Save American Democracy

Foreword

Before I talk about the politics in the USA, I just want to make clear that this entry does not constitute a return to writing. I’m still taking a step back from writing. I’m only writing this entry now because this message is important and it won’t be of any use if I wait too long.

The Appeal of Trump

For anybody who thinks I don’t understand the appeal of Trump, you’re wrong. It’s laid out very clearly in Sam Harris’ podcast, which I’ll provide a summary of in my own words, with some bits taken directly from the podcast.

Edit (09-11-2024): I think Trump’s appeal goes further than him being a reaction to the far left. It’s an important part of his appeal, but to suggest that that alone accounts for his support in 2024 was an oversimplification. A few other factors that I believe contributed to his election win were the inflation due to Covid, populism being very fashionable right now, Biden and Kamala being weak alternatives, and disinformation and conspiracies favorable to him flooding social media.

Summary

Trump does and says whatever the fuck he feels like, without regard to any standard of decency. “Grab ’em by the pussy!” “I’ll eat nothing but McDonald’s cheeseburgers if I want to!” “Go back to your shithole country!” “I’m a very stable genius.” And if you don’t like it, he’ll just tell you to go fuck yourself. He doesn’t care about your pronouns. He isn’t afraid of offending anybody and he makes no apologies. He’s shameless. He’s fat Jesus.

Why is such a shameless candidate appealing to hundreds of millions of voters? Look no farther than the other side of the aisle. It’s exactly the opposite message. Pure judgement. If you’re white, you’re guilty of the crimes of slavery and colonialism just by association to your ancestors. And if you’re a cisgendered white heterosexual male (the base of Trump’s support), then you’re a homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, sexist barbarian.

The juxtaposition of these two sides is the key to Trump’s appeal. The Trump phenomenon only makes sense in context. Trump’s supporters know he triggers the smug, self-righteous radical left, and that’s why they love him. He is the living embodiment of everything the left despises.

Destroying Democracy to Own the Libs

Edit (09-11-2024): I understand that there are regular everyday Americans who are checked out of politics, ignorant of Trump’s crimes and January 6th, and only voted for him because the price of groceries went up and they were bombarded with information telling them it was Biden’s fault and Trump could fix it. If that’s you, then most of the criticisms in the rest of this entry aren’t directed at you and I apologize if the way I wrote this entry makes it seem like they are. I was speaking more towards those who fit a certain stereotype of Trump supporter. That’s why I’m adding this clarification. You are the judge which criticisms apply to you and to what extent.

Let me extend an olive branch to the MAGA camp. I also hate the sanctimoniousness and political correctness coming from the left as much as any Trump supporter, I see the biases in the reporting by the liberal media, and I agree that in some ways the left takes things too far, and in other ways doesn’t go far enough. But I’m not going to elect a guy who will torch US democracy just to trigger the radical left and if that’s what you plan on doing, you need to grow the fuck up. I know the radical left triggers you, but the vote is not an anger management tool. Sure, you can vote for Trump and own the libs, but you’ll also own yourself because you’re electing a guy who doesn’t even fucking believe in your right to vote.

The guy who you’re thinking of voting for is a pompous narcissistic bully. He spreads disinformation and lies at a velocity never before seen in all of American political history. He breaks longstanding political norms. He says things that, had any other presidential candidate said them, it would’ve ended their political career forever. He insults US allies and talks about “falling in love” with brutal dictators like Kim Jong Un. He attacks journalists, calling all negative press coverage of him “fake news”. He wants to give up the fight against climate change and let the human race perish. He doesn’t even respect the Constitution or the rule of law. And he tried to coup the government because he prioritizes his own interests over democracy.

I agree with Trump voters that Biden is clearly unfit for office and Kamala has flaws just like any other politician, but I’m going to vote for her anyways because at least I can count on her not to end democracy or run the United States straight off a fucking cliff.

Disinformation

I know some of you Trump supporters are thinking “Fake news! Trump derangement syndrome! You bought into the media conspiracy against him!”

Let me ask you something. Where do you get your information from? Do you ever check your sources? Or can you just admit that you eat up whatever bullshit gets spoon fed to you from your MAGA social media propaganda bubbles on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Tiktok, and Youtube?

These are rhetorical questions. I know that you never go “Hey, I wonder if Trump is telling the truth.” and look up his claims with a search engine because if you did, you’d find out that every single thing that comes of his mouth is a big fat fucking lie. You don’t see any real information because nobody ever taught you basic media literacy. You’re ready to elect this guy as the next US president but you haven’t even skimmed any of the criminal indictments against him and you probably can’t even name what he was being charged with before his corrupt US Supreme Court declared him immune from prosecution. And by the way, did you even watch any of the January 6th footage or did you just believe the lie that it was Antifa?

You think that Trump is a beacon of truth, an innocent victim who has been unfairly persecuted by the media, all his former associates, cabinet members, the Intelligence Community, White House counsel, his former Vice President Mike Pence, the FBI, his own Justice Department, the legal system, the DNC, the rigged elections, the deep state, scientists, scholars, economists, journalists, and add me to your list as well, I guess. Or maybe you think that Trump isn’t innocent, but that the media blows it out of proportion and demonizes him.

But have you ever asked yourself why all his former associates are turning on him and being criminally indicted left and right? Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe the reason the media calls him a narcissist, a dictator, an insurrectionist, and a criminal isn’t because they’re demonizing him, but because he is those things? If you’re a MAGA person and none of what I’ve written so far here even gives you pause, I don’t know what else to say to you. I’m sorry that MAGA has rotted your brain so badly that you’ve become unreachable.

But you know that American society can’t continue like this, right? You can’t have half of the voting population completely divorced from reality, believing that Covid was no big deal, Bill Gates put microchips in the vaccine, climate change is a Chinese hoax, the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen from Trump. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but there are certain basic, ground-level facts that Americans have to agree upon to live together, such as who is president. So I don’t know where the US goes from here. I just hope that this MAGA cancer isn’t terminal.

The Both Sides Argument

Look, I agree that the Democratic Party gets up to shady business too. Welcome to the two-party system, which always leaves us with the lesser of two evils. And we all know that money inevitably corrupts both political parties. Welcome to capitalism. But for those who say that both sides are corrupt, so it doesn’t matter who wins…

No no no no no, a thousand times no. You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to believe that. Nothing coming out of the Democratic Party even approaches the level of insanity in the Republican Party right now and if you can’t see that, then you’re living under a rock. The Republican Party has gone all in on electing a fascist. The things that Trump accuses the deep state of doing, he literally does shamelessly right out in the open for everybody to see. Just look at the rigged election claims:

Trump spread false voter fraud claims for months leading up to the 2020 election without a shred of evidence to back them up, but you can listen to Trump trying to rig the election by threatening the Georgia Secretary of State on the phone to pressure him into saying that Trump won. Or you can watch clips of Trump’s sycophantic fans smashing into the US Capitol to pressure the Vice President to overturn the election results.

Name me a single democratic presidential candidate who has done anything remotely similar. You can’t, because it’s never happened. So get out of here with the “both sides” nonsense.

Arguing With MAGA Republicans

This might come as a surprise to some of you given my strong opinions on this subject, but I don’t challenge MAGA republicans except for what I’ve written here on this journal where they can’t respond back. It’s not because I’m afraid they’d make a good point, but rather because debating with MAGA republicans is a complete waste of my time. It’s like playing chess with a chicken. They don’t even know how the game is played. They just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and think they’ve accomplished something. For more about how MAGA republicans “debate”, check out the alt-right playbook.

If you’re a MAGA republican, I just want you to know that’s genuinely how I see you when you think you’re debating. I want you to know that when you think you’re “winning the debate”, all I see is an overconfident ignoramus repeating a bunch of false claims from unreliable sources, committing one logical fallacy after another, and getting completely blown the fuck out on every point. I want you to know that every time you open your mouth, you further prove that you need to take a remedial intro to logic and reasoning course. I want you to know that I could make your own arguments more convincingly than you could, but I don’t because I don’t believe in them. I want you to know that people like you drive me to consider antidemocratic ideas like giving educated people more votes.

Maybe you tell yourself that you’re not that convincing, but the people you get your information from are convincing and they do make good arguments. Well let me tell you that I’ve listened to Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Steven Crowder, Elon Musk, Tim Pool, Andrew Tate, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Alex Jones, and I could probably run circles around them on my worst day. They’re not informed, intelligent, thoughtful people, they spread misinformation nonstop, and they care more about Wall Street and big business than they care about you. You are nothing more than a useful idiot to them.

A Word on Tone

Some of you MAGA people are thinking that I’m being really harsh and cruel in my tone right now.

You know what’s harsh? Electing an autocrat. Did you not think it was harsh when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6th, assaulted police officers, caused millions of dollars in damages, and the right’s collective response to that was apathy, denial, and making excuses? Don’t you think it’s cruel to support the criminal scumfuck traitor who incited the violence with the goal of staying in power after losing a democratic election? Are you really saying that you have a problem with my tone, but you’re fine with people who inspire stochastic terrorism, use dog whistles because they’re afraid to say what they believe, and express how they just can’t wait for women to return to being baby factories for men? Give me a break.

You know why I’m not using a kinder tone? Because in the past, I’ve been extremely patient, understanding, considerate, and courteous when engaging with MAGA republicans. I’ve shown you all that I understand and even sympathize with your frustrations with politics. And you know where that’s gotten me? Absolutely nowhere. You still engage in bad faith arguments, constant whataboutism, and never concede any point. I can admit the failures of the left, but I would never admit them to MAGA cultists who can’t even acknowledge what happened on January 6th.

If you MAGA crackpots think you’re going to carry out Project 2025 and create a king, and the rest of America is going to let that happen just because you do it with a soft tone and friendly demeanor, I’ve got news for you. America revolted against a king once before. Wanna run that experiment again? Fuck around and find out.

On The Assassination Attempt

Phew. Now that all that’s off my chest, while we’re still talking about Trump, I’d like to pivot and discuss the assassination attempt on his life.

The democrats want to claim that the shooter was a disaffected republican and the republicans want to claim that he was a radical democrat, but there’s not enough information publicly known about him yet to say either way and the information we do have is conflicting. At age 17 he donated $15 to a liberal voter turnout group and at age 18 he was registered to vote as a republican. So it’s anybody’s guess what his motivations were. We may never know.

When I first heard the news that Trump had been shot, there was an instant sinking feeling in my stomach. Some of his brain-rotted sycophants worship him more than their own religion, so I knew that if he’d been killed, there was a significant chance that the delicate political situation in the US would’ve devolved even further. So it’s good that the shooter missed his target and bad that he even took the shot in the first place.

Although I think Trump is an awful human being and the world would be better off without him, I do not condone the shooter’s actions that day. The idea that anything good could’ve come out of assassinating Trump was naïve. Generally speaking, history is not decided by lone wolf actors. Had the shooter succeeded, Trump may have just been replaced with an eviler candidate. All the shooter accomplished was increasing US political instability and giving Trump some admittedly badass photos.

Conclusion

What America needs going forward is not Donald Trump being shot dead, although putting him in prison is long overdue. America needs Kamala Harris to win by a huge margin and Trump to lose hard. And when Trump loses hard and starts spamming tweets in all caps with exclamation marks whining about how the whole thing was rigged and refuses to concede, everybody needs to ignore him. He cannot be allowed to incite another January 6th or worse and get more people killed. It’s time for this dangerous clown to get his. It’s been a long time coming.

So please, help me save US democracy. Make sure your voter registration is up to date and vote for Kamala Harris this November. If you know anybody who is undecided or uninvolved, get them involved. If you know anybody who’s voting for Trump and they’re not too far gone, tell them what really happened on January 6th and get them to change their mind. Let’s make it happen folks. As democratic VP pick Tim Walz says, “There will be time to sleep when you’re dead.”