And what an absolute crock of shit it is. On one hand, we have a candidate who is supposedly left-leaning but would be seen as being to the right side of the center-right position in most European countries, not to mention some of the human-rights violation stuff like supporting Israel’s genocide efforts and somehow supporting whatever the hell is going on at the US border. On the other hand, we had a literal fascist felon who supposedly has a secret plan to become president even if he doesn’t win the election, running on a far-right platform that is more and more exactly the nazi platform. It’s fucking wild, let me tell you, to be a person in this country who has to help pick between these two miserable human beings. I mean, the choice is clear and super easy to make, but it sure feels bad that this is where my country is at. This asshole (Trump, to be specific) should have been laughed out of the area a decade ago. He should have been in prison even longer ago, given all the fraud. Only by the virtue of being a “rich” celebrity has he managed to get this far in life without any time in prison. The man’s a wannabe mobster and is so blatant about it that the entirety of US culture has shifted in order to not lose their minds over how much blatantly wrong and illegal stuff this man and his campaign for presidency have done over the last ten-ish years. I really wish I could say that I don’t and can’t understand how anyone could think of Trump as a viable president or as anything beyond someone who deserves life in prison, but I do and can because I’ve seen it happen. I watched it happen.

I knew people who voted for him in 2016. After the Democratic establishment shoe-horned Hillary Clinton into the nomination and blocked out anyone who didn’t play ball in a way that felt incredibly unfair even though a version that felt more fair likely wouldn’t have gone any differently, a lot of people got incredibly disillusioned with politics in the US. I was one of them. A much smaller subset, though, who lacked the foresight to anticipate the consequences or the memory to know he was absolutely going to do every bitter and awful thing he said he would, decided to vote for Trump in order to “burn it all down.” Any kind of actual upset to the political status quo was all they wanted, consequences to those without their copious privilege be damned! Some people were single issue voters and despite his philandering, rapist ways, the forced birth (anti-abortion is how they style themselves, but I feel like their actual stance has been made PRETTY CLEAR by the past decade of them getting exactly what they want) contingent cast their lot behind him since he ran as a Republican and that’s just sort of the general Republican platform (and still is, despite how much they pretend otherwise). It was really weird, but he also captured the religious crowd despite being one of the shittiest, cruelest wastes of oxygen in existence, which feels like it really illustrates how much Fire and Brimstone those people are about. I had family members in both of those later groups and while I don’t know for sure that they voted for him, I know that they’d never admit to it since politics is a taboo subject in all of my biological family units (and I haven’t spoken to any of them in more than passing since 2019, so I’m not about to break up that lovely distance I’ve made to find out which of them I should dislike or avoid more than I already do).

I know the kinds of people who are blind to all the horrific stuff someone like Trump does. I was raised by them. It’s so easy to ignore something inconvenient, to make excuse after excuse about something you don’t want to admit or wish wasn’t true, to pretend that nothing happening right now matters because, if it did, surely someone would have done something about it. To act like it’s all okay because, ultimately, someone along the line will do the right thing and stop the truly horrible stuff from happening (if its really even happening at all, and not being blown out of proportion for attention) and that’s sometimes just the price you pay to get the thing you really want. It’s so easy to look away, especially these days when awful stuff is constantly being brought to our attention at the deliberate cost of our peace of mind because people in fear are easier to manipulate. That said, there comes a time when ignorance, deliberate or otherwise, becomes complicity. It isn’t difficult to pay attention. It isn’t difficult to look something up. It takes real work to stay ignorant, to avoid learning things, in this day and age. I mean, it’s no “rise of fascism and literal promises to kill people the instant a candidate takes office,” but just look at the whole “AI” deal. Given how much it is talked about, it takes a real dedication to being uninvolved in the world to not know about the dangers it presents to the environment, artists, writers, and the ability to find true information on the internet. Why should anyone extend the benefit of the doubt to someone who has deliberately chosen to live in ignorance? Sure, if you just woke up from a decade-long coma and this is still the first week you’ve been awake, I might cut you a little slack. No one else, though, given how Trump is literally proclaiming to the crowds at his rallies that he’s going to try to steal the election and send people to camps.

Sure, you could blame the media. They have some culpability here. They’ve done their very best for a decade now to pretend like the increasingly unhinged stuff the Republicans are doing is perfectly normal and that any refusal to meet those asshole halfway is actually the wrong thing to do. Problem with that view is that you can’t meet someone halfway on denying basic humanity to entire groups of people. There’s no compromising with that, as much as the reporters at the New York Times (and so many other publications, but they’re perhaps the most egregious of the bunch) would like to pretend. You can’t meet people halfway on deporting anyone they THINK might be an illegal citizen following a quick stop over at whatever horrendous concentration camps they cook up.

Anyway, that’s the rant I’ve got. I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to say in the coming days based on how today plays out. And then based on how every day after that plays out until we have a new president confirmed in office or the entire government has collapsed/can no longer ever pretend to be a functional democracy. One or the other. Pretty stark difference between them, you know? Pretty rough world to live in, where it is apparently a fifty-fifty shot on which way things will go. Fucking wild.