Screaming Intensifies

 It's been two months almost since the last time I wrote anything of substance. Not gonna lie, things have been getting to me, I've been pretty depressed, bored, maybe a little lonely if I am honest, and perhaps most notably increasingly pissed off at virtually anyone with any kind of power in this hellworld it turns out we live in.

The problem with that of course is who wants to hear it? Another white guy is angry, big fuckin' whoop. I'm not saying voices like mine aren't useful in some fashion, but I have almost nothing to say about what's happening that haven't been said a million times by other, less privileged, and more eloquent voices, and these days unless I feel like I am bringing a unique(or something like it) perspective to the table then no one needs me shouting into the void.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died recently, that was sad and also infuriating. RBG wasn't a saint, but she was one of the very few people with both the opportunity and the will to do good for people on a large scale and she executed it well. I never really got the cult of personality around her and I rather suspect that she was more hypocritical and self serving than most of us want to believe, but nonetheless her death is a tragedy in a lot of ways.

To the surprise of apparently a lot of people, Mitch McConnell has been pushing to get a new nominee approved, why anyone thought he'd do otherwise is beyond me, but here we are. A lot of words have already been written about the nomination process and what the Democrats can do to throw a wrench in it, I won't go into detail but suffice it to say there are some things they could try, it looks like they won't though and probably before the election we will have a sociopath in RBG's place.

Let's talk about McConnell for a second, I hate the man more than perhaps any other figure in public office right now, including the president, and if I ever am in a room alone with him I will kill him with my bare hands if I can. He is the embodiment of the degradation the Republican party and our political system in general has fallen to. No, that isn't quite right. He is the embodiment of every thing wrong with our system? No, that isn't quite it either.

Let's talk about the system, the ideals of democracy and republic that founded our great nation have never been more than ideals, and this nation has never embodied them, it lost the chance to do so when the founding fathers allowed slavery to exist in America, chose not to allow women the vote, and built the electoral college to make sure that "The right people" would forever have the final say in who ran the nation. Over the last couple hundred years we've had many chances to change that and without exception when a person gathered enough power or influence to do so, the nation killed them. Oh slavery is technically illegal now, and women can vote, but inequality is written into the bones of this country on much more than paper. The psyche of the entire nation knows on some level that we aren't what we claim to be. Some people are big fans of that, those people are in power now. 

That is what Mitch McConnell embodies. Rather than a corruption of the political process, he is the purest expression of it. A monster who ruthlessly defends the status quo using any tool available. His belief system is only that those in power deserve it, and those without are not even worth showing a façade of respect.

Donald Trump is a monster who deserves only to suffer for sure, but he's just a symptom of a populace that knows it has no power and is blaming the wrong people. He jumped on the wave, manipulated it, but he didn't create it and honestly has very little idea what he is doing. McConnell knows precisely what he is doing and Donald Trump was a huge gift to him because his horrible things are so obvious that people pay less attention to him, and when Trump is gone the new president will be easier to manage, if Democrat they will be willing to reach across the aisle in an effort to show unity and healing, if Republican then all they have to do is stop saying the quiet part out loud and they will get to do virtually anything they want.

The problem with this is that it is only now starting to dawn on people that Donald Fucking Trump has never let anything he wanted go before he destroys it. He is threatening to break the system if he loses the election, to stay in power and expose just how shaky the foundations of government are, that they are mostly a system that works because everyone agrees it works. It wouldn't take much to show that for a lie, and in fact is something that McConnell has taken advantage of in the past, with the last Supreme Court nomination most notably. Who could have conceived that he could hold up the entire process for a year simply by... not doing it? Now we must ask ourselves, what if Trump applies this same lesson to losing the election? What if he just... doesn't leave? He challenges the legitimacy of the results and refuses to go anywhere until they are confirmed. How can we stop him? What if the Supreme Court steps in as they did in 2000 and rules that in the absence of reliably tabulated votes, Donald Trump must remain president?

If the country sees how easy it is to ignore the process, then it might just set people to considering why they don't do it themselves. What if in the above scenario, the West Coast states secede? Or not even that, just... stop working the with the federal government? Right now our governors are cowards who wouldn't think to try it, but if the president leads the way then what?

It's honestly not the worst thing in the world if this whole institution falls apart, don't mistake me for an accelerationist though I am not saying vote Trump so that happens sooner, I would dearly love to see the USA turn into something else in my lifetime, but I think we maybe can manage that without election a literal fascist to his second presidential term.

But just like the police, it is too corrupt to stand, it has to be torn down and rebuilt if we want any chance of seeing true freedom for the majority of people, or for the human population of the world to have a chance to survive climate change for that matter.