Unfucking What You Can: A Case for Voting for Harris Even If You're Pissed About Israel

I'm going to try to be as clear as possible here in where I'm coming from.

I'm not going to make this about Israel's war with Gaza and Lebanon except to say that I stand with the large number of Israelis and Palestinians and the Lebanese people who want a ceasefire and the hostages and prisoners brought home. Nor am I going to talk about the Biden/Harris administration's continued policy of arming Israel. I've been pretty clear that I oppose the blank check on weapons the United States has given Israel and that conditions need not only to be met but enforced when it comes to massacring civilians. I want the mass killing of children to end. Dismiss me if you want because of that.

This is really about voting for Kamala Harris for president despite her response to a grave and horrific situation in the Middle East. I understand the impulse to withhold your vote because of this. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. As I've said before, I went through it with Bill Clinton's reelection in 1996 (I was pissed at him for his inaction on the Rwandan genocide and welfare reform), although I ultimately voted for Clinton because I didn't want Bob Dole picking Supreme Court justices or other federal judges. 

But I haven't had the same impulse with Harris. It's not that I'm deluding myself into thinking that Harris is going to completely change US policy towards Israel once she gets into office. See, I have a few things I believe about this whole situation when it comes to the politics of this fucked situation. I think that Biden’s treatment of Benjamin Netanyahu has been ludicrously naive and ineffective and based in a fear about an electoral backlash to any hint of opposition to Israel, a fear based in the politics of 30 years ago. I think that the refusal to condemn the actions of Israel and to hold them to international law lessens the credibility of the US in holding bad actors to account. 

However, Harris is still a part of the Biden administration. She cannot state a policy completely at odds with the policy of the president, and I think that Biden has unintentionally screwed over Harris by letting Netanyahu roll him so completely. Harris is showing some tiny signs of shifting away from Biden's position, as when she was asked about supporting Netanyahu on 60 Minutes and she responded, "I think, with all due respect, the better question is, do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people. And the answer to that question is yes." If this means something, it's hard to say, but the right people are freaked out by what she said. It feels like she's testing the waters. 

Again, I don't believe that Harris will all of a sudden take a stand on limiting or stopping weapons flowing to Israel. She might, but I won't hold my breath. But it's pretty clear that Trump will be worse, aiding and abetting whatever extensive war crimes Netanyahu wants to commit, with the added bonus of threatening to deport anti-Israel protesters from the United States and reinstating his ban on people from Muslim countries. I also believe that Netanyahu is, at least partially, prosecuting this war in a way specifically meant to interfere in the US presidential election in Trump's favor.

It's a fucked situation, one of many fucked situations going on right now. My vote can't unfuck everything that's fucked. Even if the most perfect candidate in the world were nominated, it still wouldn't unfuck it all. I will disagree with something; I will still see something as fucked. But I have a responsibility to unfuck what I can unfuck in whatever way I can unfuck it. Frankly, we all do.

If I vote for Harris, I accept that I am probably not doing anything to unfuck the current situation in the Middle East. But I also accept that I am doing something to unfuck so many other things and preventing many more from becoming fucked (or further fucked). I know that if Harris isn't elected, the parade of what's fucked will be grotesque and long, from the suffering of women over abortion restrictions to the suffering of families over mass deportation and threatened denaturalization to the suffering of everyone over the reversal of policies trying to mitigate climate change to the suffering of children in this country over the mad proliferation of guns. I know that rights will be taken away from queer and trans kids and adults. I know that Ukraine will be handed over to Russia and that an emboldened Putin is gonna fuck things up a great deal more. I know that people all over the world will be harmed by the United States moving into an isolationist and racist posture, with the potential for more wars. I know that free speech rights will be trampled by right-wing courts, workers' rights will be crushed by the elimination of regulations, and civil rights will be beaten and shot by the police. And the Supreme Court will be lost for the next generation, at least. That's just scratching the surface of fuckery that Trump and his more effective MAGA apparatchiks are planning to do, along with a huge helping of Christian nationalism. 

I'm not trying to minimize the suffering caused by Israel's decimation of Gaza and its threat of decimating Lebanon. I get the raging anger over it. I'm not even going to pretend I understand your feelings if you're from one of the countries involved or have family there. But not voting for Harris isn't going to solve it at all. That never fucking works. 

Whatever you thought about Hillary Clinton in 2016, you didn't make things better by not voting for her. Whatever you thought about Al Gore in 2000, you didn't make things better by voting for Ralph Nader or not voting at all. The losses in those elections didn't bring about some lesson for Democrats or some great ideological shift that wouldn't have happened otherwise. But we know what they did bring about, and it was fucked. We know that factually and demonstrably. You didn't make anything better. You didn't save a single person. You made yourself feel better, and maybe that's enough for you. (And, by the way, I'm including myself here. I voted for Nader, albeit in a state that was going for Bush anyways.)

So I'm gonna vote for Harris not because I agree with her on everything. I disagree with her on quite a bit. But I know she's the only candidate in a position to unfuck things I want unfucked or at least stop them from being fucked more. And that's a trade off that I'm at peace with. 

Three Things That Matter from Last Night's Vice-Presidential Polite-Off

My quick take on the vice-presidential debate last night between Peter Thiel's gimp and Governor Care Bear is that it doesn't matter who "won." If you give a shit about reality, Walz won. If you prefer your political leaders to be smooth-talking sociopaths spewing bullshit, Vance won. Otherwise, beyond a surprise line or two (like Walz saying that his son witnessed a shooting), it was a disappointingly normal debate where the Democrat was overly deferential and polite and the Republican was a merry liar.

But three things stand out for me. 

First, to that liar point, the most important moment in the evening was when the moderators corrected Senator JD Vance. Talking his usual fuckery about immigration, Vance said, "In Springfield, Ohio and in communities all across this country, you've got schools that are overwhelmed, you've got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes." After Walz spoke, quoting the Bible, moderator Margaret Brennan added, "And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status. Temporary protected status." And that's absolutely, completely true. Vance tried to lump legal immigrants in with undocumented ones. 

And that led to Vance whining, plaintively, "The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact-check" and then his mic was cut off when he tried to explain how something legal is actually illegal, which it isn't. TPS was established by the Immigration Act of 1990, which was passed on a bipartisan basis by wide margins. It's the fucking law, upheld against court challenges up to the Supreme Court. You can't just say you don't like the law and therefore actions using it are illegal. It would be like saying, "I don't give a shit if your stupid laws tell me to pay people. I say it's illegal to force me to do so." You're just an asshole if you try to do that. (Yeah, I know who I'm referencing.)

Even more importantly, when Vance got pissy about fact-checking, he was saying, really, "I was told I could lie and get away with it and now you're telling everyone I'm lying. How dare you." He tipped his hand. He showed his cards. He did other gambling metaphors that show how every fucking word out of his smarmy, bitch mouth is a lie. If you fear fact-checking, you fear being found out. And that ought to be the headline: "Vance admits he's a fucking lying piece of shit" or however you wanna couch it. (Yeah, I know what I did there.)

The other significant moment was when Vance couldn't bring himself to fully lie. It was the end when Vance climbed to the top of fuckery mountain and planted a flag, saying that Donald Trump proved he's no threat to democracy "when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th." Yeah, but that's like saying the rhino that was just charging your jeep is a peaceful creature after you've hit him with the tranq darts. Walz challenged Vance's bullshit head on, in his strongest moment of the evening: "This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say, he is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?" Vance started babbling some conspiracy theory nonsense about Harris censoring people over Covid and then Walz interrupted to say, "That is a damning. That is a damning non-answer." Vance wouldn't say Trump lost. He couldn't bring himself to say the one thing that would alienate the fucking animals on the MAGA side. And he couldn't bring himself to say Trump won, which would have discredited him immediately with future voters he's trying to sucker into supporting his cruel ass after Trump dies or collapses into an amorphous pile of raging orange goo. It was a moment of utter cowardice that should tell you everything you need to know about this amoral, squamous rich fuck. 

One more thing is worth noting. Throughout the debate, Walz kept talking about what Harris would do as president. Vance kept talking about what Trump would do. Neither of them talked about what they themselves would do as vice-president because what they want to do doesn't fucking matter. It's not the job. As I've said, sure, they can offer advice, but ultimately, they are there to preside over the Senate or replace the president, both on an as-needed basis. Vance and Trump keep attacking Harris as if she is the president, saying that Harris has had four years to do shit. That's another goddamn lie. She's had four years to carry out the policies of Joe Biden that he wants her to carry out. But the policies come from him. (And let's not even get into the "Border Czar" lie.)

The thing that annoyed me most about the whole fucking thing, which I really do think Walz won on points and on likability, is that, with a frustrating assist from Walz, Vance was allowed to seem kind of normal, which he most definitely is not and would not be if in power. Vance is Ted Bundy to Trump's Vlad the Impaler. Trump's slaughtering people left and right. Vance is gonna try to charm you so you don't see the crowbar behind his back.