Let us say, and why not, for the sake of argument, just for a thought experiment, that racism, sexism, and xenophobia weren't the driving factors behind Donald Trump's victory in 2016. Let us say, and, indeed, why not, that we can put aside any arguments about Hillary Clinton or Russian fuckery. Surely we have all wondered, "Why the fuck would anyone vote for a bloated, molesty carnival barker?" And maybe, after seeing everything excluded, it would make sense to conclude that they did it to "own the liberals."
But what the fuck does that mean in action? The knee-jerk response is that Trump voters (the "they" here) believe we Trump haters think we're smarter than them and that, generally, we think we're better than them, which, to be fair, we are. (I'm not being glib. Objectively, if you are a Trump voter, you are a worse human than me.)
I wanna go further here. Lemme give you a theory, some dime store sociology: They hate us because we're right and we've been right all along. We're right about getting health insurance to more people being a good thing. We're right about climate change harming us. We're right about racism. Hell, Barack Obama allowing the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy to expire didn't murder the economy; it helped with the recovery, as did big government investment in infrastructure and rescuing states. Every fucking thing they were told was going to be a disaster turned out to be fine. And everything they were told was fine, like the COVID response, has turned out to be a disaster.
How right were we? Go back to the same sex marriage debate. Pre-2015 Obergefell decision, a large number of conservatives were predicting the end of "traditional" marriage and all manner of supposed societal downfalls. What happened in the years after Obergefell? Marriage rates rose and divorce rates fell. And now, over 5 years later, a huge majority of the country supports the rights of two dudes or two chicks to get married. And we haven't legalized polygamy or marriage to animals. (Although, to be sure, there are backwards ass evangelicals and savage conservatives who still hate them some queers, and some of them are on the Supreme Court now.)
So when you're confronted with facts that show that all the shit you've been injecting into your brain for decades is just wrong and the people who you were told were nation-destroying, soy-sucking animal fuckers are right, you've got a few options. You can accept you were wrong and change. But, goddamnit, your entire identity is based on all that shit. So your other options are various levels of denial. You can just say, "Fuck you" and ignore reality and cling to your lies. Or you can jack up that noise and declare, "Not only do I not accept reality, but you eat babies!" Or you can declare that you wanna fuckin' murder those smug fucks for the crime of being right about all the things you thought you were right about.
Like I said, it's a thought experiment. Chances are, it's just racism, sexism, and xenophobia covered with a secret sauce of stupidity, with a glaze of Christian extremism jizzed on the top. Although, you know, one of Donald Trump's biggest grievances is that he was never accepted into a kind of bourgeois elite in Manhattan he craved to be part of, that he was too boorish and awful (which he was, although they weren't much better), and he developed a healthy hatred of rich liberals because they didn't invite him to their parties. He always wanted to get those fuckers back for their rejection of him.
To bring this into our current situation, what we see in Trump and his voters is a proud anti-intellectual and anti-science ignorance, either willful or learned. And if you don't believe in something like doctors telling you what the fuck to do when a virus is spreading, you're not gonna believe in a whole lot of other shit, like, say, the rules and laws when it comes to elections.
Ultimately, if they can't beat us fair and square, then they will cheat. And if they can't win by cheating, they will kill us. To my mind, that's where we stand as a country right now. Everyone in professional political punditry knows that if the election were held in a way that protected voting rights instead of disenfranchising people in any way Republicans can dick over voters, the GOP would never win a presidential election and would be a permanent minority in the Congress. That's something else that we're right about, and it scares the fucking daylights out of them. It's gotta be stopped, just like the diminishing powers of whiteness and maleness have to be halted, according their worldview. They face being stripped of power, and they'd rather shoot the horse than hand over the reins.
What are we to make of the White House Science Office's declaration today that Trump is responsible for "ending the pandemic" as cases reach an all-time high and hospitals are becoming overwhelmed again? What are we to make of Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, saying, plainly, that "We are not going to control the virus" and that we just need to tough it out, or "learn to live with it," until there are treatments and a vaccine? What are we to make of Trump's constant threats against Democratic governors and mayors to withhold coronavirus aid? What are we to make of a Supreme Court that is likely to overturn Roe v. Wade and, even though there is no reason to rule this way, toss out the Affordable Care Act and gut environmental regulations?
All of these things will end up killing people. Not having a national plan to deal with COVID even 10 months after it appeared will cause so much more death. Refusing to give relief funds to Democrat-run areas will cause more death. The end of Roe will cause more deaths of women. The end of the Affordable Care Act will cause a great many more deaths. And failure to address climate change will one day cause cataclysmic levels of death. It's a banal evil, less obvious than sending troops into the streets, although that's not off the table.
All of this is possible not only because of vile leadership and craven voters who are unable to handle reality, but because they want to destroy those who state what reality is.
If this seems a bit over the top, good. That's the level of prepared you need to be for what's going to happen after the voting is over on November 3. Barring a sudden eruption of rationality among Republicans now that they have gotten their cruel Supreme Court pound of flesh, there is no way that Trump doesn't sue for every perceived minor infraction in voting. That motherfucker sues more than a jerk who makes money by pretending to get hit by cars. There is no way that they don't try to get the Supreme Court to junk the whole election and declare him the victor.
It's gonna be a hell of a battle between fantasy and reality. And I don't know how it ends. I just know that I wanna be ready to hit the streets, if need be. Hopefully with millions of us.
