“She knew better than to envision any further: the future was a room with a warp on the floor.” – Tiffany Morris, “Night in the Chrysalis”
I’m writing this before Tuesday. I usually do. The reason, though, is because how I feel after the fifth straight MOST CONSEQUENTIAL election of my lifetime transcends electoral politics. Whatever candidate takes the oath in January, we are in a bad, bad place in this country.
Let’s be clear: if it’s Harris, I’m stoked. It’s a thrill to vote for the first Black and Indian President, the first woman President—I do believe in the power of representation and symbols, and I think it’s great that those “HERE ARE ALL THE PRESIDENTS” posters in elementary schools are getting less white.
If it’s Trump? Good luck to you, me, and everyone else.
It’d be nice to vote for antiwar candidate. It’d be nice to vote for a candidate unafraid to talk about climate change. But war and fossil fuels make people money. So.
This season has seen Republicans fully embrace mask-off racism and fascism. It saw Democrats fully say “not only is genocide fine, you’re a fascist sympathizer if you call us out for funding genocide.” One party is transparently beholden to the odious greed and oozing racism of the world’s richest man, the other is more quietly beholden to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Troublingly, we saw billionaires block journalism—the high-profile endorsement killings at LA Times and WaPo are one thing, but the obviousness with which the press was cheering for Trump (at worst) or impotent to cover him honestly (at best). I wish just about everything in the world was different.
After the 2016 election, I was reminded just how racist this country is. The 2020 election taught me just how much capitalism will fight socialist movements, and Democrats are actually fine with a little sexual harassment if it’s their guy. The 2024 election season—which has been happening since 2015 but depressingly really kicked off on October 7, 2023—has taught me that the powers that be really are that amoral, really are that okay with other people’s death and suffering as long as it’s not at their doorstep. Also please stop pointing out how okay they are with genocide, it makes the food at their dinner parties taste ashen.
If there’s anything the last nine years—post-Trump descending the escalator—has taught us, it’s that the rich will easily and happily go along with fascism. We saw the media sanewash Trump after spending all summer freaking out about Joe Biden’s sundowning. We see media going extra hard on Harris—she’s not talking about policy! She’s not doing interviews! Why does she never talk about policy! I can’t believe she doesn’t have any policies! If only we knew her policy proposals!—and we see every rich person absolutely lining up for Trump because, hey. They made billions during the pandemic. Expanding the police state so that the federal government can set up concentration camps when the mass deportation plan goes tits up? That’ll make them money, too! Who gives a shit about human suffering?
Who gives a shit about human suffering?
Who gives a shit about human suffering?
Who gives a shit about human suffering?
The last Trump admin saw a massive transfer of wealth to the upper crust, at a time when we’ve had decades of massive transfer of wealth to the upper crust. Income inequality is bad and it’s going to continue to get worse. These types of things are incredibly hard to fix, which is why I enthusiastically voted for Harris. It can always get so, so much worse. While I am appalled and horrified by the Biden admin’s arming of Israel—a war-crime committing settler-colonialist state that’s essentially Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa rolled into one—I fully believe Trump would give Bibi Netanyahu nukes, and a nuked Palestine is not a free Palestine.
As much as I hate Joe Biden—and I hate that sexual harassing, segregationist sympathizer as much as I’ve ever hated any politician—he had some good stuff on labor and energy during his mostly failed and embarrassing term as president. Trump is all gas no brakes on literally every awful thing you can think of. A Harris administration will do some good things, and will not hand the country over to the billionaires.
Which brings us back to the point of this post: there is a real enemy. Trumpism is not going away because JD Vance is not going away, or more accurately, Peter Thiel is not going away. Jeff Bezos is not going away. Elon Musk is not going away. The need to raise the tax rate to 70% on any income over $10 million or whatever AOC proposed a while ago? That’s still here, no matter what happened yesterday.
It’s the day after Tuesday. No matter what happened yesterday, the work continues. The war has to stop. Burning fossil fuels has to stop. The billionaires gotta go. The work continues.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris