You know, I wish I could. I also wish I could turn all this off and not worry about it for a few more months.
But you know something? I can’t afford to assume anything other than the worst case scenario. Outside this thread I avoid doomposting and doomscrolling for the sake of my friends’ mental health. But sometimes? Sometimes, I get in a really bleak mood, and so I reply to a rhetorical question in a very pessimistic manner.
If Biden and Friends screw this all up - if a Republican takes the governor’s mansion in my state in November - I could have a chance of being spared since I’m a white man. But I’m also autistic, openly bi, unapologetically queer in general, and very upfront about who and what I am. That’s never gonna change, and I will be a target for a lot of people who grow more emboldened by the day.
My intimate partner is transgender. They’re more terrified and cynical about America’s direction than I am, to the point they’re seriously considering emigration to Canada using their Mom’s citizenship, which will make it all the more difficult for me to be with them. And if my state’s GOP gets a trifecta and starts passing everything on their slate of “culture war” issues like they’re doing in all the other states they control? I’ll be forced to uproot myself from a community I love deeply to flee either to a solid blue state, or to another country.
There are silver linings happening in the grassroots around the country, and I’m not talking just about electoralism. Just earlier today I was marveling that we seem to be witnessing the birth of a Second Labor Movement.
But it’s still very much an open question as to whether the infrastructure we need to push back against fascism will be in place before time’s run out. And if it does? Well, peaceful transfer of power becomes impossible, and the future of many, many people including myself, my partner, my genderfluid sibling, and my close circle of friends - the majority of whom are themselves genderqueer - becomes all the more uncertain.
So, I’d love to lighten up. I’d love to not be a sourpuss and express severe doubt that the senior Democrats in this country are actually going to do anything, and win what could be the last free election the US has - at least at the federal level. But politics is literally a matter of life and death for myself and for people I care about with all my heart.
So I have to stay engaged, and I have to remain informed. And sometimes that endless parade of bad news and the malicious incompetence of the Establishment Democrats gets to me.
Tell me you don’t know what the word “fascism” actually means without telling me you don’t know what the word “fascism” actually means.
