2024 US Presidential Election

[The Grand Nudger]

There we have it. You think that whatever better I have in mind must be perfection, which is contemporary shorthand for impossible...though I do suspect this is more an issue of generalities and not anything specific to anything I advocate for or believe in. I'm pretty one dimensional there. Local and sustainable industry and accountable representation will not be perfect - but I do think it would be better. It's the only fopudnation, imo, that even allows us the leeway to handle stickier issues. My main gripe with dems (even more progressive dems) is coopting that message because it's a demographic winner, and then delivering precisely the opposite. I don't actually think...and have made it pretty clear, that dems and republicans are broadly identical in their idiocy - but that part really is equivalent on both sides.

I actually talk alot with the wife about getting into politics, which is basically poison to me so consider that. I'd foolishly assumed (because, like I said before, I've always wanted to believe the lies we tell ourselves about our politics) that the smartest people in the room were in charge. That we were, in the end, some sort of meritocracy. I just assumed that with the sorts of skeletons I have in my closet there's no way I could win an office that people actually voted for. Turns out I was wrong about one thing but probably not the other. That's not to say that I actually could win anything with those skeletons...I couldn't, just that they don't really matter in the face of corporate backing..which I certainly couldn't get, lol. Worst of both worlds really - which is the inevitable result of repeatedly voting for the lesser evil......

But go ahead, continue giving me shit for not searching the wasteland for a politician that doesn't exist, and for accepting the fact that I will never be in charge of anything because I'm wholly against the very system that grants such indulgences to it's unofficial employees (and, not for nothing, that I probably shouldn't be in charge of anything). I mean, I actually have made my own own political opinions my life and my business. I've been working for commissions and boards and granted research projects and running a non profit. Whatever, after election season is over we'll commiserate in agreement, again, like always. It just stings, lol, every fours years, to have to go through this same bit of theater with people I respect and understand and wish could grant me the same.

I strongly believe in free markets, small government, and the second amendment. I want nuclear power, fiscal conservatism, and social progressivism. I agree with america first and that we are -and should be- a global police force. I fundamentally disagree with affirmative action and also believe we should have single payer healthcare. The reason that I don't have anyone to vote for, is because I stand astride of the issues that our political machine has made into wedges to the detriment of all of us...and I'm not credulous enough to believe that I could turn that around at this very late stage in that game. It's negative partisanship all the way, and that doesn't work for me or for those goals that I think are worth pursuing. I get that everyone votes "a different way" that our motivations are complex - but I know that we cannot proceed towards the better if, in the aggregate, we disagree about literally everything...if, for no other reason, because it's associated with The Other Guy. I'm part of the growing number of americans who believe that our current political moment ends in civil war - though I don't think it will be like our previous civil war.

It's going to be ieds in the streets and cells of seemingly upstanding americans murdering non combatants. I think the reds will start it, but I don't think that the reds have a monopoly on violence (and there again I differ from both political parties). Each of them thinks that violence is not an acceptable answer...but only to their own policies. I think that, ultimately, violence will be the only practical answer to both of their bad policies. You don't get out from under hostage taking warlords by asking nicely -or...fucking voting..... Lean into all of our positive interactions and the vast gulf of things we have in common and try to see it from my point of view without the canned shit, right? I'm not miffed that you vote for what you believe in (if that's even what you do or can do) despite the fucked up nature of our politics. End of the day, I think you should do that, if that's an option for you. I think the white supremacists should vote for white supremacy, too, if that's what they want. I've heard all of this exact same stuff from them, too, btw. They're not the problem. I'm the problem, for not voting for them. I'm miffed that you assign responsibility to the failures of that process to people who are not involved in it. It's ridiculous. Like accusing a witness of the crime. The people who accept this state of affairs and go along with it - for whatever complicated reason, are the coconspirators for better and for worse - not the people who are non participators for exactly this reason. I refuse to give our current form of government the patina of legitimacy through my vote. I know you can get that, and get it in a way that isn't dirtbag shit, lol.