Trump

Thoughts on July Fourth

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This is not a day I currently celebrate; my current Facebook cover photo pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject.

White text on a black background quoting the final line of Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Trump v. United States: ‘With fear for our democracy, I dissent.’ The final two words are in red.

Don’t fall for the propaganda and disinformation campaigns (Biden’s age is just this cycle’s “but her emails”, the headlines about his health are the same as were run about Hilary’s health back then, he has no intention of stepping down, it would just cause chaos and problems if he did, and a vote for Biden is also a vote for Harris if that’s who you’d prefer).

In your local elections, vote third party all you like (and push for ranked choice voting so there’s a better chance of your candidates winning), but on the national stage, please, I’m begging — put pragmatism and the health of our country over pure idealism. While a multiparty system would be better, we only have that in theory, and the reality is that there are only two candidates who can actually win. A third-party vote may arguably be a vote against Trump, but it’s not a vote for Biden and — however little you may think of Biden — getting him into office is the best (and quite likely only) chance there is of you being able to support your third party candidates at any level in the future.

Remember that voting for either candidate isn’t just about the individual person, but also all the people they bring with them as part of their administration. Biden is imperfect, but has done a lot of good under very trying circumstances, and is surrounded by people who support him and help him work towards a better country. Trump and his cronies are focused on nothing less than the dismantling of our democracy and the installation of a fascist dictatorship. (And they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.)

It’s also about correcting the direction of the SCOTUS. Trump was able to grab control of the Supreme Court by appointing three justices during his first term and there’s a reasonable chance that more vacancies will open over the next presidential term. We’re seeing now how much those appointments can affect things long after the president who made the appointment has left office. If Biden (or Harris) is in office when the next openings come up, we have a chance at reclaiming some amount of sanity for that branch of the government.

And when it’s time — vote. Too many people are convinced that voting doesn’t matter, when we’ve seen time and time again how slight swings one way or another can make huge differences. If those of us left of the Republican party (whether just a little left or way the hell out there) were even remotely as good at mobilizing, showing up, and voting as the Republicans are, instead of throwing fits that we don’t have the ideologically perfect candidate and staying home and pouting or giving a “protest vote”, we’d be in far better shape. We might even have an ideological center that’s closer to the center, instead of a left-wing party that’s in line with other nations’ right-wing parties, and a right-wing party that’s determined to out-Hitler Hitler.

Don’t like Biden? That’s fine. You don’t have to like him. But please recognize that with a Biden administration, you’ll have the freedom to make your complaints known, and hopefully affect the system and make change. That won’t be an option if Trump wins again. If nothing else, vote for the party you’ll have a better chance fighting against.

And maybe eventually this will feel like a holiday worth celebrating once more.

Lots of Reason to Laugh

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One glorious paragraph from the Intelligencer’s attempt to dig into the story behind the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle, Four Seasons Total Landscaping: The Full(est Possible) Story:

Whether it’s war and peace or public relations and gardening, sorting out the truth is a complicated endeavor when it relates to Donald Trump. Everyone involved in anything, no matter the size, no matter how stupid, seems to lie as a first resort, or to know very little, or to lie about knowing very little, or to know just enough to send blame in another direction, and the person in that direction seems to lie also, or to know very little, or to lie about knowing very little, but perhaps they have a theory that sends blame someplace else, and over there, too, you will find more liars, more know-nothings, and before long, a whole month will have passed, and you still haven’t filed your story about how the president’s attorney wound up undermining democracy in a parking lot off I-95 on a strip of cracked pavement in a run-down part of a city that ordinarily would command no consideration from the national political class or the very online public or the equally online mainstream media, which, when forced to look, found lots of reason to laugh.

A wish for a Best-Case Scenario

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I’m so tired of this year.

Crossing my fingers for the best-case scenario: Trump is actually ill. He ends up having a case that’s serious enough to keep him isolated and unable to debate or campaign for at least the next few weeks, but not so bad that Pence assumes the Presidency (and possibly brings anti-Trump Republicans back to vote for a ticket with Pence at its head). His sycophantic followers, used to gleefully following a bellicose, bellowing bully of a god-king, have to reconcile that with reality and decide if they still support a frail, sickly man, laid low by the very thing that he told them shouldn’t be worried about and that they decried as a hoax. From his sickbed in isolation, he watches in impotent fury as his campaign crumbles, his family and advisors turn on each other as they scramble to hold on to whatever power they can, his base stays home, either unwilling to brave a virus that suddenly seems real or simply uninterested in supporting a mere mortal, anti-Trump Republicans and Republicans unwilling to vote for someone in undeniable ill health either don’t vote or vote against him, and Biden/Harris solidly and unequivocally win the election.

We’ve had a year of worst-case scenarios, of course, so the odds are against this. But I can hope.

Linkdump for July 16th through July 30th

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Sometime between July 16th and July 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

More Shaming

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Faced with the unceasing cruelty and degradation of the Trump presidency, liberals have not taken to marching around in public with assault weapons and threatening civil war. I know of no left-wing publication that has followed the example of the right-wing Federalist and run quasi-pornographic fantasies about murdering political enemies. (“Close your eyes and imagine holding someone’s scalp in your hands,” began a recent Federalist article.) Unlike Trump, no Democratic politician I’m aware of has urged his or her followers to beat up opposing demonstrators.

Instead, some progressive celebrities have said some bad words, and some people have treated administration officials with the sort of public opprobrium due members of any other white nationalist organization. Liberals are using their cultural power against the right because it’s the only power they have left, and people have a desperate need to say, and to hear others say, that what is happening in this country is intolerable.

— Michelle Goldberg,  We Have a Crisis of Democracy, Not Manners