Too Close For Comfort

The night before the election I was not optimistic. I remain in the same cloud of pessimism. After four years of watching that walking talking pile of rotting buboes, incite violence, get endorsed by every white supremacist group in the country, Strip away rights from queer communities, force sterilization on women whose children he ripped away, all while they are sitting assholes to elbows in a cage, and cause the deaths of over 230,000 Americans by downplaying a Virus with a global infection of over 45 million people.

Last night I watched as numbers started to pour in, and the votes have been so close that I have spent the last 18 hours trying not to vomit. I expected nothing from America, and I have received exactly what I thought I would. I have seen affirmation that 67 million Americans are willing to uphold a fascist regime, for reasons that I can not begin to guess at. I have no idea what kind of person you would have to be to look at the last four years and say, "yes please, more of that thank you."

I know a lot of terrified people right now. I feel like I am sitting two inches behind myself as I write this. The idea that Mitch McConnel and Lindsey Graham will continue to be senators is enough to make the bile rise in my throat like a tsunami too devastating to ever recover from. I never want to hear the phrase "This is not who we are" ever again. This is very clearly who we are. Who the people of Kentucky and South Carolina are. Who close to half of all American voters are.

There are still some bright spots, Oregon decriminalized hard drugs and legalized medicinal psilocybin. Delaware has the first trans state senator, New Jersey, Montana, South Dakota, and Arizona all legalized marijuana, and Jay Inslee beat out Loren Culp in Washington. But the amount of effort I had to put into finding just those things is astounding. I wanted to have a longer list, but a longer list simply does not exist.

Perhaps the all-out war that I know is coming will be postponed a few days. The feeling that we are watching the trees sway gently in a breeze that comes before a ripping hurricane is still palpable. I can't definitively say one way or the other how this will shake out and saying that on November 4th is terrifying. What I can say is no matter what, America is finished. We are witnessing the death rattles of a dying country built on genocide, slavery, greed, and devastating weaponry. The bill for these crimes is due, and our pockets are empty.

There are no longer innocent people standing by. There are only the guilty, and the culpable. Frankly, we deserve what is coming for us. The good fight is over, now it is a fight to preserve human life, against the people who use genocide to generate profit. What you would have done if you had lived in Germany in the '30s is no longer a thought exercise it is the reality we face. But we aren't in the '30s we are well into the '40s and Allied troops are banding together to fight us. We are now the Axis of Evil, and we will pay for our crimes.

All I can say now is hold fast, the ship is already sinking, the band plays on, and we walk on a deck knowing that below our feet are thousands of drowned people, trapped to a fate for the simple crime of being poor. We did this to ourselves, and we will reap what we sow. We need liberation, we need justice, and from the hands of government we will see none of it.