Not This Asshole Again ⁂ starbreaker.org

Yeah, it really looks like Donald Trump won the Electoral College and the popular vote.

a meme showing Dark Helmet from Spaceballs with the text, ‘aw jeez, not this shit again’

This guy, and his running mate JD Vance, are living proof that money can’t buy class or principles, and yet people voted for them. I am not at all pleased with the projected US election results, but I find I’m not surprised.

why I think the Democratic Party lost the election

wages and prices: Everything costs too much and nobody gets paid enough. Everything seems to go up but our wages. The Federal minimum wage is still $7.25/hour, too many people still don’t get time and a half for overtime, and wage theft might as well be legal. The Republicans probably won’t fix this, but the Democrats certainly haven’t. You can’t say the economy is doing well just because the stock market is up when most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and the rent is still too damned high. Hell, I make a little under a hundred grand a year before taxes and I still feel like money’s tight. How the fuck do you think somebody making only twenty grand a year feels, especially if they’ve got kids?
social justice: The Democrats ran on the wrong issues. I can say “trans rights” until the rest of Hell freezes over, and most likely will because trans people never did me any harm, but a lot of Americans don’t give a fuck. A lot of other Americans are actively hostile to the idea. Likewise, abortion isn’t enough. Gay rights aren’t enough. Black lives mattering isn’t enough. What the Democratic establishment doesn’t seem to get is that as far as the rich are concerned, when it comes to the poor no lives matter.; I don’t want to dismiss social justice issues entirely. However, you might have noticed that there’s a class war going on. You’re not going to make social justice happen without economic justice. Egalitarian ideals don’t pay the rent.
DEI and white girlboss feminism: The Democrats put too much emphasis on DEI and white girlboss feminism. Why should I care that most billionaires are men when I think billionaires should not exist? Why should I care that most CEOs are men when I think that CEOs are grossly overpaid relative to people who actually work for a living?; On a more practical level, why should I care what color my boss is, or whether my boss is a man or a woman? Either way, they’re still my boss and have the power to fuck me over with near impunity since I work under at-will employment. I sure as hell don’t give a damn about my boss’ race, religion, sex, or gender — not when I’m working for a fixed salary and not getting time and a half for overtime and don’t even have the legal right to refuse unpaid overtime without retaliation. The Democrats keep running on ideals that play in academia, but don’t play at the polls.; Frankly, I’m surprised that conservatives aren’t creaming themselves with delight over corporate America’s embrace of DEI instead of treating it as some kind of Marxist plot to subvert the Republic. It’s the perfect divide-and-conquer approach to union busting; instead of opposing unionization directly, keep your workers distracted by using identity politics to pit them against each other.
foreign policy: Too many people who might have voted Democratic probably didn’t vote at all because of foreign policy problems like Gaza. I’m not happy about what’s going in in Israel, either, but it’s almost as if a lot of Democrats who think Kamala Harris isn’t doing enough about the Likud regime’s atrocities seem to think that Trump will somehow do better. That’s about as likely as me living long enough to retire.; You know what’s also improbable? Americans giving a damn about atrocities in countries they can’t find on a map when they live paycheck to paycheck. Democrats need to get their shit together.
the ‘fuck you’ vote: It seems that knowing Trump is a convicted felon and a known rapist is just peachy fucking keen with over 70 million American voters, as are the revelations that Trump sounds a hell of a lot like a Nazi. Never mind that he fomented an insurrection on 6 January 2021 rather than leave office. Maybe they think this is “fake news”.; Maybe they just don’t give a fuck about any of that, and want to stick it to a party they think represents everybody but them and a society they think doesn’t give a shit about them. I don’t really blame them for thinking the Democratic party doesn’t care about them; I blame them for thinking that the Republican party does. Both parties serve the richest among us; the Republicans are just more honest about it.
Joe Biden: The Democratic Party should not have let Joe Biden campaign for a second term at all. These clowns had four years to find a suitable successor and compose a platform that was actually worth voting for, and what did they do? They blew it, and and as a result, Donald Trump is going to get a second term. That’s just what we need: America’s bigoted uncle moving back into the White House.
Kamala Harris herself: Kamala Harris is a brown woman. Neither of which bothers me, but that’s a dealbreaker for too many Americans, as we’ve seen by her being projected to not only lose in the Electoral College but the popular vote. Frankly, the Democratic party needs to stop trying to push cultural change from the top down. It plainly isn’t working, and the party needs to figure out what’s more important: their idea of diversity or winning elections. Your ideology doesn’t mean shit if you don’t hold office.
messaging: The Democrats are lousy at propaganda, in my opinion. If I wasn’t already committed to opposing the Republicans, I’d have to take the time to read through an almost 100 page platform statement to find reasons to vote Democratic. Do you really think the average American voter is going to read that much policy wonkery before voting? Nobody has time for that. Nobody gets paid enough for that bullshit.

I would love to be wrong and see Kamala Harris win, but you’ve got to be realistic about these things. I would love to not feel like I’ve been conned into holding my nose, keeping my objections to myself, and voting for the lesser evil like an adult and a responsible citizen. Unless we see some of these red states go blue as the votes are fully counted, it probably isn’t going to happen.

And, frankly, I’m sick of the Democratic party. I’m sick of their incompetence and fecklessness. I’m sick of their inability to campaign on bread-and-butter issues that actually matter to Americans who work for a living.

Of course, a renewed and sustained focus on class in the Democratic Party is as likely to happen as monkeys flying out of my ass. The party of FDR and JFK is as long dead as the party of Lincoln, (Teddy) Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. I think I might drop my party affiliation. I’ve been a registered Democrat for years, but if this is the best the party can do, and if holding my nose and voting for neoliberals to oppose a Republican party that is increasingly blatant in its embrace of religious fundamentalism, white supremacy, and outright fascism doesn’t actually help, then to hell with it. Why should I feel obligated to vote for a party that does not serve people like me but still seems to feel entitled to my vote as a matter of duty or conscience, yet can’t reliably win elections?

Seriously, people, I’ve been seeing this bullshit for years. I registered as a Democrat so that I could help vote for progressive candidates in the primaries. Instead of running a progressive candidate, the party’s leadership picks a milquetoast or a neoliberal stooge they think is more “electable”. However, the chosen candidate proves incapable of winning in the general election. We saw it happen with John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and now Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders might not have done any better, but the Democratic Party needs to provide candidates with more to offer than, “I’m not a Republican.” That worked in 2020, but there was no way it would work again in 2024.

Some might say that because of these criticisms I’m not a “real Democrat”, but they can eat the corn out of my shit and choke on it. I’ve been voting a straight Democratic ticket since I turned 18 in 1996, and it doesn’t seem to be helping. I’ve been feeling like it’s time to stop caring. I mean, what more am I supposed to do? Work for free knocking on doors — and risk getting shot? Run for office myself — as if I could get elected.

It’s not like anybody is entitled to my vote, so why shouldn’t I vote as I please, even if that means a write-in vote for “none of the above”? Hell, I might as well have voted for my cat, Alice Cooper, or Cthulhu.

artwork of Cthulhu in a three-piece suit (image credit: Cthulhu for America)

Frankly, this system is fucking rigged. It was never a democracy. It isn’t even a republic any longer. It’s a goddamned plutocracy, and I want out.

But maybe that demoralization I’m feeling right now is the desired outcome. I still want to fight, dammit, but I’m just one man and my one vote plainly isn’t making a difference. I could buy a rifle, Catherine’s objections be damned, but a single angry man with a gun does not a revolution make.

I mean, who the hell would I try to shoot first? Not Trump; he’s merely a symptom of the underlying disease. The real problem is that too many oligarchs and reactionary intellectuals have been working behind the scenes to undermine the republic and undo every advance toward political and economic equality made since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration. These assholes have created a society where every job is inherently precarious, the American Dream is a joke, and people are desperate enough to listen to populist demagogues like Donald Trump. That’s not a problem I can fix with a gun. This is real life, not Final Fantasy, and the yearning for simplistic solutions to complex problems is what got us into this mess.

public-domain artwork depicting the execution of figures from the French Revolution — an early attempt at implementing technological solutions to complex sociopolitical problems (image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Nevertheless, the older I get the less patience I have for reasonable politics. It grows ever more difficult to argue against the logic of the guillotine. The problem isn’t who gets to be President for the next four years. The problem is that Congress has delegated entirely too much authority to the executive branch. The problem is that Congress has carte blanche to do was it pleases as long as they can hide behind the Commerce Clause. Hell, maybe the problem is that the government exists at all. But that’s anarchism. That’s crazy talk, isn’t it?

It’s times like this when outright anarchy seems almost reasonable. Why should I value the rule of law when the law protects the richest among us without binding them and binds the rest of us without protecting us? That’s not going to change whether Kamala Harris ekes out a win or Donald Trump gets his second term.

This is why people suggest that there’s no meaningful difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Regardless of which party claims electoral victory, it’s billionaires and corporations who win. In the meantime, the rest of us are fighting fires with empty words while the banks get fat, the poor stay poor, the rich get rich, and the cops get paid to look away as the one percent rules America.

cover artwork for Queensrÿche’s 1988 album — an album that should not still be relevant in 2024

Regardless of what I think or how I feel, we seem to be stuck with Donald Trump as President again. We also have the guy who once called Trump “America’s Hitler”, JD Vance, likely to serve as Vice President. That’s a hell of a way to deter further attempts at assassinating or impeaching Trump; even if somebody managed to do it, we’d be stuck replacing America’s Hitler with America’s Himmler. Only nobody ever thought Heinrich Himmler was the sort of guy who might sodomize a couch.

One almost wishes that Trump had been removed from office via impeachment and that Mike Pence had taken over. He’s a Christian fundamentalist, and therefore a right-wing authoritarian asshole, but at least Pence wasn’t constantly complaining about “childless cat ladies” or accusing Haitian immigrants of eating stray pets. And he did finally stand up to Trump; it only took him four years to find his backbone.

Basically? BOHICA. The next four years are going to be absofuckinlutely hilarious as long as you manage to avoid being deported for not looking white enough, summarily executed for driving while black, or consigned to a concentration camp because Trump thinks you’re “vermin”.

By the way, a lot of you single men who voted Republican probably aren’t going to have much sex for the next four years unless you’re willing to swallow your pride along with another man’s semen. Before you complain, remember that you’ve only yourselves to blame. Why should women have sex with men who voted for people that only value women for their ability to bear children?