decision 2024: this is not obama vs. mccain or romney — this is really fucking bad

I think it’s very, very hard for a lot of peo­ple – es­pe­cial­ly kind peo­ple who are com­pas­sion­ate and ca­pa­ble of em­pa­thy – to ac­cept that some­times a per­son, or many peo­ple, are just bad, shit­ty people. 

This doesn’t have to mean they have no re­deem­ing qual­i­ties, but said qual­i­ties aren’t enough to bal­ance out or negate the bad. And what’s even hard­er for them to ac­cept is that in the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cas­es, what this re­al­ly comes down to is choice.

It’s a hard pill to swal­low and it hurts but I’ve found at least for my­self that once you get that pill down it makes it a whole hell of a lot eas­i­er to re­al­ly stand up for what you pur­port to be­lieve in.

I have loud­ly made it ex­treme­ly clear that my home and space are safe for my friends who are LGBTQIA+ and/or BIPOC, so if you’re a shit­head you bet­ter be the best per­son about hid­ing it from the en­tire world and I nev­er ever find out or if I do find out you’re toast. You’re no longer wel­come in my home or in my life.

If a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber votes for Trump, I don’t know what else to tell you. 

They open­ly made the choice to vote for a man who said he wants “the kind of gen­er­als Hitler had.”

What­ev­er their rea­son­ing is for do­ing so is en­tire­ly ir­rel­e­vant; there is no ex­cuse that can be an­a­lyzed or work­shopped enough to sym­pa­thize with or un­der­stand why a per­son would vote for some­one like that, and frankly it’s in­sult­ing to ask any­one to try. 

And if they’re un­aware that he said that (or any num­ber of things he’s said) that’s not any bet­ter.

Vot­ing from a po­si­tion of blind ig­no­rance caus­es just as much harm as vot­ing from a po­si­tion of in­ten­tion­al mal­ice. Also you’d re­al­ly have to be un­der a pret­ty big rock not to know what’s go­ing on or be ex­posed what­so­ev­er to his aw­ful hate­ful rhetoric.

We are on the precipice of fas­cism and if Tues­day doesn’t go the right way we will top­ple over the edge. How­ev­er bad you thought 2016–2020 was will look like noth­ing in com­par­i­son to the next four years. 

A lot of peo­ple I know who are hard­ly Trump sup­port­ers but who “don’t like pol­i­tics” and “stay out of pol­i­tics” and think that is a safe, ad­mirable, or in­tel­li­gent­ly con­sid­ered po­si­tion and who like to say they can “dis­agree and still be friends” bet­ter wake the fuck up. 

If you know even one per­son who is gay, queer, trans, BIPOC, not Chris­t­ian, an im­mi­grant, has had an abor­tion … ba­si­cal­ly any­one who isn’t a straight white Chris­t­ian male, and you claim to love them and you call them a friend, you owe it to them to get out there and vote.
 

en­dorse­ment
And yes, I’m gonna fuck­ing tell you who to vote for here be­cause let’s not pussy foot the fuck around and pre­tend like there’s even a sec­ond op­tion – vote for Ka­mala Har­ris.

 

I take a lot of um­brage with her too, but not vot­ing for her isn’t gonna save a sin­gle Pales­tin­ian kid. It’s only go­ing to let you pat your­self on the back and feel smug and su­pe­ri­or while do­ing ef­fec­tive­ly fuck all to ac­tu­al­ly help the sit­u­a­tion in Gaza.

I mean, I don’t like that our op­tions are “pre­vent fas­cism here and con­tin­ue fund­ing geno­cide” vs “go full fas­cism and con­tin­ue fund­ing geno­cide” but uh­h­h­hh one is ob­vi­ous­ly prefer­able over the oth­er and with the fas­cism ver­sion the geno­cide only gets worse. Any­one re­mem­ber the Mus­lim ban?

Like, this sucks, but it’s gonna suck a whole hell of a lot worse if Trump gets elect­ed. I wish our op­tions weren’t “this sucks” and “this re­al­ly fuck­ing su­per sucks hard” but I’d re­al­ly pre­fer not to live un­der full throt­tle fascism.

Also, I’ve watched a lot of “pro­gres­sives” flip a bitch and go hard into con­ser­vatism the sec­ond their com­fort or priv­i­lege feels threat­ened. Which I know per­for­ma­tive pro­gres­sives love, it’s their fa­vorite pastime. 

But we can get back to that lat­er – right now we need to stop full on fas­cism from happening. 

I am not be­ing hy­per­bol­ic or em­bell­ish­ing here. It is al­ready hap­pen­ing and if we don’t stop it right now we are to­tal­ly fucked.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2024 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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