A lot of encomiums for Carrie Fisher today, to which I offer this counter: Through her role as Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher was responsible for encouraging yet another generation of entitled blond boys to believe the universe – along with the girl, top billing, and mountains of endorsements – was their birthright by virtue of their mediocrity, blue eyes, and sense of unwarranted destiny. Throughout two entire movies, Leia led Luke to believe that throwing a tantrum in response to basic developmental obstacles would make him heir to VP of Galactic Acquisitions, and it wasn’t until the very end of a third movie that the cock tease was finally all, "Lol, sorry, I think I’m going to kiss the guy who isn’t my brother instead.” In Green Jesus the strong faith he had, so Luke was able to resist the overtures of his professorial father to join him on the Politically Correct Dark Side, and in the process abandon his blood oath to the Rebel Alliance of Men’s Rights Activists. Fortunately for him he was strong enough to maintain his frail masculinity, but what misfortune awaits our next generation of fair freckled boys raised amongst black Jedis and female leads?
So, Carrie Fisher. While she should be celebrated for her commitment to mental health awareness and the force with which she spoke against the unreasonable standards of youth and beauty foisted upon the fairer sex - as well as further cultural expectations of the debutante class - it is vital that she also be remembered as the woman solely responsible for 90% of the doobags populating 4chan and Reddit, because men are easily duped and incapable of demonstrating emotional agency.
Stated less facetiously, Carrie Fisher used one of the most iconic roles in American culture to normalize women's ambition, will power, emotional perspicacity, intuitive mathematical reasoning, political intelligence, and basic badassery. (Remember, Leia was talking that ish straight to Darth Vader's face five minutes into Star Wars; Luke saw his dad get home from work and ran straight up to his room, hid in the closet, and had a good cry.) We mourn her passing and pray to the great Baby Yoda that all the meninists will soon join her on that great Death Star in the sky.
The 2016 election is nearly official and apparently a pumpkin pie from 2011's Thanksgiving dinner is going to succeed Barack Obamar as the POTUS. Lots to unpack there so let's get to it.
Reasons Donald Trump won - Other than Jesus hates America, there has to be something that explains Trump's appeal to voters who presumably own a functioning human heart. Here's an exhaustive list of probable reasons that I can squeeze into my worldview:
People want to be lied to - I already wrote about this just before the election, but fuggit, I'm a good ol' boy and there's nothing more good ol' boy than repeating yourself over and over and over. I learned that in debate class. Anyhow, people want to be lied to and Donald Trump lies a lot, so he got all of Michigan's vote. Wisconsin's too. "I will bring back auto factory jobs." Which was the plot to Argo, not a campaign promise any pathological liar in the history of ever intends to actually keep.
So here we are now, over a month into Trump's president-electedness, and he's already abandoned 75% of the bullshit red meat he threw out during his political rallies. Hillary's not going to jail, a deportation force isn't going from farm to farm looking for migrants, your neighbor's grandchildren don't have to go broke if their grandma gets the flu (never mind, that's still going to happen), and the swamp most definitely isn't being drained of corporate lobbyists. Most importantly, that wall has already been downgraded to a fence, which means it will be completely abandoned by next Wednesday, though don't cry too long if that was your thing: It will be resurrected just as soon as Trump gets hit with his first big scandal. 55% odds that scandal will have to do with kickbacks and 45% it will involve three consecutive lunch break rapes. No Republican officeholder or flyover voter with half a college degree will give a shit about either.
Racists - There's been a lot of effort since the election to frame the Trump vote as an expression of economic anxiety rather than approval of his racism, but, uhhhh, I didn't see all that many economically anxious not-white people voting for Trump, so explain that? No, nothing? Okay, I'll do the explaining for you: A humanoid made of orange Fruit Roll-ups appealed to white insecurities by blaming the death of 1950s America on black and brown people rather than the rapacious Wall Street assholes he regularly dines with and that sounded about right to them. And even if all that "rhetoric" - to put it nicely - didn't sit well with them it still wasn't enough to disqualify Trump as THE MOTHERFUCKING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA even though it should have disqualified him as a person you'd say hello to if you were the only two people in a broken elevator. Or to put it in dating terms: You met a man who's ruggedly handsome in just the way you like, is intelligent but doesn't mainsplain a thing, can fix a car as well as discern differences between the 2004 and 2005 Cabernet, and not only likes the same things as you but hates the same stuff as well; he also French kisses a cardboard cutout of his mother every night before going to bed and mixes a little of his pee in with the scrambled eggs because it gives his toe hairs a nice sheen. Oh, and he calls anyone he doesn't like the N-word. Most people would call those things a deal breaker, but not the Trump voter. By the time he runs for re-election they're going to be asking him to tie the ball gag in their mouths a little tighter even though blood hasn't circulated through their brains since last February's primaries. So yeah, if you voted Trump you're most definitely not a racist but you certainly don't mind a little white supremacy with your disability check.
Racists were so butthurt that liberals called them racists that they voted Trump out of spite even though they were going to vote for him all along - I've read in more than a few places that all these invisible rural Republican non-voters the pollsters missed were motivated to actually vote this time because of the mountains of scorn heaped upon them by Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, Michael Moore and any other liberal commentator they don't actually listen to. Uh, okay. Reminds me of when I was teaching in Detroit and some of my students would say something along the lines of: I don't care about that muhhhfugg. Then that muhhhfugg would call him a name and like three fights would break out because he was so nonplussed by that muhhhfugg that he had to break his jaw over being called a name. Basically, if someone calls you a racist and you respond to that by enabling a racist, well then, you're probably a racist. Own it. Don't blame that bullshit on some make-believe unicorn of an elite New York liberal.
Suckers - Like the number one compliment anyone had to say about Trump during the campaign was that he says exactly what "we've" been thinking, which, I don't know, sounds exactly like the job description for a used car salesman. "Oh, you're concerned about the environment? Well this '73 Bonneville gets great mileage for only having three wheels. And you're also worried that your health insurance has gone up because of Obama and not because of your Republican governor who refused Medicare expansion? How about we repeal the ACA since not having insurance to begin with is the equivalent of 100% savings on your monthly premiums? By the way, you'll have to trade in grandma's Medicaid to get that deal."
For real, let's examine the things Trump hit Clinton on that resonated strongest with all the easy marks he courted and then compare that to what's transpired on Trump's end since:
- Crooked Hillary was using the Clinton Foundation to enrich herself even though her family probably donated more money to the foundation than they ever pulled out of it. Trump is now using the presidency to shake down foreign governments who've stalled building projects with his name on it, not to mention letting the woman tasked with running his empire during his "absence" sit in on meetings with heads of state whose governments own companies finalizing business with that very same woman.
- Hillary was also using the Clinton Foundation to facilitate a pay-to-play scheme since large donors apparently asked for face-to-face meetings afterward but barely any of them got. Trump is appointing his largest donors to cabinet posts. So: asking to meet with the former Secretary of State vs. letting your friends buy whole swaths of the US Government? Okay now.
- Qatar donated a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation, so what happens when Qatar calls that favor in? Or how about: Donald Trump owes a bajillion dollars to Chinese and Russian state banks, so what happens when their governments tell their banks to make a margin call or two?
- The Clinton Foundation is just one big ruse to give Chelsea Clinton a job since not a single consulting firm would hire a Stanford graduate whose dad used to be the POTUS and whose mom should have been. Curiously, conflating the interests of the Trump Organization with the USA is only the second real job Donald Jr. and Eric have held since starring in Beavis and Butthead, but NBD.
- Hillary was paid $625,000 by Goldman Sachs to say a bunch of boring shit during lunch so is going to let them run roughshod all over the Treasury. Donald straight up gave Goldman the Treasury.
- Hillary risked the security of the United States by carelessly setting up a private server in her basement. Two days later Donald the Tee is on an unsecured line calling heads of state everywhere telling them their country looks beautiful, shame if anyone came around and dropped a bomb on it.
- Hillary's tenure as Secretary of State was a disaster. Just look at the Middle East, same as it's been since Jesus climbed that tree and came down off it dead. But let me send a quick text to Taiwan here so I can shake that Chinese hornet nest.
- Hillary has zero understanding of the white working class experience because she's a career politician who's had to maintain her employment by listening to the white working class who makes up substantial parts of her various constituencies. Donald Trump has taken exactly 37 poops since the election, all of them on a heated toilet seat made of gold. He really gets us.
- And like a million more hypocrisies.
Raise your hand if you didn't see all that coming. Not you, neo-Nazi; I didn't mean it that way.
Plain old dumbfunkery - The number one rule for an election is never vote for anyone dumber than you are. And in case you were wondering, a person who expresses his intelligence by saying "I have a very good brain" is not very intelligent. That there were enough Americans who graded out lower on the intelligence spectrum than this explains the results.
Also explains voting against your self interests. Capitalism is zero sum, so if you're on the losing side of that equation - and you are since "I'm not racist, I'm just voting for my job back" - then you should probably warm up to the idea of a social safety net. Access to a family doctor, an average public education, and a few loaves of bread every week is like $6 of your annual tax bill. For real, when people decry the redistribution of wealth they're not talking about your 45 large. That money's flowing upward, not downward.
Fake news - I obviously could have used the fake news to keep talking about how stupid people are, but at some point all the stupidism, racism, suckerism, butthurtism, even more stupidism, and post-truthism all just blend together. But yeah, fake news. A healthy portion of Donald Trump's support was pure opposition to Hillary, and much of that opposition was based on Super Conservative Gun Slinging Trolls Dot Com reporting that Hillary was Bill's initiate into a Satanic ring of goat humpers trafficking in child slavery. Which obviously can't be tolerated so let's vote for the child rapist instead.
A lot of post-election fake news coverage has focused on the people who produce it and how their intent was revenue, not political outcomes, which has inspired a lot of angry tsk tsk'ing from people who believe there's such a thing as the truth. But that all misses the point. The point is that facts are no longer a thing, and if nothing's a fact anymore than nothing can contradict reality. So even though Hillary is 100% not a member of a Satanic cult, that's just, like, your opinion so don't tell me how to think, you East Coast Libtard.
Suckers, part 2 - I can never point out enough how easily half my country got played. I get political, philosophical, and, most likely, ideological differences informing your vote, but if that's the case go with Rand Paul, Marco Rubes, or even Ted Cruz. But instead y'all voted for a transparent grifter whose favorite Bible verse is somewhere in Two Corinthians. "Who am I to criticize his relationship with the Lord...except when I use my own relationship with the Lord to criticize women who assert their reproductive rights!"
Predictably, Donald Tee has spent his entire transition accepting bids from ultra rich foxes for which hen house they'll get to guard. Can't wait for Joe Bob, who spent the election complaining how government regulation has held him back, to start whining about being forced to send his kids to over-priced, under-performing charter schools 10 miles farther from his house than the good public school that used to be there; the lack of workplace safety and overtime protections at his milling job; the tap water entirely more flammable than the "Drill, Baby, Drill" bumper sticker on his truck, and oh yeah, the five hour waits in the emergency room because giving the super rich a 0.2% tax break was more important than an accessible heath system.
Plain old dumbfunkery, part 2 - I can also never impress upon you enough just how stupid Trump voters are. "Government should be run like a business" as an argument against government spending and the national debt. So they elect the guy who runs one of the most highly leveraged companies in the world. Okay.
Reasons Hillary Clinton lost - Other than Muhammed hates America, there has to be a reason Hillary lost to a can of expired frozen orange concentrate. Here they are in reverse descending ascending order:
She's a woman - There's literally zero difference between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden other than had Joe Biden run against Trump then he'd be President-elect right now. Because he has male pattern baldness and a dong.
The Clinton machine is broken down and has been stripped for parts in a junkard - Whatever political game the Clintons had in the 90s retired the same day Michael Jordan left the Bulls. They're still running data simulations on a Texas Instruments TI-84. Meanwhile, Barack Obama showed up in 2008 with a six-year-old Dell and ran circles around their operation. Donald Trump hired a data team with zero political experience and flipped the entire Rust Belt. Sometimes you win because you're the '27 Yankees, other times you win because you're playing the Cleveland Browns circa any year ever.
The Democrats are sad, rejected Republicans - Have you ever seen a picture of Bob Marley's dad? It will blow your mind.
I know, right? You're absolutely gobsmacked.
This means that Bob Marley was stuck between two worlds that left him with a decision to make: Appeal to the whiteys who would only accept him insomuch as he behaved like one of the good ones, or just be black and do his thing. Which is basically the same decision the Democrats have to make today. Are they early Wailers-brand fake Republicans you would've never heard of had they continued dressing like this?
Or are they absolute legends who, if they fail to save the world from global warming, at least they'll fight for your access to minimally potable water.
The emails - Literally zero was found in the DNC emails. If there had been then no doubt Hillary would have had to sit in front of Congress for 47 separate investigations. She sat for none. The big problem with the emails is that a bunch of people who act like they could have hacked law school even though they barely graduated high school were the ones digging through them. "Ohhhh, creme brulee. I heard on Alex Jones that, that's code for "let's be super corrupt today between 4:30 and 9:00 pm.""
Anthony Weiner - That dickbag is walking proof that the Clintons don't impose forced suicide upon political liabilities. Of all the flanks to leave undefended, I can't believe they left themselves exposed to a serial dick pic'er.
Reasons Donald Trump didn't win - The above were the only reasons Donald Doobag was elected the final President of the United States and Hillary wasn't. The following are reasons commonly given for the outcome that are as dead wrong as your predictions the US won't be a banana republic 10 years from now:
No one understands the underemployed totally-not-racist white vote from flyover country - A big ol' spectacle was made about the libruls failing to understand the bottom-of-my-heart motivations of the rural white voter, which culminated in Trevor Noah inviting some factory mold of a blond to come on The Daily Show and lecture him and his audience about living in their condescending leftist bubble. But, no. As a gentleman raised in a 4000 person farm town in the Michigan Thumb, I can tell you that the real Trump voter is no more nuanced than all the easy caricatures you've retweeted on your Instagram feed. Unless, of course, the guy who reflexively screams "all lives matter" at Black Lives Matter protestors is somehow more deserving of your empathy than, say, not-white people. A bunch of tea party folk who've demanded zero compromise from their government representatives and now they're sad because you haven't sat them down on your lap to ask what's been bothering them? Bish whut?
Here is a longer explanation of what I mean, the short version being that plenty of elitist liberals are from Red Town and understand exactly what's up.
Fake News - I know I said fake news helped elect Donald Trump, but it also didn't help that much since the doobag himself can just make shit up and good enough for me. The idea of fake news also presupposes that people read, which lololololol, no.
People wanted change - Everyone was so tired of ineffectual leadership stewarding the transfer of ever more wealth to the top 1% that they were emotionally primed to vote in the buffoon who predictably installed a $300 billion Presidential Cabinet to look after the interests of the everyday American. I told you the flyover voter wasn't particularly deep.
Misc. - I made this section just to talk about the Electoral College. And probably fake news.
The Electoral College - Since Trump got his wee wee kicked in the popular vote, faux-intellectual dipshits on the right have galvanized around the idea that the Electoral College was established to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority rather than as a way to appease Southern slave owners who wanted to include their slaves' bodies in the voting calculus, though obviously not their voices. But what the fuhhhhh does that even mean, the tyranny of the majority? I'll tell you: It means your side lost, because curiously, when it comes to extending protections to actual minorities persecuted by the actual majority, y'all are so quick to pipe in with your "why do black/Latino/gay/women/non-Christian people get special rights?" But then when you succeed in imposing your worldview on a bunch of people who don't want to deal with whatever 1940's wonderland you've come from, that's just democracy in action. Huh? Go drink beer from a broken glass bottle and leave the voting to Acorn.
In summation - America is so fucked. I hope you canned enough vegetables from Michelle Obama's forced labor camp of a garden since preventative health is the only healthcare you'll be able to afford once grandma's medicaid is liquidated as a tax break.
We're less than a week away from the US presidential election and for some reason a full 50 ml of dried pumpkin cum has convinced tens of millions of people who presumably know right from wrong from sociopathic sexual predator to vote for him. Huh? How? To answer that question, every media outlet not a part of the fringe right has commissioned the exactsamethoughtpiece examining the motives of the Trump voter by either humanizing their hypocritical grievances or justifying their practical support as pure wonk, even though any interview longer than 15 seconds with one of these doobs will invariably betray the racism undergirding their enthusiasm for a known grifter.
The problem with every single one of these formulaic trailer park ethnographs is that they fail to grasp what is actually going on with the Trump voter. They usually conclude by attributing the Trumpian wet dream to immigration (Latinos), law and order (blacks), failed foreign policy (Muslims), and the economy (everyone but the person they stare down in the mirror every day), but all of this faux-reasoning ignores the real reason White America is voting for Trump: THEY WANT TO BE LIED TO! Whether it be constructing a physically implausible 2000 mile-long wall, improving education by letting anyone who can spell their name become a teacher, co-opting the plot from Rambo 3 as a secret plan to destroy ISIS, growing the economy by turning the IRS into a billionaire's feed trough, or strengthening global alliances by treating our forward military bases as a shakedown racket, there is an entire subculture of people - known in anthropological circles as half the United States - that will happily forgo the hard work of basic critical thought in order to close their eyes and wish Causcasian fairy tales into existence. There is no better example of this than Trump's hands. I mean, look at them:
John Oliver mocked Donald Trump for those small hands last spring and every comic since has turned his fingers made of cocktail sausages into an interminable punchline, to which Donald Trump responded by holding aloft two Eggo waffles made of flesh and declaring them to be large and beautiful. 32% of women and 97% of men actually bought that bullshiz, which is wholly representative of all the pyramid schemes-as-government policy they've bought into as well. Seriously, look at those hands again:
There's barely any clearance between knuckle and the tip of his index finger. A pregnant mouse could hurdle that. But somehow just calling them large was enough for people who don't believe in verifiable science to completely redistrict their notions of large and not large. Or in other words, a Trump voter:
And a not-Trump voter:
So if you're trying to understand or - even worse - engage a Trump voter, don't; otherwise, you'll find yourself in a dimension where up is down, left is right, 7-11 is gourmet, white people were forcibly brought to the New World on the Mayflower and made to work executive-level positions for no money and billions in stock options, Taco Tuesdays are a Friday thing, the Cubs are World Series champions, Black Is the New Orange, flowers bloom in winter, Fox News is liberal, Seth Rogan is funny, the person minding his ice tea and business is the aggressor in a standoff started by whitey, and all that other stuff that contradicts reality. And yes, I understand that all politicians bend the truth and that I'm just as susceptible to the spin of my preferred candidate as anybody else is to theirs, but Donald Trump's mouth is an entirely new class of traveling medicine show. To wit:
- Every Mexican ever has illegally crossed the southern border even though the net migration rate between the US and Mexico is below zero.
- Violent crime is is out of control even though it's at historical lows.
- Hillary plans to abolish the Second Amendment even though she wouldn't have anything approximating the power to do so.
- He can't release his tax returns even though he'll release them on condition that Hillary dredge up all those emails.
- The media doesn't broadcast the size of his crowds even though the media constantly broadcasts the size of his crowds.
- He's going to bring back American jobs just as soon as he's done outsourcing them to China.
- Government regulation is killing America even though he needs Hillary to pass regulations so he won't do all the terrible shit that's killing America.
- Dead people are voting even though they're, uh, dead.
- He's rich even though none of his suits fit.
- The unemployment rate is 42% or 28% or maybe 1000% even though it's like 5% using the same metrics that have always been used to measure unemployment.
- Is self-funding his campaign if what you mean by self-funding is that he's using campaign donations to fund his self.
- Is the least racist person he knows even though not even my avowedly racist neighbor dares bother with the alt-right on Twitter for fear of being labeled a racist.
- Hillary is trying to turn the US over to a consortium of world bankers...and oh yeah totally not an anti-Semite.
- Loves the Bible; reads Two Corinthians every day after afternoon tea.
- Donald is a real authentic guy just telling it like it is even though he lies every time he snaps his hair into place or wears that orange body suit of his out in public.
- And any other idea that came to him while divining the poop entrails on his toilet paper after potty time.
So, a summary: Donald Trump is a lying piece of shit and some people just don't care. For those of us who will suffer the occasional lie but are otherwise grounded in reality, this is problematic, and the urge is to counter all that bullshit with facts and reason. But don't. You'll just waste your time, energy, and sanity and have nothing to show for it. The only recourse this close to the election is to vote for Hillary Clinton and then go home, light a candle, and pray to Uncle Mo's best friend Jesus' homie Buddha that we still outnumber the flat earthers. If not, then drop acid and wait for Trainspotting 2 to come out since the first Trainspotting makes as much sense to me as a Trump presidency.
Hillary Clinton is literally the second shittiest human being in the
galaxy and is running for President of the United States. Fortunately
for her, the only other person running for President is by far the worst
piece of toxic puss to have ever oozed out of a DayGlo factory disguised as a living woman's uterus, which should make your voting calculus fairly
straight forward: Vote for Hillary. I suppose it would be more accurate
to point out there are other people running for President that you might
consider, but they're running for President in the same way I rose an
eyebrow when Mariah Carey became newly single. And just like
I'm never getting invited into Mariah's champagne room, they're not even
getting invited to the debate stage, so don't even bother learning
their names.
Except, except, except, in the course
of kicking Bernie Sander's ass in the Democratic primaries, Hillary
somehow went from being your run-of-the-mill politician held in public
contempt for no other reason than people remember seeing her on TV 20
years ago to the reincarnation of Kim Jong-un's bad mood whenever the
lights go out in Pyongyang, and now an entire subculture of buffoons is
threatening to vote third party as a way of protesting a primary so
obviously rigged that it didn't even fall within the margin of
subterfuge. Never mind that homegirl won nearly 4 million more votes and
11 more primaries than Bernie, the fact that their candidate had
larger, more enthusiastic rallies and his face littered all over
your Facebook echo chamber means the election was stolen even though a similarly
idealistic outsider had no problem taking down the exact same
establishment candidate just eight years earlier, because votes.
So
now we're to the point in the election season that's the political equivalent
of a New England Patriots vs. New York Yankees World Bowl, where yes,
Tom Brady wears Uggs and most likely dropped hints to the ball boy about
letting some air out of the game balls, and their coach regularly spies
on other teams, and Boston kind of sucks; but your only other choice
here is to root for Evil Empire because no matter how hard you close your eyes and wish the Lion King were true, the lovable Chicago Cubs just aren't going to show up in the bottom of the 4th quarter and hit a walk off touchdown. Bernie Sanders isn't either since he
lost in the conference semifinals, nor is Jill Stein because she's an
assistant coach for some Little League team in a town that doesn't even
have a baseball field. (Gary Johnson is working the concession stand at that Little League field and smoking a spliff.) There are literally only two options in this election - Hillary Clinton or a mango anal fissure - and voting for not one of these is a vote for the other depending on what side of the third party spectrum you throw away your vote.
But that hasn't stopped all the butt hurt disguised as faux-political advocacy and make-believe principles about building a more just society by voting your conscience, mostly from pretend-activists on the progressive side of things. In Donald Trump Town, the people who are not happy with his nomination have acknowledged the scope of their options by either migrating to Hillary (5%) or tying their body parts into literal knots trying to justify the poo he gets all over his Twitter feed because he doesn't wipe after talking (96%). On the Democratic side, however, people angry at the Hillary nomination have acknowledged that same limited scope by pretending they can jump start the revolution by facilitating the election of a nuclear grease stain completely anathema to their worldview rather than voting for a woman who shares 90% of their policy positions. They don't characterize it that way, obviously, since for them a vote for not-Hillary is everything but a vote for Trump, which is why I will condescendingly explain why all your reasons for voting Sith are whack no matter what sort of institutional rot has set in with the Jedi.
Voting for one of the two major corporatist parties reinforces the corrupt two-party system - Of all the reasons in this election to vote third party - more specifically Jill Stein of the Green Party - this is probably the most common considering the Democratic Party has appropriated the progressive worldview less as a philosophical basis for policy and more as a means to differentiate themselves from the Republicans. It's also an argument that acknowledges that our two-party system stifles actionable progress by artificially limiting the spectrum of political debate, which has legitimate resonance with people on both ends of the political spectrum who feel their interests aren't represented in government. Which sure, I get. I actually agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. But this election is just not the place to suddenly give a shit, and since there are a thousand different permutations of Won't get a third party unless we vote for a third party, I will address the three or four easiest to mock before moving on to all the other dumb reasons you have for voting third party.
I'm trying to build a third party here - I'm down with a viable third party, especially if it's structured around my liberal sensibilities rather than public broadcasts of Ron Paul reading Ayn Rand bedtime stories to Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan. But a nuclear winter isn't the time to decide you're a doomsday prepper, Boo Boo. You've either built your bunker by then or you haven't. And considering that the major parties can't even win a presidential election without a system of national infrastructure and locally elected surrogates already in place, the only thing you're building with a third party vote this time around is Trump's fake wall. And besides, if you were legitimately trying to build support for a third party then you'd care just as much about the political system during non-election years as you do now. Perhaps you do but like 90% of your comrades don't so maybe it's about that time you start some of the community organizing the entire right makes fun of Obama for.
Voting third party will help build momentum toward subsequent elections - If a third-party candidate receives 5% of votes in the general election then they will receive dolla dolla bills from the FEC, which they will presumably bank in support of future electoral challenges. Yeah, great, $10 million is nothing to sneeze at, but how about the hard work of building a movement from the ground up and then you'll have multiples of that $10 mil, not to mention actual political allies for whomever benefits from all that third-party cash. Oh yeah, 2017, 2018, and 2019 aren't election years so no one gives a fuhhhhh.
Voting third party signals my dissatisfaction to the major parties
- Voting third party just shrinks the pool of serious voters, which
makes the 30% of Americans who identify as Republican closer to 50% of
people who vote for candidates with an actual mathematical chance
of winning an election. That, in turn, emboldens the Republicans to flat
out dispense with any pretense they aren't racist by nominating
the walking id who dreamed he could become a real life boy one day
rather than the robot programmed to mimic social graces that they usually do. Looking at you,
Mitt Romney.
The major parties will never acknowledge your concerns if you capitulate in the end
- Voting for the viable candidate who sort of represents you rather
than the incarnation of Satan's fart is not capitulating; doing fuck all
after the election to effect change is. Hold your nose, vote, then go
do something constructive rather than put all your complaints about the system in winter storage just
so you can reuse them in the spring of
2020.
If we'd have been voting third party the last 20 years we'd have better candidates now - Voting is overrated: it's the bare minimum of civic responsibility. Saying
you're politically active because you voted Green once is like listing
Russian literature as one of your Tinder interests after reading half
a Doestoevsky novel. If you voted third party 20 years ago we'd still be in the same conundrum because an I Voted sticker is probably the entirety of the political work you've done since then.
My vote reflects my progressive identity - The last person I want running the free world is a fool who perfectly aligns with my beliefs, ideals, and sensibilities. I'll have some of that tasty check and balance, please.
Your conscience should inform your vote, not fear - I mean, yes, if I rode a unicorn to work instead of Steve the Hetero Crusher. But right now my conscience is ruled by the fear of all the real life shittery a Trump presidency would entail for the people who've benefited drastically from the social progress that's occurred since Obama started his capitol chill.
The Democrats rigged the election against Bernie and have to pay for their malfeasance - Putin's cousin-in-law hacked the DNC email server and now we know that the people responsible for running a neutral primary were trying to undermine Bernie's candidacy. Dick move, sure, but if you want to see how effective the establishment is at rigging a primary then the Republicans are right over there carrying water for the nominee they tried screwing over themselves.
I seriously just want to vote for Jill Stein - Jill Stein is a career nominee for offices no constituency has seen fit to give her and whose political arsenal is limited to wishful thinking and a can of Sprite. If either you or I or the insufferable doobag who sings folk songs at the Portland Saturday Market had created a free blog on Wordpress and published "Rainbows, Fairy Dust, and No Student Debt Yayyy" as our platform then we'd have been just as reasonable of a candidate as Jill Stein, who's basically your crazy aunt who cans way too much of her food. She's never going to eat all that rhubarb.
I seriously just want to vote for Gary Johnson - Then you're a white guy who thought he saw himself in the pages of Walden and "Self-Reliance." That wasn't you, by the way; that was a man who knew how to hunt and fish, not to mention butcher a cow, build a house, build a boat, build a fire, build a plow, build an axe, and build a beard. Otherwise, Gary Johnson: Yeah, okay. I just sprained my eyeballs rolling them into the back of my head.
A Donald Trump presidency would actually encourage more civic engagement from the left - Similarly to how participation in active white nationalism increased in response to Obama's presidency, the thinking goes that liberals will finally get off their asses if confronted with the reign of Donald Trump. But if y'all already know what assery a Trump presidency would be then why not prevent it in the first place? I mean, I could go to the hospital after drinking a cup of bleach and have my stomach pumped. Or, you know, I could set the bleach down and drink water instead.
Donald Trump is a Democratic sleeper agent meant to facilitate Clinton's ascendancy - Damn that's a long con. Well, consider me conned since I already sent my absentee ballot in. Also, Donald Trump shouldering all this dickbaggery for the good of the team is so much lolololol that I'm going to go outside and lolololol out loud.
Donald Trump is to the left of Hillary on a number of issues - The only time Trump is to the left of Hillary is when he's hovering over her left shoulder at the debates.
________________________
Since one of the prevailing motivations of the third-party voter is that you should for something rather than against something else, I will now give you the exhaustive abridged list of reasons you should actually support Hillary.
Hillary is your fault - For real, all this complaining about a two-party system and what have you actually done to make it better? What would you be willing to sacrifice to make the world truly just? The Völker on the right who want to overhaul the system have retired into the deep woods and learned how to shoot a gun; their counterparts on the left occasionally remember to bring their reusable grocery bags to Whole Foods and and always remember to lecture the bagger on Chomsky. So now we're left with a choice between a candidate who will implement the Red Dawn wet dream and one who will continue the status quo. Acting like you have a third option here is the equivalent of assuming your average white daughter can enroll at the University of Texas just because she had a 3.6 GPA and volunteered at a soup kitchen that one time. Since that's about all you've done to dismantle the two-party system then the least you can do is help ensure someone who wears shag carpeting for hair doesn't dismantle human existence.
The lesser of two evils is still the lesser of two evils - The lesser of two evils means there's a whole big pile of more evil on the other side of that equation, so take that doodoo elsewhere. If you don't believe me then let's make some hard calculations:
- LeBron James in a Cavs uniform or Lebron in a Miami uniform?
- Sunday at the Renaissance faire or a weekend insurance seminar?
- Eating a jar of mayonnaise or a bowl of casu marzu?
- Lunch with Jared Fogle at a gas station Subway or football two-a-days with Jerry Sandusky?
- Play soccer or watch soccer?
- Sean William Scott movie marathon or Oprah's Book Club?
- 1000 sit-ups or 500 burpees?
- Sex advice from your father or sex advice from your father-in-law?
- No tacos today or no tacos forever?
- Genital herpes or the Hiv?
- Ohio or the American South?
- Being in a room with Hillary Clinton or rubbing Donald Trump's feet?
I bet $2.50 that you had a clear preference for each of those.
The Supreme Court - One of these two is going to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, and since the Court is the last viable political mechanism for old white doobags to codify their 1950s dumbfunkery - which will take like eight consecutive Green presidents to unwind - perhaps you should vote for the lady who will nominate the kind of person who thinks women are sentient human beings and homosex bum touching is not grounds for capital punishment. Your choice.
She isn't Mike Pence either - If Donald Trump wins and the Republicans maintain control of Congress, they're just going to impeach fatty and call it a day. Then we're stuck with President Pence. Mike Pence is an empty dickbag.
Divorce court - There's an 80% chance that Hillary's first act as President will be to leave Bill for an intern.
The issues - Hillary really likes Ellen DeGeneres. So do I.
________________________
Why I just wasted your time - This rant was probably pointless. I began writing it just after the Democratic National Convention when Bernie or Bust was an actual thing and people were pretending they were guided by their idealism, but now it's mid-October and everyone's falling in line because (1) they always do and (2) no one wants to see the world explode.
If you know anyone at all then you've probably never met a racist because there just aren't any of them around anymore. It's true: ask any random white guy who just finished ripping on a black athlete for not being able to "talk right" and he'll tell you he can't be racist because he doesn't have one black friend, he has two, though he's pretty sure that 15-year-old Sikh kid over there has a bomb tied around his waist even though what's really around his waist is what us non-racists generally refer to as a belt.
But since we all eat Thanksgiving dinner every year, frequent social media, or have at least one co-worker, we also know that racists have not gone extinct. The problem then is locating all those white power Pokemons. How though? No one's going to admit it, and all the old telltale signs like racial epithets have evolved into disingenuous stances on policy that can be defended with faux-intellectual reasoning. Like, I don't have a problem with Mexicans, but if you're going to come into this country with 15 kilos of the coco lodged in your bum then you should learn to grow blond hair like real Americans, otherwise your true loyalty is to the drug cartels even though they killed all nine of your cousins. Or, he's not a negroid or anything but he does have braids and two eyebrows, which according to FBI data means there's a 78% chance he just armed robberied like three banks even though he's walking his daughter home from school.
So if you're looking for racists they'll be hiding in the space between n-word and thug, because racial epithets aren't powerful on their own, they're powerful because of the ideas they convey. And since the idea is more important than the actual word then there are ways to hint at those ideas without actually saying the word. Which brings me to my number one foolproof way of determining whether you or anyone you know is a subconsciously avowed racist dick stopper: reactions to the most recent high-profile police shooting of a black man, especially if there is video. But first an explanation for why you can use police shootings as a weathercock for racial animus.
An explanation for why you can use police shootings as a weathercock for racial animus - Aggressive policing is at the intersection of two issues: (1) whether the popo are serving and protecting the state a little too much at the expense of its citizens; and (2) whether or not you give a shit about the citizen who just got served. Ideally, who gets shot by the police shouldn't affect how you feel about what constitutes reasonable policing, but then again, Internet comments. I know they tend to be discounted as pure sewer, but in truth the flame wars that take place in comment sections are basically what you'll find verbatim on Facebook, Twitter, or in real life. Let's explore, shall we?
LaVoy Finicum was a white dude who participated in the armed takeover of federal property and who subsequently taunted law enforcement with threats of a shootout if they moved to end his occupation. Eventually he was shot dead after trying to run over officers from two separate agencies with his pickup truck and then reaching for his gun as they attempted to bring him into custody. This is the general tenor of the response on NRO, a subreddit for white guys too old to know what actual Reddit is:
Alton Sterling was a black dude selling bootleg CDs in a convenience store parking lot when the police approached him about a complaint they'd received of someone fitting his description threatening passersby with a weapon. For whatever reason the encounter escalated to the point where the police forcefully subdued him and were literally sitting on his chest when he was fatally shot. Here is the response to a Fox News article saying the Justice Department was going to investigate:
Basically, a hostile actor who's publicly boasted about going down in a blaze a glory grabs for his gun during a standoff and the police should have exercised restraint, but a man the police rolled up on under the singular context of "you may be the guy we're looking for" was both tased and subdued before finally being shot and everything but the police should have exercised restraint. I'd try to put my finger on what could inspire a person to get their emotional responses completely backwards here but I don't appreciate when people touch my white face. Instead I'll make a new header to introduce a list of things not to say in the aftermath of a shooting if you want to maintain your non-racist anonymity.
What not to say in the aftermath of a shooting if you want to maintain your non-racist anonymity - Lethal force should only be deployed in situations where police have no choice but to shoot. There's a whole lot of durrrrrrrr wrapped up in that phrase since people ostensibly believe in things like due process and the rule of law, but then again all that durrrrrrrr suspiciously goes missing whenever a black guy gets shot and all the not-racists very reasonably explain why that black dude was not only responsible for his own death but also the price of milk, global warming, undocumented immigration, holes in the municipal budget, Ted Cruz's personal failings, and everything else white people usually blame on Obama. If levying blame on the victim sounds unreasonable to you, and if you'd like to be a genuine not-racist rather than a "I don't have a racist bone in my body" not-racist, then here is a list of those very reasonable Trumpian arguments you should most definitely skip the next time this happens, because they're garbage.
He was no angel - The debate that should follow a police shooting is whether or not that shooting was justified and would only take into consideration things relevant to a policeman's decision to fire his weapon. Now, I don't know exactly what constitutes reasonable cause to shoot bullets at a person but I most definitely know "he's an asshole" isn't one one of them. That character evaluation may have been relevant when deciding to approach a person of interest, and it becomes relevant again when deciding whether to pursue charges afterward, but it is not relevant during the physical process of taking a person with constitutional rights into custody. The only information pertinent to that moment is whether or not the person being apprehended is compliant and what kind of threat they pose if they aren't.
This should be obvious but it isn't, since a black dude gets shot and everyone who's ever had sexy time with the U.S. Constitution will immediately forward his criminal record all over AOL, as if two jaywalking tickets and a bag of weed disqualify someone from their 5th and 14th Amendment protections. "But he held up a lemonade stand 10 years ago, and he shot my mother!" So? As long as he doesn't pose a mortal threat then it's just handcuffs and the paddy wagon. He could drive a windowless white van past three elementary schools and a cop still doesn't have the legal authority to execute him just because the guy is gross as hell. That's a decision that courts make. As far as real excuses and not just ones I made up here to lampoon racist stupidity: Tamir Rice looked older than a normal 12 year old and was suspended from school once or twice; Trayvon Martin took a bunch selfies wearing a grill so make sure to publish those photos, liberal media, and not the ones of him looking like every other 15-year-old babyfaced kid; John Crawford III was once busted for carrying a concealed weapon so of course it's reasonable the police shot him for holding a BB gun that was out on display in a Walmart; Philando Castille had a suspended license so blame him for getting pulled over in the first place actually no blame his mom for conceiving him since if we take this back far enough we can blame his death on everyone but the cop; and so on. For real, if you're I'm not racist but enough to have constructed a timeline full of post-hoc excuses to justify an unjustified shooting, you're an actual racist.
All that doesn't even take into account how completely arbitrary the justice system is when tagging people with a criminal record in the first place. For one thing, you have to get caught. How many times have y'all driven your ass home after a few too many drinks and gotten away with it? And what's the difference between you and a dude with a DUI conviction other than you're one of the good guys...who just happened to elude any trees or police cruisers on the way home? Or if drunk driving isn't your thing but driving is: How many times have you hit 90 on the freeway or 40 in a school zone? You know the chances of causing serious harm rise exponentially when you ignore posted speed limits, right? But you probably have quicker reflexes than the average bear, or something. Then there's the weed. When I was in college fully 85% of students smoked it and 82% of those people sold it, and that's just a pretend survey from BYU. Imagine how much more is smoked at state schools with liberal arts curricula. And of those people who've gotten high at BYU, like zero have ever been busted, and were the cops to shoot one of them tomorrow then all you'd hear about them is their doctoring, lawyering, middle-managing, and then the two adorable toddlers they left behind; what you won't hear is that the cops killed a drug user even though they probably smoked more pot than Michael Brown ever got a chance too.
He should have cooperated - Resisting arrest is so broadly understood in the police community that it means different things to different officers, and basically nothing to the non-policing public. There's obvious resistance a la running away from an arresting officer or actually throwing punches, but there's also WTF, that's resistance? resistance, like maybe your leg twitched while being handcuffed and suddenly the deputized steroid who's arresting you turns green, tears off his shirt, grunts something along the lines of "stop resisting," and then beats the shit out of you with his boots. "Cooperation" is even more vague than that, especially in instances that aren't actual arrests. Yeah, I'm sure most cops are generally very tolerant of verbal abuse, but there are definitely more than a few who will lose their shit if you don't break out the yes, massa, you wan' me to tap dance, massa? routine even though all they were doing when the police rolled up was walking down the street looking like a human. This kid, for example:
Meanwhile, every time the police so much as Good afternoon! some old cowboy in White Town it's all, Don't you guys have some real criminals to be arresting instead of pulling us law abiding Causcasians over for driving too fast?
Saying someone should have cooperated also ignores that people get shot for actually cooperating. Like this dude:
- Can I see your license, please?
- Okey dokey, officer, I'm going to fully cooperate, let me get my license just like you asked, it's right here in my car...
- Pew pew pew pew pew pew stop threatening my life pew pew pew get on the ground even though you're already on the ground bleeding to death pew pew pew pew STOP RESISTING!
And then the whole Philando Castile fuggery, where not more than 27 minutes after everyone scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention said Alton Sterling would still be alive if only he'd cooperated, a black man fully fully cooperated with police and ended up dead just the same.
- Hello officer, I have a permit to carry and it is my duty to inform you I have my gun on me now...
- OMG he has a gun pew pew pew pew pew pew pew get your wallet out please OMG he's getting his wallet pew pew pew pew pew.
Anyhow, racist, I hope when Obama's girlfriend Hillary shows up to take your guns you respect her authority and just hand them over, else the slew of policemen at her back will have all the justification in the world to shoot your ass dead for not cooperating.
Cops have a tough job you don't know what it's like! - No durrrrrrrr. Then again, that's why they undergo police training: to prepare themselves for the unique challenges of being a cop. Part of that training presumably includes detaining uncooperative assholes without shooting them dead for no other reason than "he scared me a little bit." And anyhow, the actual dead guy is like 10% of the problem. Most of the pissed offery stems from all the aggressive policing beforehand and the lack of accountability afterward. Yeah, I get that it's hard for the prosecution to build a legal case against an officer with nothing but eyewitness accounts from non-credible - AKA black - witnesses when all the defense has to do is throw the officer's official police report on an overhead projector and then light a victory cigar, but Walter Scott. That guy was dead for days and all the racists were boasting, "Shut up you reverse black racist, he grabbed the cop's taser, I know 'cause the cop said so!" And that would have been the official story had this video never surfaced:
Worst of all are the cops who reflexively defend assholes like this because of some blood oath they swore to Officer Friendly that they'd never think bad thoughts about their brothers. Yes, protocol is sometimes unnecessarily burdensome, sometimes lines are crossed to do the right thing, and more than sometimes the very people who summon the police via 911 are the first to lodge a complaint; but I have never seen one profession so unquestionably circle the wagons in defense of shit that shouldn't be defended. I mean, when's the last time you heard a teacher defend another teacher raping a student by saying "you don't know what it's like"? Uh, never. So stop it. You're already the police, so start policing your own.
Oh yeah, this was about the racists and their knee jerk defense of the police whenever they kill a guy, not the actual police. So let's see...policing is a difficult job, yes, but that's not an excuse for unjustified shootings. And yet in cases like Walter Scott's, where evidence emerged contradicting the officer's official accounting, there are still doobags blaming him for his own death. Because they're racists.
But, statistics! - Hiding your racism behind statistics is the same as hiding your face underneath a white robe. You can't say shit like "the police shoot way more honkeys than black folk" and think that actually means something without also acknowledging there's a difference between absolute and relative numbers. But the whole blacks are 2-3 times more likely to get shot than their white bredren point gets brought up in every article ever about police violence so nothing new to add here other than I really wanted to get that blast in about hiding underneath your robe.
Black-on-black crime is responsible for more black deaths than the police are so complain about that instead - Leaving aside a serially debunked myth - that black-on-black crime is an actual thing - how is that even relevant?
- Hey, guy, I noticed you stole my social security number and have opened up three credit cards in my name.
- There are children in Africa starving why don't you talk about that instead?!?
The obvious insinuation when bringing up black-on-black crime is that the black community is indifferent to violence in their own community and is only moved to outrage when a white cop from outside it does the killing since that fits their victimization narratives, which leads to Skeletor Guiliani going on Fox News to ask where the BLM protestors are whenever a not-cop kills someone. Uhhhhhh, they're in the streets, protesting. So basically, just because the one black guy you saw at the store three weeks ago was at that store and not at a protest doesn't mean that people aren't concerned about the violence in their neighborhoods, it just means you're a racist.
There's a picture of him on social media holding a gun - The more open an open carry of a state the more relevant a black dude's gun ownership is used to justify his deadness, curiously.
As far as dudes who had a gun they were pointing at the police, you'll notice none of the public outrage is ever about them. If a guy is going to get in a shootout with police, well goodbye then since that's not the issue. The issue is that even fake police like George Zimmerman can conjure circumstances out of thin air that they can later use to justify what most of us would regard as murder were it to happen to our own son or daughter. I mean, imagine if we went to junior high together and I walked up to you in the lunch line, slapped your tray out of your hands, punched you in the dong, and then you ended up in detention for calling me an asshole. Exactly.
Thanks, Obama! - Obama is seventh on my list here but at least third on every other racist pop-sociologist's list of reasons the police most definitely should have shot that rando black dude. The sole reason for laying this at Obama's feet is that no president in the history of the solar system has done more to divide the country along racial lines...
...by simply being elected, since being half-black is the real act of racism while joining an armed white militia in response to his election apparently isn't.
No one ever complains when the police kill a white boy - That's because he wasn't cooperating with police instructions. Also, Obama ordered the hit.
Blue lives matter! - All lives matter!
Then why are white people so trifling? - The reason so many white people will have completely different reactions to the exact same scenario - government security agents killing a citizen - is because there are zero ways to convince them that racism is still an actual thing. To them, racism is stuff like slavery, lynchings, and Jim Crow, and since that was like 900 years ago then the only reason people should be mad the 5-0 shot a black 12-year-old is if the cop was yelling "I hate black people" while shooting him 104 times in the back, then reloading and shooting him again. But racism very obviously still exists, and even though I don't know how to define exactly what it looks like, double standards are a dead giveaway, especially those related to victimization. Here comes the elaboration.
Sorry I'm still talking but here's the elaboration - One list is usually half a list too many for the average blog reader, but I wrote up a second just in case you're still along for the ride, this one detailing the double standards and hypocrisies you should avoid if you don't want to be mistaken for a Donald Trump voter. Not all of them are exclusively about race, but if you're a Republican Senator who's endorsed Trump then chances are you're also a misogynistic homophobe, so being less of a dickbag in your secondary areas of hate will help you hide your primary hatage as well.
It's not about race - Whenever a black or Latino or Asian or other non-white human mentions some humiliation they've endured 8000 times prior to the singular instance they just brought up, everyone's white dad always pipes up with a dismissive "it's not about race" and "they're just playing the victim card." Ask this same white dad why he didn't get into medical school and it's because of Affirmative Action. "I was totally in the top 87th percentile at Phoenix University, and I majored in Physical Education, but they let some qualified black guy in instead. I was left with no other options but the string of sad days I've endured since."
I was reversed racism-ed - There are polls out there of real life white people who believe anti-white racism is more prevalent than anti-black racism, which should come as no surprise to anyone since we've all heard at least one Billy Bob hold forth on the straight white Christian male being the only demographic you can legally shit on. The thing about those polls is there is quite a bit off crossover between white folk who simultaneously believe that actual racism is a thing of the past and reverse racism is the biggest problem ever. The thing about reverse racism, though, is it can only exist in contradistinction to something else, so in the same way up doesn't exist without down, east doesn't exist without west, a shadow doesn't exist without a sunny day, a selfie doesn't exist without a self-involved narcissist, and Taken 2 doesn't exist without Taken 1, reverse racism doesn't exist without your Klan outfit.
I've been racisted against and didn't bother me except for when I complained about it all the time - Take someone who's spent his entire political consciousness ridiculing things like biases and microaggressions and drop him in the middle of Seoul, Korea - where I happen to live - and suddenly our hypothetical good ol' boy suddenly has a healthy interest in equality and basic human decency. For real, the same white bros who insist privilege is a farce are the same white bros who will bore you to death with tales of all the Korean racism they had to endure at the job that curiously affords them a middle-class lifestyle in a country they can't even hack the language. (Just try to imagine a moderately educated Mexican achieving the same in the US.) Sample conversation:
White Bro: Korea is so racist. No one at work will talk to me.
You: It's because they don't speak English. And you don't speak Korean.
WB: Korea's so racist. I've been here 11 years and they won't promote me to super head of every department in my cram school.
You: You don't speak Korean. And you're not qualified.
WB: Korea's so racist. A taxi driver didn't stop for me the other day.
You: They drove past a herd of Koreans too.
WB: Korea's so racist. An old Korean man said mean things to me.
You: Old Korean men hate everyone.
[Black Dude joins the conversation]
Black Dude: That man over there just made monkey noises at me.
WB: Why does everything always have to be about racism? You probably just imagined it.
The worst thing about all this is when Chad or Steve or whoever goes back to Amurka having mistaken an old cantankerous doobag for systematic racism and begins insisting that it's just something you can ignore if you feel like it.
Let's dismiss your experiences so we can validate mine - A black
man from Detroit will tell a white man from the suburbs that he's been
pulled over at least 40 times for DWB and the white man will say no way
it was DWB, you probably had a bazooka in the back seat. Five minutes
later that same white man will tell that same black man he knows
exactly what's wrong with Detroit. "Trust me, I've been to the city at
least six times; I know."
Hey baby! - Cat calling a lady is NBD since she can just ignore it if she really wanted - plus, why did she dress in clothes and human skin if she didn't want me to look at her? - but oh hey, I won't share a locker room with a gay man because he might see my wee wee, and that makes me uncomfortable. For real, someone should make a video where a gay dude approaches a man who just cat called a lady and assaults him with language similar to what he just used himself. I'm sure he'd take it in stride.
Ima touch her puss - Bragging about sexual assault is just locker room jokes, Anderson Cooper! Also, trans folk can't use the public potty because they're perverts.
Cronies! - Everyone hates nepotism, at least until it's time to call your uncle's friend's mistress's brother and ask him to hook you up with a job you're not exactly suited for.
Islamers are evil - I've read at least six Koranic verses on alexjones.com that says all Muslimers are required to kill the infidel, so Muslim ban sounds good to me. And no, I haven't actually read the Bible so don't expect me to comment on all the times God ordered genocide there.
Et cetera - For days and days.
Summary - The number one way in White Town to prove you're not a racist is to say: "I'm not a racist." Since that doesn't fly anywhere else then the next best way to prove you're not a racist is to stop saying stupid hypcritical shit after the police shoot a black person. Have a blessed day.
Colin Kaepernick is a busted ass NFL almost-was-decent-but-turned-out-wasn't QB who has decided to use the last four minutes of his media relevancy - which is entirely predicated on stories about him finally washing out of the league - to publicly comment on the state of black shittery in the USA. To make his point, Mr. Kaepernick has remained seated during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner before each of his team's preseason games. I say preseason because he probably won't have the choice to stand or sit before any actual games since he'll be on a beach in some city that has an ocean but not an NFL team. Like I already said, he's not very good.
Because Mr. Kaepernick has an opinion, and because that opinion is a Chinese factory that manufactures white tears, and because because he decided to express that opinion, commentary has been rife both on the Internet and in the closed fist you call a brain. Since none of those opinions have been mine then you can probably guess they're all stupid and that I'm about to tell you why. So in no particular particular order, here are the most common criticisms of Colin Kaepernick and an explanation for why you should dismiss those criticisms out of hand.
Sitting during the anthem disrespects the soldiers who sacrificed so you'd have the right to...do exactly what you're doing so why am I complaining? I'm not sure why the flag - since standing during the anthem is done out of respect for that flag - is exclusively associated with a soldier's spirit of sacrifice and not the entirety of the USA. Treating this as an act of disrespect towards the military actually disrespects the Americans who weren't in the military. Emmett Till, por ejemplo, who was just as American as anyone who's ever served. The white dudes who murdered him and the jury who acquitted them were pretty American as well, though no one will argue if you want to disrespect them all the day long.
Otherwise, civil liberties are won and lost in legislative chambers and the courts, not on the battlefield. I mean, I definitely appreciate that there's a class of citizen willing to defend my country from any theoretical invasions, but those three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and other forward deployments had precious little to do with my Constitutional right to say a bunch of dumb shit on this blog; the $20 I give to the ACLU every year does. So y'all can repeat "defending our freedoms" as much as you'd like but that still doesn't make it true since what the military is actually defending are the interests of the US Government rather than anyone's individual rights. He's just a football player so who cares what he has to say. Except I've been complaining about him for five days now. Also, whenever a middling celebrity - say, Curt Schilling - says a bunch of racist shit I agree with then I will applaud his bravery to speak out publicly.
He's criticizing the very system that made him a millionaire. Colin Kaepernick looked around and noticed there were systematic differences between white and black America. Then he said something. To have not said anything solely because he's achieved a level of financial comfort barely anyone else has would have made him a sellout, that most celebrated of American virtues. Like, don't we all get together every October or March or whenever Judas Iscariot's birthday was and celebrate the big contract he signed with the Sanhedrin 49ers? And don't forget how emotionally gratifying it is at the end of a movie whenever the hero opts for personal comfort over the friends in dire need of his help. "Nope, just going to go home and drink a craft beer. Good luck with that inter-dimensional freedom destroyer!"
There's also the fact that telling someone they shouldn't bite the hand that feeds them is entirely paternalistic bullshit. It's the same as telling someone they shouldn't have an opinion about world hunger if they had a McDonald's value meal for lunch; or a woman can't be vocal about misogyny if she's never been raped; or Donald Trump can't rail against illegal immigration even though his current wife worked illegally as an immigrant before he made a few calls and got her a green card.
I support the message I just don't support the method. This is a hard argument for me to criticize because I'm a stooge for the University of Michigan football team, and, uh...
But
I am a blog of middling principle so will say to Mr. Harbaugh: You
don't support either so stop playing. If you did then you'd be more
outspoken on the actual issues that prompted him to sit out the anthem
in the first place since it's not the song he's criticizing -
though obviously people have since pointed out all the dickery that went
into writing it in the first place - it's the system that's tacitly endorsed every time you pay that song respect.
He's a rich man's Tim Tebow. This isn't related to the controversy at hand but I still feel like it deserves an airing. Basically, anyone who's ever smelled Tim Tebow's testicles and liked it is 100% certain he's been blacklisted from the NFL because of his Christian convictions and not because he's an ass quarterback. But those same people have zero problem shitting all over Colin Kaepernick even though he runs faster than Tim Tebow, throws a better ball than Tim Tebow, makes better decisions than Tim Tebow, and has far better hair than Tim Tebow. On second thought, maybe this is related to the controversy at hand. Colin Kaepernick is just a straight up horrible word. Don't know why homeboy is taking so much heat.
Seems like he has a point.
The system's not that bad if there are black NFL quarterbacks and black middle managers and a black president. Individual success is not representative of systematic opportunity. There are actually rich people in North Korea who enjoy functioning electricity; I doubt you see that as vindication of North Korean political society, amirite?
_____________________________
Now for some thoughts about Colin Kaepernick that are thoughts of their own and not just explanations for why your opinions are stupid.
There's no right way to bask in salted anthem glory anyhow. Gabby Douglass did the country proud when she got a gold medal at the Olympic Games then did her country not proud when she stood at attention for the anthem rather than place her hand over her heart even though no one knows whether you're supposed to or not. Let's ask Donald Trump to clarify.
So I guess we don't? Either way, if I were Colin Kaepernick then I too
would skip the anthem rather than deal with the charlatan backlash.
Holding the Star-Spangled Banner in absolute reverence is substituting a circle jerk for genuine love of country. If America and Americans were so important than everyone would be outraged at all the ways Americans actually get dicked and would care less about the pretend ways they don't. Whether or not a football player stands for the national anthem has literally zero effect on your life, but that's still reason enough to burn his jersey in effigy. A sociopathic doobag who deliberately lays waste to American small businesses by ignoring their invoices and now you want him to be president. Erm, here comes the side eye.
It's all just meaningless jingoistic bullshiz. The people barking the loudest about French kissing the best country ever are the very people complaining that we need to make that same country great again. If the US is simultaneously the best country in the world and a shell of its former glory then I definitely don't want to stand for Earth's national anthem since this planet disappoints me.
_____________________________
In conclusion, Colin Kaepernick will soon be traded to the Minnesota Vikings and then traded to a CFL team. He won't have to stand for the national anthem there because he isn't Canadian. Problem solved.
The big news in Koko this past week has been a woman being stabbed to death in a Gangnam toilet while out for drinks with her boyfriend and some friends. The assailant was some self-aggrieved men's rights doobag on the prowl for a random woman to stab as penance for his own personal shortcomings as a not-creep. Chances this guy has said "Why won't these sluts go out with me I'm such a nice guy" out loud: two hundred forty-durrrrrrrrr percent.
The police manhunt took all of two minutes to conclude since there is CCTV in every Korean back alley ever and our dickbag didn't even bother concealing himself nor the name of the restaurant plastered all over his work clothes:
The investigation took even less time since the police didn't have to waste time constructing a motive after the dickbag just gave it to them straightaway:
The suspect has since told the police that he committed the crime because he “hated women for belittling him.”
There you go, case closed.
What's left in the aftermath have been the reactions. From the women's side of things have been comments along the lines of #YesAllWomen where they detail the times, both general and specific, when they've feared for their lives or sexual security while doing completely innocuous shit like going to work, looking at a cloud, or drinking a can of beer somewhere other than a cold, dark cave. A makeshift memorial has actually emerged near the murder site that is made up of post it notes left by women sharing their own experiences with run-of-the-mill douchbag men.
Men's reactions have been, as you'd probably expect, a little more varied. Four responses, basically:
I hear you, sisters.
That's horrible. I can't believe someone would do that. Women should feel safe. So where the bitches at tonight?
Women shouldn't incite the lustful wrath of rapey men aka wear a burqa and never leave the house, except if you do that then I'll suddenly feign concern about equal rights because I'm not only sexist, I'm racist too.
I'm a men's rights activist. The murderer is the real victim here. He was just standing his ground against all women's sexual appeal.
That about covers it for immediate reactions, which I'm not going to debrief more fully here since if you're a man and really want to understand the millions of different little ways institutionalized misogyny is manifested in everyday life then there is probably some lady sitting nearby you could ask. Actually, never mind, because if you ask her and she tells you she's busy then you'll probably call her a bitch or something. Let's just move along.
What I do want to point out is the ensuing dipshittery, particularly the defense of fake non-misogyny by trying to lay this particular crime at the feet of mental health in an attempt to explain it away as just a one off rather than as symptomatic of cultural attitudes that treat marginalized groups like shit, in this case women. This guy literally said "I killed a woman because I'm a misogynist," and instead of being all, "Yeah, alright, that's probably the reason he killed her," like 75% of men have instead fallen all over themselves to say it must have been something else. Which I don't get. It's like having this conversation:
"Hello, what's your name?" "Leroy." "LEROY ISN'T REAL YOUR NAME IS FRANK!"
Or this one:
"What do you want for lunch?"
"A hamburger."
"NO YOU DON'T YOU WANT TO COBBLE TOGETHER A PAIR OF SHOES WHILE SITTING ON A ROLLER COASTER!"
Seriously, the guy said misogyny. He killed a woman to get back at all the women who belittled him. He felt belittled by women because a misogynistic culture made him feel that a woman with a contrary opinion was the equivalent of literal castration. Why is his admission so hard to accept? And what are the repercussions of accepting that explanation? That men will have to systematically stop raping women, or at the very least not feel entitled to a Saturday night out with one just because they sent her a Tinder dick pic? (Go take a scroll thought the Bye Felipe Instagram.) Just accept that men, in thousands of little subconscious ways, tend to make life a little less carefree and a lot more shitty for women and then work on trying to be less of a douchebag. If that's too hard then just nod your head yes the next time a man says he killed a woman because he hates women since that's the reason he killed a woman.
The refusal to believe misogyny is a thing is just one half of the dumbfunkery, though. The other half is conveniently blaming every hate crime ever on mental health, which is entirely stupid because (1) durrrrrrr; (2) anyone with even a
rudimentary understanding of mental health can tell you the mentally ill
are most often the victims of crime, not the perpetrators, and pinning
the blame on schizophrenia - as we will soon see is the case here - unfairly stigmatizes the
99.9999999% of people with schizo who get through their lives without
stabbing a single person; and (3) if mental illness is where you've planted your head in the sand then you're just as weak sauce as the Korean police:
The suspect, who had no prior contact with the victim, told police that
he had committed the crime because he had been “belittled” by women many
times in the past.
Police pointed out that killing the first
woman Kim saw in the toilet meant that his crime was neither planned in
advance nor systematic.
“There is a need to distinguish between
hate crimes and crimes driven by mental illness. The latest case falls
in the latter category,” the police said in a press briefing. “Hate
crime arises from prejudice on a certain group, while mental
illness-driven crimes are usually committed due to symptoms such as
delusional thoughts and auditory hallucination.”
After police
profilers had hours-long interviews with Kim on two occasions, they
concluded that the crime was “accidental” as the suspect had no direct
cause to murder the victim and his symptom of schizophrenia had
deteriorated at the time of the crime.
According to the police,
Kim, who was an only child, has lived alone without interacting with his
family. He used to work with women at a restaurant as a waiter, but had
to move to the kitchen for his personal hygiene problems, which Kim
claimed was due to his female colleagues badmouthing him.
He allegedly told the police that he could not stand mistreatment by women anymore and had to kill them before he got killed.
A rudimentary fisking of their public comments would include the following golden nuggets I downloaded from Magnum, P.I.'s personal Moleskine:
Waiting around in a bathroom with a knife stolen from work for the express purpose of killing any ol' rando woman can be reasonably thought of as "planned."
If "systematic" is so essential to the definition of a hate crime then the Nazis are the only hate crimers there ever were.
Hate
crime arises from prejudice on a certain group...spoken right after the guy said he hates a certain group of humans.
...while mental
illness-driven crimes are usually committed due to symptoms such as
delusional thoughts and auditory hallucination...said just before that thing he never said about the voices in his head. Thanks for the Intro to Fake Psychology lesson but but maybe next time apply your pretend diagnoses to a situation where that pretend diagnoses possibly applies.
According to police, Kim had no direct reason to kill aside from the hours of interviews where he detailed all his whiny woe-is-me reasons for hating women enough to kill one of them.
So basically, if you're a person who thinks misogyny doesn't constitute an obvious M.O. here then the above fisking is a geometric proof of You = (dumb)²(ass)³/(go play)+(in traffic).
For feces and haha's, though, let's just go ahead and blame this murder on mental illness, more specifically psychotic disorders since that's the bogey man Donald Trump would blame if Megyn Kelly ever asked him about this. A summary from the U.S. National Library of Medicine:
Psychotic disorders are severe mental disorders that cause abnormal
thinking and perceptions. People with psychoses lose touch with reality.
In other words, mental illness - and more specifically, psychotic disorders - is a dysregulation of thought processes that impairs one's ability to function normally within a community. Okay, I buy that: this guy who murdered a woman in the toilet was definitely mentally ill. Why? BECAUSE MISOGYNY IS A MENTAL ILLNESS! For real, if you've had a photo shoot with your dick so that you can fire off faxes to women you've just noticed online then you are not interacting with society the way Jesus intended. If you've ever blamed a woman for her own rape then there is something definitely wrong with you, Booboo, and you should probably go see a psychiatrist about a Blarap® prescription, which is a drug I just made up that helps moderate the cognitive processes associated with rape culpability. (Blarap® is an amalgamation of blame, rape, and on the fucking rapist.) And if "she's a crazy bitch" is the sum response to being told by a woman, however politely, that you aren't quite the King Dick you've always fancied yourself then maybe it's time to discuss treatment options. My recommendation for you is cognitive-behavioral therapy since Google tells me that is a short-term intervention and the goal here is to get you to stop being an asshole as quickly as possible. Benchmark for the first week: Stop telling women to smile.
In conclusion, it's a shame that misogyny literally means "hatred of women" because it gives all the misogynist doobags a faux-pedantic out. "Durrrrr...I can't hate women since I love my mom!" In the meantime, praise be to Allah that I have been allowed to include actual misogyny - the attitudes and behaviors that contribute to a culture of dickbaggery toward women, whether it be mild condescension or actual rape - in the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders so that all the gross men in charge of government policy will start taking this issue as seriously as they generally take other mental health issues, which is not at all.
Since this blog is such a community treasure, we who work here take our role as the thought police very seriously, which means we generally don't accept requests. However, our EIC's sister recently called in this favor:
Before considering her request, it is important for all 17 of you to understand how this blog decides which topics to write about. Basically, we have editorial meetings every Tuesday between either lunch and our afternoon nap or our afternoon nap and a siesta. During these meetings we evaluate whether or not we have any original thoughts to add to the discussion at hand. Those thoughts don't have to be purely original in the sense that no one else in the universe has yet to have them, but they do have to be original in that we haven't encountered them somewhere else before passing them off as our own. There's a term for that, and it's not plagiarist. It's parrot, which is far worse than plagiarist since a plagiarist is just some dude with a deadline he wants to meet as quickly as possible so he can go outside and drink a can of beer. Anyhow, these editorial meetings of ours generally take place after any point worth mentioning in a debate has already been made, so instead of writing anything we just go home, watch Game of Thrones, and fall asleep for the fourth time that day.
As far as the Target bathroom policy goes, we thought it prudent to know what their actual policy was before deciding whether to take on this request. Their policy is:
In our stores, we demonstrate our commitment to an inclusive experience in many ways. Most relevant for the conversations currently underway, we welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.
Practical enough. We here at ISWYD applaud Target for their sensibility and would like to call it a day, except our dear reader above was probably less interested in the actual policy than in the general histrionics surrounding the question of whether or not transgendered folk can use the potty when out in public. So okay, some background before we get started in order to understand why Target had to develop a policy like this in the first place.
Background - There are a bunch of bathroom bills being proposed, considered, or passed throughout the USA, Land of the Free. The basic crux of these bills is that a person must use the bathroom designated for use according to his or her biological sex at the time of birth. We don't know if these bills address the differences between transvestite, transgender, and transsexual but of course they don't.
The most high profile of these bathroom bills - probably because it's the only statewide dipshittery to have been passed into law - is North Carolina's, which was passed two months ago, one month before the entire state went bankrupt because every non-discriminatory business in the universe moved to far more accommodating South Carolina instead. The most humorous of these bills was proposed in Texas and would have allowed someone trapped in the bathroom when a transgendered walked in to sue that transgendered for $2000 plus the costs associated with treating their mental anguish. We say humorous because this bill was proposed, no doubt, by a guy who only five minutes earlier was complaining about political correctness causing the downfall of the joint US/Roman Empire. "It's totally unfair I can't say fag or queer anymore just because it might hurt someone's feelings but ohhhhhh the mental anguish caused by another human having a bladder. Hold me!"
Opposing viewpoints - If you're reading this blog then you probably agree with our editorial board that using the toilet corresponding to your gender identity is NBD, and you probably already know that transgendered folk, when forced to use the bathroom opposite their gender identity, are susceptible to a wide range of harassment when all they want to do is make a poo and check their Instagram in peace. You've probably also been brainwashed to believe there are zero documented cases of transgendered people attacking their non-trans cousins in the toilet, which is totally false since (1) you probably hadn't noticed most of the trans folk you've encountered were even trans; and (2) there was most definitely a time at the club when a trans lady confronted a non-trans lady in the bathroom about looking at her man. Fights happen.
If you're not reading this blog then you probably disagree with our editorial board but aren't able to defend yourself here, so we will build a straw man on your behalf and call him Ted Cruz. Not ideal, but at least this way our readers will be able to understand (1) the rationale behind your support of bathroom bills and (2) why that rationale betrays your dumbfunkery. And yes, we realize that Ted Cruz is totally irrelevant now that he's dropped out of the presidential election but his face is still the best representation of all the ugly arguments that follow:
Think of the children!- Nearly every argument put forth by Ted Cruz has been some iteration of grown men and little girls, the insinuation being that trans women are not actually women on a mission to pee but rather dudes on a mission to coach Penn State football. Okay, but if we're going to use oddly sexual right-wing fantasies as the basis for public policy then we should also use statistically relevant facts too, which means Ted Cruz's own father can no longer use any public bathroom because it's just common sense that traveling preachers shouldn't be allowed anywhere near children, let alone in North Carolinian toilets. That also means Ted Cruz himself should just pee sitting down at home and nowhere else considering what he does for a living. Do you know who yourRepublican congressman is?
#NotAllTransgendered - Ted Cruz later softened his stance by saying transgendered people themselves weren't the problem but acknowledging them as human beings was, his rationale being that predators would take advantage of that courtesy by buying a dress and walking into every toilet ever to get their molest on. To that we say:
THANKS FOR GIVING THEM THE IDEA, TED!
If you'd have paid closer attention in Bible study then you would already know that it's been scientifically possible since Jesus first invented gender-segregated bathrooms for men to disguise themselves as women in order to spend all of Tuesday afternoon hanging out in the Walmart ladies room. But that hasn't happened yet. Why? Because it took until now for some repressed Texas Republican (like four redundancies in just three words there) to concoct the Oceans 11 of sexual assault scenarios before using the national media to disseminate that shitty idea to every pedo in the seminary library who has been wasting their time studying for the long con. So of course some totally non-trans dude is going to take that suggestion and end up in the ladies room now, though unfortunately for Ted Cruz the only fools sneaking into the opposite bathroom haven't been his hypothetical child assaulters, it's been members of numerous pro-family advocacy groups, which makes sense since pro-family is really just code for lashing out at those who remind you most of the skeletons in your own closet.
Don't look at my wang - The North Carolinian governor - whose name we don't know so will just call him Ted Cruz - recently defended his state's bathroom bill by saying its purpose doesn't have anything to do with discrimination because it's all about protecting the expectation of privacy and nothing else. Well, if privacy so important to you, Ted Cruz, then don't use a bathroom with 13 other toilets inside. Also, when you never become president make sure to sign an executive order mandating walls and doors for the men's urinals since those are straight up peek shows, especially if you're urinating next to a pro-family marshal of sexual unliberation.
What if we're wrong? - If our position on pees and poos is all wrong then we must consistently apply the logic behind Ted Cruz's arguments to all of public policy, not just toilet time. That logic boils down to:
Think of the children
A few hypothetical, totally imaginary bad apples have spoiled it for everyone
Ted Cruz is a dick
By exporting those ideas to other issues, we now have a world where toddlers don't shoot each other because their dipshit parents, who swear by gun safety, can no longer buy the loaded guns they're just going to leave around with the safety off; no one goes to church anymore because that's where creepy priests live; women only date and marry other women since single men are too rapey; and all children everywhere only drink bottled water, because Flint. We'd actually consider trading trans toilet rights for all of that, come to think of it. Vote Ted Cruz!
In the end - If little girls are so vulnerable in public toilets then perhaps accompany yours to the toilet. If you're a man that means taking her into the men's room, which had never been a problem until Ted Cruz used a failed presidential campaign to confront his failed subconscious. Also, if you've ever special ordered a hamburger at McDonald's because the ones under the heat lamp weren't for you then you have zero right to tell someone else how to feel about their own special-ordered identity.
