Four Things We Must Remember

When I'm writing this it's day 4 of the second Trump presidential administration. The new president has signed a vast number of executive orders that are specifically designed to hurt the people he's currently blaming for all earthly problems. The new billionaire co-president has gotten a journalist fired for correctly stating that he threw some nazi salutes at an event on inauguration day (don't worry - that link doesn't call a sieg heil a sieg heil, your eyes are safe from the truth). ICE is rumbling around to see how many people they can round up and deport, Mexico is starting a campaign called "Mexico te Abraza" to let deportees know that they can get jobs in Mexico once the US kicks them out. And it's only Friday!

We're in for a bumpy ride, folks, and we're far too early in this trip to see exactly where we're going. Everyone is scared, though. I can tell, because my email is full of think pieces going "oh god, how did this happen" and "do not obey in advance" and "Trump is a big mean bully." And, I mean, yeah. All of that is true.

I have seen a lot of other takes, either attached to those or alongside them, that are not true, or misleading, or start from principles that don't make sense, so I put together a list of four things that I find helpful when I think about the election, the new administration, and politics in general.

Firstly, we must remember:

1) Voting Republican is a choice

I have seen a lot of takes over the past 18 months or so that imply that some people are - through no fault of their own - just falling into voting Republican. That somehow, some way, people can forget or just not realize that there are two (or more) parties and that it's possible to vote for either of them, and so they vote for Republicans. If we just remind people that Democrats (and maybe other parties) are there, people will stop voting only for Republicans.

Or maybe somehow, some way, people can forget or not realize that the two (or more) parties have different policies and will carry out even the policies they share in different ways. And so they vote for Republicans. If we just help people realize that Republican policies are different than other parties' policies, they will evaluate everything and decide that Republican policies are worse and they will stop voting for those policies.

Or maybe people can forget or not realize what the Republican policies are - that they are primarily intended to hurt specific people, usually people who are poor or people who are not Republican, and secondarily intended to benefit specific people, usually people who are rich and very politically powerful and Republican, and only after those things are they intended to fix the highways or run the courts or protect people from bad food or military invasion. And so they vote Republican.

These are bad takes.

People who vote for Republicans who win will sometimes imply they didn't know what they were voting for when the winning Republicans put policies into place that take food from children or give extra money to billionaires. They will say "oh, I just didn't realize" or "this isn't what I voted for." And it's possible they mean those things when they say them, but I've noticed that a lot of the time the people that say things like that feel perfectly comfortable voting for Republicans the next time. So it seems like they know what Republicans are selling, and they're buying it willingly.

Which leads to the next important reminder:

2) Everyone has access to true information

Throughout last year and the year before when there was a political campaign going on, I got a lot of emails from newspapers and political campaigns and newsletters I found on Twitter. There were breaking news headlines and deep-dive investigation pieces and burning hot takes. I told coworkers and friends and internet randos what I thought of the news and often what the news was.

Many times they were grateful for recaps and opinions, and I felt smart, and good at politics.

I had as much information as I could stomach - and more! - and sometimes it seemed like I was the only person who could have pulled all of that together.

But that's wrong.

Anyone could have been that amount of checked-in. They just didn't care to make the effort.

I heard a lot of people say things like "I just can't pay attention to the news - it's too upsetting" and "I don't want to talk about politics." Which is fine. No one has to pay attention, and it's fine if you don't vote, as long as you are absolutely, positively sure that the giant machine for cutting people up and making them into money that we call a government is never going to have time to get around to you. If you're human, and not a billionaire, and especially if you're a minority or a woman or LGBT or an immigrant, you may want to take note of some of the things that are going on.

That said, there's a large swathe of people, some of whom voted and some of whom didn't, who don't pay attention to what's happening. They have other places they get their news - social media, maybe, or one of the right-wing TV infotainment programs, or podcasts, and it's possible those sources don't cover a lot of true things that are happening. These people are not very interested in the outcomes of the things they vote for, and they don't bother to be informed about the causes of things.

There's a school of thought especially on the political left that says we shouldn't blame uninformed people for not knowing what's going on, for reacting angrily to unpleasant surprises that were no surprise at all for those of us who were paying attention. That it's not their fault that they didn't know what was going on, and it's unfair of the well-informed to call them out on it - we shouldn't be mad at them for blaming people for their problems who can't possibly be to blame. We can't hold them responsible for opting out of any decisions and then complaining when they don't like what's been decided. It's frankly rude to tell them the truth.

That's very unfair to the uninformed. It's infantilizing. It isn't accurate. People who don't know what's going on have had the same opportunities we have used to get good information, and they haven't bothered.

That's their responsibility, because:

3) We're all adults here

There's a strong thread of our culture that is devoted to making sure that groups of powerful people, especially white men, are never called to account. We've seen it with the backlash to the #MeToo movement, we've seen it with the hissy fit around changing the names of forts to remove confederate generals, and we've seen it most recently with our dear leader, Donald J Trump, who managed to turn aside some 93 felony counts plus several other entire prosecutions for different crimes. How dare lesser beings like women or people of color ask for redress of the wrongs done them by the men in charge? The men in charge are busy doing in-charge things. It's rude to ask them to change, or even to pay attention.

There's another strong thread of our culture that is devoted to making sure no powerful person, especially a white guy, is ever required to take real responsibility for his actions. If he said something awful that hurt your feelings, he was joking. If he doesn't know how to do the dishes or change a baby or balance the checking account, well, men are really just fools, we can't expect them to do that stuff. I've seen descriptions of dudes who commit crimes in their 30s as "young men." I've seen rapists in their 20s described as "boys" and let go with minimal punishment because we wouldn't want to ruin their potential.

These two threads combine with some other greasy, gross parts of our culture to make a thin, shitty veil of excuses over the bad behavior of right-wingers, especially men. In this paradigm, right-wing men are both leaders - the ruling class and therefore above criticism - and children - too immature to be expected to control their behavior.

When people who don't have that kind of privilege buy into this kind of thinking, we have a world where only Republicans can legitimately hold power, and only everyone else can ever legitimately do anything wrong.

When we have a culture that's bought into the veil of excuses, we end up with political cycles like this most recent one: Republicans win without trouble while Democrats chase a middle ground that doesn't exist. When conservative white people can never do anything wrong and are not responsible for their own actions, but are the arbiters of culture and all things good, anyone who doesn't want terrible things for vulnerable people has to spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince conservative white people that protecting vulnerable people is in their best interest.

This is essentially impossible because:

4) Other people get to decide what's important to them

I hear a lot of takes, especially but not solely from Democrats, about how groups of people - poor whites, rural people, conservative women, Christians, men who are not white - are "voting against their interests" because they vote for conservatives, who usually run on policies that will make life harder for a lot of people in those groups in specific, usually economic, ways.

When liberals and leftists say things like "voting against their interests" they're committing the cardinal sin of the basic bitch liberal: assuming you know what is best for someone else.

Democrats often accuse the right of this, but that's not correct. The cardinal sin of the basic right-wing kook is trying to force everyone to do what the right-wing kook wants. As long as people are compliant the right wing doesn't care if they're happy.

It can look similar.

The problem on the left is that by and large the left wants everyone to be happy, and they're absolutely convinced they know what that means.

And they don't. You don't. I don't know what's going to make someone else happy. I don't know what will make you happy, you don't know what will make me happy. Hell, I don't know what will make me happy most of the time. Democrats can go around telling people that voting for Republicans will make them unhappy, but it's condescending, probably wrong, and definitely won't help them win.

The last few election cycles have definitively proven that "the other guy is a fascist" is a losing argument. No one will come around to the Democrats' side as long as their message is "You're stupid, and you don't know what you're voting for, and so you should vote for me, the status quo, and 3% less inflation."

The people voting for Republicans are grown adults who have the ability to learn what's going on and know what's important to them. Based on their votes, what they want is bullies who will light the house on fire to stay warm. Trying to pull those voters into voting for Democrats by moving right will not work: if what you want is Hitler, you're not going to be satisfied with Hitler Lite.

The folks who aren't voting, or who only sometimes vote, the folks who don't pay attention or vote third party or even the ones who voted for Democrats are also not very happy with the "vote for the status quo but with less inflation" message - we can tell because so many fewer people voted this time and also because people keep saying it's a bad message and they want primaries and different options and the possibility of a government that doesn't act like a machine for cutting people up and turning them into money. It might be a good idea for Democrats to start listening. Voters are grown adults who know what's important to them, after all, and there are a lot of ways to find out what's going on.

And voting Democrat is also a choice.