Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
No, to do that you would have to replace Anthony Kennedy with someone farther to the right, and you'd have to have a really solid conservative majority, at least 6-3, so that you could still lose one. There's no sign of that, is there?
I drove to the grocery store yesterday and coming the other way down the street was a MAGA parade, trucks honking their horns and flying their Trump flags and causing a traffic jam. The point of the exercise was just to express themselves, and to get in the face of the large majority of people who live in this area and who will vote for Biden.
The idiocy of voting against Biden because he beat all of the progressives you dislike so much, because some of his supporters irritate you.
You are just like the Trump voters in the MAGA parades, in your own way. Go get yourself a flag.
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It's hard to articulate fully. And it changes a lot.
But start with this bedrock: I am generally oppositional to politics and people who hold strong beliefs in matters political. I have an immediate revulsion to people who "resist," people who join any movement. (I can see resisting Putin, or Stalin, or Mao, but Trump? You don't get hysterical in response to a con man.)
Anti-Trumpism also has a religious feel to it. And that religious fervor has bled into other "movements." The freakout over Kavanaugh, "women must be believed (even if its clearly bullshit foisted by Avenatti)," flip the patriarchy, identity politics is excusable and noble, etc. These things are all deeply irrational, sophomoric, illogical, gaudily emotional, and dumb.
You're right -- I should not lump Biden in with that train of screwballs on the left. He is moderate. He'll be a fine president. The world will keep spinning and hopefully, he will in a Clintonite fashion keep his hands off the economy and allow a recovery to continue.
It is difficult, however, to hear both sides of this debate. First, because as I said, I reflexively find myself annoyed by people who get so upset about politics (I admit I do care about general freedom, but that's easy to defend... people who seek positive rights and are indignant about it annoy me*).
I think to pick a side requires one to join. I couldn't join Trump. (I can't even join a tennis league, as it seems too much commitment.) Whatever it is, if I see a ton of people fervently behind it... I'm not. Because it'll take some suspension of disbelief, as joining any movement ultimately does.
And allowing that baggage to infect my view is a bit of an unfair way to treat Biden. Because Biden isn't bad guy. He's just the banner under which a lot of people for whom I have no respect and think are silly are congealing in an anti-Trump freakout.
I'm not unsympathetic to the argument of Never-Trumpers in favor of Biden. And I'm sympathetic to the arguments of moderates. The desire for normalcy is quite appealing. The argument that voting for Biden (or whoever is running against Trump) is a moral imperative, OTOH, is childish.
And the argument staying home or voting third party is a vote against Biden still just breaks my brain. The only vote against Biden is a vote for Trump. And the only vote against Trump is a vote for Biden. Logically, if one is voting third party or staying home, he is not voting for or against either. He is depriving both of his vote. The kind of dumb that asserts it is voting against only one of the two candidates is a level of stupidity that drives me nuts. But it's a common form of dumb, like a lot of the arguments we're seeing today. The Left is very emotional, in an extreme form of moral panic. Huge turn-off.
So I don't know. Maybe I will vote. Last week I told a Republican friend I was voting for Biden. This week, I listened to few podcasts dissecting Ibrahim Kendri and thought, "Man, these fucking progressives are not only nuts, but dumb as fucking fence posts." I don't like this new SCOTUS judge, so that will make me want to throw out Trump and see McConnell boiled in oil. But then I'll hear a bunch of whiny overwrought nonsense and illogical shit from the Democrats grilling her and wish there was a way we could fit them all for cement shoes.
And after being grossed out by both sides and thinking maybe the country deserves to crash because it is filled with morons - and that includes those who'd fancy themselves elites, and their deplorable counterparts, who together power the idiot-go-round of American society - I'll wish I could vote for Lyndon LaRouche, or Pigasus.
I am at heart a vacant golf course quasi-libertarian who just likes to complain. I should should own it already.
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* I see abortion as a negative right, the govt having no authority to tell a woman what she may or may not do with her body.
