Some predictions re: November
Jun. 2nd, 2020 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyWhen Trump got elected, I kinda figured there wouldn't be another election. You give a guy like that the keys to your car, don't be surprised when it winds up at the bottom of a river. He made it clear what he was about, Americans voted for him anyway, and I'm pretty sure this year is going to involve the White House on literal fire at some point.
This said. I think there will be an election and here's why.
First, Biden is a really weak candidate. He may very well be the lesser of two rapists, but it's hard to imagine anyone being really passionately for whatever it is he stands for. He wears his politics like he wears his mask—wrong and useless.
Trump, conversely, is a monster, but he's a strong candidate. The people who love him really, really love him. They are a death cult who will do his bidding, even if it kills them.
The incumbent gets to gerrymander, so where the borders are drawn and who gets to vote will be decided by the ruling regime.
COVID-19 will not be gone by November. It's likely to be in a second or third wave by then.
Liberals mostly understand the science of epidemiology, conservatives do not. The Republicans will make sure there are fewer, more crowded, less accessible voting options in Democrat-friendly ridings; Democrats are more likely to stay home if the choice is "vote for Biden" vs "not dying of the Rona." Republicans don't care; they don't believe that the virus is real, let alone more important than voting for their God-Emperor.
So an election favours Trump, therefore he'll allow it. I would, if I were one of his advisors. Which I wouldn't be because I'm too smart and not a relative.
What we're seeing now is fascism with American characteristics. The US isn't really going to be Nazi Germany. One of the problems with the reification of WWII and Nazi Germany as our primary means to understand fascism is that anything that doesn't look exactly like that gets discounted. There are other fascist and authoritarian models to draw from, and I think the US is rapidly devolving towards one. India, at least at the national level, has managed a quick hop, skip, and jump into something that is essentially fascism while still maintaining the overall look and feel of democracy. Brazil did it. The Philippines did it.
I'm a broken record on this, but what we are seeing the limits of liberal democracy. This is another problem—the conflation of liberal democracy with capitalism. They are not only uncomfortable bedfellows, but they don't really need to be sharing a bed at all. China has proven that it's perfectly possible to do capitalism better than liberal democracies do it. It's entirely possible for the US to develop a system like, say, Russia's, where ostensibly there are elections but lol as if anyone other than Putin would win.
I'm not saying this to depress you, by the way. My silver lining is that I never put all that much faith in elections as a primary driver of social change as most people do. Like by all means vote for your team, and if they win, there are really tangible improvements that will happen. But it's not the only thing or the most important thing.
Related: Really glad I saved a slice of cake for tonight as a reward for getting through today because I feel like several different kinds of crap.
This said. I think there will be an election and here's why.
First, Biden is a really weak candidate. He may very well be the lesser of two rapists, but it's hard to imagine anyone being really passionately for whatever it is he stands for. He wears his politics like he wears his mask—wrong and useless.
Trump, conversely, is a monster, but he's a strong candidate. The people who love him really, really love him. They are a death cult who will do his bidding, even if it kills them.
The incumbent gets to gerrymander, so where the borders are drawn and who gets to vote will be decided by the ruling regime.
COVID-19 will not be gone by November. It's likely to be in a second or third wave by then.
Liberals mostly understand the science of epidemiology, conservatives do not. The Republicans will make sure there are fewer, more crowded, less accessible voting options in Democrat-friendly ridings; Democrats are more likely to stay home if the choice is "vote for Biden" vs "not dying of the Rona." Republicans don't care; they don't believe that the virus is real, let alone more important than voting for their God-Emperor.
So an election favours Trump, therefore he'll allow it. I would, if I were one of his advisors. Which I wouldn't be because I'm too smart and not a relative.
What we're seeing now is fascism with American characteristics. The US isn't really going to be Nazi Germany. One of the problems with the reification of WWII and Nazi Germany as our primary means to understand fascism is that anything that doesn't look exactly like that gets discounted. There are other fascist and authoritarian models to draw from, and I think the US is rapidly devolving towards one. India, at least at the national level, has managed a quick hop, skip, and jump into something that is essentially fascism while still maintaining the overall look and feel of democracy. Brazil did it. The Philippines did it.
I'm a broken record on this, but what we are seeing the limits of liberal democracy. This is another problem—the conflation of liberal democracy with capitalism. They are not only uncomfortable bedfellows, but they don't really need to be sharing a bed at all. China has proven that it's perfectly possible to do capitalism better than liberal democracies do it. It's entirely possible for the US to develop a system like, say, Russia's, where ostensibly there are elections but lol as if anyone other than Putin would win.
I'm not saying this to depress you, by the way. My silver lining is that I never put all that much faith in elections as a primary driver of social change as most people do. Like by all means vote for your team, and if they win, there are really tangible improvements that will happen. But it's not the only thing or the most important thing.
Related: Really glad I saved a slice of cake for tonight as a reward for getting through today because I feel like several different kinds of crap.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 10:26 pm (UTC)What we're seeing now is fascism with American characteristics. The US isn't really going to be Nazi Germany. One of the problems with the reification of WWII and Nazi Germany as our primary means to understand fascism is that anything that doesn't look exactly like that gets discounted. There are other fascist and authoritarian models to draw from, and I think the US is rapidly devolving towards one. India, at least at the national level, has managed a quick hop, skip, and jump into something that is essentially fascism while still maintaining the overall look and feel of democracy. Brazil did it. The Philippines did it.
I'm a broken record on this, but what we are seeing the limits of liberal democracy. This is another problem—the conflation of liberal democracy with capitalism.
Yup yup yup yup yup.
I think if there's a big push for voting by mail, Trump is in real trouble (which is why they're fighting it so hard). If not....
no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 10:39 pm (UTC)....Washington state does have mail-in voting for I think a couple of weeks beforehand, but apparently a lot of the US still thinks we're Commies. (Which is FUNNY, only not, if you live here.)
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Date: 2020-06-03 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-02 11:36 pm (UTC)- Trump is fanatically supported by his base, but his base is not enough to win on its own.
- Trump is also massively hated by rather more people than those who fanatically love him. Even those who don't think much of Biden will likely turn out in high numbers, come Hell or Coronavirus, to turn him out. Current events will strengthen that sentiment.
- The Republicans will do whatever they can to suppress the vote, but that happens state by state, and they have lost at least some levers of power in several of the key states. They still have them all in Florida, but they lost both a ballot measure and a court ruling, which means ex-felons can vote. They can put their thumb on the scales, and it could be enough to make a difference, but there's a limit to how many people they can stop from voting.
- (Unless that is they actually manage to have the cops/army on the streets actually beating the heads of anyone of the wrong colour who tries to vote. Which is not impossible, though I hope it's unlikely, but that would be basically the equivalent of not having an election at all)
All in all, I think it still could go either way.
Pretty much agree on the place of electoral politics, but getting Trump out will create an environment where there's more chance of the more important drivers of change succeeding, and may halt the slide into total Fascism.
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Date: 2020-06-03 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 12:22 am (UTC)....whoops, I didn't take my psych meds on time! scuse me while I get my portable sanity
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Date: 2020-06-03 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 12:34 am (UTC)He is tall, and good looking - a silver fox - and he has a genuinely lovely smile. We scorn such shallow things, and point to his record and his policies. But an awful lot of people go for that sort of thing. Ditto his ability, when he's not talking off the cuff, to turn out Trudeau-like warm words and healing sentiments, with little actual substance. We see past that, because we are very, very smart. Lots of people aren't and don't. He is pretty dumb and rarely strings together a coherent sentence when not giving a pre-prepared speech. But we have ample evidence that this is not really an obstacle to electoral success, if anything the opposite. True, he makes lots of gaffes, and some of them may actually cost him, but a lot of the time he actually apologises, and whether this is sincere or not, the contrast to Trump of being capable of admitting he is wrong is very stark, and may win folk over. Finally he was Obama's Veep, and I'm sure all those buddy memes will be doing the rounds again, and while we remember all the severe deficiencies of the Obama reign, to many people it seems like the age of gold. (And frankly in comparison to Trump...) It will likely still win him a lot of favour with especially older African American voters, and I am sure that he and his team have enough smarts to play on that big time as the election approaches.
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Date: 2020-06-03 12:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 12:20 am (UTC)Trump is openly threatening the states now tho -- with cutting off funds, with the National Guard, with the ARMY -- and openly sending help to "Red" states and being horrible to govs and mayors of blue ones. Did you hear that absolutely fucking psycho phone call? And Hillary lost by a very very thin margin in a handful of dodgy fucking states. So did Kerry (Ohio, anybody). Let's not even talk about Bush v Gore. The Repubs are good at stealing Presidential elections, at this point.
I wll be very, very surprised if he doesn't contest it, and takes it all the way to the Supreme Court to boot. It would have to be a landslide for him MAYBE not to do that.
And all this said, unless Mitch McConnell gets voted out (haha no) or his power is sharply decreased (probably also no) he's going to continue to fuck everything up. He's the grand architect of a whole lot of this shit, especially starving the federal government and turning the judiciary into a bunch of right-wing zealots.
-- Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound super fighty, there's just been a stupid fucking chopper hanging RIGHT over my house for like half an hour and it's getting on my last nerve, and the National Guard is now protecting the local cop shop and we're all really nervous about what might happen when it gets dark
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Date: 2020-06-03 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 01:03 am (UTC)I just found out that using the Insurrection Act screws businesses and property owners because insurance doesn’t cover damage from insurrection (but it does from riots). Time to unleash an army of Karens.
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:09 am (UTC)Do you want to see the most Karen pic ever, I swear this is like the embodiment of gentrification in my neighbourhood right now
https://twitter.com/tetraphis_/status/1267965717007093760
all that's missing is her dog isn't wearing a sweater
You will appreciate this: the Mayor and the top cop tried luring the protesters into the EOC. "We can't have this conversation with seven thousand people! Do the leaders want to come inside?" IMMEDIATE ARGUMENTS about who gets to go inside, if they're traitors, &c &c. I think the Mayor is trying to avoid BOTH declaring a curfew, which is pissing everyone off (ESPECIALLY businesses) and evening protests next to the East Precinct cop shop. Half the protest split off and is like, we're marching, fuck you. A bigger independent protest from downtown bypassed the EOC invite altogether and is also marching up to Cal by the cop shop (this is not in my neighbourhood, but like six blocks away).
This area is also gentrifying at lightspeed. One person in one of the new terrible crackerbox buildings which charges like $2K a month for a tiny 1BR apparently had tear gas seeping into his apartment, the construction was so bad. He was already complaining about breaking his lease. "Will I get my deposit back?"
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:19 am (UTC)One thing I hope with everything is that rents will come down, But that’s way too optimistic.
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:23 am (UTC)'Talking to my neighbors at the Sunset Electric building on Capitol Hill. They say their building manager called to complain about their residents being hit by tear gas while in their homes and was told that it was acceptable "collateral damage"'
that is this horrifying building https://www.sunsetelectricapts.com/home.aspx
It is literally 350 FEET from the East Precinct police station, where THOUSANDS of people are now heading. The manager complaints are going to be legion.
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:11 am (UTC)Anyway sorry didn't mean to hammer you with Seattle bullshit when you're already so stressed! I just thought you might find some of it amusing.
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:21 am (UTC)I assume you saw the Cheesecake Factory raid picture?
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:30 am (UTC)I DID. T AND I KIND OF LOVED IT. She is just carrying away her perfect white absolutely untouched cheesecake with the three perfect strawberries on it. That was a Moment and a Mood and kind of amazing.
Our neighbourhood news liveblogger (who is awesome) was all like, "Well, we got the National Guard in, I guess it's better than the Army....?" https://twitter.com/jseattle/status/1267933428470566913
Useless Fucking Mayor: "Well we will certainly reconsider the policy of those mourning badges, they are covering up the numbers in honour of fallen fellow officers you know...." oh my fucking God, lady
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:40 am (UTC)Mourning badges?
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:46 am (UTC)MOURNING BADGES. When the cops COVER UP the numbers on their badges, you see, which is how you could possibly identify the assholes who RUN INTO PEOPLE WITH THEIR ARMOURED BIKES, and then ARREST THEM, it is uhhh because they are mourning dead police officers. No rly.
Meanwhile even tho there's no curfew, the SPD is getting civilian witness photographers off the roofs https://twitter.com/KelseyCheng/status/1267991112947359744
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 01:57 am (UTC)I’ve heard tennis rackets are useful. This being Canada, we also use hockey sticks.
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Date: 2020-06-03 01:48 am (UTC)https://twitter.com/AGarlandPhoto
https://twitter.com/jseattle
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Date: 2020-06-02 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 05:17 am (UTC)--------------------
"What we're seeing now is fascism with American characteristics. The US isn't really going to be Nazi Germany. One of the problems with the reification of WWII and Nazi Germany as our primary means to understand fascism is that anything that doesn't look exactly like that gets discounted. There are other fascist and authoritarian models to draw from, and I think the US is rapidly devolving towards one. India, at least at the national level, has managed a quick hop, skip, and jump into something that is essentially fascism while still maintaining the overall look and feel of democracy. Brazil did it. The Philippines did it. "
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Date: 2020-06-03 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 06:49 am (UTC)Fires and military just down the street from the WH are too close to the sixties for my comfort, as it is. I full expect Trump's insane and criminal response is going to spark a whole new wave of protests and riots, and it's only a matter of time until a street side Kent State happens.
I agree that elections are not the only or best force of social change. For one thing, our state system makes federal top down change a lot harder than grassroots and populist change from the bottom or middle. Which can be good and bad.
Definitely, Biden isn't going to inspire much of anything. At least he's fucking saying something, but he's in no way a good "face" for change or resistance right now. And everything he does say comes off as "what he should be doing".
And oh, yeah, the voter suppression is well under way. When November comes, we'll have an "election" where half the votes don't get counted or even allowed to be cast.
HUGS
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Date: 2020-06-03 02:05 pm (UTC)There's already so much disenfranchisement, given gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the criminalization of POC that has essentially re-legalized slavery and stripped the vote from huge swathes of the population. The riots got that one cop arrested, which is more than any politician has managed to do.
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Date: 2020-06-03 02:12 pm (UTC)As to November...Biden might win if the people behind the scenes decide he's a safer bet than Trump, which if the current level of unrest continues is a possibility. It's not as if Trump is going to win on his merits, because he has none, but as the incumbent he'd normally be a shoo-in anyway. Since 1900, the only one-term presidents (excluding those who died in office) have been Taft (because Roosevelt split the vote), Hoover (the Great Depression), Ford (tainted by Nixon's legacy), and Carter (Iran and general CIA skullduggery).
Of course, the people behind the scenes also have to deal with Trump's minders in Moscow, and whatever other kompromat they may have in store.
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Date: 2020-06-03 02:26 pm (UTC)Compare, for example, Ford the First, who in many ways was both the proto-Trump/Boris/Ford the Second. He unleashed pure insanity upon Toronto and the other councillors took away all of his powers once it was clear that he was out of control. There are no such safeguards for the US presidency, despite the fact that everyone thought they were.
I saw some leaks purporting to describe the contents of the kompromat, and it's pretty bad! Weirdly, exactly the same thing that the Pizzagaters accuse Clinton of doing. No way to verify the accuracy of these reports, though, and they've kind of just gone away.