Listen, I’m not going to tell you what to do
Listen, I’m not going to tell you what to do
And I shouldn't have to at this point.
I got really sick at the end of 2020. Really, really sick, like I don’t remember much of December (though it wasn’t all bad, I don’t remember watching Wonder Woman 1984 on Christmas Day, I’ve been told it was terrible). One of the last clear memories I have from that time was when the dust had settled after the Presidential election and Biden was officially confirmed as the winner. I remember cheering like my team had won the World Series, and, of course, an overwhelming sense of relief. The good guys won, and more importantly I wouldn’t have to worry about this shit for another four years.
Then of course, there was January 6th, the same day I was discharged from the hospital after almost dying. I was too busy dealing with paperwork and various visits and finalizing procedures to know what was going on until after I left the hospital, and though I was horrified and angered at the whole shameful affair, my predominant feeling was disappointment: I guess I won’t get a break from this shit for a little while after all.
And so, here we are, four years later. The longest and shortest four years of my (and probably a lot of other people’s) life. There hasn’t been a single day, even immediately following Biden’s inauguration, where we haven’t had to think about the next election, not a minute to breathe and be glad that this time the right person had won, and that maybe the ship could be righted. Not one day has gone by where we haven’t had to be subjected to another atrocious thing Trump either said, did, or was planning to do.
Where we had hoped that Trump’s presidency had been an aberration, and that certainly his robust support of the events of January 6th would cause him to lose support, instead his supporters became more angry, more unhinged, more eager to resort to violence if that’s what it took to get their man back in power. Trump’s team was more open about taking cues from the Nazi playbook, and how when they said “Make America Great Again,” it had nothing to do with freedom and opportunity, but the preservation of whiteness and Christian values, though only those that controlled and oppressed women.
That was merely scary. What was terrifying was watching the mainstream media begin an inexplicable campaign to minimize Trump’s increasingly violent rhetoric, and the nightmare scenario of Project 2025, in favor of focusing on the idea (not unwarranted, mind you) that Biden was too old for a second term in office, if not too old to complete the first one. Virtually everything Trump said or did, all of which pointed to the fact that either his mind was going or he had given up any pretense of not being one of the most purely malevolent human beings who ever walked the earth, was dismissed (or ignored), while Biden stumbling over a word during a speech or looking a little tired warranted days of editorials and interviews from so-called experts and pundits who speculated that there was a mass conspiracy among Democrats to hide from the public that Biden was about one step away from being taken to a nice farm upstate.
So fine, Biden withdrew himself from the 2024 election, which in the future will be considered a heroic act of patriotism, real patriotism, not this “covering my lifted, coal-rolling pick-up with Trump flags and driving around intimidating my neighbors” bullshit. Then the narrative changed: though Trump became more and more unglued, and his running mate JD Vance began saying such alarming things as “people who don’t have children shouldn’t have as much voting rights,” not only was it still minimized, but focus turned to Kamala Harris, and how she didn’t give enough interviews (she did), and wasn’t transparent about her platforms (she was), and has a weird laugh (she doesn’t), and maybe lied about working at McDonald’s over 40 years ago (she probably didn’t, and even if she did how does that compare to storing top secret documents in your fucking bathroom).
And on top of all that, there was still, like in 2016, an overwhelming focus on “real America,” and what “real Americans” (white, Republican, mostly Christian) felt about the direction the world was moving towards. Democrats were repeatedly chided about our inability to “reach across the aisle” and understand Republicans and why they were so angry and threatened, while Republicans were never encouraged to understand why Democrats believe that access to safe abortions, supporting LGBTQ+ people, and affordable healthcare are all good things. And of course, we were reminded (usually after a mass shooting) that we weren’t doing enough to acknowledge that young white men were feeling increasingly lonely and disenfranchised, and that’s why they turned to people like snake oil salesman Joe Rogan, and rape enthusiast Andrew Tate. Republicans aren’t expected to dial down the violent, hateful, racist, sexist rhetoric to win an election, but rather Democrats who need to let go of such radical ideas as feeding hungry children.
It’s the hidden agenda that keeps me up at night. What did The New York Times stand to gain from spending an entire summer depicting Biden as a lump of quivering, mindless jelly stuffed inside a suit, before only just in the past two weeks finally reporting that Trump talking about using the military against other Americans for the crime of disagreeing with him might be a little alarming. What drove Anderson Cooper to feign pearl-clutching shock at a guest describing Trump as exactly what he is, a fascist? The simple explanation is that all these people know that Trump is a terrible human being, and an immediate danger to the stability of the country, but he also makes for great copy. Biden? Biden is boring. He likes dogs and loves his wife. What kind of story can you get from that? But Trump, whether in interviews or on social media, is a goldmine of bizarre, stupid, and/or unsettling quotes and soundbites. They love Trump because people simply cannot look away from Trump, even if they don’t support him. It’s a sickness.
Or maybe it’s something more insidious. Maybe it’s what happens when you let people like Jeff Bezos buy an entire major newspaper, or Elon Musk single-handedly turn the former Twitter into his personal “marketplace of ideas,” those ideas being that there aren’t enough white people in America, and that supporting trans teenagers is exactly the same as sexually assaulting them. Or part of a bigger orchestration by people like Peter Thiel, and agreed upon by lackeys who love money more than they love democracy. My mind keeps going to these possibilities, and it makes me angry and frustrated because I start feeling like a Dale Gribble conspiracy theorist.
I’ve always been enthusiastic about voting. I never believed, even after moving to New York, that my vote didn’t count, or that it was a fruitless effort to deny the fact that all politicians are the same, that voting was pointless, and none of it mattered. I take my civic duty seriously. Call me naive, that’s fine. I didn’t love Hillary Clinton, but I happily voted for her against a clown in a cheap suit. I didn’t love Joe Biden, but I happily voted for him to keep that same clown in a cheap suit from being able to be President a second time. And I would love to say that I happily voted for Kamala Harris (who I do like and think will be a good President) to keep that very same clown from winning.
But, instead, I’m exhausted.
I voted early, and all I could do when I read over my ballot was let out a long, tired sigh, and ask myself a terrible question: will any of this matter? With all the orchestrations behind the scenes that seem to be going on, with the most brazenly corrupt Supreme Court in American history on the bench, with Mike Johnson’s smug little “secret,” with Elon Musk bribing people to vote (I’m sorry, “fill out a survey”) and Merrick Garland doing bafflingly fuck-all about any of it, all in cahoots with the media, will anyone’s votes matter? I don’t know who to believe, the massive, passionate crowds who show up to see Harris speak, or the polls that say that, somehow, Trump has, while not a commanding lead, an edge on her. How? How???? And yet, if you look on social media, those polls aren’t to be believed, they’ve been paid for by the GOP to discourage Democrats from voting. It’s a long, very successful gaslighting campaign, and I am tired.
But still, I did it. And I hope you do too (if you didn’t already). No matter what happens, it’s not pointless. It’s a vote for sanity, and dignity. It’s a vote confirming that most people do not believe that a political rally is the place for some of the dustiest, shittiest racist jokes imaginable, or to threaten violent revenge against your enemies, whether real or imagined. It’s wanting a President whose cabinet won’t be staffed with people who claim they have literal brain worms, or are building a David Koresh-esque compound for their family. It’s not wanting the country to be run by people who think that drinking unpasteurized milk is healthier for you than being immunized against a disease that killed over a million people in the U.S. alone over the past four years.
It’s a vote against people who want less safety regulations, less environmental protections, less public education, less benefits for immigrants and the poor, less social safety nets, and, of course, less access to safe and affordable abortion. They can’t agree on that quite yet, of course: some merely want it to go to the states (some of which have already begun banning it entirely), while others want it restricted to six weeks or less, and still others don’t want it available at all. Not even if you were raped. Not even if both you and the baby might die. Not even if you’re 12 years old and it’s your daddy’s baby. Not at all.
We gotta try, right? Hopefully, we will succeed, and we’ll push back hard enough to keep the insanity at bay for a little while. Will there be another January 6th? Oh, probably an attempt, no doubt, but presumably Harris and Co. will see it coming and prepare accordingly, even as talking heads on the news gnash and wail about how this isn’t who we are, when it very much is at least who some of us are. But if goodness doesn’t prevail, at least sanity might. None of these people will go away, but they’ll be held at bay for a little while, neutralized, and then when they all come roaring back to grotesque life in 2028 we can push back again, and again, and again, and as many times as it’ll take, until they’re all languishing in the dustbin of history. It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?