There is a point where screaming that the house is on fire loses its power. With the building full of smoke, and everyone weary of hearing that the smoldering embers that have never gone out are going to set the whole place ablaze, it’s hard to keep caring. There’s a point where a trauma response takes over and you just shut it all out.
You have to survive and sometimes that means blocking everything out.
Forging ahead.
Getting on with your life.
Even with the house finally truly on fire.
That’s where we are as a nation with two weeks until the election.
People have heard Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to tear the country up and they’ve said – eh, was it worse, really worse when he was in charge?
The answer is ‘yes’ but to some, they didn’t see any big change. Or have been told there was no real change.
They figure, the pandemic was no big deal (it was, and it changed the course of our history), and politicians are still crooks (many are but not all of them want to dismantle the entirety of what made us who we are), and I still have to pay bills. So who cares?
It’s easy to tune out.
Too easy.
And with the white noise of the final push, it’s easier than ever.
Things are so scary now though, that people like Elon Musk, billionaires, are working to influence the vote for their own reasons. I recently saw an abhorrent ad on television of graphic images of aborted fetuses. It was disgusting and has no place on TV but because some fringe presidential wanna-be has the backing (from Republicans and the religious right) to pretend to run for office he can put these ads on. Imagine the outrage if there were ads of gay people making out on television in the middle of the day. Or of transgender people just being alive on TV. Heck, what if we just went all-in and showed abortions and people giving high-fives after women get them?
It’s all fair-game in an election, according to the rules.
Except it’s not.
There’s no decency. And I am not going to clutch the pearls as mudslinging is nothing new to election cycles but this is the worst I have ever seen. With bots and foreign agents pushing false messages and people like Musk embracing and parroting every conspiracy they can think up, this is a dark time.
There is this disgusting narrative among the religious right and Republicans that seems to think women get abortions without a thought, That they just say – pfft, who wants a BAYYYBEEE? And they go and get an abortion. While there will always be people who can compartmentalize things to such a degree that they seem not to care, I guarantee they have the scars, physical and emotional. It will never be for me to judge someone who has had to have an abortion because it’s not my body and isn’t my choice. I am not paying their bills and am not facing their struggles. But making the decision to do this is something that will haunt the woman for the rest of her life. It doesn’t change their reasons for doing it but it’s not for us to tell them they don’t care.
Instead of empathy for these women, instead of getting them the emotional support they need we instead want to demonize them and pretend that they are shoveling bodies into a pit as they chew bubble gum. As a nation, we have no interest in kids, not really. We dress them like adults and sexualize them and then scream about how they are being groomed. We steal their history and education from them. We let social media raise them and teach them. We show them the horrors of the world without telling them what it all means and why it exists. We destroy their planet – yes THEIR planet – and shrug. We let people go broke and poor and end up on the street because corporate captains make foolish decisions and someone has to pay for them. Our politicians wag their fingers and talk about dead babies but don’t care about the children at the borders, or the children living in poverty, or the children being abused. They don’t care because it takes work to change those things. It takes hard work and it takes looking corporations in the face and telling them to get their crap together. It takes telling the billionaires of the world that their money doesn’t take away their responsibility to the rest of the world.
The Republicans pick out things that will get the religious right worked up and they point at them and scream – LOOK WHAT THEY ARE DOING!
They lie that this is a Christian nation when it isn’t and never was. But the Christian fascists want this country to look like they feel – white and powerful. But they aren’t. They are weak and afraid because they know the world is changing and they cannot stop it. We are watching the nation grow weaker as our enemies get stronger. We are raising a generation of kids that won’t know history and will think that they can be a rich influencer because we are raising them to believe that…because we believe that of ourselves.
We’re hustlers and we’re only hustling ourselves.
And I get it, I am another lib screaming into the void.
I won’t change one vote.
I won’t change one mind.
But to see what Trump is, and what Vance is, and to think that they are going to bring America back to some prosperity is a joke. Trump likes to say – well she is Vice-President, what did SHE do? – when we know what he did as President. He lied. He cheated. He threatened. He golfed. He ignored a pandemic and downplayed it as bodies piled up. He sent machines the nation needed to Russia. His own people that served him have turned on him and say that he is dangerous and he replies – oh, I don’t know those awful people. The nation was under siege on Jan. 6 because of him and he says, well, I never told them to do that but they are patriots and need to be free. Trump, the man who pledged to drain the swamp, filled it with turds that have all come under investigation, morally or legally. He’s literally the kid that breaks your window while you watch and then blames the kid safe at home with is family for doing it.
This is who he is.
Who he has always been.
He’s a bully.
He’s a brute.
He is a monster and madman.
He is dangerous.
The Republican party is dangerous.
The interesting thing with the two parties right now is one is bragging about what they will take away and the punishments they will mete out to those that oppose them and the other just wants to figure out how to fix things. That doesn’t mean the Dems are not going to screw up, and make stupid decisions, but it means that millions and millions of people are gleefully, proudly voting to suppress the rights of others because it makes them feel powerful. It makes them feel, ahem, proud.
Men are being preached to that transgender women are stealing sports from their little girls and that women are raising families and ruining little boys.
WHAT?
Women, gay people, and trans people are being demonized with this sexist messaging that too many men buy into because they feel like they want the good old days when you could tell a dirty joke or slap a butt and not get in trouble. Men are being forced to face that we’re not always great, that we screw up, and that we need to own our mistakes. We’re facing that people we admired are sometimes awful people. And men are getting mad. They want to feel powerful. And I get it in a small degree because there is a message of – men are gross, who needs them – that can run through the hardcore feminist movements, but it’s not commonly accepted. Just like there are great Christians, there are lousy ones, just like everything else. Every movement and belief has its idiots.
I have a daughter, I will guess what she needs is not a dad holding a gun on his lap every time she goes on a date but one that will teach her to be careful with people and to learn to protect herself.
That’s love.
Whatever happens in two weeks the world will keep spinning and we’ll have to figure out if we can get along together. The right has said – it’s fake if we lose and if you win we’ll fight you and if we win we’ll force you to fight us.
It’s a bleak outlook but as long as we keep our beliefs that this country can protect the weak, support the needy, and work to better all of us, then maybe there’s still hope.
…c…
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 