot, and therefore proof positive that there is no meritocracy in capitalism, that even complete dipshits like Musk — who, I’m sure, would prefer to be called Xxxx Xxxx, so that’s what I’m going to be calling him from now on. Or maybe just Muxx? (Or Marc?) — have too much money and absolutely do not deserve it, and do not deserve our respect for their ridiculous hoarding of wealth. Because their wealth does not show their brilliance.
So the guy buys Twitter, right, and it isn’t really clear why. It seems mostly like he wanted to prove to everyone that he could do it, because Xxxx obviously believes his own hype to a truly epic degree, like Trumpian level delusion here: and literally every choice he’s made in running this company has been a bad one: first he let all the extremists and slanderers and liars and shitbags back onto the platform, which made the platform not only actively worse for everyone but also genuinely dangerous for some; and then he destroyed the verification system, which reduced the value of being a name on Twitter and of following names on Twitter, which reduced the value of the site and of the company; then he introduced a bad subscription model, which is still a cheap gag for everyone on the site who doesn’t have a blue check; and then he expanded the length of the Tweets; and then he limited the number of Tweets that someone could see in a day; and somewhere in there he also threatened to remove (and did remove) a number of people and a number of tweets that he disliked or disagreed with, thus proving to everyone but his legion of sycophants (Also suffering from Trumpian levels of delusion) that he as not actually interested in protecting free speech like he pretended do be doing when he bought the site; and now the crowning glory, his most recent conversion of Twitter to — X. Twitter is a household name, with Tweet a known slang verb used across the internet; and he threw all of that away. Because he thinks X is cool. And X, in actuality, is a shit name for a company, and a shit name for an app, and he picked a shit logo, and the rollout has been absolutely terrible — mine just switched over today, and it still says Tweet and Twitter all over the site. I mean, even I could do a rebranding better than this, and not because of my business acumen or my marketing skills — but just because I’m not a goddamn idiot. I can tell you that I am already filled with a visceral loathing for the X app, and am really just hopeful that it will go ahead and finally die so I can stop looking at it.
Just look at that garbage.
It’s possible that that’s what Musk wants, too. There is profit to be made in breaking a company up and selling off the pieces; but it doesn’t really seem like Musk is doing that, because everything he’s done, other than fire all the workers and refuse to pay bills (In the short term, dumping salary and holding onto cash would be profitable if you meant to destroy the company and sell the pieces — but he hasn’t done that yet.), everything has reduced the value of the company: which would seem to really reduce the potential profit he could be making as a vulture capitalist. On the other hand, if he planned on keeping the company and building something bigger out of it, which is what he has claimed to want to do, then firing half the staff and refusing to pay bills is a shit-stupid way to handle a company that does an incredibly difficult and complicated thing like maintain a free marketplace of ideas on the internet — let alone grow it into an all-inclusive financial network where people can handle literally all of their business interactions. I saw an article that said this:
Expanding the platform’s reach to include things like shopping and paid subscription content could actually help it flourish in the long term by creating several revenue streams and making it less reliant on large companies’ willingness to spend money, analysts said.
In the short term, building out those capabilities would require a massive investment in staff and infrastructure. It’s far from clear if a company that slashed about three-quarters of its staff and is now embroiled in multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills can deliver that.
“The investment is a lot in terms of cloud infrastructure — we’re talking about $40 billion, $50 billion in upfront investments,” Singh said. “Twitter as a standalone app doesn’t have the infrastructure to become an everything app.”
But the name change suggests Musk is likely to keep control of the company for the near future, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. After Musk’s takeover in April of 2022, some observers believed the billionaire could make some changes to Twitter and quickly flip it to a different owner, Singh said.
“That option is off the table now given the name change — I don’t think there’s any other prospective buyer who will take it now,” he said.
There is also a profit to be made in being a corrupt oligarch who opposes and helps to suppress free speech and the free exchange of ideas; and one of the ways you could achieve that, as a corrupt oligarch, would be to buy the marketplace of ideas and just set the whole thing on fire. And it very well could be that this is really want Xxxx wants, and if so, on this front, he’s doing a bang-up job.
I will definitely say that that is a sad thing. Communication is one of the highest forms of human endeavor and accomplishment: our ability to share ideas and spark new ideas in each other is unmatched in the natural world, so far as we know. And the internet and social media have made that possible on a scale unheard of before now; Twitter was part of that. But now it’s not. Because now it’s X.
Speaking of corrupt oligarchs fucking up things that were once worthwhile: Trump is another example of something that actually seems to be going right. I don’t want to count my chickens before they’re hatched, because I, like most of us rational, thinking people, was deeply overconfident in 2016, and I just could not believe it when TFG won the election. But it does really seem like he is facing a whooooooole lot of serious legal trouble, and at least in the Mar a Lago documents case, he’s clearly as guilty as sin: and when you put that shithead in front of a jury (Not that he’ll show up for his own trial, if he can possibly avoid it), he’s not going to get a pass like he did in both impeachments under a corrupt senate.
Oh right — and let me take a moment to wish Mitch McConnell ill. Forgive my schadenfreude, but that fucking no-neck piece of shit has ruined untold numbers of lives with his power mongering, so fuck him. I hope he did have a stroke, and I hope he suffers in his declining years.
Anyway, the court system is not as easily bought as Congress: so Trump will likely go to jail. And while that doesn’t mean he can’t run for president, it surely does mean that most Republicans will not vote for him, and his base still will, or they won’t vote at all; and that likely means a runaway victory for the Democratic Party — which, if Biden is the nominee (And I personally hope he will withdraw from the race and let someone younger take it over), and wins a second term, I will say that he has actually been doing a goddamn good job so far at restoring the American government to what it should be, and we could do a whole lot worse than the guy who has re-established NATO even while supporting Ukraine in the war, and who is establishing new alliances across Asia, and who has passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Build Back Better Infrastructure Act, and who has therefore done more for American manufacturing and industry and for fighting climate change than literally any other American president. We could do a whole lot worse.
So let me just say that, too: this time we all have to try to do our part to make sure we don’t do a whole lot worse. Joe Biden is old, yes. I do not want an octogenarian President. But he’s actually doing a good job. And if Trump goes to jail, the democrats might just win both houses of Congress — and then maybe we can name a couple of new Supreme Court justices, too. But if we’re too overconfident going in, we might get another TFG presidency, and that might just turn all of this back around, and send us all spiraling down until we crash. Let’s try to make sure it doesn’t go that way. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize, and keep things looking up, okay?
So okay, this wasn’t exactly the most cheerful blog, because things have been pretty bad for a while. But hey. School starts tomorrow.
Let’s make this a good year.
Actually just found this. The band is donating proceeds to the ACLU. Plus a player piano!
The knowledge hasn’t trickled down yet to the sewer underneath the swamp, where Trump lurks, where he festers and spreads like an antibiotic-resistant infection (I wonder if, in classic supervillain style, he unintentionally revealed his secret weakness: what if the only way to defeat him permanently is to inject him with bleach? [NOTE TO THOSE WHO ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH MY WRITING AND PHILOSOPHY: That was ironic; I am a pacifist. Please don’t actually try, or plan, to inject the President with bleach. Not even when he is the ex-President. (NOTE TO THE SECRET SERVICE: I know, I shouldn’t suggest harming the President of the United States. I still think it’s a funny joke, so I’m leaving it. I wouldn’t worry too much about the people who read this trying to actually pull it off. And if they somehow managed it, hey, now you can relax and stop feeling all that conflicted guilt and irritation from trying to preserve the life of a pustulent boil on the ass of America. [NOTE TO THE SUPER-SECRET CABAL WITHIN THE SECRET SERVICE THAT HAS BEEN SECRETLY PLOTTING TO REMOVE TRUMP SO YOU ALL CAN PROTECT SOMEONE YOU ACTUALLY RESPECT AGAIN: Try bleach. (Note to my students and fellow grammar/syntax nerds: this is my favorite part of nesting parentheticals like this:)])]), but it’s true. We won. We got past this hurdle.
So now what?
I’ve been seeing and hearing all kinds of advice about not giving up. Continuing the fight. Now is the time, activists say, to turn that anti-Trump fervor into fervor for new causes, to keep the same energy moving forward into the next fight for change and progress. I heard it on Pod Save the People this week (If you don’t know it, this is a weekly news commentary podcast with a focus on people of color and social justice, very well done and interesting and human — sometimes a leeetle too woke for me, but I still recommend it), I saw it on this Twitter thread shared by a friend on Facebook; I feel like I’ve seen this everywhere. Now, whenever I see something like this, the bottom falls out of my stomach; so I may be noticing this sort of thing more, rather than seeing it a whole lot, but it feels like I’ve seen it a whole lot, and I don’t like it.
Because I don’t think I can do that. I am spent. I am drained. If somebody wants me to turn my anti-Trump energy towards a new focus, the bad news is that I don’t have any of it left. The good news is that I am quite willing to move to the next focus, the next fight. I don’t believe this is the end of the issue; the victory we’ve won is incredibly important, like saving the country important — but it’s not the last victory we need to win. I get that. I am with that. I am onboard.
I just don’t have it in me to fight. Not right now. I feel bad about it, but that is the truth. I’m close to my edge. I have of late had bouts of depression and despondency that I have never experienced in my life before now. I struggle with things that should be easy, my patience is gone, I can’t sleep, I’m not writing or reading much right now. Pretty much everything is wrong.
Not everything: my wife is still my perfect partner, and I love her deliriously. My pets are delightful. My friends are fun and supportive. All these things bring me at least some joy, every day and every week and every month. And though it doesn’t necessarily bring me joy, I do have a job and a reliable income, which gives me a sense of security that millions of people — billions of people — are lacking. I am grateful for all of those things. But still, pretty much everything else is wrong, and so:
I need to stop fighting.
I recognize that it is a privilege that I can talk about not fighting; because my life and my freedom is not at risk. It is somewhat at risk because we are living through a pandemic and the situation is deteriorating; I am at a bit higher risk than some because I work for a school that insists on staying open and having students and teachers in person in the classroom every day. But also, I am healthy and I have insurance — and I am not wedded either to glorified ignorance nor superstition, so I listen to the warnings and take reasonable precautions — so the risk is as minimal as I can make it. It’s easier for me to step back from fighting for police reform or environmental action or to protect reproductive rights than it is for people who are at risk from those dangers.
That makes me feel bad, that I can allow myself to step back from the fight while others can’t: but that guilt doesn’t give me the energy or the wherewithal or the resources to fight. It just makes me feel bad, which adds to my current emotional burden.
(And if anyone reading this is thinking, “Pssh, get out of your feelings, Snowflake” — I mean, considering my writing and position and my probable audience, it seems very unlikely that anyone is; but I think there may be some people who still subscribe to the image of men hitching up their gunbelts and soldiering on, because I still think that, a lot of the time — let’s recognize that all the strong silent men of the past drank and smoked themselves to death by age 65. So let’s be clear about what actually works and what we think sounds like it should work, maybe, but really doesn’t. “Sucking it up” is fine when you’ve stubbed your toe. Sucking up your looming despair just makes everything worse.)
I don’t mean to whine (And again, my probable audience probably doesn’t see this as whining, but I watched Westerns when I was a kid, so I feel the need to address this) because I also realize that there are people who are having a much harder time with the same issues I’m having right now, the stress and anxiety and depression, which for others is compounded by other and greater dangers and problems, problems that I don’t have. I want to do two things: I want to be honest about how I feel, as that is the healthiest thing for me to do for myself; and I want to let other people who may feel the same way know that they are not alone.
If you are exhausted, you are not alone.
If you want to join the fight, to keep fighting, to do the right as you see the right, you are not alone.
But if you just can’t do it right now, you are not alone.
So that’s where I am. I want to do a lot of things. I want to write to politicians and urge them to do the right thing. I want to join organizations and show up and participate — and I suspect that my writing skills could actually prove an asset to those fighting for the causes I believe in. I don’t want to join phone banks or knock on doors or fundraise, but I want to want to do those things, and if things were different I’d do them whether I really wanted to or not. I want to donate lots and lots of money to lots and lots of causes.
But instead, I’m going to stop fighting. I’m going to take care of myself.
It sounds stupid to me (Again, trying to be honest, and I grew up watching Westerns, and also wonderfully chauvinistic and hypermasculine shows like Buck Rodgers or The A-Team — and, yes, The Dukes of Hazzard, too) because I don’t fit into a category of people who have problems and need care. I’m a healthy straight white American male with an upper-middle class upbringing: I should be fine. I’m afraid to take care of myself, too, because there are others who rely on me, and it feels to me like I can’t take time for myself without leaving them hanging, and I don’t want to do that: it feels like I’m compounding my — what, my negligence? My dereliction of duty? What is it when a teacher doesn’t take care of his students, when a husband doesn’t take care of his wife, when a pet-papa doesn’t take care of his sweet little 60-pound Boxer-mix princess? When a liberal/progressive doesn’t take part in the fight for social justice and a functioning democracy? It’s my sin, right? My wrongdoing? After all, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. If you’re not part of the problem then you’re part of the solution. All those memes about the German people allowing the rise of the Nazi Reich, the passage in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” when he talks about how the listless superficial support of white liberals is a greater danger than the vigorous opposition of white racists; how can I stop fighting in the face of all that? How can I do nothing right now? However tired I am, surely there is something else I can do? However upset I am, however anxious and depressed, surely there is something I can do? And people are full of advice: if you can’t march in protest, then join a phone bank, write letters, donate donate donate. Take action. Don’t lose the momentum. Don’t stop.
Enough. I must stop listening to these idiotic voices in my head telling me to ignore how I feel and press on forever. They are not telling me the truth. They are not the voices that matter to me, not the people who I care about and who care about me; all of those people tell me to take care of myself, to take it easy, to not put myself under too much stress. Another moment of honest truth: my wife tells me this all the time, and my friend and fellow teacher Lisa; but they are the only ones because I never talk about how I feel to anyone else. Anyone asks me how my day is, and I say it’s — fine. Doing good, I say. Sometimes, with my students, with my parents, I will share that I am not in truth doing that great, but I also immediately get angry and defensive about it, or I breeze right through and change the subject, and don’t allow anyone else to sympathize with me or tell me that it’s okay to not be okay. It is also true that my parents make me feel bad for feeling bad, and my students respond to my sorrow with their own sorrows rather than sympathy for mine; when they do that I feel the need to sympathize with their sorrows, which is hard and draining, and just makes me feel more hopeless and helpless, and also bad for feeling that way; so there’s not a whole lot of impetus to be honest about my current state, most of the time. So I’m usually not. But I want to be, and that’s why I’m doing this, and ignoring the discomfort I feel in writing an entire blog this long about how I don’t feel very good right now.
I don’t feel very good right now, and that’s why I’m writing this, and why I’m not writing much of anything else. That’s the truth.
Here are some other truths:
I spend too much time on social media, particularly arguing on social media. I shouldn’t do it, because the people I’m arguing with are never going to change their minds because of anything I say. I do think there is value in pushing back against ignorant or dangerous or harmful ideas; and I recognize there is some audience reading those arguments on social media who may be more thoughtful and may get something out of my arguments more than my actual opponent will; but it is draining. I spend time on social media because it feels easy and it feels like relaxation — I see memes and laugh, I see videos of cute animals and smile, I see that my friends share my likes and dislikes, my passions and skepticisms, and I feel connected — but I spend a fair amount of that time trawling for arguments, and then continuously going back and arguing again and again and again. I suspect I do this because I am not doing other and more important things, but it’s not a replacement for good and useful action: it’s a waste of time and my limited resources, and a source of unnecessary and unproductive frustration. So I need to stop. That’s the truth.
Being a high school teacher is both very stressful and draining, and also very important; it feels like a copout to say I don’t spend more time fighting for the causes I want to fight for because I spend all my time fighting to make my students less ignorant, but it’s also true: it is a fight, and I fight it hard, every day. They don’t like to read, they don’t like to write, they don’t want to do work, they don’t know how to relate to and understand other people; every day I try to help them do all of those things better, and also understand why they should do all those things, and I try to find reasons that are specific and personal to them. All of that takes energy and passion, and hope and determination, and confidence and faith that what I am doing is the right thing. Meanwhile my school and my society seem bound and determined to tell me that it is not the right thing, determined to get in the way of my and my students’ success: and so I have to fight them, too, have to keep them from shifting my priorities and effort away from what matters, have to avoid the pitfalls and traps they set for me, have to discern when they are genuinely trying to help and when they are just trying to look good at the expense of the real work. All of that takes effort, too. I spend that effort every day.
I think it is vitally important that we recognize that none of us have it easy: that all of us are fighting in our own lives for our own success, every day; taking on other causes is already dipping into our reserves, taking from our reservoir of strength and hope and resolve what may not be there to take for much longer.
We all fight in our own ways, and with our own capacities. I will not be joining phone banks or door-knocking because I am an introvert, and what’s worse, I’m an introvert in an extrovert’s job, so I have to use up all of my socializing energy just to get through my day. If I was still a janitor (And I frequently ask myself why I am not still a janitor — but the reason is because what I do now is important) then maybe I could participate more; but I’m not. If I was an extrovert then I would be happy to go out and talk to people about causes I believe in; but I’m not. If I was rich I would give all kinds of money away; but good grief, I am most assuredly not. And many if not most of the people out there who tell me, who tell us, to fight and keep fighting are not in situations like mine. They may, as I said, be closer to the issues, in more danger because of the problems than I am in; but that doesn’t mean they have jobs as hard as mine is, or proclivities as unsuited to organizing and rallying as mine are. Wishing it was different, or even just pondering what it would be like if it were different, is a waste of time and energy: this is the situation. This is the truth. I’m not lying to myself, and it’s not a dodge or a copout: I am an introvert, and I work very hard at being a teacher, and I am tired. And I need to take care of myself, no matter how stupid or guilty it might make me feel to say that, because if I use up everything I have, if I fail, if I fall: then — and only then — will I be letting down those I love, and those who love me.
And my sweet little 60-pound Boxer mix princess needs her daddy.
So what’s next?
You need to think about what’s next. Think seriously, think truthfully. Think what needs to be done, yes — but also think about what you need, and what you are capable of. If you are ready to start the next round, then get in there and start fighting, keep fighting. If you have to pause to take a deep breath, then do it: breathe as deeply as you can. Keep breathing. If you have to take a few hours for a meal and a glass of wine and a bath and a nap, then do all of that. And do it again next week. If you need a few days for a vacation, or for a retreat and a rest, then do that. If you don’t know what you need or how long you need — and in my case, I do not; part of my struggle with this is that this struggle is new to me, has never been like this, has never been this hard before, and so I do not know what to do, I do not have a ready answer for what is really wrong with me or how to deal with it — then don’t try to decide in advance what you need or how long it will take to take care of yourself. Just take care of yourself until you feel better. Just do that.
Take care of yourself. For me. And I will take care of myself. For you.
Just Dusty 
