Transcript:
Today is Hiroshima Day.
I just want to point out that I am horrified that any human being thought that bombing hundreds of thousands of civilians because you don’t like their government was acceptable. It was wrong 79 years ago, and it’s wrong today. 🇯🇵🇵🇸
Wanted to share a few thoughts on the Harris/Walz ticket that has emerged, but first I want to share where I’m coming from.
I have a lot of leftist ideals and political goals. I’m not sure leftists would call me a leftist, but I think billionaires shouldn’t exist, I think tampons should be free in public places like toilet paper which I guess is controversial today, but more seriously, my tax plan is “nobody get seconds until everybody has a plate.”
But I was raised by an anti-abortion activist and I worked at a conservative libertarian think tank, so I saw how the machinery works on the other side. And it’s not about idealism, it’s about pragmatism and incrementalism and strategy. And voter suppression and war mongering and taking people’s rights, you get the idea.
Earlier today I saw someone on Twitter making the same complaint I have made for years: the Democrat Party ignores leftists.
But like. Leftists don’t vote. Some people have protest votes. Leftists have protest non-votes. They should not pursue our votes either way. We are inconvincible. We are untrustworthy.
The people who win elections are… independents, moderates, and sometimes voters. We’re sometimes voters but again. Untrustworthy.
The Democrats sort of have to ignore us. We aren’t meaningful enough to matter. In political polling, we don’t even rank. If Democrats did what we wanted, conservatives would wipe the floor with them. I don’t know if that will always be true because conservatives are being extremely weird rn, trying to figure out what’s in everyone’s pants. Our ideas may be beneficial for the country but they are NOT popular. We’ve never lived in a country that wanted demonstrably beneficial policies for all. We’re THE ONE COUNTRY that needed to start a civil war in order to end slavery. Our biggest social programs were almost exclusively for white guys, and some of them - like the interstate system - came with a massive cost to communities of color.
Irregardless as we like to say to annoy the grammar police, irregardless, presidential election years I really have to reorient my focus away from idealistic visions of the future to the limited tools we have available to us right now. I say this all the time but you can’t burn it all down when there are people still inside the house unless you’re willing to become just as harmful as the people you’re trying to stop.
No, I don’t think Harris and Walz are “good people”. They are not going to save us. But being in park is better than being in reverse. As I have said before, I’m not looking at this election as a “lesser of two evils paradigm” but a “put on your own oxygen mask first” paradigm. Yes, Walz sent the national guard out on protestors during George Floyd in Minneapolis. Trump was literally throwing people into unmarked vans and had a protestor assassinated.
These are shit choices man. I’m not arguing that they’re not. I’m not going to get everything I want out of a presidential candidate ever.
We don’t get to choose the make and model of the car and we don’t get to choose where the car is going. To paraphrase Andre Henry, all we get to choose is the context in which we will be organizing for the next four years. It’s bad either way, but one of them is at least slightly less bad.
Quick Thoughts on Harris/Walz