Informing Ourselves to Death: Another Explanation of Why Harris Lost (Part 1)

We keep getting "deep dives" into why Kamala Harris lost and Donald Trump won. They can be big reasons, like racism and sexism, or the ability of Trump's campaign to exploit the anti-incumbent zeitgeist through bro podcasts and transphobia, or Harris and the Democrats courting anti-Trump Republicans while taking other Democratic voters for granted. 

But I will always blame voters more than I will blame campaigns because, ultimately, each individual American had to decide whether to vote and who to vote for. I'm a fan of simple explanations, and the simplest explanation, by far, is that the majority of Americans of voting age are stupid. I mean that in a few ways. If you stayed home and didn't vote because you don't care about any of this, you're stupid. If you didn't vote because you hated both candidates, you're stupid. People on the left who didn't vote or voted third-party because of specific issues? Stupid. If that includes you, then I mean you. Letting Donald Trump back into office is the stupidest thing this country has done since at least the Vietnam War. (Yes, it is stupider than electing him the first time.)

By far, though, and it's no contest, the absolutely stupidest voters were the ones who voted for Trump. Let me qualify that: if you voted for Trump, you're stupid or evil or some unholy combination of both, in which case you've probably been tapped to be in Trump's administration. I've gone on at length before about my contempt for Trump voters and my refusal to try to "understand" them. (As I've said, I won't treat them like children. I'll treat them like adults who made an adult decision that's objectively wrong and respond accordingly.)

Here's the thing that gets me about all this stupidity (and, believe me, I know people have been stupid forever). We exist in a time when the amount of information available to us at any moment is beyond comprehension. If you want a government report, you don't have to order it and wait for it to be delivered. If you want to read legitimate scientific and medical research, it's a few clicks away. It's all there. All the real information you could ever want. I don't expect everyone to want to access it. I don't expect everyone to have the time to look everything up. The point is that more facts are out there than ever before, as well as everything that proves those facts.

When pundits and politicians (primarily Democrats) talk about The Way Things Used to Be when it came to governing the country, one of the things they mean is that we used to have a relatively stable group of agreed upon facts on an issue. Politicians of both parties would look at crime statistics, for example, like those provided by the FBI, and then they'd argue about what to do as a result of those statistics. Democrats might argue for gun control and poverty programs. Republicans might argue for more guns and more cops and more incarceration. You had a group of facts interpreted through different ideological lenses. 

And, for the most part, that's how it worked on most issues: taxes, spending, foreign policy. Sure, there was hyperbole and posturing and accusations about how one side wanted to let criminals run free or the other side doesn't care about children being killed. There was manipulation of facts, sometimes egregiously (as in the Willie Horton ad in the 1988 election). But, again, a great majority of this had some basis in reality. Even if it was stretching the truth, it was still founded in some truth. (Yes, there are many, many exceptions you can come up with throughout our history, especially those based in racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and more.)

Somewhere in the 1990s, reality began to wither with the rise of the internet. Believe it or not, children, there was a huge conspiracy then about the supposed "Clinton Body Count," where millions of people believed that the then-President and First Lady, Bill and Hillary Clinton, were personally responsible for murdering or having murdered dozens of people. That one never went away. I heard people talking about in 2016 as if it were real. Then came the 9/11 truthers. And then came the lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and then we went to war based on that. That should have led to a rededication to reality. Of course, then social media kicked into high gear, and, well, that was it. 

So, despite all the information at our fingertips, information we had during all of these lies, a fantasy version of reality has taken over and infected everything, like some kind of slime mold you can't scrub away. 

What's my point? What's this got to do with Harris? More on that in a couple of days. 

To Make It Through the Next Four Years, Stop Hoping Someone Saves Us

Even though I've bailed on Uncle Elroy's Phantasmagorical Hellscape of Incel Nazis and Rapey Transphobes, I keep my ear to the social media wall over on BlueSky and Threads. And one thing that's bubbled up lately amid the shitting-oneself despair about the incoming Trump administration is a vague sense of hope because of the not really well-named "MAGA Civil War" over visas for foreign workers. It's a battle between the racist capitalists and racist isolationists over who is the better racist, the fight America deserves. Some are wondering if this will hinder Trump's agenda, which is really just "cause as much chaos to take as much money as possible until we die or are chased out of office."

Now, I'm not saying it's not well-named because we haven't gotten any fields covered with the corpses of MAGA foot soldiers, however gratifying that may be. I'm saying that because it doesn't matter what the MAGA freaks outside the administration want. Trump won. It's over. There is no war to be fought on any meaningful level until the 2026 midterms. Yes, everyone can position themselves in anticipation, but nothing anyone says will stop Trump from getting into office. But we're human, and we like to hope. We like to think that Trump will die in prison. We liked to think that Bob Mueller or Jack Smith or Kamala Harris would save us. We really wanna see Democrats throw a 14th Amendment Hail Mary pass. Perhaps we even need to think and believe that in order to keep going. I've said recently that we need to fight lost causes for that very reason. Today's lost cause can become tomorrow's victory.

I wanna offer an alternative idea here: Stop hoping for that miracle. That doesn't mean don't have a goal or a dream or whatever. But stop hoping that some magical deus ex machina is going to swing in and wave a stick and make it all go away. Stop hoping that past precedent shows us the future, as in "Well, in 1975, this happened so, obviously, it will happen to Trump." Stop hoping that Democrats in Congress will be able to slow down Trump's rolling meat grinder from leaving minced bits of the Constitution and tradition and everything else in the broken streets of America. Stop hoping that Trump and the Republicans will be a clusterfuck of dysfunction. Stop hoping that the courts will do something to mitigate the wreckage. When you stop hoping, you can clear your head and get to fucking work.

What's coming is a fucking nightmare. That's how I'm starting 2025. It's going to suck in ways that we can't even anticipate it sucking. I said in 2016 and I'll say now: It will be worse than you can imagine. And that's because I think that everything we're seeing shows that not only are the guardrails off, but that no one will be able to even find guardrails.

Trump is going to wield like a bloodstained hammer the Supreme Court's decision that anything the president does in his "official" duties is totally cool, even if it's something we might quaintly call a "crime." I believe wholeheartedly that when the courts step in to put a stop to whatever fuckery is afoot, Trump will ignore them and use the SCOTUS free pass as justification. That's not even to mention that it's likely that if a case makes it to the Supreme Court itself, the savage dicks in the majority will side with Trump.

And you can hope for process and law to save us here, but that's foolish, too. You can say, as some have, that the SCOTUS only gave Trump immunity, not everyone else who would carry out whatever criming he wants to do. So? Trump can pardon them from any federal charges. Hell, since preemptive pardons are all the rage, he can do that before they start to drag people out of their houses and lock them up without any due process. And if you think that due process is going to be followed, if you think that a "massive immigration court backlog" will slow them down, well, what do you think the camps will be for? To hold migrants until whatever kangaroo justice system is set up tosses them out. As for the states stepping in to somehow outmaneuver a Department of Homeland Security, Trump's "border czar" (one of many completely made-up roles Trump's created) said, "Either you help us or get the hell out of the way, because ICE is going to do their job." That promises a confrontation which might involve the military. Like I said, worse than you can imagine.

I'm not saying you should despair. I'm saying you should be ready for despair, be ready for what might happen, and use that shit to figure out where your energy for fighting can be used, whatever your income or general ability levels are. Start local. I joke around about there not being any future elections, but I don't think that's true, if only because states run them. Making elections secure from the ways Trump and the GOP can fuck with them is one of the most important things we can do, and that means organizing to toss out the assholes in your state legislatures who are making voting harder for some groups. Join organizations that are advocating for more state constitutional amendments on abortion rights. Get decent school board members elected. And find and support progressive media outlets because CNN and the rest of corporate media can get fucked. If things go full fascist at the federal level, any bulwark will at least slow shit down.

Right after the election, I texted a buddy, "I'm so exhausted by hoping." Hoping set me up too often for the almost inevitable failure of hope to win. But I'm never too tired to kick some ass. Too drunk, maybe. But never too tired. Fuck the new year. At best, it'll be a wash. But let's set shit up for the years beyond. 

(Note: Because caveats are necessary in this oversensitive age, I'm not saying you can't hope and work. I'm saying you can work better without the way I'm defining "hope" here. It's like if you get into an argument with your partner and think, "Well, when this is over, I know we'll have hot sex." That's gonna color how you argue, and you will find your unfucked ass out on the sidewalk.)

(This was originally published on my Patreon page for subscribers. You can join starting at $1 a month. You can do an annual subscription so you don't have to keep track of another monthly thing. But join in. The other subscribers are awesome, with smart, feisty comments and discussions.)

Haiku Review of 2024: Slow Haikus

Okay, one more round. While the vast majority of the haikus couldn't get past the election (which, well, we never will), a few other subjects came up, including the annual check-in from Hong Kong and, wait, sports? Enjoy the final dose of haiku:

From Tasha in NC:

The Fuck-ry

Black women stare now

At fools who won’t vote with sense

The fuck-ry cometh

From Earl in Nashville:

So much depended

On electing Kamala--

Damn those white chickens

From Mary in Minnesota:

Reality Bites

Vikings’ year at last?

Until they choke down the stretch.

Tale as old as time.

From AlContraire in Shawnee, KS:

Dumpster Ire

Dead child in the trash

Couldn’t afford to feed it

Then why was it born?

From Chris in HK:

Hong Kong's 45 Jailed Democrats

The law said they could

Xi JinPing said they couldn't

Guess who fucking won

From Jack in a deep red section of a blue state:

A Lesson On Consequences

This ain't Passover, 

Trump voters are not exempt;

ALL will feel this pain

From Kristina in Holland, PA:

Jimmy Carter died

He was very old

but why not someone shitty

I won't name instead?

From QSantiago on Planet Earth

2024 DONE!

Fuck off, ‘24!

We will never be the same

Trump and Musk did it

And from me:

Sad Billionaire

Being rich doesn't

Make you happy. Elon proves

Losers are losers.

If We Had Listened to Jimmy Carter

Everyone laughed 

At White House solar panels

As the world burned down.

Big, huge thanks to everyone who sent in your haikus this year. I read every single one of them, even if they sucked (and very few did). Let's kick this bullshit year out of the bed at last. Who knows what kind of lover the next year will be? I'm guessing rough and barbed, without a safe word. But we can do this, everyone. We can fucking tell them we won't be beaten down. 

Haiku Review of 2024: What We Do in the Haiku

Man, you all are pissed off in your haikus this year. I got a whole lotta variations on "Fuck you, [insert name]" and "We're fucked" and "Fucking Trump voters, man." 

From DJ in London, Ontario: 

No Thanks, Orange Cretin

Fifty-first state, huh?

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, Trump;

Canada’s all good.

From Dick Fritter of the Great White North: 

Fraud?

What happened to their

Massive fraud accusations?

Bullshit, bullshit. FUCK

From RG in Illinois:

Can't fix stupid...

Yep. Voted for him.

Punched myself right in the dick.

I'd do it again.

From Rob J in NYC:

Concepts of a plan

dawdle about in Trump's head

never to be free

From Nancy in the Pacific Northwest:

Our Mainstream Media

Sanewash the insane,

whitewash the incoherence,

greenlight a fascist.

From Esquire:

MAGA Originalist

I don't understand

Amendment One. Must rely 

on Amendment Two.

From Jim in CA:

Meanwhile, Justice Alito Sleeps Like a Baby

I’m pregnant.  What state

Do I move to?  Or is it

Another country?

And me:

It's Obvious

Anti-DEI

Is just racism from some

Butt-hurt white people.

Gaza Wasteland

I'm wondering when

it stops being defense and

Is just genocide

Okay, one more day of this and then we're done with this bitch of a year. Send 'em on: rudepundit@yahoo.com. And don't forget the form: a line of 5 syllables, a line of 7 syllables, and a line of 5 syllables. Title it if you want. Let's keep it going until the bitter end of the bitter times.

Haiku Review of 2024: Some Haiku Somewhere

Keep 'em coming, motherfuckers. Once again, I asked and you have already sent a shitload of haiku. Coming in from sea to dingy sea, you're once again defining the year with your simple, short poems. Here are a few of the absolute best I've read so far:

From Tom, missing friends in Asheville:

Ode to Climate Change

Helene's fury proved

That mountain towns are not safe

From hurricanes' wrath

From Heather in Minnesota:

Snow drifts white this eve.

Hate, greed, or war, no matter

Snow'll be red by morn. 

From Rabbitearz in L.A.:

Beware of Beardo

If that couch could talk...

That weird eyeliner guy is

Holding the NUKE CODES.

From Not Clever Enough to Think of a Clever Name: (me: oooh, meta)

Too Depressed to Think of a Title 

fight fight fight he said

as bullet tore through his ear

more guns than voters

From Debbie in Dallas:

OH, LOOK!

it's a guillotine

Sharpened and ready to go

Whom is it for - OH!

From TMangrove in Wisconsin:

Four More Years

I can’t I just can’t.

It’s hard. They are relentless.

I will not give in.

From VJ in NJ:

Suit Up!

We now stand against

Weaponized stupidity

A blitzkrieg of dumb

And from me:

Not Until the Sepsis Starts

A pregnant woman

Bleeding in a hospital

Parking lot, Texas

The Real Threat

Drag queens don't rape kids.

But in the church's rec hall

Your youth pastor does.

Keep on sending them in to rudepundit@yahoo.com. I've got dozens more to get through, but I want to get haiku'd in the face repeatedly. Make that happen, rude readers.

(Note: The titles of the posts will be variations on my favorite TV shows of the year, in case you're wondering.)

Haiku Review of 2024: 20th Anniversary of Reducing the Fuckery to a Size We Can Handle

That's right. Back in 2004, I did my own review of the year through the delicate poem with the incisive power of a stiletto made of metaphor. Then rude readers started sending me their own, which led to me just saying, "Well, fuck it. Join in." And you have joined in, emailing, at this point, over a thousand of the little bastards. So let's do it again. For the twentieth goddamn time. Let's skullfuck this bullshit year with haiku.

The deal is the same as it ever was. I'm a stickler for the form: three lines of 5 syllables, then 7, then 5 again. But the subject is wide open. Be serious, be stupid, be your incredible or fucked up you. Email them to rudepundit at yahoo dot com. Whichever ones make me laugh or make me cry or get me all hot and throbbing or some combination of two or three of those will be published on the blog. I'm the only judge here, and I'm probably drunk right now, so no insult if you don't get in. 

Give it a title. And include some name and place, like "F. B. from Trumpwillfuckusover, Alabama" or "Jackie from Tucson" (I'll miss you, What We Do in the Shadows) or "Elon's Burning Tesla from NYC."

Here's a few for inspiration:

The Consultants Fucked It Up

"Weird" was the best way

"Weird" said, "They're awful, just creeps"

Should have stuck with weird

A Thing I'll Never Understand

No one tried to stop 

Penny from killing Neeley.

Riders with blinders

When We Eat the Rich

I'll skip my portion.

Too full of hormones and shit.

Stringy with smug hate.

Okay, it's early and I'm out of practice. But now it's your turn. Flood me, motherfuckers. 

The Rude Pundit's Annual Nativity-palooza, Now with Bonus Cultural Insensitivity

Like movies about suicidal snowmen and tortured ghosts and pole-frozen tongues, some things are a tradition around the rude house. Beloved reruns are good for the soul. My favorites to trot out this week are the Invader Zim Christmas episode and Olive the Other Reindeer. Even here, in Left Blogsylvania, we can indulge in revisiting old posts.

Before Threads, Twixter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, Buzzfeed, and many other places you can get your fix of weird shit, I posted this Christmas blast back in 2004, updated yearly with new bits of freakishness (some links might not work anymore, but they were or are all real and unironic):

Xmas - And, lo, a small teddy bear will lead them:
In the days before Christmas, the Rude Pundit roamed his neighborhood, looking at the displays in the charming stores and corner markets. There he saw the agony of so many dichotomous feelings about this holiday. One window had a kneeling, praying Santa next to a baby Jesus in the manger. Santa's hat was off. He was balding. Another display had the jolly old fat man landing his sleigh and reindeer on the roof of the manger. Surprisingly, neither Mary nor Joseph seemed rattled by the noise, although a camel was looking upward, as if asking, "What the fuck?" The Rude Pundit loved that camel.

Ah, sweet camel, what the fuck, indeed. Christ and commerce, Alleluia. The Savior has been born and he thanks you for your presents. Santa showing that he'll even honor the king of the Jews in the land of Islam. There's no telling what it means (and don't get all up in the Rude Pundit's face about St. Nicholas). Except this: we want to embrace both things, good deconstructionists that we are: Santa, who soothes our greed, and Jesus, who promises us peace. Either way, we want them both to tell us we're good people, nice people. And, of course, guilt-ridden Christians want to make sure that Santa toes the party line, you know.

For the holiday, here's a few of my favorite nativity sets, none of which are intended to be mocking of the event:

That right there is the Veggie Tales Nativity. In case you don't know, Veggie Tales are cute vegetables who love Christ and salad tossing. The newborn savior up there is a carrot. Get it? A baby carrot? What a delight.


Holy shit, that bear nativity is one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever seen. Staring straight ahead with their dead eyes, it looks like a satanic cult sacrifice to some horrible bear-demon. Although, the three wise bears have provided snacks for the blood rite: salmon, honey, and berries. All go well with cub entrails.

Every year, I think, "I wonder if there's an even weirder nativity set that I can find" and every year I come across something where I think, "Yeah, that's friggin' crazy shit, man." Here, it's the snow people nativity, with a snow angel, a snow Joseph, a snow Mary, and horrible, smiling snow kings. Did Snow Mary give birth to Snow Baby Jesus? Or did they all just make Snow Baby Jesus out of snow? And the temperature in Bethlehem this time of year is in the 60s. Is that why they seem to be festooned with turds, to try to hold their globular shape a little longer?

That goddamn nightmare fuel isn't a lab experiment gone horrible awry. It's a bunch of white mice with eyes so wide they look like someone laced some cheese with meth and let the little bastards go crazy. It's gonna be horrible when baby Jesus mouse gets crucified in trap.

This is not to mention the Chickentivity, the Moosetivity, the Barntivity, the Native American Nativity, and the various Beartivities, all available unironically for your Christmas consumption.

And then there's the baby nativity:

You might think, "Oh, that's adorable. What's so wrong with it?" To which I can only inform you that the implication of it is that a baby Mary shoved a baby Jesus out of her baby vagina.

Speaking of implications, think of what this dog one means:  

This means there is a dog Pilate who will sentence dog Jesus to dog crucifixion. It means that there is a dog Mary Magdalene who is a dog prostitute. This is not to mention the dog centurions who routinely torture and kill dogs, the dog slaves who serve their dog masters, and the Jewish dogs who get blamed for everything. But don't worry. Dog Jesus will rise from the dead in three days. Have some damn kibble waiting for him. 

And to all a good night.

Oh, wait. What's that you say? You think that last one was kind of a weak one to end on? Well, then, fuck you. Here's the Day of the Dead nativity:

Yeah, you might think they're singing Christmas carols, but they're all screaming in horror and pain. Essentially, that's Christmas in the time of MAGA and Covid.

Oh, wait. What's that? Those aren't that bad after all we've suffered? Then how about these terrifying motherfuckers:

Or maybe that's just how we'll all look after climate change has its way with us.

All of those are preferable to this fucking thing here. This might be the first of these nativities to make me feel visceral anger. Check this shit out:

It's like someone was taking a crap in an IKEA bathroom and thought, "I've got it! The birth of our lord and savior, but stackable!" Imagine the fun you could have with these. I'm already thinking about arranging the Wise Men around Ass for a sticky menage. Mostly, though, this is just middle finger to your guests if you put this out, like you're saying, "Oh, you expect a nativity at Christmas? Suck on these posts."

Wooden blocks not your thing? Want something that's a bit more of a weapon so you can strike down the heathens who won't let you say, "Merry Christmas"? Maybe a little more Flintstone-ish? Then here's some fuckin' rocks. 

Not enough like the nativity you might see on the mantle of the leader of a forest cult dedicated to cannibalism and blood drinking? How about this folk horror: 

It's like the last thing you see before the cellar door closes and you wait to find out if you're meant to be sacrificed to the corn god or impregnated by the cock of the spirit of the wheat in a fertility rite. Puritans would look at these Puritan-looking motherfuckers and decided, "Nope. There's no god. Let's just jump in the ocean."

But what is Christmas without a little cultural insensitivity? For that, you get the Apache Nativity: 

Nothing says, "Welcome Baby Jesus" like being born among the people that will be mass murdered and stripped of their land and religion, all in his cute widdle name.  Bonus points for the totem pole with a look of "What the fuck am I even doing here? And why have me shaped like a crucifix?"

Finally (for real), here's one I actually like. It's the Recycled Auto Parts Nativity: 

C'mon. It's got everything. Skeletal camels, edges that would slice open a loaf of bread and some fishes, and baby Jesus sleeping on a bed of chicken wire. That's awesome art by Armando Ramirez, and I'd proudly put that up in my home next to my Peanuts creche and dare some internet asshole to talk shit about it. 

Merry Christmas, baby. Let's just get out of this year alive. May George Bailey finally get to push Mr. Potter into the frozen river.

(Note: Previous editions of the nativity post have included the Zombitivity, Dogtivity, the Boyd's Bears Nativity, and the Rubber Duck...oh, fuck, you get the idea.)