We Already Understand White Rust Belt Voters

The day before today,One day, making tracks

In the prairie of Prax,

Came a North-Going Zax

And a South-Going Zax.

And it happened that both of them came to a place

Where they bumped. There they stood.

Foot to foot. Face to face.

“Look here, now!” the North-Going Zax said, “I say!

You are blocking my path. You are right in my way.

I’m a North-Going Zax and I always go north.

Get out of my way, now, and let me go forth!”

“Who’s in whose way?” snapped the South-Going Zax.

“I always go south, making south-going tracks.

So you’re in MY way! And I ask you to move

And let me go south in my south-going groove.”

Then the North-Going Zax puffed his chest up with pride.

“I never,” he said, “take a step to one side.

And I’ll prove to you that I won’t change my ways

If I have to keep standing here fifty-nine days!”

“And I’ll prove to YOU,” yelled the South-Going Zax,

“That I can stand here in the prairie of Prax

For fifty-nine years! For I live by a rule

That I learned as a boy back in South-Going School.

Never budge! That’s my rule. Never budge in the least!

Not an inch to the west! Not an inch to the east!

I’ll stay here, not budging! I can and I will

If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still!”

Of course the world didn’t stand still. The world grew.

In a couple of years, the new highway came through

And they built it right over those two stubborn Zax

And left them there, standing un-budged in their tracks.

-- The Zax, by Dr. Seuss (1953)

Now that the existential dread and Oh My Fucking Gods What Have We Done? stage of grief has passed, I'm back and I'm pissed the fuck off. Now starts the anger stage, and it's just going to keep on keeping on from there.

So to start this one? Stop fucking telling progressives how we need to understand the rust belt and where we went wrong in not coddling and appealing to the "concerns" of rural white voters. We already understand them, way the fuck better than you do.

It's not "economic anxiety." These folks do not give a rat's sweet pink ass about their financial situation. Because if they did, they would recognize that some jackass real estate mogul from New York Fucking City who built his career by not paying his bills and playing with bankruptcy also doesn't give a rat's sweet pink ass about helping them out. They voted for him because he wants to get rid of all the people they hate. Brown people, Jews, Muslims, the disabled, LGBT...literally anyone that isn't a straight white conservative Christian.

That's not anxiety. That's bigotry. And they were all too happy to vote for it. Even the ones who voted for a black guy just four years ago. Because it's a lot easier to take out your impotent rage on someone else than to fix your own shit.

Yeah, I'm fucking going there. The reason I do not feel a single scrap of sympathy for rural white America is because literally every fucking problem they bitch about is their own fucking fault. Because they refuse to adapt to a changing world, and like permanent spoiled goddamned children, they expect to get what they want when they want it and seriously fuck everyone else's priorities.

They don't want a job. They want their old job. They want to do exactly what they were doing before, nevermind that their old job is obsolete and being done by a robot. And they refuse to learn the skillset required to get a new one, because as conservatives they don't want to change. Period. End. Like literal fucking toddlers, they are going to stamp their feet and scream and demand that candy bar at checkout no matter how many times they're told it ain't happening.

Trump just happens to be the enabling grandparent this cycle, and his promise specifically is "you will get your old life back because I will get rid of those whom you've been convinced by years of bigoted pandering bullshit are responsible for all your problems." That's a sewer into which neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney was willing to crawl; even they have standards. Trump has none.

You want to see real economic anxiety? Go to the urban core. Where people are fighting for higher wages, better education, affordable childcare, affordable housing, student loan forgiveness and more affordable college, more efficient mass transit, etc. All the shit that will actually improve their lives in a tangible way. The truly economically anxious don't blame the already marginalized for their situation; they do what they have to in order to get by. The truly economically anxious adapt.

And therein lies the difference. Rural America does not want to adapt. Rural America does not want to do what needs to be done. They want to do the same shit they've been doing and just have it magically work this time. They want the rest of the world to cater to them.

They are those two stubborn Zax, and the world is not going to stand still.

RIP America: 7/4/1776 - 11/9/2016

60 million people just screamed “I HATE YOU” at the top of their lungs. We can’t undo that. We never will. Thinking it was even possible is the white rabbit that lead us down this deep dark hole.

It’s over. There is, literally, nothing left to do. It doesn’t matter how well we organize, how qualified a candidate we put forth. There are too many people in this godforsaken lake of shit that calls itself a country who would elect the very embodiment of evil as long as he feeds their hatred. There are too many journalists who care more about perceived fairness than accuracy. There are too many people who will let perfect be the enemy of sane. There are simply far too many people who do not want a better world for everyone, only for people like themselves.

I’m done fighting. I’m done hoping. We’ve reached the end. If it’s not going to get any better, then let it fucking burn.

There is nothing left to save. May nuclear war wipe us off the fucking map before Trump makes us suffer death by a thousand cuts.

Protest Votes Are Merely An Excercise In Straight White Guy Privilege

There, I said it. And now I will explain why this is not an opinion, but a motherfucking fact.

Were this a normal election, I literally would not care if a bunch of angry straight white guys in good health decided to write in Donald goddamned Duck as their candidate. But this is not a normal election.

This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means we have guy who flies off on vengeance-driven Twitter crusades at 2am in charge of the nuclear codes.

This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who is to stand two civil trials for large scale fraud and raping a 13-year-old girl has the power to sign bills.

This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who has no idea how the government works will hold the nation's highest public office.

This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who thinks he has the right to sexually assault whomever he wants to just because he's rich will have to meet with other world leaders, many of whom have wives and daughters and quite a few of whom are women.

This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who wants his political opponents jailed or assassinated has the power to issue executive orders.

This is an election in which Hillary Clinton not winning means a guy who has expressed borderline incestuous interest in his own daughters has the power to pardon convicted rapists.

In other words, were the nation made up of sane, rational people, the very idea of a Trump presidency should scare the holy shit out of everyone enough to make sure he lost by a landslide, simply because we'd become the United States of Fuck This Guy. But of course, if that were the case, Trump would never have gotten the nomination at all.

So here we are.

Unfortunately, while Clinton is still leading, there is a sizeable contingent of people -- many of whom supported Bernie Sanders of all people -- who plan to either throw their votes away entirely on a 3rd party candidate, or not even bother hiding their childish tantrum and vote for the Orange Menace himself. And these people are, by and large, straight white cisgendered men in general good health, voting in a way that screams "I know I'm one of the most privileged demographics in this country and I don't give a shit about anything but my feelings."

Why? Because for them, even a Trump presidency isn't as bad as an establishment candidate since none of the things he wants to do will affect them directly. Thus, the blow to their pride that would be casting a vote for a woman is of far greater concern.

Yes, I'm going there, because the evidence is literally right in front of your faces.

Bernie Sanders has been involved in Congress for even longer than Clinton has. She was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2001; Sanders first got elected as U.S. Representative in 1991. They support many of the same policy positions. They're certainly further on the same page than Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or Saints preserve us, Trump. And yet, Sanders is the favored anti-establishment "maverick" candidate, while Clinton has been "in politics too long" and therefore "corrupt."

They are virtually the same candidate. But only one of them is female, so obviously that one is no good.

And this is the result of Clinton being the subject of a Republican smear campaign for nearly three decades. Longer than half the electorate has been alive. There is no way in Hell that people haven't internalized that nonsense in some form.

And yes, it's nonsense. Literally every single anti-Hillary argument boils down to "she's unfit to be President because she embodies qualities we still do not find acceptable for women; she does not back down and shut up when a man is talking." Every single "scandal" she's been embroiled in has fallen apart under even minor scrutiny. Every. Single. One. But for insecure privileged white men who felt their balls shrivel up and retreat when she got up on that stage and accepted the nomination, they will cling to any excuse not to vote for her no matter how ridiculous it is. It doesn't matter that her opponent is literally a fascist dictator fanboy. They will, as Varys said of Joffrey Baratheon, "see this country burn if they can be kings of the ashes."

For those of us who are not straight white men in general good health, this election is quite literal life and death. I'm a gay woman with two chronic health conditions. I have friends who are also women, LGBT, disabled, cancer patients, black, Native, and Hispanic. People who would not survive 4 years under Trump, no matter how Congress ends up leaning. I have already voted Hillary Clinton not just because she is the most qualified candidate to ever run for this office, period, but because I will do anything I have to to make sure that the people I care about make it through the next four years alive.

This is not an election to cast a protest vote in. There is too much at stake. This is not about you. This is not about your fucking 'conscience.' Because if your conscience is telling you to vote against someone just because she's a woman, no matter what, then you need to get a new one because yours is fucking broken. This is a fucking emergency.

And I'll tell you what we do in emergencies: we break glass.

Happy Hour With Mussolini: The Rise of Donald Trump Explained

This election cycle is unlike anything we've seen on U.S. soil in living memory. The last time we had such a forward-thinking candidate matched up against the rotting remains of last year's compost stash was when The Party of Lincoln was literal; being anti-slavery was the same level of radical as being feminist, pro-climate science, and anti-crony capitalism is today. And by all accounts, Stephen Douglas was just as batshit looney tunes during the debates as Trump was last week.

It's the kind of once-a-century circus on the Island of Misfit Toys that has people on both sides of the red-blue spectrum asking "where the fuck are we and how did we get here?" To answer that question, we'll have to go across the Atlantic and roughly a century back in time, to where and when conditions were very similar.

In the immortal words of Sophia Petrillo: picture it, Sicily, 1916.

Not Sicily proper, but close enough. The middle of World War I. The Italian Socialist Party had declared itself neutral and opposed Italy's involvement in the war. But a prominent member, writer and professor Benito Mussolini was having none of that. A fan of eugenics, who believed that WWI was a golden opportunity for Italians in Austria-Hungary to prove just how superior they were, Mussolini changed his tune from Marxist Socialism to the kind of scary ideology that would make him besties with Hitler later on; that of nationalistic fervor and the mandate that "superior" peoples dominate the "inferior" ones.

WWI was the European version of Iraq and Afghanistan, only it lasted half as long because in those days, countries still used actual declarations of war rather than merely committing troops to an area indefinitely. But it was just as popular-and-then-unpopular an albatross as Iraqi Freedom later became. And Mussolini saw the same kind of opportunities in WWI that conservatives saw in Iraq; profit, and a chance to bomb the shit out of brown people. And just like Iraq, it eventually proved to be more trouble than it was worth for the Italian Socialists when it started to divert money away from important shit like food and infrastructure.

The Italian Socialist Party eventually gave Mussolini the boot over his pro-war stance, and he responded by forming the Italian Fascist Party, which promoted the need for the "elite" to show the rest of those plebes how to live. And that could only happen if everyone in the country united under the banner of superiority and self-determination, and Seriously, Fuck Those Slavs.

If this sounds frighteningly familiar, that's because it's all happening again. Only replace Italian Fascism with the Tea Party and Mussolini with Donald Trump. It's the same zombie ideology wearing a flimsier, made-in-China hat.

Trump is taking advantage of the same kind of people Mussolini did. Uneducated, low-information country folk who miss the Good Old Days when they were the biggest fish in the pond. And he had a cult of personality much the same way Trump does. He "told it like it was." He peddled the idea that Italians were inherently superior, and if only they could stop their petty squabbling and agree on everything, they could bring their country back to its glory days of law and order. "Make Italy Great Again" indeed. What's more, the Italian Socialist Party that had ousted him saw the whole thing as an overly long joke, until the Blackshirt squads started "restoring order" by getting rid of everyone Mussolini didn't like.

Oh yes, the Blackshirts were very much real. WWI veterans who swore an oath to Mussolini and carried out all the ugly stuff like kidnappings, murder, bombings, and general mayhem in the name of scaring people into line. The fascia in fascism; they bound everything together with the promise of swift and scary judgment against those who didn't conform. Today, we'd recognize them as the "sovereign citizen" movement. The Timothy McVeighs and Cliven Bundys of the U.S..

And the years between WWI and WWII were the crucible in which this explosive mixture of nationalist fervor, childish fear and resentment, and the apathy of the opposition cooked and eventually boiled over.

Like Trump supporters today, Mussolini's followers viewed him as a genius, someone whose success meant he was inherently better than everyone below him. Mussolini himself fanned the flames by attributing his wealth and prosperity not to luck or being born into the upper middle-class and thus having more advantages, but to having inherently better attributes than other men. Much like Trump's "very good brain."

And that's not the only similarity. Both men dodged military service themselves while later advocating for war (Mussolini did eventually serve, but only because it was a condition of his pardon for, ironically, falsifying immigration papers in Geneva). Both men cultivated a propaganda machine that associated their names with prestige and value (despite the fact that nearly everything Trump has ever slapped his name on no longer exists). Both men's visions centered on a glorious empire with themselves at the top (Mussolini wanted to reforge the Roman Empire, while Trump merely wants to dominate the airwaves).

The common thread that really ties the two together, though, is that neither man was/is dangerous by himself; on their own, people like Mussolini and Trump are no more concerning than that hardcore conservative relative of yours who ruins Thanksgiving every year. The danger is in their followers. Nobody would've taken Mussolini or his movement seriously without the March on Rome; had it not been for 30,000 pissed-off Blackshirts and the very real threat of an armed communist revolt, Il Duce would've been remembered more like Leon Czolgosz.

Likewise, what makes the prospect of a Trump presidency legitimately terrifying is not the kind of laws he could enact even with a Republican Congress (because frankly even his own party can't stand him), but the fact that being elected president has the potential to embolden his fiercest supporters to translate their hatred into the kind of violence we haven't seen in nearly a century.

And these modern-day Blackshirts have body armor, semi-automatics, and much larger magazines than their 1920s counterparts.

There's a saying in toxicology that the dose makes the poison, and it's true in politics as well. The support makes the movement. Followers are the difference between your hardcore right-wing relative ruining Christmas dinner, and a neo-fascist right-wing lunatic ruining your country.

Still, a charismatic leader who tells angry people precisely what they want to hear isn't quite enough on its own. As I mentioned before, it's the apathy of the opposition that's the final catalyst. And yes, we have that, too.

Like the Italian Socialists, today's Democratic Socialists are not taking the threat of President Trump seriously enough. He's written off as a joke candidate, much the way Mussolini was. To the point that some who supported Bernie Sanders' run for the nomination have declared their intent to either stay home or vote a protest candidate rather than cast a vote for Clinton.

Edmund Burke told us over two centuries ago why this attitude is dangerous:

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

The reason I've taken the time and energy to write this is because this exact scenario strikes a very personal chord with me; my grandfather escaped Fascist Italy in the 1930s. He died in 2007, which I'm actually glad for. Because my grandfather loved the United States; he would not have wanted to be alive to witness the rise of the same kind of man he risked death at sea and capture/deportation to get the fuck away from.

It all boils down to this: don't do nothing.

Don't be the apathetic opposition that looks on and lets this happen again because we forgot what happened the last time. Be the generation that remembers. Be the generation that votes, because there is too much at stake here to throw your voice down the gutter or not use it at all.

Be the generation that tells the Angry Fuckhead Movement that this shit will not be tolerated anymore.

Be the the generation that, when the mob and the press and the whole world tell them to move, plants themselves like trees beside the river of truth, and tells the whole world — "No, you move.'