Give us something to believe in

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

This is a scheduled post. If you’re logging in at 6am to yell at me, I promise I’ll still be asleep.

I’m not a pundit or a political scientist and no one in any party has ever asked my advice. I don’t have a degree in anything. I’m a writer who was a cable guy and a bartender and a bouncer and I’m a veteran. I live in a blue city in a red state in a house I rent with my cousin and her boyfriend and my dog. I’ve lived in a few countries, visited a couple more. Lived in a few states and visited every state that isn’t Nebraska or Hawaii.

I say that because any time I express an opinion on a thing, I’ve got people accusing me of being a journalist, a New York liberal, a party shill, a socialist, a progressive, a centrist, an elitist, and about everything in between. And a lot of them think I’m a man, with the always popular man’s name Lauren.

I’m not a member of any party. I used to think I was a socialist because I read a book by Jack London called The People of the Abyss. I picked it up in a thrift shop and thought, hey that’s the guy who writes about wolves. It wasn’t about wolves. It was about the working poor in London. This was after being raised by a Rush Limbaugh superfan, and just sort of assuming everyone else was a Republican. Than I joined the Air Force, the service with more than its share of guys who say things like, “Oh my god. Seriously? You’ve never read Nietzsche?”

I developed the very mistaken impression that everyone who wasn’t from Amarillo and didn’t grow up in a cult must’ve read all that shit in middle school or high school or college maybe. So I reacted like the homeschooler I was. Over preparing for a test that would never come. Thinking I was playing catch up, reading fucking Trotsky and Dworkin or whatever the fuck in my Air Force dorm room. Trying to never again see that look on someone’s face. I abandoned the socialist label when I met socialists online and decided whatever I am, I’m not that. Never came up with another thing that fit. But it doesn’t matter to me anymore.

I still don’t know anything. Probably why the constant reminders are helpful, the reminders that no one seems to believe in anything at all unless it’s convenient. Everyone’s against rape. Terrible thing. Horrible. Unless someone they don’t like is going to prison. Then rape jokes are hilarious. Drug dealers should go to prison. Unless you need drugs and one of your buddies knows a guy. But that guy’s just selling you drugs. He’s not really a dealer. Not like those dealers who should be in prison.

I can’t tell you how many people who would never do drugs because drugs are bad and illegal have happily taken my xanax or adderall or an oxy I had leftover from surgery. But only stupid hillbillies from West Virginia get addicted and it’s clearly their fault. Obviously the opioid crisis is bad and we know the Sacklers intentionally addicted people to make more money. But if West Virginia votes wrong, it’s because they’re stupid junkies. We think illiteracy is a real problem until we need an easy joke about Arkansas or Mississippi. We hate that fathers rape their daughters unless we want to make fun of Alabama, then we call it incest and it’s funny again. We support gay rights obviously. We’re allies. Unless we see a funny meme about Ted Cruz being Trump’s bottom. Gay sex is the worst thing we can accuse a man of. Of course we’re supportive of people who don’t conform to stereotypical gender roles but if a woman we hate has short hair or a square jaw or works out too much and god forbid she’s proud of it, that’s clearly the worst thing about her, the butch body, not the trying to overthrow the government part. Prisons are bad and we torture people in sweltering concrete convection ovens every summer in Texas. But hey if you can’t do the crime… But if you did the time and paid your debt, I can’t exactly just hire you or rent to you. The best way to make sure you don’t go back is to make it hard as fuck for you to find a job or a home.

For the past several years, too many years, I’ve watched the entire left side of the country mock Republicans for denying what they see in front of them. Now the same people want us to pretend we saw nothing at all. Shaming anyone who expresses concern that the goddamn leader of the free world doesn’t seem entirely there anymore. We’re supposed to shut up and stop worrying. We’re supposed to rally around a leader, who doesn’t seem like much of leader right now. But don’t talk about it. Pretend it’s fine. Don’t ask questions. Believe what they tell us, not what we saw. They tell us the stakes are too high. Democracy is at stake. And some of us are thinking, yeah, that’s our fucking point.

I would say that I thought we’re supposed to be better than that. That we were supposed to care about facts. We’re supposed to care about who’s running the country and whether or not they can do the job, or are doing the job at all. We’re supposed to question our leaders, not blindly follow because the party demands it. But like I said, I know better.

I was actually raised in a cult. So maybe I’m a little predisposed to be wary of groupthink, of towing the party line, of being told to pretend I don’t know the guy in charge is insane, or in this case, suffering dementia. And maybe I do know something about the way people think and maybe the way I grew up and the life I’ve lived since means that I don’t have to go to in a diner in Pennsylvania to find an “average voter” to interview. I know the waitress. And the cook. And I know that if something doesn’t change, we’re fucked.

You can’t fight a narrative once it’s taken hold, once it becomes everyone knows and just common sense. It’s how everyone knew Hillary was dirty. We were supposed to believe she could win like we didn’t come from the 90s in Amarillo. We like to tell ourselves everyone who stayed home just didn’t care enough about democracy or maybe they were racists or maybe they were misogynists. And it’s likely all of the above were true for a lot of people. But I wasn’t all that surprised when she lost because my mom who lives in Florida didn’t vote for her. Didn’t vote at all. Because Hillary was dirty. My mom learned that in the 90s along with everyone else because everyone knows. The guys I worked with when I was a cable guy knew it. The gays I worked with at the bar didn’t vote either. They didn’t vote for Trump. They just didn’t vote. Why take a day off and burn PTO to vote for a Clinton, everyone knows she’s shady as hell.

Which seems weird, because they voted for Obama. Proudly. Happily burned the PTO. Fuck yeah. They were excited to. And they might’ve voted for Hillary. But no one else they knew was going to vote. Because everyone knows she’s dirty. No difference between the two. Why bother. No amount of yelling at them was going to change their minds.

You can cancel your subscription to the New York Times if you’re mad about their coverage. But they’re not leading the conversation. The conversation’s happening in memes in the group chat and on socials and jokes on late night shared in clips the next day. The conversation’s not even happening anymore. It’s done. The group chat’s moved on to who’s fucking popping off fireworks this early and do y’all want to do burgers or ribs. The memes will still go around. Only if they’re not very funny.

I don’t know much. But I know a few things about people. No one votes alone. They vote if their friends are voting and they vote if it feels like being part of something and they vote if they think their vote will matter, even if only for bragging rights, maybe especially for bragging rights. Same reason they believe in anything at all and same reason, the only reason, they ever change their minds. MAGA voters feel like part of something. Obama voters did. First term Biden voters did too. Different reasons, same outcome. But Biden’s team forgot that. Somehow.

Democrats tend to forget. They spent the day after a catastrophically bad debate performance pushing memes about Trump having the “morals of an alley cat” as though anyone needed to be reminded that Biden’s older than humor itself. They talk in depth about trade policy and hide their beliefs on anything controversial behind euphemisms like “a woman’s right to choose,” ignoring that abortion is and has been extremely popular. But they cede the narrative to the other side. Why take a risk. They play by the rules and they play polite and friendly and folksy while the fucking world is burning and Trump threatens to jail his opponents. And they wonder why they keep losing the narrative.

The problem here isn’t the New York Times and it’s not a debate format, though that didn’t fucking help. People want a leader. They don’t need to agree with the leader on everything, or much all. They don’t even care if their leader wins every battle. Hell, even better if a leader takes a few beatings. They just want someone to lead. They want to feel like their leader will fight for them. Even if their leader is a fucking billionaire conman. Trump gives them that. He tells them he sees them and he’s fighting for them. He shows them an enemy. Someone to hate. And he tells them he’ll fix it. And they believe it. Because their friends believe it.

We had a common enemy four years ago. We were all in it together. We were going to be part of something. We had to get that guy out. We had to save democracy and save the world. And Joe was going to fight for us. Then… nothing happened.

I know a lot happened. Slowly. Politely. Trust the process. These things take time. Roe got overturned and he made a speech or two but his heart wasn’t really in it. Inflation went up and housing prices went through the roof and he kept adding jobs and talking about the economy but who the fuck owns stocks? It doesn’t seem like the economy is going all that great when when no one can afford groceries or rent, when everyone’s retirement plan is maybe buy one of those sheds at home depot.

Here’s the thing. I know he did more than that. But I’m not a cable guy anymore. I’ve got time to read the article I’m commenting on. And I can afford a subscription. People like the guys I used to work with, the guys at the cable company and the veterans and the bartenders and the cooks and waiters, the people I still call my friends, they still don’t read the article. Why would they. They’re late to their next job or they’ve got a few hours to sleep before their next shift. They just want to scroll through and see something funny so they can forget for a moment that they’ll be working until they die.

They’re not going to vote. A whole lot of people with the most at stake. They won’t bother voting this time. Because they don’t think it matters. Because they showed up last time. And it didn’t matter. Everything is worse.

Of course it’s not worse. They don’t remember the worse. They remember what they spent on groceries last week. They remember how they’re picking up extra shifts but they can’t seem to dig out of this hole. They know it’s worse because they’re four years older and it hurts more these days and they’re deeper in debt than they’ve ever been and they’ve got nothing to show for it. They lie awake because their bodies hurt and there’s a weight on their chest because they’ll never get ahead. They can barely hang on now.

I don’t know what has to change. I don’t know much at all. But I know if you want people to show up, to take a day off work and stand in line, you have to give them something to vote for. And you do need these people to vote. Not the people pledging to ride or die with Joe online. They’re always going to vote. You need the people who aren’t paying attention, who are just trying to get through their day. You have to make them believe you’re fighting for them. Even if you lose every time. Even if it seems futile. They have to see you fighting anyway. Show them your bruised knuckles and they’ll follow you to hell. You have to make them believe it matters. You have to make them believe their vote will matter. That there’s still hope. That we’re in this together. That you can make their lives better. That it will matter. That they matter.

No one is telling them that. The message is getting lost. I don’t even know what the message is. The other guy is bad? No shit. It’s not enough. I know it should be. But it’s not. It’s four more years of… nothing all that great, as far as they can see. You can’t just keep telling to believe that you already fixed their problems, the economy is great, they’re just too stupid to understand that the economy doesn’t mean them, it’s better now, they just didn’t notice, maybe they’re dumb or something. Here, have another job that doesn’t pay the rent that went up again.

And you cannot tell them to not believe what they saw with their own eyes. That this is the guy, that guy who couldn’t remember the sentence he started, the guy who couldn’t argue about anything but his golf swing. You can’t tell them that guy’s gonna take care of it. Everyone knows you’re full of shit.

I’ve watched people mention a lot of names in the past few days. Somehow ignoring that we already have a leader on the ticket. I know. She crashed and burned during the primaries. But the primaries are a weird thing. You’re fighting against fellow democrats about minutia while the leader’s already been chosen by the money behind it all. And the people who vote in the primaries are going to vote anyway.

Harris is a prosecutor. Yeah, I’m aware the twitter socialists hate her for it. Fuck em. They’re sitting it out anyway. Right now, my mom’s sitting it out because she knows what dementia looks like. But my mom loves Kamala Harris. Why? She’s a fighter.

You want to make a case that needs to fucking be made, a case against Trump, it is actually what Harris does, very well. Goddamn she could’ve wiped the floor with Trump the other night. How many times did we watch her do it in the Senate. She knows how to communicate. She knows how to fight. She knows how to win. You want to see someone fight Trump. Someone who actually cares about abortion. Someone who can make the argument that a rambling old Catholic couldn’t and never has been able to bring himself to make. He can barely bring himself to say the word. You want to inspire women to show up? The fuck is Trump going to do, say she’s soft on those rapists he loves talking about?

She’s already on the ticket for fuck’s sake. All Biden has to do is save what dignity he has left and step down, say hey good thing he made such a great choice in running mates. Why are we being told the Vice President, who is meant to be ready to take over, cannot do it.

And here’s the thing, the thing that matters. She’s fucking exciting. We need something exciting, a new narrative, some goddamn hope. The very fact of her is a story to rally around. Do you understand how much we like to rally? The very idea of her. Think about it for a moment. Just for a moment, forget what you think you know about the American voter. Think about voting for Kamala Harris, a Black woman for President of the United States. Think about changing everything. If you didn’t feel a little hope just now, you’re lying.

You want to give the New York Times something else to talk about? You want to give the American people something to believe in? And you do. For god’s sake you have to. She’s the best chance we’ve got. Let’s stop fucking being scared. Stop fucking writing off the people who need something to believe in, because we’re not winning shit without them. We need someone who can fight Trump, who will make people believe she is fighting for them. We need to change the goddamn narrative before it’s too late.

I believe she can do it. I really do. I think if you give people a reason to vote, you make them believe it matters, that they matter, I believe they’ll vote. Because I have seen it. You have too. And I tend to believe what I’ve seen. Or you can spend the next few months yelling at people to ignore what everyone knows, what they saw. Watch every new stumble and sputter get memed in the group chat. And we really will be fucked.

I know. No one asked me. But as people keep telling me, there’s too much at stake. And I agree.