Threading the needle

The felon Trump has taught me to back away, avoid, ignore politics, meanwhile enticing me to read endless condemnations and explanation of why people actually vote for him.

A number of times I have caught myself mindlessly ranting about Trump, the big bowl of wrong that his is, connecting it in many ways to various values that I have being violated. To be sure that's part of his appeal to the sociopaths who love him.

A candidate takes a recipe. One part rugged individualism, one part exceptionalism, one part manifest destiny, one part materialism. Served to conservative evangelicals, serve to conservative religious people, serve to ordinary conservatives, serve to people who hate liberals, and you've got a popular dish. They would rather a selfish ruler was just out for their own because that confirms their theory of human nature, and it's not liberals trying to do good. 

This next election will be about what you hate, if Trump has his way. Do you hate liberalism, high taxes (Republicans don't lower taxes on anyone but the very wealthy) and inflation? The economy is really doing quite well, but many people feel like they have less, even though Trump is the cause of the weak economy we're recovering from. The super rich can get rich in a bad economy, it often helps. People like chaos, and government not functioning, their dastardly actions have some cover. When things are going well, people can complain about the little things. 

I clearly dislike what Trump is and represents, I knew I didn't like him the second I heard about the "grab them by the pussy." And he kept piling on atrocity after atrocity. His cousin says there's not one single redeeming quality to him. It's quite well documented how bad he was for the country, the 700k plus people who died because of his inaction on Covid, he's literally murderous. Right wing people can forgive that, quibble it's a metaphysic. 

My friend says prosecuting him is political, but I think it's the opposite, he's weaseled out of a lot of prosecution because he's political. He's delayed the other 3 big cases he has against him till after the election. 

These two realities, they do not meet. We don't share a reality. One piped in from Fox News, the other from MSNBC. We used to watch the big 3 or PBS. PBS Newshour was what I was raised on. I wasn't political, but watching that during diner every night, that is my conditioning that gave me the information to be the way I am.

I go to the park and watch my daughter. I try to get people to vote. We've had the highest voter turnout recently, 2 out of 3 people vote. I don't want fines for people not voting, I don't want to punish people who don't vote, but I wish more people were condition through education to develop ideas about who to vote for, to participate in democracy.

Now many in the park came from Eastern Europe, South American and China. They don't want to pay attention to politics. It's all just too frustrating and perhaps even dangerous. I think about that man standing before the tanks in Tiananmen Square massacre.

A little attention to politics could lead you to losing your life like this. That unidentified fellow known as Tank Man is dead. Challenging authoritarian regimes is deadly. 

I want to forget about politics, I don't want to die. I'm attracted to those people who make dramatic stands like Wynn Alan Bruce, who burned himself after a particularly heinous ruling from the illegitimate supreme court. 

So I'm trying very hard to not read about how wrong Trump is, I wasn't going to vote for him anyway. I can't seem to persuade people to vote, let alone who to vote for. 

I'm not so hopeless that I'm not going to vote. Not voting is a vote for Trump, unless you were going to vote for him, and don't. 

It's not clear if the people saying they won't vote for Biden because of his support for Israel, really mean it and understand Trump would be worse.

I don't care if his dictator rhetoric is just a negotiating position for Trump, he doesn't really mean it. He's used quite inflammatory rhetoric for fascism, for white supremacy, and generally lies.

It's not exactly the choice I want, but I'll make my choice. I'll choose democracy, and stability. The choice is between a centrist and a right wing wannabe dictator. It tells you something about billionaires that they're behind him, the right isn't quite as interested in the dialectic of democracy, they want to know their bought influence will prevail. That Murdoch and Musk vote against Biden makes me want to vote for him even more. I'd rather Obama glaring at Putin, than puppy dog Trump asking him what he wants.

Just to state what I intended to back up: Don't pay attention to Trump and just vote against him.

I don't have to watch clips of him saying heinous or incoherent things. He's just trying to get attention, and the person forwarding that on is complicit. 

I don't have to see the similarities of his tropes about white supremacy, immigrants, anti-democracy or authoritarian statements.

I don't have to see how he's just as old and fragile as Biden.