I've never had a book wrench out from my heart such a disgusted hateful violent emotion before F+L on the campaign trail. The last line of this book echoes in my heart and in my mind: "...and I made my way to the loser's club." I closed the book and started smashing it into the corner of my table, drilling ripped dents into the back, trying to destroy this horrible reality unfolded before me.
Theres really no other way to put it, the 1972 election was a fucking debacle. If I was on McGovern's campaign team as nixon claimed each state one by one, from New York to California, leaving only two states in the entire union for the democrats? Christ almighty... I would have asked Hunter S for his .44 magnum, walked into my hotel room, faced the open night sky window, put the barrel up against the roof of my mouth and pulled the trigger. The failure of the democratic party in the 72 elections can only really be matched by the greasy horror shows they've put on for 2016, 2020 and 2024. That gnawing frustration, that screaming oily red hot "THIS is the best we can come up with??? THIS?!?!?!" How this walking dead zombie of a party takes any chance of some real deal freak power rising up in this country and smothers it like a spoiled kiddo choking out his grandpa for the inheritance money. only in this case the parties are reversed, some decrypted old octogenarian is choking out a 20 year old in his sleep because itll make the stock price for lockheed martin go up a few ticks.
I hate this book so, so much because it lays reality bare flat on the ground: the new left has been failing tremendously for the last five decades straight. And every time it has been because of this mummified dinosaur called the democratic party that we all have to kow-tow to like its chairman mao ze fucking dong. Hunter S called the democratic party an atavistic endeavour 52 years ago, and its only gotten worse since then. From the hoboken arsons burning children alive so that wall street deskjockeys can fuck up our global economy from luxury studio flats, to the federal government dropping bombs on philidelphia, to reaganist privatization of government agencies, to unregulated housing markets forcing people out of their homes. To federal agents scooping protesting portlandites into unmarked vans and ICE sponsored internment camps for the migrants who keep this country barely floating. From the broken agencies currently being gutted for copper wire by republican sponsored profiteers, to the subsequent plummeting of civil and LGBT rights as tech oligarchs brainwash unsuspecting people with an unstoppable deluge of fearmongering engagement farming post-truth fabrications. The truth is that we have failed. So what the hell are we gonna do about it?
I was reserving this passage for my journal entries section, but its more apt here.
November 20th, 2024. Wednesday
ya, i guess i never really talked about the election and subsequent political fallout. were in for a fight, thats all i can definitively say.
what with how complacent ive been in my life recently, i honest hearts thought that kamala was going to win. i took a look at the surface level debate asskicking she brought out, the clearly jabbering crazy opponent going on about migrants eating pets and sex reassignment surgery given for free to prisoners, and thought that was that: another tepid milquetoast democratic victory. hail a new era of back and forth himming and hawwing while jesus freaks and profiteers take the four years to sharpen their pitchforks or completely implode as extremely barebones anti-discrimination laws are maybe brought out, possibly.
call it liberal naivety if you want to. i honest hearts hadnt accounted for just how UTTERLY effete the democrats were. no primary, no spunk, no showmanship. they walked onto the floor and declared that they would change nothing about the comings and goings of things, all while profiteering wrecks the american fabric like a bull in a china shop. while the poisoned american public cant get their medicines, let alone rent payments, stuck and bled like pigs by tech firms and private capital vampires. looking back on it, as the dust has settled: of COURSE they couldnt mobilize enough votes. of COURSE no one is coming out to vote for more of the fucking same. people want change even if its completely schizophrenic, even if it actively harms them. they want change, and they want someone to blame. and the democrats couldnt even vow to protect the transexuals: vowing not to codify our rights, but only to "follow the law". spineless cowards. and so OF COURSE people once again vote for the human wrecking ball. of course they vote for the person who gives them a clear enemy to hate. once again, the democrats have signed their own fucking death warrant. the keys to the kingdom have been given to nixon, reagan, and now trump. every single time without fail, the democrats look success dead in the eyes, and then snap their necks walking down five steps of stairs.
i can tell you this much: the democrats are finished. maybe even america as a whole is as well. but the only way the democrats can properly implode is with a viable alternative. and as long as winner-takes-all politics is in play, thats never going to happen. because the two ruling parties would NEVER allow for ANYTHING to step on their power. and that is going to hurt so many fucking people. hell that new transgender congresswoman has already conceded to using the mens bathroom on capitol hill, likely due to pressure from the democratic party not to make a scene or try to fight the legislation through direct, material methods; ie just bucking up and using the womens room anyway. no, doing that would have been defiant. it would have been a loud spit in the face that no, you won't erase me. you won't erase us. the screeching and cawing from jesus freaks and corporatists that a congresswoman dared to upset their hastily set-up cruelty gambit would have been deafening. so instead of taking the risk, which she might have even wanted to do, the dems likely pressed her not to make a scene. or they would boot her out of the party. so she has been absorbed by the tepid mass; and now makes pathetic little remarks about abiding by the law and order set out by people who would much rather see her dead, in prison, or in an asylum.
local didnt fair out much better. our district is in the hands of republicans for the next two years atleast. that means congestion pricing is going to get torn down as suburban infants kvetch at the thought that no one wants their stupid oversized death machines anywhere near their urban fabric. but largely things will go unchanged: this is the red dot in a blue state, afterall. a vicious place to be in, this suburban concrete nightmare. its going to be its usual amount of bad: no sidewalks, no crosswalks. deeply ugly asphalt parking lot oceans that claw at the soul. the littlest reprieve is that the state at large has secured our rights as transexuals. so the most these grubby little yesmen can do is nod their heads to the man in the oval office, and not much else, stopped in their bigotry by a wall of state law. if only my comrades in the rest of the country were so lucky.
I was pretty naive back then, this was before I finished reading F+L but after the election. Its January 30th 2025 as I write this. It hasn't even been a week and they're already taking all of the federal government for a ride. ICE goons are already out in full force nabbing random south american girls in massachussetts and sending them off to internment camps in Maine. Its barely been a week and I can no longer get a passport without fearing my birth certificate seized on some zombified crossdressing law before they put a big fat MALE on the card. Two aircrafts just crashed into eachother leaving no survivors after the president froze federal hirings, then blamed the crash on diversity quotas. We're really in for it now. And if we don't learn from the failures and losers club of yore, then it'll only get worse.
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