I have less and less to say about Trump as this election draws to a merciful close. I just checked my FB memories and found that this is the same pattern for the last 3 cycles. In the last week of the 2016 and 2012 campaigns I was not struck by any scintillating burns or revelatory election thoughts. I want to get this thing over with. Now. I think it's the result of a few things...
1) our presidential elections are too long and I am exhausted listening to ppl's opinions, even if it's my own. Our ass backward system take 18 months...at least. If you factor in early bird fundraising, our elections take about 20-24 months of campaigning for a 4 year job. No other country spends this much time and money to elect its chief executive. After examining every corner, crevice, and crack of a candidate for up to 2 yrs, I have NOTHING new to say in the last week. If you are an undecided voter, I only have one question: who hurt you?
2) Fox News and social media has made arguing about facts less productive. A significant portion of our electorate just doesn't listen to certified information. There is no pie chart or graph I could create to convince the 90% of Republican voters that statistically this is the worst public health crisis in a hundred years. They love Trump. The death and sickness and poverty and lies? Well it's not happening in their world. They would pivot to 'but Obama and the swine flu' and then I would say 'the swine flu only killed 10,000 ppl' and they would say 'according to Qanon the swine flu killed 15 million Americans' and I would say 'where are you getting this information from' and they would brilliantly counter with 'online. I do my own research.' And that's pretty much the end of the conversation. If I tell you that it was sunny last Tuesday and you say 'no it was raining old Reebok sneakers' and I show you the National Weather Report and you show me a blogspot from some guy in Montana snorting crank then we are not having an Oxford-style debate. There is no court of law that would equate a trained scientists using scientific tools on the same level with a radical who just screams their passion. And yet, in the court of public opinion, the two sides are often considered equal.
3. On the day before the 2012 election I turned on Fox News for fun. I wanted to see if reality was going to sink in. All the morning heads were breaking down the polls and predicting...a Mitt Romney blowout. The only question they had for each other was how big would the win be for their masterful leader? It was like an auction where you bid with higher levels of cult-like lunacy. One correspondent said Romney would win 300 electoral votes easy. Pssshaw!! Only 300?!? That was weak. Another commentator said it would be at least 320...no, 350...do I hear 400? Yeah, Romney might even take Massachusetts and NY. I was literally laughing out loud until I couldn't breath. These were grown adults with facts responsible -according to the federal laws- with trying to report the truth. Then i stopped laughing. I looked closer and I could see the crazed cult like blank stare in their eyes. It was the look of fear and fried brain cells. The look of being stuck between 'keeping your job and keeping your conscience.' Guess what they choose? Of course the 2012 election was over by about 8pm and Obama won easily. Romney's campaign actually had an elaborate fireworks display set to go off for their blowout victory. That's when I realized...
4. we may have reached the point of no return. It is one thing for 'Tammy with the Frosted Tips' to spout crazed beliefs not based in facts. It's quite another thing for reporters with the facts right in front of them to look up at the camera and try to out-lie each other. There are people who really believe Fox News. And they do have actual fact checkers and poll experts working at the news company. The execs just choose to not use them. It wouldn't be so bad if the modern conservative movement wasn't steeped in white fright and fragility. If you lie to black people and black people die in massive waves, we will not trust you again -no matter what your race is- because our survival is not propped up by theories of exceptionalism. Our survival is based on shrewdness. Thinking is a MUST to live. But for non-college educated white people their cultural survival is based in their devotion to whiteness. Whiteness trumps country, Christianity, and even facts. So you can have someone lie to them again and again, kill 300,000 Americans and still win the majority of white voters. How can you have a thoughtful discussion about fixing a nation's problems with someone whose primary objective is to re-affirm a racist societal structure that created the problems? It's like trying to get a snake to stop eating its tail after its taken the first bite. The snakes is in pain and its only reptilian thought is to continue its predatory instinct in order to take the pain away. The snake will eat itself alive to keep its identity rather than unclench its jaws and show mercy to the prey...which is its own self.
America is eating itself alive like a crazed snake. Every argument only makes a certain segment of the white population bite down harder on disinformation and death.
If pussy grabbing, raping, locking kids up, killing 1 out of every 1,000 Americans, destroying the economy, kicking 8 million people into poverty, tax cheating, destroying our agriculture, and encouraging Nazis to organize didn't convince you..what could I possibly say to break the fever?
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