just:words

Writing a post about the 2024 election seems inevitable. It’s been a week since America showed up and — in no way surprising yet deeply disappointing — chose to be its full self: racist, misogynist, xenophobic, fixated on short-term issues, deeply misinformed, and inexhaustibly selfish.

About sums it up.

I foolishly thought there was a chance I would see a woman President in my lifetime. I no longer have that hope; even if the American electorate could be weaned off its sexism and steady diet of media bullshit, I can’t imagine the Democratic Party running another woman candidate. “Women can’t win” will be the excuse from now till the 22nd century.   I believe women can and should be our leaders, but I’m not sure anyone will be willing to put in the work to make it happen short of a stunning crisis.

I think Harris ran a solid campaign. I think the Democratic message was fairly clear and fairly mainstream.  She proposed policies and programs to support families, new home buyers, small business owners, and general middle class Americans. She argued for trans rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and women’s rights including a fully stated support for abortion. I’d hoped for more pushback against Israel but am easily old enough to remember when NO American politician would even take a stance that wasn’t staunchly pro-Israel; Biden and Harris could have done more but they did not do nothing. It was a start.

Yet the price of eggs is too high.  What shall we do, vote for good policies?

This loss culminates what America’s right-leaning crew have been building since Nixon: a coalition of Jesus Evangelicals and Catholics, rich assholes, “I got mine now get out” immigrants, disenchanted rural denizens, and a lot of angry men across multiple ethnic groups who are willing to buy a particular Lie about the way America is supposed to work. It’s supposed to raise up Whiteness, lift up “the nuclear family,” and reward bootstrappers who succeed by their own sweat.  I hope you’re not a woman, in poverty, or too brown, because you’ve never been welcome really and that isn’t going to change.

For me, that is the one victory of this election: For many center and left folks, and even the occasional conservative (the ones who hold to principles and not just MAGA cruelty and vibes), America clearly stands openly as what we really are.  We are not “the city on a hill” or “the leader of the free world,” not any longer.

We, America, are profoundly ignorant, densely short-sighted, and obsessed with money and status.  We will sacrifice anyone not deemed “strong” in order to give ourselves the chance at “being rich” (or “being powerful,” they are essentially the same and almost impossible to gain one without the other). We are a nation of colonizers living on stolen land, profiting still (as a collective) from the stolen labor of slaves. We have always worshipped capitalism and Big Men far more than we’ve ever wanted anything to do with the carpenter from Nazareth, but we appreciate him stopping by to bless our football games.

Might makes right. This has always been our modus operandi as a nation. The American Dream has always been a lie, but it makes us feel warm at night and less guilty about bashing in the heads of everyone who’s ever stood in our collective way.

I have particularly observed over this past week the ire from the community of Black women who feel betrayed by the majority of White women who walked proudly into the voting booth and marked their ballet for a convicted felon, sexual abuser, and likely pedophile.  I genuinely hope my Black sisters push us out for a while. We white women have our privilege still, and we are not to be trusted.  I think that coalition might heal over time — actions will be needed, not words.   For now, it would be wise for all liberal white women to shut the hell up and read the stories of the Black American struggle for freedom, especially the many decades when freedom was nowhere to be seen for anyone with dark skin.  Read to learn; do not ask our Sisters to do this work for us.  If we happen to lose a bit more of our privilege in the next 4 years (due to our lack of a penis), we benefit to watch with humility as Black women move ahead in determination and — when the pain has subsided a bit from November 5, 2024 — even joy.  The oppressor cannot take your joy unless you give it to him. They already know this.

I do think the coming 4 years of a Trump administration will be quite horrible.

I think we will watch our neighbors (metaphoric and literal) be rounded up and deported because suddenly the Land of Immigrants no longer wants your poor, your tired, the ones yearning to breathe free. And we will pay for that loss, as a nation, over and over again for decades.

I think we will watch rich men tinker with the economy and get richer. They will play with our systems and move the dials around.  Businesses will get pinched by tariffs or whatever foolishness these people come up with, and they will use that as an excuse to smash union labor, shed jobs, offshore millions of roles to cheaper labor elsewhere, lay off thousands, and rake in billions in profit.  Musk is an idiot, but others are not. They are all cut-throats.  Billionaires are a policy failure and a mental disorder.  Who needs to hoard such wealth? Rightly did the old myths envision such greed as a curse that turned one into a dragon, a beast without humanity, fueled only by lust for more.

I think we will see a lot of useful programs, grants, and aid cut in the name of rugged individualism and fiscal responsibility, while military and defense contractors feast on the wealth they will continue to take from our economy.  People will cheer Trump’s isolationism, as they cheered in the early 1900s for the idea of us taking our collective wealth and staying home.  It took two brutal world wars to break us of the naiveté that we could have the biggest stick on the block but not be responsible for punching bullies in the face.  Hell, Trump loves dictators.  We’re on the other team now, boys!

I’m not sure folks want to live in a world where many smaller nations realize that if America won’t be moral and won’t lead in world affairs, then they cannot be safe. And those nations will start to build safety on their own. Nuclear weapons technology is a century old now.   Non-proliferation partly rests on the agreement of the nuclear powers to hold one another accountable.  Trump has already tried to sell our nuclear secrets to other nations; he won’t stop now.

I dearly hope the many who were foolish enough to protest-vote against Harris due to Gaza will see, learn, and never forget what it looks like to hand power to someone who would carpet-bomb his buddy’s little ethnic problem spot if that means his cronies get to build a resort on that land. This is what you voted for.  Protest voting in a two-party system ruled by an arcane Electoral College is nothing but a vote for the opposition.  Your vote is your power and I think you gave it to the wrong guy given your ultimate goals.

But really what’s going to break a lot of people will be the cruelty.  The actual knock-on effects of destroying the Department of Education, of stripping student loan borrowers of a public service forgiveness pathway, of a national abortion ban which raises the danger of every single pregnancy, of the policing and outlawing of non-hetero and non-cisgendered bodies, of the brazen racism, of the homeless and starving senior citizens living on the street when Social Security and Medicare are gutted.  The libertarian wet dream of privatization benefits only the corporate overlords who get to run all those privatized services. You will own nothing and enjoy it.

“Your body, my choice,” said young influencer-asshole Nick Fuentes who is now stunned to find out women can and do work in tech and are petty enough and mad enough right now to doxx him on the Internet so we can all see where his dumb ass lives.  I think there are many women, old and young, who are about to enter a phase of learning how to punch patriarchy in its dick at every opportunity, because clearly men will not go to the ballot box and help us fight it there.  I truly hope the women stay mad.  Fear cannot take us where we need to go as a nation.

I have been angry for years – probably since late 2016 – and now the fire is a white-hot coal at the center of my core, more an engine than a flame.

If America the Nation survives this full-on attack by enemies foreign and domestic on its very soul, I think some folks may be surprised at the roar and backlash they face from those of us who now know they cannot be trusted to do more than vote for the price of eggs.