Is It Over Yet?
With a week left to go until the General Election, I have to be careful about how much news I consume. Especially after the cowardly decisions of enablers like Bezos and Soon-Shiong, there’s a great deal of anxiety that comes with being disabled and navigating the political hellscape here in the United States.
I do plan to watch VP Harris’s speech at the Ellipse tonight, but I have been very diligently managinging the time I spend pondering the political. I avoid social media sites or meter my time on them. Even the one site I enjoy using most (Bluesky) is abuzz with triggering truths.
Striking that perfect balance where being informed doesn’t mean being exhausted with anger eludes me most days. And for me, anger and anxiety are inextricably linked. At least temporarily. That’s a problem for someone trying to manage her GAD.
Here’s how I see it: Republicans didn’t do shit until it was way too late, and that is rage-inducing.
If I’m frank, their belated arrival to the table of empathetic humanity reads to me like they’re only now moved by the realization too few voters prefer what they’re selling.
And for a bunch of Unfetter-the-Capitalism! types? Well. Doesn’t seem like they understand the marketplace of political jobs, now does it?
Too bad the words ‘conservative’ and ‘Republican’ are soggy after steeping in that basket of deplorability for so long.
Anyway, I saw a link to this Flux article on Substack where a conservative talking head got booted from CNN for being too racist:
“The sheer difficulty in identifying qualified, respectful conservative voices without ties to extremism was astonishing.”
Conservatives of conscience* relinquished a decades-long commitment to bad economic policy (trickle down is the best idea they’ve had) for an openly racist and misogynistic platform that’s now synonymous with the word ‘Republican.’ From my vantage point, the assholes thought they were God’s gift to the American flag.
The spectacle at Madison Square Garden Sunday shocked some, but for plenty of us it would have been more shocking to see Trump’s campaign acknowledge its use of unforgivable rhetoric.
I expect a rebrand of Republican conservatism as some of them realize this is a stink that will live in our collective scent memory for at least four score and seven years hence.
I don’t feel up to the task of assessing whether these blatantly racist tactics are more helpful in the long-term because they’re undeniable or more harmful because they’re shouted unapologetically to the masses. They are vile, regardless. And writing that out loud feels important in the wake of ballot box fires, disenfranchising bullshit from NC’s Freedom Caucus Chair, and whatnot.
Whoever wins, I’m sure that violence is imminent. The kids who didn’t get presents on their sibling’s birthday and had violent meltdowns are all grown up, and they are miltant fascists now. I want to believe we can elect Kamala Harris and deliver sweeping majorities of sincere public servants to Congress, but I am low on hope.
When hope is low, I take refuge in action.
* I’m told they exist.