I’m angry. Really angry. As a lot of you are. There’s all kinds of analysis and speculation about why people voted for Trump, or against Harris, or how the Democrats may or may not have abandoned the working class, and the social impact of egg prices, but I just can’t get over the core fact of this election which is that half of the voters decided that fascism is an acceptable option. Fascism. Whatever shortcomings the Democrats and the Left may have, the fact that fascism is an attractive option to half of America should be the focus of attention. The fact that it isn’t is appalling.
There are a lot of people who have been arguing for the need to be understanding of Trump voters, to understand their economic distress, to build a strategy to convince them that we have a better plan and welcome them back when Trump’s schemes go awry. If we were dealing with any other Republican, or even Trump the first, I would agree, but that isn’t the reality we’re faced with. That doesn’t reflect what has happened in the past few months. We had a normal person running a normal campaign with normal policies contrasted with a person dressing up as a Garbage Lego man, rambling incoherently about electrified sharks and cannibals, holding racist and misogynistic Nazi-rallies, simulating oral sex with a microphone and discussing prodigious golfer penises. And he’s a convicted felon and a rapist. But the people threw their hat in with the Orange God Clown anyway because eggs. Good for them.
The real problem for me, personally, is that people voted for an aspiring dictator who wishes me harm, wishes my family harm, wishes my friends harm, and will have the power and intention to upend millions of lives. They voted to take the first step toward death camps, based on the hope that it will stop at the first step. They voted for the promise of a national abortion ban, and the hope that it won’t materialize. They voted for the hope that we can have a fascist government without becoming monsters. That’s some aspiration. No matter how they try to rationalize it, no matter how they twist up their own moral logic, they voted to harm their fellow citizens based on the promise of economic prosperity. That’s something I can’t and won’t accept. People have the right to vote as they see fit, but I will not accept a vote for fascism as moral. This is beyond a difference of opinion. It is a moral betrayal.
So, if you have the stomach for it, welcome back the fascists as they discover the error of their ways, after their promised economic Eden evaporates before them. I don’t have it in me. Not now. It’s true that rage is not healthy, but we don’t have a healthy society. We don’t live in decent times. Maybe someday I’ll have room for something else, but not now.