We listened to the bells and the pots and the pans, while out here in the west, we choked on wildfire smoke that we couldn’t escape inside, and tried to dodge every other person that we couldn’t escape outside.
What We’ve Lost
I was a nicer person before 2016, I think. That may be self-flattery; my personal life was falling apart, my marriage effectively ended, and one of the last things I remember before I left Denver, CO was watching Donald Trump win the election. It felt like the beginning of a darkness, and it was. The people around me were crying, and they were right.
Donald Trump was the worst President of any of our lifetimes. There’s no one alive to read this who remembers a leader that was worse, at least in the United States. He made all of us worse, and he brought out the worst in all of us. He was never a leader, he was just the guy who won, and we have all suffered for it.
He was bad before covid, but he was so much worse during covid. We watched the livestreams of New York suffering from here in shocked silence. We listened to the bells and the pots and the pans, while out here in the west, we choked on wildfire smoke that we couldn’t escape inside and tried to dodge every other person that we couldn’t escape outside.
He almost started wars with Iran and North Korea, he stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, he lied, cheated, and ruined countless American lives. His son-in-law boasted about making the city that raised him suffer.
He made all of us look fucking stupid.
Where We’re At
I’m not foolish enough to think that anyone reading this is legitimately undecided. You don’t make your way to this website if you’re the kind of person who worries about that. This post is for people who are already in the tent and who want and need reassurance, or for those who wonder what to think about the people on the outside left of it. We are going to fucking beat them.
We are going to beat them.
We are going to win.
They will not break us, they will break upon us.
My best friend in the world has a trans son. I’ve known him since he was born, I’ve known his father since before I was a teenager. The world in which he has to live is hard. It will always be hard. He would be a target and a victim of a second Trump administration.
A person close to me had top surgery this year. They are able to now live in a way they want to live. This is something everyone deserves. A second Trump administration wouldn’t have allowed them to have that surgery in the first place, let alone have it be part of an entirely normal state healthcare plan.
My partner couldn’t have kids. We didn’t want kids and it was never in the cards for us, but women’s health has been severely degraded because of successful Republican efforts to punish women for being women. Under a Trump administration, my partner would’ve been denied the cancer treatment that saved her life, and I’d be a widower.
Maybe you have stories of your own. Maybe you have fears of your own. If you don’t, I assure you, the people close to you do. Donald Trump sent the feds to my city as a testing ground, and if he wins again, he’ll send them to yours as a matter of course. All of this is what’s on the table this year.
I read an article about a woman who died because of Dobbs. More women have and will die because of this. All of them should matter to you. Some of them might be close to you.
Where We’re Going
If you think it doesn’t matter, or if you think it’s never mattered, well, I can’t help you. My friends, my family, the people I care about have lived and your choices would have ensured they would die. I would hold you responsible for those bad choices.
I am old enough to remember Bush v. Gore, and I am old enough to have voted for Gore. The bad choices from that election killed tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of other people in the years to come, and those people told themselves they were making the moral choice, too. They were wrong in the same way that the people today, right now, 48 hours before the end, telling you not to vote are wrong. Do not listen to them.
I have lived through a Donald Trump administration and I do not intend to live through another one without fighting it, and you fucking shouldn’t, either. These choices will come to find you, whether you want them to or not. You cannot escape an authoritarian regime by opting out. Your choices are binary, there is one good choice, and one bad choice.
I can’t change your vote, and I can’t make you vote. But I can tell you what some of the consequences will be if you don’t, and I want you to try to imagine how much worse they could get.
But that’s on you, and I can’t tell you what to do. What I can tell you is that we are going to win. We are going to win. If you’ve already voted, I commend you. I’ve you’ve volunteered — if you’ve phone banked or you have text banked or you have knocked on doors or you have folded up chairs and made coffee — I commend you. You have helped us win.
Kamala Harris is going to be the first woman to serve as President of the United States and she is going to end the era of Donald Trump.
We are going to beat them.
We are going to win.
They will not break us, they will break upon us.
The sky is the limit after that. There are many, many battles to come. But we can’t win any of them if give the State to the people who will destroy us.
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE 