Rambling Lemurian

I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t even know what I want to think anymore.

Kamala Harris should win. More importantly, Donald Trump should lose. In any reasonable version of this universe, Donald Trump shouldn’t even be running at this point. He should not be a public figure anymore, and be relegated to a shameful period in American History as he lives out the rest of his days on some island somewhere, alone and senile, as his ex-wives and children and sycophants fight over the scraps from his Empire of Fraud. He’s a fraudster, a liar, an idiot, a racist, a violent extremist, a rapist, and a pedophile.

And he’s the preferred President of half of Congress, at least half of the Supreme Court, and roughly 47% of American voters.

How did we get here as a nation? This isn’t what America really represents, is it? America is about democracy and freedom and decency….. ah fuck it. No it’s not. We Americans need to start being honest with ourselves. This is exactly who we are as a nation. We may not like it. And I hope we’re striving to be better. But Donald Trump didn’t start the MAGA movement. Racism, misogyny, and xenophobia didn’t make a comeback from obscurity during the 2016 election. Homophobia and transphobia isn’t new to Americans. Fascism and religious extremism wasn’t just confined to the history books. All of this has been alive and well, albeit at some times more hidden, in the US for as long as we’ve called ourselves a nation. Let’s drop the myth of the ideal, sacred America.

Let’s start with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Oh how wholesome, a group of Englishmen and women arrive in the New World fleeing religious persecution to start a new colony where everyone is free to worship as they choose, right? And bring civilization, technology, and the Word of God to the “Indians”, right? It’s basically what we’ve been taught in school since we were children but it’s just a myth. The Puritans weren’t fleeing persecution. They were dismayed with the LACK of persecution of other religions and lifestyles in England and Europe. That’s why they sailed across the Atlantic. They desperately wanted to start a colony where they can persecute as much as they wanted. And it’s not like they were the first Europeans in the area either, not by a long shot. When they met Squanto as they landed, the Native American responded to them in English. He’d already been sold into slavery and sailed across the Atlantic several times over the previous decade and knew English quite well.

Fast forward to the American Revolution. The colonists had to fight against the TYRANNY of the British Empire, right? Well much of the “tyranny” was in the form of taxes because the British were trying to recoup their losses after fighting a war with the French in defense of the colonists. Seems fairly reasonable with some room for negotiation, I’d think. But no! TYRANNY! WAR! And so the British gave a half-hearted effort to quell the rebellion but once the French got involved again they backed off and America was born! Finally, our own nation where everyone is free, except for all the black and native people.

After several fever-paced decades of expansion to the west, Native American genocide, enslavement, and violent warfare with anyone who might dare be in our way, we turn the guns on each other. It took less than a century for us to proclaim ourselves the “United” States of America and “land of the free” before we needed to fight a civil war over the right to enslave people. And let’s not kid ourselves. The Civil War was not fought over “states’ rights” or the growth of the Federal Government. It was fought because the South needed slavery to economically flourish (or so they thought) and didn’t like the fact that the North said slavery might not be ethically right. Thankfully the North crushed the South. But let’s not pretend that Abraham Lincoln and the North had great views of Black people too. Lincoln even offered to allow the South to keep slavery until 1900, essentially blamed Black People for the war, and suggested forcibly moving emancipated slaves to Panama rather than live a free life in the United States.

Moving along to the 20th century… oops, women still can’t vote. It takes another couple decades of fierce debate before that’s fixed. It takes another 40 years after that for the Civil Rights Act to be passed to end segregation, but not without a loud and violent fight from Conservative people and states. Despite anti-interracial marriage laws being ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS in 1967, the state of Alabama didn’t repeal its law banning interracial marriage until 2000. Oh and by the way, during this time the US reluctantly joins the second World War to fight fascism in Europe in alliance with the communist USSR but pretty much only because the fascists’ friends attacked us first. During and immediately following the war we capture a lot of these top fascists and…. put them in charge of our space program while Congress panics about the very idea that communists might exist in the US? Hmm, that seems backwards.

So now we’re in the 21st century. Roe v. Wade has been struck down thanks to the tireless efforts of the Christian Fundamentalist movement over the past 40 years after the Republican Party mobilized them in the 70s just for the purpose of getting some untapped votes. Gay Marriage rests on thin ice as the packed and corrupt right-wing Supreme Court is just waiting for an excuse to overturn that too. The Republican nominee for Vice President is telling women they are useless unless they’re pumping out (white) babies. Oh, and him and the Republican nominee for President are heavily funded by the Christian-fascist Heritage Foundation which published a playbook of their goals called Project 2025 which is basically the dream to make America into even more of a white, Christian, male-dominated nation.

So what’s my point? I barely remember anymore. I guess it’s just that everything we’re hearing from Trump and Vance and MAGA Nation and Fox News isn’t new. As a nation, most of the time relative progressivism has defeated conservatism. We ended slavery, we gave basic rights to African Americans, we’re less hostile to immigrants and non-Christians than we were before at least in aggregate. We expanded marriage rights. We gave women the right to make their own healthcare decisions. We’ve started to close the gender pay gap. We’ve given visibility to trans people. And none of that came easy. And there will always be powerful people and groups attempting to taken it away like we have in this election, and we likely will in the rest of the elections in my lifetime. So yes, this election is deeply important, and one of the most important elections in American history. But it’s not to save Democracy like so many pundits and social media commenters like to say.

Democracy has long been a myth in America. If America was a democracy, there wouldn’t have been a Republican President for the past 20+ years. Al Gore would have defeated Bush in 2000. We would have more than two viable choices in all our elections. Democrats and Republicans wouldn’t be the only ones on debate stages. Voting third-party would not be a “vote for the other guy” or “throwing your vote away”. If we actually followed Washington’s exampleMy vote in Illinois wouldn’t feel like formality. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia wouldn’t dominate every election cycle. State legislatures would not be actively and openly pushing for voter suppression tactics like making it harder to vote. We wouldn’t see all the heart-warming tales of people of all ages standing in line for 8+ hours on Election Day just to cast a vote. This isn’t what democracy is supposed to look like.

I voted for Harris. I’d vote for Harris a million times out of a million. But I hope we all understand that this election isn’t really saving democracy in America. It’s saving the status quo of the two-party system. Yes, Trump wants to be a dictator. But he’s also 78, morbidly obese, incontinent, and has rapidly diminishing mental faculties. He’s not going to hang on to power for 20 years even if he wins this election. Most likely he dies in office or is 25th’d out by Vance, and since Vance has the charisma of a moldy carrot, he wouldn’t be able to hang on to power either and somehow would lose a rigged election in 2028, or gets deposed by the neo-Republican party who install a military dictatorship or some other hot-shot puppet while making up some massive 9/11-size crisis or war to justify cancelling elections. Or being slightly more subtle and installing an even more packed and corrupt Court that grants him powers that would make George III squirm. Then it all falls apart due to corruption and in-fighting, the American political system is completely revamped and we end up with ranked choice voting and a slightly better electoral college in 60 years.

So maybe the end result of a Trump/Vance win and dictatorship results in something positive. But there’d be a ton of suffering in the mean time. Ultimately I don’t think it REALLY matters who is the President right now from a legislative and decision-making perspective. Our whole system is fucked by partisanship that nothing really gets done until one party suffers a catastrophic defeat. Here’s to hoping that’s the Republicans this time. But it does matter who we choose to be the representative of the nation. Do we want the image of America to be an old fraudster and failed businessman who was besties with Jeffrey Epstein and was sexually attracted to his own 13-year old daughter as he spouts widely debunked racist conspiracy theories and rejects any scientific data that doesn’t result in lining his own pockets? Or do we want the image of America to be a bi-racial woman who worked her way up from McDonald’s to the police force through law school all the way to California’s AG, Senator, and now VP?

The 53% of you who pick the latter are real Americans. The 47% of you who pick the former are also real Americans. But you 47% can get fucked.