this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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Johnson in 2016 for me (I regarded it as a protest vote, not an affirmation of any supposed libertarian principles; I was a Berniecrat). Election night of 2016 is seared into my fucking head, and will be for the rest of my life.
My vote wasn't the difference between victory and defeat. I lived in one of the safest of safe states. But I realized then that such performative moral objection necessarily includes moral acceptance of the end result. I didn't do the literal least thing I could have done to prevent Trump. And I had to live with that as he took the oath of office.
The practical end of preventing fascism, not only for one's own good but for the good of the country and the world, is more important by an order of magnitude. But the moral and personal element is not inconsiderable. It weighs on you.
I remember I was playing The Forest late at night with my friends. I was utterly unconcerned - America surely wasn't stupid enough to elect Donald fucking Trump. And the polls were clear.
And then one of my friends, knowing that I'm the more politically oriented one in the group, asked, with a bit of concern in his voice, "We just lost Pennsylvania. Is that serious?"
I alt-tabbed out and checked the maps at like 3 AM. And kept checking the maps for two hours, in utter horror and disbelief. Over and over again. Clearly Hillary was winning the popular vote. How could the electoral college fuck us? It had only happened a handful of times in US history? And then I passed out, because 'went to sleep' implies some sort of restfulness. I remember waking up afternoon the next day with an immense, crushing weight on my chest and feeling utterly exhausted, wishing it was a nightmare and knowing it wasn't.
Jesus Christ.
I for one was not surprised at all when Hillary lost in 2016.
she engaged her pied piper strategy, held that rotten rat bastard plutocrat irredeemable orange scumbag to America's head like a gun, said "vote for me or else," and smugly thought to herself "well now they have no choice but to vote for me."
from where i stood, i fully expected that America very well could have been petty enough that it would cut off its own nose to spite its face. or in this case, reach up and pull the trigger on that gun itself.
America said "else," and proceeded to pay dearly for responding to an act of out-of-touch party aristocrat hubris with careless lackadaisical contempt.
my father is dead because America didn't have appropriate healthcare or effective pandemic response frameworks in place. it has robbed me of a significant chunk of my humanity and empathy. a good man died because of this comedy of errors, and anyone less of a worthwhile person than my father had been who yet lives will never again be seen as a human being in these eyes of mine.
I'd like to believe this country has learnt its very painful lesson.
but if it hasn't, it can drown in the bed it will have shat. i shall squander no loyalty or kindness upon anyone who "left on the table" the most accessible possible measure within their grasp to ensure trump never defiles public office again. for those Innocents who may yet be caught in the crossfire of "protest voter" manic delusions of self-righteousness, I'm ready to assist in helping people escape this shithole nation with all the resources a working class household with four walls and a roof can spare. it would sure be nice if it didn't come to that, though.
This is why I have such a problem with the single-issue "but genocide" voters. They're so blinded by a decades-long conflict across the ocean that is far more complex than they could possibly fathom, that they're willing to sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans at home. How priveleged must one be to think Trump's policies won't affect them, their families or friends? How many American lives are they willing to put on the line so they can feel good about themselves for "not engaging in genocide" while ignoring the very real one about to happen on American soil?
We've seen how destructive Trump's last term was, especially regarding Covid. Why the hell would they risk another four years of that, on top of the worse things Trump promises to do to anyone who protests or disagrees with? Do the lives of women, people of colour, LGBTQ, veterans and the elderly not matter to these people? How many American lives are they willing to sacrifice to feel better about themselves?
I'm so tired of people being so short sighted that they're willing to throw everybody under the bus over a single issue. Yeah, genocide is horrible. But it isn't going to end on Tuesday, nor will it end years from now no matter who you vote for. The least one can do is prevent the literal fucking fascist from taking office who would guarantee that not only Palestinian lives will be lost, but so many Americans as well.
When it comes to leadership who view an ongoing genocide overseas with blase tacit complicity, we are indeed damned if we do AND damned if we don't.
If we are to be damned no matter what we do, though, it then becomes a question of what qualities our inevitable damnation should possess.
Shall we be damned with bog standard milquetoast business as usual liberalism that doesn't do enough to actually help anything get better and continues to naively play nice with the predators, parasites, and scavengers of the big business elite class?
OR
Shall we be damned with concentration camps on American soil rounding up anyone the republican party deems to be "undesirable" and "making them go away" (any american who uses their free speech "the wrong way" being labeled a domestic terrorist 'enemy alien', nevermind the economy tanking, women being held hostage by their uteri and dying frequent preventable maternal deaths because a stillborn fetus is valued more highly than her life, prices soaring due to tariffs making imported goods nonviable, etc) ON TOP OF all the shit that's wrong with liberalism with regard to big business pandering (except only the businesses owned by republican-party-approved individuals)?
the idea that people can't tell the difference makes my fucking blood boil
How's the Forest game? I have it in my Steam library but haven't booted it up yet (busy having "fun" with Dwarf Fortress)
The Forest is fun with friends, choppin' up cannibals and setting their mangled bodies aflame. Wholesome community stuff!
Singleplayer, it's more directly horror-oriented, but also a bit grindy. If you like survival/exploration/base-building type first-person games, though, you'll probably like it.
It's great, don't look up any advice or guides. Everything can be found by exploring; they put the stuff you need right in your face and it's a relatively small map.
Wasn't that the guy who didn't know where Aleppo was?
He wasted a perfectly ideal opportunity to say fuck that noise, or more diplomatically: "i don't care about something that concerns America so little when we have such serious issues to deal with right here at home. it's like a plane that has lost cabin pressure; we need to secure our own oxygen mask before we can help anyone else."
predictably, nobody talks about Aleppo or the things that happened there now.
i probably wasn't going to vote for him no matter what but his failure to leverage that opportunity still disappointed me and what IS still happening to this day is my disdain for people who still identify with his organization. they did not eat; they got cooked. they need to read the goddamn room and go home.
He also pretended to have a heart attack after an anti-drug crusader said that people who smoke weed have heart attacks one hour after consuming the devil's lettuce.