What a fucking travesty. As of this writing (November 5th, 2020) the election is looking more and more like a narrow victory for Biden. For the Democrats in the legislature it's a disappointment. They still run the House of Representatives (though I've heard their majority has been reduced) and they didn't win the Senate.
Because they're a shit party with shit policies. They spent so much political capital trying to court disaffected Republicans, which by necessity meant shitting on their own progressive base YET AGAIN (and lecturing them on the need for "compromise" while abusing them), only for Trump to strengthen his hold on Republican Party members. The Democratic leadership loves the idea of a "moderate Republican" because that's what they see themselves as. Rich people with a social conscience and liberal social values. Sure, they no likey the taxes that rich people would have to pay for there to be a decent society in the USA where medical bills don't bankrupt people and where there are financial supports for people condemned to live as the "Precariat" in a world of rising food and housing expenses. But aside from that TOTALLY understandable sentiment, they're just fine with embracing diversity and tut-tutting brazen displays of sexism or racism comes naturally to them. Barack Obama described himself as a "moderate Republican from the 1980s."
If only those card-carrying "moderate Republicans" could see just how "moderate" the Democratic Party has become, why, they'd abandon the GOP in droves and leave it to the Kochs and the Sheldon Adelson's and other plutocratic extremists, as well as those deplorable hillbilly, deep-South redneck, inbred imbeciles, and there'd be a true, blessed, Moderate Hegemony ruling the USA in peace and prosperity for decades to come!
Except that's not the case. And gambling that it was the case was just that, ... a gamble. What wouldn't have been a gamble would have been reaching out to the goddamned party's base and mobilizing them and inspiring them with policies that would help them. But again, for the leadership of the Democratic Party (and the bulk of their politicians who are wealthy, with many of them being millionaires) this would require higher taxes on the wealthy and assaults on sources of profit for their corporate benefactors. Which makes advocating for popular policies a non-starter.
But let's not leave the nauseating Republican Party USA and its deplorable voter base off the hook. I haven't spent as much time trashing the Republicans during the past couple of years (I don't think) because I believe that it goes without saying and I've been more interested (when I'm interested at all) in getting my fellow progressives to abandon such waste-of-time fixations as "lesser-evil" voting and capitulation to centrist "pragmatism." But make no mistake about it: I think Trump is vile. I can't stand the man. He's obviously a victim in some ways from a truly despicable, psychopathic father. But at some point you have to hold people accountable for their actions. Whatever traumas in their past, what they do to other people is part of who they are. Perhaps we shouldn't condemn them entirely, but neither should we completely exculpate them either. So here is my evaluation of Trump ...
Donald Trump is a disgusting imbecile. He's a stupid, stupid man. Vain, selfish, arrogant, entitled, racist, misogynist, rapist, corrupt, stupid and disgusting. I can't stand to (are rarely did) watch his "press conferences." The belligerence. The brazen lies. The nauseating self-pity. I don't know why so many outlets continued to participate in those farces. After all, repeated stories about his lies and scandals simply made people numb. Desensitized. I barely paid attention to these reports. But on the few occasions where I watched snippets of a Trump press conference, I would quickly become angry and disgusted and turn off the video.
Like a lot of idiotic, toxified masculinists, Trump appears to think that the environment is either gay or female. Should we simply abuse the planet that gave us life and tries to sustain it, or should we full-on rape it? It's dangerous. Destructive. Stupid. Inexcusable. And, finally, because it represents his insecurities and rages; pathetic.
Trump was raised by a nazi. He's a right-wing racist himself. He panders to racists. He strengthens racists. He is the sort of human filth who would gleefully watch innocent people being executed for crimes they didn't commit if he didn't like their skin colour.
Who votes for Trump? The wealthy people with no sense of community who always vote Republican. Ordinary people taken in by the Republican Party's espousal of so-called "traditional values." (These people might not be hateful racists and homophobes.) And, finally, the demographic that is being increasingly pandered to as the party abandons all pretense of caring about the lives of ordinary people: Ignorant and/or stupid racists, dimwits, authoritarians and closet-cases. "Conservatives," studies show, are more fixated on threats and are possessed of strong "fight or flight" instincts that often overwhelms their rational brains. Such people are not necessarily white skinned. You will find racialized minorities who love Donald Trump and women from all sorts of demographics who like Trump, despite his racism and sexism. This is because Trump represents an extremely crude version of the dominant figure in our society. He's a rich white male. Obviously Mitt Romney is also a rich, white male. So are many (most?) US politicians. But Trump is a showman version of it. He's crude/extreme. His "alpha male" presentation is over-the-top and that's why it resonates with certain people.
What can you say about the bulk of his supporters? They support murderous police racism and only become agitated when they hear that the oppressed people are fighting back. And then they fucking whine about "cities burning" and the "racism" and "violence" of Black Lives Matter.
They (like their Canadian conservative counterparts) wail about voter fraud against them (which is essentially non-existent) ten seconds after hooting and hollering in their approval for their own sides open, blatant voter suppression tactics. Rank hypocrisy.
They shriek about dangerous "illegal immigrants" when confronted with refugees created by their own nation's rulers. They worry about becoming a minority in their own country because they themselves treat minorities like shit and they project their own disgusting racism on everyone else.
They cling like the idiots they are to their religious delusions and all the constricted moralism that entails. They use their "values" as an excuse to attack women, GLBT people. And then they throw themselves at the feet of a corrupt, sleazy businessman who is a serial rapist and who has publicly stated that he has lusted after his own daughter since she was an adolescent. Why do they do this? Because they're shit-heads.
The last thing I'll say on this post (It's taking to long to say what I wanted to say so I'll do it in installments. And this is all just me getting stuff off my chest.) is that these idiots with their COVID-denialism are disgusting. Blowing away all the froth of their stupid internet theories and arguments, the facts remain that COVID-19 is a real virus. It is far more deadlier than the seasonal flu. It is highly contagious. And disease experts, public health experts, health care workers, etc., ... these people are not all charlatans, Soros-funded tools of "globalists," or "crisis actors." These right-wing conspiracy theorists would be laughable if the stakes weren't so high. These stupid fuckers can't process that capitalists and domestic surveillance and law ENFORCEMENT institutions are in charge.* Instead they inhabit an Alice in Wonderland society where the gravest threats to freedom are "social justice warriors," climate scientists and, now, public health experts. Everywhere, right-wing people are confronted by conspiracies, being advanced by stealthy, long-term campaigns, to cunningly destroy society from the inside. The traditional family is being undermined. Economic freedom (to exploit and destroy) is being subverted. Individual liberties are being reduced. (By people telling you to self-isolate and wear a mask when outside during a pandemic.)
It's all so self-evidently stupid. And these idiots, parading around without their masks and sneering at the "sheeple" who accept reality, are making the pandemic last longer and spread farther. And Trump, even after openly admitting he downplayed the danger out of a delusional effort to prop-up the economy and who even contracted the virus himself (through his negligent behaviour most likely) is personally responsible for the untimely deaths of at least 110,000 US-Americans. (Canada at 1/10th the USA's population has lost 9,000 people. A poor showing compared to places like South Korea but better than the USA. 9,000 X 10 is 90,000. Trump's stupidity has produced 200,000 deaths. 110,000 more than 90,000.) It's an undeniable catastrophe, but deny it they do. Because these dickheads will deny anything in order to prop-up their preconceived delusions.
I could say more but I won't.
* Strangely, while they worship local police forces, and ICE and DEA agents, many Trumpists have an incoherent relationship with the FBI or the CIA. Some see the latter two organizations as the main players in a Jewish/globalist dominated "deep state" that is opposed to human freedom. Others simultaneously love and loathe them for being cops and for attacking countries like Russia, China, Venezuela, etc.
