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The way I see the things in my bubble.
Watching the Democrats media machine spinning at full gears is impressive. Trump's assassination attempt is old news. It never happened. The iconic Pulitzer and election winning picture is nowhere to be seen. A lot of dem aligned twitter accounts suddenly are active and on the attack. Felon and rapist are everywhere. Suddenly Trump's age is a problem. Absolutely no accountability demanded from the people that were telling that Biden is ok. No talks if he is fit to be president. Their reality building efforts are smooth and from what I can see effective - no one seems to remember critics of her that they wrote from the ancient time of June 2024, let alone before. All in all makes you believe that Snowcrash's ur-language was not pulled out of Neil Stephenson's imagination.
On my side - Republicans are high on copium, seems to not have been prepared for Kamala, lack message and message discipline, and are on the defensive. JD Vance seems to be bombing. And for it - the election moved from landslide to at best narrow win. I still think that she is the second worst possible candidate after Joe Biden but probably ok enough to win.
The quantity of vitriol on both sides is extremely high, the quality is lacking. But I would say the Democrats are better right now. I feel that it is manufactured enthusiasm, but has the chance to become real one.
All in all bad news for everyone that hopes that mass migration to the west will be curbed before the mid 2030-s (lately I have become single issue on that issue).
In my bubble, all my Democrat friends went from fear and loathing and despair to a sudden surge of optimism. Now they think they can win again and they are all-in on Kamala, as if they've always loved her.
Me? I despise Trump. I think he was a bad president before and will be a bad president again. I cannot bring myself to vote for him.
I also cannot bring myself to vote for Kamala, and I might just not vote for the first time. Democrats actually think it's cute for the Harras campaign to be embracing the "Kamala is brat" meme? No, it is not cute. It's infantilizing and embarrassing. Harris is an unaccomplished nobody, but I don't really hold that against her, nor her alleged trading of sexual favors during her climb to power. Historically, most vice presidents have been also-rans picked for whatever advantage they are believed to offer during the campaign and for being relatively unobjectionable compromise options in the event that they become an "accidental president." Harris was picked for her demographic attributes and because people didn't really have strong feelings about her otherwise. What I hold against her is being an intellectual lightweight with a cringey demeanor. But more than that, what I hold against her.... is her followers.
I fucking despise the hivemind that has taken over almost all the social media spaces and groups I am in. "Trump is Hitler, if he becomes president it will be The End of All Things" (even though he was, and it wasn't), and there is just... no discussion. No debate. No disagreement. Just such smug self-righteousness.
I can't say I will be happy if Trump wins, and it's remotely possible Harris could convince me to vote for her in the next few months. (For Trump to convince me to vote for him, he'd pretty much have to stop being Trump.) But if Trump does win, I'm gonna buy me a big bowl of popcorn and enjoy me some schadenfreude.
I know these are not noble sentiments or sober political thinking. But damned if I won't enjoy watching some epic meltdowns.
I'm reminded of something a friend of mine said in the lead-up to the 2016 election. He was much further along the curve than me of what the MSM would probably call right-wing extremism, and what I would call anti-wokism. At the time I still clung to notions of "decency" in politics. But I asked him how he could vote for Trump. The man was a blithering idiot. He was crude, and he represented no right-wing values whatsoever. He had no political experience which meant his first term was doomed to failure. He had no ideological positions other than "democrats bad" for reasons which were unclear.
So my friend quoted Lincoln.
It is 2024. Trump is a blithering idiot. He is crude, and represents no right-wing values whatsoever. His lack of political experience meant his first term was doomed to failure from the start, and its failures will haunt his second. He holds no ideological positions other than "democrats bad" for reasons which I still do not understand.
But I cannot spare this man. He fights.
Fights for what? His own ego? I see what appears to me to be a lot of denial from right-wingers. From the evangelical Christians who convince themselves that Trump is sincere talking about how the Bible is his favorite book to the nationalists who think he's actually going to make America great again (remember "We're going to win so much you'll get tired of winning?"), it's all nothing.
The only real reason to vote for Trump seems to be "He makes my enemies really mad." And yes, he does that. I admit it, some of the people I despise having meltdowns over Trump winning is, as I said, not enough reason for me to vote for him but enough reason for me to have a dark place in my heart that chortles a little at the thought.
But to the degree he has any policies that appeal to me, I see no concrete plans or any reason to believe he can actually accomplish those things.
The things he said during the debate with Biden about curing cancer, restarting the space program, making our enemies respect us, and stopping illegal immigration sure sounded nice! Unfortunately, I believe he can do any of those things about as much as I believe that he reads the Bible every night.
It doesn't matter what for. He fights my enemies, and sometimes he beats them. I don't care if he fights for his own glory, his own ego, his name in the history books. I don't care if he fights for chocolate sprinkles on bananas. He fights. And when he fights, he forces others to fight with him. Before Trump the Great Republican Hopes were Romney and McCain. Both of whom died whimpering deaths on the blades of a media that hated them. Because Trump was willing to fight tooth and nail using every dirty trick the mainstream Republicans considered beneath them, he won. He beat the Anointed Champion. Could Cruz have beaten Hillary in 2016? I doubt it. In 2016 Cruz was just as unable to handle a hostile press as every other mainstream Republican. A fact which boggles my mind considering how long the press have been hostile to Republicans.
Who else is left from the 2016 primaries? Trump and Cruz. Nobody else. Nobody else had the staying power and the only reason Cruz stayed is because he started to fight like Trump. In 2024 Cruz is a pitbull. He doesn't give a damn what the papers say, and I've watched him tear apart some of Biden's judicial appointees on live television. Where is Marco Rubio? When was the last time his name came up? He's a Senator for God's sake and he does nothing. His name was halfheartedly floated as a VP pick for Trump but nobody took it seriously. Ben Carson? Founded his own think tank where he sits and does nothing. John Kasich? Endorsed Biden. Jeb? Retreated from public life.
Trump has managed to remind the Republican party they are supposed to fight god damn it. They are more than Progressives in the slow lane. They are the goddamn conservative party and I want some conservatism. Is he the One True Conservative, destined to bring honor and glory back to the halls of the Grand Old Party? Of course not. I'd be shocked to learn that he believes in anything other than the Cult of Trump. He is a Manhattan real estate developer who voted Democrat like every other Manhattan real estate developer until he decided to throw his hat into the ring in 2016. I don't particularly like Trump. I don't like what his presence says about the state of the country I love.
But I see progressivism as the cumulative effect of memetic weapons deployed by the Soviet Union. I am utterly convinced that Gramscian Damage is real and McCarthy was right. And nobody else was willing to get down in the mud and fight it out. So I cannot spare this man. He fights.
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