I thought we were moving on from this bullshit. Now, we’ve got four more years of it. Four more years of fear, anxiety, anger, violence, and death. Middle America and Texas, as always, fuck you. The rest of you, it’s time to get to work.
My angry self wants to blame … everyone. Maybe the DNC could have had a little more serious discussion before simply handing the keys over to the VP (and maybe Michelle Obama could have been mentioned as more than just a cheerleader). Maybe Kamala Harris’ people could have had her spend more time distancing herself from that POS dictator-elect instead of from one of the most economically successful presidents of all time. Maybe Harris’ team could have reached out to center-right men like some of my family members — even after leaning toward Joe Biden in late July, there was no way they were going to pull the lever for a younger/“less experienced,” leftier candidate and a woman without good reason. For the rest of them, maybe Kamala Harris could have had the common decency to have been born a man.
My rational self wants to try to move on, which won’t be easy. Half the country literally wants to kill pregnant women and deport our friends and family and possesses the legislative mandate — and the fire power — to do so. Along with a national abortion ban and mass deportations, our new dictator will also roll back LGBTQ+ rights, accelerate the death of the planet from climate change, put more military-style weapons in the hands of small white men, sic the National Guard on peaceful protestors, repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, and, by cozying up to dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un, make the world more unstable than it already is. But, hey, maybe the price of eggs will go down a few cents now. (Hope you’re happy, independents. If there’s any justice left in the universe, that buyer’s remorse you’ll be feeling soon should keep you awake at night for years.)
I keep telling myself it’s only one more term, but we all know plans are underway to rig future elections in Republicans’ favor and that there’s nothing to stop them, including — or especially — the mainstream media. The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, and far too many other networks and big publications all normalized and sanewashed the guy with 34 felony counts, one conviction, two impeachments, and six bankruptcies, plus more than two dozen credible accusations of rape against him, the same “man” who, through abject negligence and ignorance, hastened more than 400,000 COVID deaths, lost more jobs than any other president since WWII, and added $7.8 trillion to the national debt, the third highest amount of any presidency, though unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, Trump was not negotiating two foreign conflicts or a civil war. He was just giving tax breaks to his billionaire buddies. (Yes, “The Debt King” had run up the tab long before his delinquent COVID response added $3 trillion to the number.)
Instead of treating him like a normal candidate, these once-proud publications and networks should have drilled down on his criminality and ineptitude. Again, fear of an angry, mostly online, uniformly disconnected-from-reality mob kept the Times et al. from speaking the truth. Every time I remember our next president is Donald Fucking Trump, I throw up a little in my mouth, then I think of our mainstream media and how that vindictive, tiny-handed asshole is going to pull every stunt imaginable to limit them or even censure them, and I laugh. Then I laugh some more. Good riddance.
I also take heart in the fact that Dems up and down the ballot may — may — learn something from this redoubtable loss. They probably won’t, but I’d like to believe they may because I’m a pollyannish dumbass. No one’s saying D’s need to adjust their values. We just want Chuck, Bernie, and the gang to stop talking — and talking and talking — about esoteric bullshit and start taking bold action. Democrats could have codified Roe decades ago but chose not to because it gave D candidates something to run on. They also could have put term limits on the Supreme Court over the years and/or expanded it but did not because it was too much work, and the DOJ could have put Trump in jail but, curled up in a ball in a corner of Main Justice, declined out of pure cowardice. “Mean guy might tweet mean things about us” L And even if Tiny Hands dies in office — from old age, a Big Mac, or a knife in the back from VP-elect J.D. Vance (a distinct possibility once the senile, diapered fool starts criming even more while rambling and raving about Hannibal Lecter) — the future has never looked bleaker.
Our only option is to resist. March, write, sing, paint, talk, fight — do whatever you can to let the fascists know we’re not going to stand for their hatred or roll over while they destroy the bedrock upon which this country was founded: democratic freedom. And to all the far-right politicians and tiny conservative men in town: We’re watching, and — no surprise — we have more eyes now than we’ve ever had.
This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
