Like so many I remain shocked by the results of the election, and in reaction to it I, also like many others, have taken an almost-total break from all news; I do glance at DK headlines on occasion but that’s it. As expected there is an avalanche of post-election analyses about why the OA (orange orifice) and his cohorts now control all three branches of government: What Harris / Biden / Dems / did or did not do and, of course, various and sundry opinions about what needs to be done to “win back” power. Such reflects the traditional and accepted approach that the chattering classes always articulate after an election, which distilled to its most basic form can be described as the “message / messenger” principle: We must change our message because it did not appeal / was not understood / was not communicated effectively OR we must change our messenger / enlist a new generation of candidates / get better more tech-savvy people to run for office who can reach more people through social / alternative media, etc. Blah. Blah. Blah. In short, anytime there has been a national election of consequence (1980, 1992, 2000, 2004, 2016, etc.) the approach is always, without exception, the same: Change The Message / Change The Messenger. This time around I call bullshit on the conventional wisdom. The problem is not the message or the messenger. The problem is ignorance and stupidity, and that problem will not be addressed by post-election business as usual.
I have just realized that the over-riding emotion I now have is one of anger, rage even. In order to deal with any problem one must first recognize and acknowledge that the problem exists. The problem is not those people who voted for the OA; such voters exist(ed) and everyone knew that, so the fact that millions of people “pulled the lever” for him is neither unexpected nor surprising. No, the real problem is the millions of people who did not vote at all. It appears that many fewer people voted in 2024 than in 2020, and it is that lack of participation that is the real problem for Democrats, certainly, but more importantly for this country and its future. I am angry, certainly, at those who chose a convicted felon over a qualified woman but I am enraged by those stupid idiots who did not bother to vote at all who have no condemned all of us to at least four years of chaos and perhaps to permanent, irreparable damage to this country. America never has been perfect; indeed, this nation has been conflicted from its inception given its complete inability to reconcile the stirring words of the Declaration Of Independence to the reality of the Constitution, a document that was “dumbed down” until it could attract enough support from slave-holding colonies by adopting such tortured elements as the 3/5 compromise and the Electoral College. But I, like so many others, have always believed in the America of the late-write James Baldwin, “...the America that is yet to be...”. This country has never actually lived up to its ideal but at least the ideal was something for which we could all strive. The OA has shit all over that ideal, and it is that brutal reality that has so many wondering something along the lines of “what happened to the country I thought I lived in?”.
No, the question now is not how do we change our message / whom do we enlist to be our next messenger? The real question, the much harder to face question is how do we address the issue just under the surface: How is stupidity on a massive scale to be dealt with? How do you reach the millions of lazy, ignorant citizens who could not even be bothered to rouse themselves to vote at all? Our system has never asked much of its citizens, especially in recent decades when the military draft was eliminated in the post-Vietnam era. I am 71 years of age and when I was in school taking a course in Civics or US Government, one learned about “rights and responsibilities”; one had vast pervasive rights, rights that many in the world did not enjoy. But along with those rights came the responsibilities of citizenship, the obligation to understand how government worked and the obligation to be and stay informed. Sadly, now all one hears about are one’s rights; one hears nothing about the concomittant resposibilities that were the flip-side of rights.
So, here we are: Huge numbers of citizens, unable to or disinterested in actually cogitating about the differences between the two candidates, made their choice by not voting at all. And those are the folks that are to blame for what is about to unfold for all of us. And my view of these folks: “Fuck Them”. Fuck the labor union members who did not vote. Fuck the young people would did not vote. Fuck the women who did not vote. Fuck the citizens of color who did not vote. Fuck the white people who did not vote. Fuck the lot of them. Originally from Texas, I have given my very last nickel to any Democrat who runs for the Senate or other office in that state; I have long thought of Texas as The Shithole state, the place at or near the bottom in nearly every metric of a healthy life (level of education, maternal health, childhood well-being and mortality, etc., etc., etc.). I knew then-governor Ann Richards decades ago; her like is long gone and if there is to be any change in Texas then Texans will have to step up.
Union members and labor activists: You need to step up in your own communities, with your own colleagues. Do not solicit donations and funds from folks like me unless and until you can deal with your own first. Young women: As a long-time supporter of women and their right to choose their own destiny, I’m done, I’ve given my last nickel to help bolster abortion rights. I’ve practiced law for over 40 years, and I can guarantee you that you have no idea what is about to happen to your rights, Dobbs was only the beginning. Young men, and all men who could not bring themselves to vote for a woman: Fuck you. I grew up in South Texas, my first life-partner was the son of migrant laborers; that so many folks of Hispanic origin voted for Trump or did not vote at all: Fuck you. Christians: For those who have forgotten, or ignored, the biblical mandate to “care for the least of these”, Fuck you. In the 1980s I, like many other gay folks, was an AIDS activist. I marched. I got arrested. I got beaten up. I gave at the office, quite literally. But now, in light of this election, I am done. I. Am. Done. Those who want to remain involved, to try to continue to effect change, good luck and well done you.
Here is the painful reality: You cannot fix stupid. And what this election has revealed is how pervasive is the stupidity, ignorance and outright laziness of the American people. This country has a real problem, and it is not “the message” or “the messenger”. The problem is the American people, writ large. Stupidity will not be “cured” in two years at the next mid-term election. It will not be cured by adopting different (better) economic policies that attempt to appeal to voters’ bank accounts. It will not be cured by getting younger faces on campaing posters. The American Experiment was always just that, an experiment. And to continue, much less succeed, that experiment required just a little effort from Americans, nothing too burdensome of difficult; all one needed to do was vote. Sadly, too many people thought that, faced with the choice between a convict and a competent woman, they were simply too tired / bored / busy / smart / online to get off their fat asses and do the minimum that is required of a decent citizen. In making that choice they betrayed every man and woman whose remains lie in the many national cemeteries around this land. Stupidity is in the ascendant, and stupid people are everywhere; it is alarming to realize that there numbers are much, much greater than any of us knew but here we are. THAT is the problem that has to be addressed but it is unlikely to be precisely because it is an uncomfortable, unpleasant reality. But, as noted, here we are.
