Dispatches from the Shitshow: What to Expect When You're Expecting
/Cleaning out my notebook of a few random thoughts before the “most important election of our lifetime”® tomorrow.
Ground and Pound
I’ve read a great deal about the Harris campaign’s money advantage and the power of their “ground game” recently…and have come to see it firsthand.
I currently reside in a ruby red republican county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I live in a very rural part of this very rural county. In addition, I live way off a main road and my home is only accessible by a half mile dirt lane…and is entirely surrounded by corn crops rendering it not only invisible from any road but also very spooky.
Well, despite my extremely remote location, I’ve had four canvassers come to my home in the last three weeks, all of them from the Harris campaign. I’ve had none from the Trump campaign come around.
One canvasser was a twenty-something woman and she was riding a bicycle and I was legitimately worried for her because the road nearest me is not bike friendly and bears have been known to roam these parts…I know because I’ve come face to face with one.
The point of all this is that the Harris campaign is definitely trying to get out the vote. From the ratio of Trump to Harris signs in this county, which overwhelmingly favors Trump by a margin of 20 to 1, it is an uphill battle to beat Trump here, but as they always tell us, “every vote counts”.
As an aside, I’m always tempted when a canvasser is here to tell them I’m not down with Kamala because genocide isn’t my thing, but I never do because I feel bad for these folks. From what I understand they are getting paid but I still have no interest in arguing with someone or making them feel bad. If they love Kamala Harris – good for them. Same with Trump fans. Me…I’ll pass on both but feel no need to burst anyone else’s bubble.
Two Voters
Here’s a minor sample of a discussion I had with two different voters.
The first voter, a centrist independent man from a swing state. He told me he is voting Trump because “Trump pisses off all the right people”.
I totally understand the sentiment.
The other voter, a woman, from a different swing state. She told me she would vote for Kamala if it meant “that would be the end of it”, meaning all of the victimhood stuff and identity politics being front and center in American culture. She acknowledged that her hope that voting for a black woman would stifle the woke impulses so prevalent in our current culture, is foolish, as she cited that same hope after she voted twice for Obama, and in her words, “things got much worse” in regards to that subject.
Ultimately, this female voter, who felt exhausted and dejected, told me she will either refrain from voting or vote third party.
Once again, I totally understand her situation and the sentiments she expressed.
Media Malpractice
Even to someone like me, who has spent a lifetime monitoring and commenting on the media’s mendacity and propensity for misinformation and disinformation, the last weeks of this campaign have been jaw-dropping.
For example, the media’s complete disregard for facts about Trump’s statement where he eviscerated Liz Cheney for being a war mongering chicken hawk, was disgusting.
Trump made the same point most liberals made back during the Bush administration (I know because I was one of them), namely that the neo-cons wanted everyone else to go fight in their wars but they themselves, and their offspring, would never go to war.
Liz Cheney is a perfect example of this as she and her truly vile father, Dick Cheney, are chicken hawk royalty.
That the media turned it into Trump calling for Liz Cheney to be put in front of a firing squad, is shameless and shameful. As for me personally, I do hope that Liz Cheney and her scumbag father Dick are put in frotn of firing squads, along with the rest of the neo-con cabal…but I’m not running for president.
I get that the establishment media hates Trump, but they’ve insured that they’re already greatly diminished credibility will only further drop.
The reality is that anyone who watches/reads the mainstream media…and believes it…is an irredeemable dupe and unconscionable dope.
On the bright side, if Trump wins then maybe we will get a return to actual journalism from actual journalists….you know the kind where journalists are adversarial to power and yearn to expose the truth.
After four years of the mainstream media playing patty cake with the Biden administration, and the previous four years of manufactured misinformation and disinformation regarding Trump, a return to reasoned and professional journalism would be a miracle…but a man can dream.
FDR, Revisited
You sir, are correct!!
After Trump’s shocking victory in 2016 (it wasn’t shocking to me – but most everyone else), liberals absolutely lost their fucking minds. People went insane…white liberal women most of all. And from their mental and emotional breakdown the egregiously inane identity politics, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), Black Lives Matter and #MeToo all flourished.
The pussy hat brigade drove liberalism into a ditch that is quickly turning into a grave. These fools, who stamped their feet and went on a seek and destroy mission against anyone who dare call them out for their vapid emotionalism and their political and intellectual vacuity in the wake of their loss to Trump, have set back leftist and liberal politics forty years at least. Ultimately, they have accomplished nothing but to align democrats with the malignant forces of big business, Israel, and the intelligence community, all while obliterating any meaningful class politics in their coalition. Well done, dipshits.
The same Clinton clowns who have ruined leftism and liberalism, make up the deplorable Kamala Harris supporters known as the KHive. So, if Kamala Harris loses in this election, expect more of the same from these unhinged hysterics, who in response will only double and triple down on identity politics and taking the corporate side in the class war.
My advice to all liberals is to not believe your own bullshit about this being “the most important election of our lifetime” and about “democracy being on the ballot” and how this might be our “last election”.
Stop with the existential nonsense. This election is just like any other. If Trump wins it will suck for you, there is no doubt, but…this too shall pass.
I had the same feelings you had back when Bush “beat” Gore in 2000…and all my fears were correct as Bush was the worst president of my lifetime (including Trump), and anybody else’s lifetime. But the truth is I survived…and so did the farce/charade of a democracy that I live in.
Liberals need to understand this…Trump is an annoyance, not an existential threat. He is hated by the establishment because he lays bare the hypocrisy, corruption and shamelessness among the ruling elite.
Liberals loathing of him is based almost entirely on style over substance. Trump’s style will no doubt grate, but his substance will be only slightly different from the business-as-usual American politics. Israel and big business will rule.
There’ll be lots of bluster and bullshit…but little else that matters will change in any meaningful way.
Just know this…the truth is that it is liberal’s reaction to Trump that makes him so dangerous. Aligning with the malignant and mendacious intelligence community, big business, Ukraine and Israel, in reaction to Trump is how you not only lose elections, but more importantly, your soul.
Liberals need to understand that the only thing they need to fear, is fear itself. Trump feeds off of fear and loathing, and if you do neither, he withers and dies.
As the saying goes, when you find yourself going through hell…keep going. Well, liberals, four more years of Trump will be hell but you gotta keep going…and maybe, just maybe, look in the mirror and ask yourself some meaningful questions like…what have I done and what policies have I supported, that brought this vile man to power? If the answer you receive makes you question your entire ideology and approach to politics…then you’re on the right track.
My advice…return to class politics and completely disregard identity politics and the cult of woke. I doubt you will (or even are capable of doing so)…but that’s what you should do.
All that said…the only thing worse for liberalism and leftism than Trump winning, is Trump losing, because then liberals will think that mid-wit mediocrities like Kamala Harris, who are slaves to corporations, the intel community and Israel, are the path to power.
They may be the path to electoral victory on occasion, but they aren’t the path to progress, and they sure as hell aren’t the path to lower class and working-class prosperity, and morality and ethics in American governance.
MAGA Mania
I’ve seen a lot of media pontification about how if Trump loses there will be violence from his supporters. Consider me unconvinced.
The MAGA maniacs are not going to start a civil war in defeat. They will bitch and moan and rant and rave, but do it all from their couches. There won’t be riots or violence or marches or meltdowns because MAGA at heart is, for the most part, fat and old…just like its leader.
There will just be impotent anger that never spreads further than their own living room because MAGA is a movement for the isolated, and with Trump no longer politically relevant, it will dissipate and disappear.
Now, if Trump wins…liberals may very well march and riot, and in response to that MAGA in its various forms will come out and there may very well be violence and in the most extreme case, civil unrest/skirmishes in a civil war.
But that will only happen because Trump is still relevant and that’s what gives his movement life. Trump out of power and out of options, saps MAGA of its mojo.
Middle-Fingers
Speaking of MAGA, I was considering the whole MAGA movement the other day and came to the conclusion once again that Trump is little more than a gigantic middle-finger to the establishment and a boorish response to the feminization of America and American culture.
At this point Trump is a caricature and a parody of himself. He is all bluster and bullshit, but his real value is in telling the establishment, which has actively destroyed the foundational working-class of this country and actively despises the majority of Americans it has displaced and dispossessed, to go fuck themselves.
That establishment includes Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama. These guys, along with Biden, are the ones who sold out the manufacturing base of America, and gutted the working and middle class of America.
They bailed out Wall Street and sold-out Main Street. They’ve flooded poor inner-city communities will drugs, and sold Americans, most notably black men, as slaves to the prison industrial complex.
These presidents, of both parties, hate you. They not only want to see you fail they want to see you suffer. They thrive off of your misery.
To MAGA, Trump is the white knight come to slay the establishment dragon and right all the wrongs from decades past, up to the present day.
What MAGA fails to understand is that Trump is just more of the same. He talks a big game but plays a small one. He gives a middle finger to the establishment but then does almost exactly what they want him to do.
Trump is a showman, a shaman and a charlatan. He’s an archetype come to life. A clown in all its manifestations…happy, sad, angry. He’ll put on a show and you’ll either love him or hate him, but you’ll find it impossible to ignore him.
Harris, on the other hand, is not a showman or a shaman, she’s just a charlatan. She will try to pass through her presidency like a ghost through a fog – unseen and unheard. She is a bad actress miscast on a dismal daytime drama. She likes that she was cast in the role but will be entirely forgettable in it. She enjoys the perks and prestige of being on the show but doesn’t want the pressure of any big scenes.
This election at its core is a question of who will haunt our collective consciousness for the next four years…and obviously, no matter who wins, we will all lose.
Right again!
On that bright note…that’s all I got for now folks. I’m sure I’ll have a few thoughts on the election once we know who won, but until then, stay safe and stay cool.
©2024