Tag: election

I’m tired of throwing my vote away, so I’m voting ASP

For most of my voting life, people have been urging me to vote third party. The two-party system is broken, they say, and we have to send a message that we’re not happy with our flawed choices. It’s degrading to make ourselves vote for one or the other of these absurdly bad candidates, they say. We’re sending a signal that we’re ready for a change. 

I have always had some sympathy for this argument. As I’ve said several times, I can’t remember the last time I actually voted for someone. It’s always been a “hold your nose and check the box for the one who will do the least damage” kind of situation. I felt like it would be nice to stand on my principles and vote third party, but this current election is just too important. The stakes are too high, and I really can’t afford the luxury of throwing away my vote. 

Today I asked myself: What have I been doing, then? 

Here’s my voting record, since people seem to care: 

1992: George H.W. Bush
1996: Bob Dole
2000: George W. Bush
2004: George W. Bush
2008: John McCain
2012: Mitt Romney
2016: Hillary Clinton
2020: Joe Biden

I was never excited about any of the republicans I voted for, but when Trump came along, I held my nose so hard I almost broke it, voting for Hillary so she could stop him. She lost. I held my nose and voted for Biden in 2020, and he won. And I’ve spent the last few weeks gloomily preparing myself to vote for Kamala Harris, because while I don’t exactly hope she wins, I sure don’t want Trump to win. Don’t want to throw my vote away. 

Then I asked myself, Have I not been throwing my vote away? I don’t even mean that my person doesn’t win every time. I mean that even when I win, I lose. Biden didn’t stop Trumpism at all, and he didn’t stop Trump himself for long. (That’s not entirely Biden’s fault, but I’m hard pressed to see how he’s earned credit for any wins, either.)

And every time I vote this way, I stray a little further from even understanding clearly what I believe, or from feeling like it’s important, because my standards keep shifting out of sheer self-preservation. You have to change your standards if you don’t want to go insane. You have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, right? 

But we have noses for a reason. They’re a gift from God to deter us from consuming things that will hurt us. Plug your nose long enough, you forget what noses are for. 

Where are we now? Nobody feels any pressure to represent me in any way. Both side perpetually crap on me and then stand back and wait for a thank-you. Even when I do my duty and stop the Great Evil from landing, all it does it put more wind in its sails. If anything, Trumpism, with its bloodthirsty strutting imbecility is more pervasive and more mainstreamed than it was four or eight years ago. Doing my duty and voting for Biden didn’t help. (Voting for Trump also wouldn’t have helped, if you think I’m suggesting some kind of “Let the worst happen and let people learn from their mistakes” strategy.)

When the republicans endorse something I support, they do it in such a backwards, revolting way that I want to kick my own ass for being in the same room with them; and when the democrats endorse something I support, they do it so limply and incompetently that I can barely bring myself to look at them. And then they both spend the rest of their time doing dangerous and depraved things that I hate. 

Maybe the worst thing of all, I’m used to it. I no longer expect anything different.

I have been throwing my vote away. 

I don’t want to do it anymore! Before the next president is sworn in, I’ll be fifty years old, and I’m sick to death of being told I must do things that I know are stupid and wrong, and that I don’t think will work. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to do it anymore.

So, I’m voting American Solidarity Party. They seem to be aligned with Catholic social teaching, including in ways that will annoy both democrats and republicans. They’re not libertarians, whose platform always gets distilled down to weed and underage girls. They’re nowhere near as flaky and unprofessional as they were when they first appeared (and their logo is better, too). I can’t think of a single reason not to vote for them, so that’s what I’m going to do. 

People keep lamenting how polarized the country has become, and then they go ahead and say, “Well, I have to vote this way or that way, because these are the choices in front of me.” But where do those choices come from? They come from us, from how we vote. Keep doing something that you can clearly see isn’t working, and it really does become your fault. And if you want to argue that individual voters don’t really make a difference, then you’re just arguing against voting (which is also something I considered). 

But I’ll say it again: I hate where we are, and I see very clearly that the way I’ve been voting has helped get us here. The left doesn’t care about me, the right doesn’t care about me, and voting to stop the left or the right doesn’t work. How I’ve voting has not served me at all. I am all done with being told I must do things that work against me. This time, I’m going to walk out of the voting booth feeling like a human being instead of a used tissue.  

Will it change things? Will we ever have a truly competitive third party who even goes so far as to be invited to debates, never mind have a shot at winning the presidency? Who knows? Not this election, or any of the next several elections.

But besides voting, the other thing I have on my calendar for this fall is to plant bulbs. Crouch there in the cold, dig a little hole, bury the bulb, and walk away. We do thankless work now so that good may possibly come of it later. I wish a massive group of people had started voting third party back in 1992, to break the back of the two party system; but the next best thing is to start doing it now. 

And maybe someday, someone who isn’t like Harris and isn’t like Trump will run and win. Maybe! Don’t tell me, in 2024, that such a thing could never happen. The last decade has been one thing that could never happen after another, happening.

For the very first time, I am going to vote in a way that lets me feel a little bit of hope for the future, and brings me peace for now. I’m not throwing my vote away. I’m burying it, and maybe at some point it will even bloom. 

Image: solidarity-party.org, via wikipedia, Fair use 

Note: As you no doubt noticed, I screwed up the election timelines! Sorry about that. What can I say, I was writing fast. 

Pro-life voters are now entirely free

For almost as long as I can remember, voters who understand the vital importance of the pro-life cause have had their consciences held captive by politics. Every election year, pro-lifers have been bullied, and have bullied each other, into voting for one candidate and shunning the other, with their very souls allegedly on the line.

People who more or less held the same views were invited or outright commanded to denounce each other as the enemy. But now that’s over. It’s done. We’re free.

Oh, folks on both sides are still arguing that it’s crystal clear we absolutely must vote this way or that way if we want to call ourselves pro-life. But now, neither party is willing to even fake an interest in actually being pro-life. The masks have come off entirely.

“But Simcha,” you may say. “I thought Trump and the Republicans were the pro-life party? Sure, Trump isn’t perfect but we’re looking for a politician, not a saint, and he’s clearly the only one who is willing to stand up to protect the unborn. At least compared to the alternative.”

Except that he just said into a reporter’s microphone that six weeks is “too short; there has to be more time … I want more weeks”; ie, the law should give women more time to decide whether or not to get an abortion (or, as often happens, more time to get pressured or coerced into an abortion). He said he would vote for just that in the upcoming Florida election.

Then, when people got upset, his campaign said he didn’t really mean it or really say anything and we’re just dumb for thinking he said anything.

He also said that, if he’s elected, his government will cover the cost of IVF for anyone who wants it, because “we want more babies.” IVF is intrinsically immoral because it replaces a sacred, creative act of love with a mechanised act of production in a lab. But even if that doesn’t bother you, IVF means millions of extra embryos are made, and then either imprisoned in a freezer indefinitely, or thrown away.

There is no IVF that is untainted by this wholesale murder of tiny humans. Babies are good; but cranking out babies like widgets and then throwing most of them away? That’s wrong.

This same Republican party absolutely lost their minds a few years ago when President Barack Obama said he was going to require Catholic employers to include contraception in their insurance coverage for employees. We were told this was a direct violation of religious freedom, and we must vote for Trump so he can liberate us from a government that would spend our tax dollars on the culture of death.

And now here we are. Maybe you will reply, “Well, this is all a shame, but you have to admit, he appointed judges to the supreme court who did what he promised, and they overturned Roe v Wade! Hard to argue with that as a pro-life win!”

Except that since this happened, the numbers of abortions have gone up. Yes, really. Why? My guess is this…

Read the rest of my latest (which I wrote before the debate, but nothing has changed) at The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: James Boast Creative Commons

Why is RFK Jr. gaining popularity? Everyone is afraid, and everyone is traumatized.

It was a bit of a shambles inside the dim, noisy pavilion. I was at the annual Free State Project-sponsored camping festival, PorcFest, to see presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and had snagged a seat, but it was a close call. The steamy, garage-like structure was filling up, and the line to get in still snaked through the campgrounds in the foothills of the White Mountains. (The speech was in late June, before the latest accusations that Mr. Kennedy shared racist and antisemitic claims about Covid-19.) 

I have a peculiar relationship with libertarians and, in particular, with Free Staters, a loose affiliation of libertarians who have moved to New Hampshire to establish a stronghold for their ideology. I strongly share some of their values: their emphasis on liberty, civil rights, small government and the freedom to teach one’s own children and to worship without restriction. But I loathe others: bodily autonomy and self-reliance that extends to the point of callous disregard for the poor, the unborn, the disabled and the underage—and their obsession with guns, guns and more guns.

Still, there is a tiny part of me that understands libertarians and sympathizes with their cause. Who isn’t sick to death of the government? I think it was P. J. O’Rourke who once said that, when you’re poor, the government seems to simultaneously control every aspect of your life and care nothing for you at all. You could apply that idea to most citizens today and get a pretty good picture of the lumbering, blindly malicious, wasteful yet horribly necessary behemoth we are all languishing under. No wonder libertarians look at our country, look at the solutions both Democrats and Republicans offer, and say, “No thanks.”

Libertarians are usually right about what is not working. The trouble is, they generally think the answer is to hunker down in whatever self-made kingdom you can cobble together, and to hell with everyone else. This attitude alone makes libertarianism incompatible with Catholicism, because we are obligated to care for one another. That’s where I land.

But these are strange times. Every election in recent memory has been difficult for me as a Catholic. I cannot remember the last time I voted for someone. It has simply been a matter of voting to do the least damage, or to stop someone else from doing more damage.

So there I was, waiting to hear what R.F.K., a Democrat, had to say to a crowd of Free Staters, many of whom are so extreme that even the Libertarian Party disowned them. I was ready to hear anything and curious about his appeal. A Newsweek poll showed that 31 percent of those who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 support Mr. Kennedy’s presidential bid. That is extraordinary, considering how thoroughly Mr. Kennedy has earned his reputation as a conspiracy theorist.

I wanted to know what my fellow Catholics, in particular, thought about R.F.K. Jr., and I had spotted a few by the miraculous medals around their necks. We made plans to meet up after the speech.

We waited. Half an hour later, an organizer stood up and began to shout, “Some of you don’t belong in here!” I froze, thinking she was on to me. I had voted for President Biden (albeit gloomily), and I think the Second Amendment is O.K. (at best). But it turns out 20 to 30 people had mistakenly jumped the line and were sitting in a section that rightly belonged to the folks who had been waiting in the hot sun for hours. She acknowledged that it is a “voluntary society” and no one can force them, but she hotly pleaded with the line-cutters to do the honest thing and leave.

Two people left.

Maybe half an hour later, the last seat was filled and the speech began….Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. 

Below: Some more photos from PorcFest XX

Signs of the times (and watermelons) for the 2022 election

It’s almost election day. Time for a little sign round-up, and a look back to see how far we’ve come. 

Back in 2019, I was stopped at a red light near the commons, where a group of earnest people were gathering to protest climate change. They carried signs saying things like “I speak for the trees,” and the rally leader started up a syncopated chant about striking because the waters are rising.

Stopped next to me was a whiskery old man in a pickup truck full of rusted out auto parts. He chewed on a sandwich and watched with great interest as the crowd clapped along with the chant. It came to an end, everyone cheered, and the man in the truck shouted, “WATERMELONS!!!” Then the light changed and we all drove on.
 
I yearn for those days. I yearn for that clarity, when we were all able to receive each other’s words, look each other in the eye, shout, “WATERMELONS.” And then just drive away. 
 
 
 
Unlike Watermelons Guy, Trump Thumbs Guy did not listen. He did not shout. He did not drive away. He just sat there with his thumb inert, telling you all you need to know about China Joe. And look where we are now. (I actually don’t know. I have been using all my effort not to pay attention.)
 
I also have an album of additional signs and other public displays from medium-weird New Hampshire from around this time, as follows:
 
 
You could spend an afternoon trying to parse exactly what is meant by “NO” in quotation marks AND inside a “no” sign, and that’s even without the “CHINA” “JOE” “CONTROL” “MAN” aspect of it, not to mention the little snowman.
 
There was another sign at a different intersection, making the same point in a more concise fashion:
 
 
I realize this is superimposed on a Biden sign, but it’s also in keeping with the general feeling of the area, in and out of election season:
 
 
Whose woods these are, I think I–NO.
Take that, Robert Frost. 
 
Speaking of in and out of season, this area also sports an unexpected snowmobile
 
 
and about fifteen minutes down the road, the town commons had not only a nativity scene and a giant Hanukkiah, but also various other displays, because somebody read a thing about the constitution on Tumblr one time
 
 
This display was soon joined by a Festivus pole and something that was either some kind of other pole that was either a frickin Wiccan thing or else a Quiddich thing. I did not slow down to ask questions. 
 
Of possible interest, the brain trust who put up the I’ll Show You Constitution Nativity display ended up being harassed by a completely different brain trust who calls himself [gird your loins] The Hip-Hop Patriot, and who was at the Jan. 6 riots and before that was cocaine dealer turned snitch, although he says nuh uh he was not. Mr. Hop is now running for State House, because of course he is.  There is also a third brain trust, a former cop with some interesting extracurricular activities who was at the time city councilor and stood up for Christianity by doxxing the guy and his wife and hosting a discussion where someone threatened to cut him, and this guy . . . I’ll save this for another day. He’s also running. So that’s where we are now, democracy-wise.
 
In 2020, a number of signs on both sides were defaced by the opposition. Someone took a bite out of a Trump sign; someone spray painted all over a Biden sign. Someone went around painting “RACIST,” and sometimes “RAPIST,” over other Trump signs. But this year, we had this much more restrained exchange of ideas:
 
 
possibly because the local police reminded folks that no matter how noble your cause, it is still illegal to go in someone’s yard and set their signs on fire. We are just coming out of a drought, so we have that going for us.
 
I always read the little rebuttal sign in a squeaky “kangaroo in her pouch” voice, and it helps a little bit. 
 
I’ll tell you what doesn’t help: Running late to pick up a kid at one school, getting to the other school to find that everybody’s already left and the one kid you did manage to get is HUNGRY and the only car cookies left are Nutter Butters, and so over the sound of her howls, you voice text the only  kid with a phone and ask her to find the others and meet you at the library instead, and when you’re on your way there you suddenly realize you’re supposed to be at a third school watching a third kid at soccer practice, and then you see this:
 
 
With God as my witness, the man is 52 years old and I thought he could arrange for his own ride. 
 
Speaking of rides, a few local citizens are signaling in their own way that the candidates this election are somewhat wanting, and maybe it’s time to write in someone who actually represents who we are as a people today. Someone like, um, Larry Dickman, or *sigh* Bertha Butt. 
 
 
We are not okay, guys. 
 
Not sure whether it’s better or worse that the next sign is from a real candidate:
 
 
These ones tend to show up in clusters, which is disconcerting because of the eyes. I did go to the website, and I did not get any clarity on any of it, not “I Want To Rule You,” not the cat eyes, and definitely not the chameleon. I find it alarming that this dude raised enough money to buy more than one or two signs. He also has this version, same guy:
 
 
“Death is not the worst of evils” is not a campaign slogan I have seen before. I agree with it in principle, but he’s a 2022 libertarian, so there is a 10,000% chance he would finish the sentence “death is not the worst of evils” with “but age of consent laws are!” 
But, he notes ON THE SIGN, “I’m serious.” 
My only question is, what the hell. 
 
Next we have another new sign that it grieves me to admit I understand:
 
 
Aria DiMezzo is [gathers strength] a local trans anarchist libertarian recently convicted of laundering bitcoin through a fake church of Satan . . . look, just stab your finger into a random page in the Big Book of Stupid Ideas, and you’ll get the gist. 
 
That’s not rain on the window, it’s tears of exhaustion. 
 
But wait! It’s not just the far right and the moronic middle who are terrible! Everyone is terrible! This is a sign I have to pass by at least twice a day, sometimes four times, and each time, my desire to punch someone increases:
 
 
I don’t even disagree! I mean I’m pro-life but I’m super duper in favor of holding men accountable for making babies. But this freaking sign is so STUPID and it thinks it’s so CLEVER. Gah. Imagine lying in bed and this phrase pops into your head, and you think, “Ho ho, that’s a corker!” and then you wake up in the morning and YOU STILL THINK IT’S A GOOD IDEA, and you actually go and find two colors of paint and a paintbrush and a piece of poster board, rather than punching yourself in the head like you should. WATERMELONS, I SAY. 
 
This house has since added a sign urging people to vote because it is almost “ROEvember.” GET IT????????? You can just feel them wriggling with delight over their own exquisitely barbed wit. Gah. You know what, I have a prescription for Xanax and I never filled it.
 
As a palate cleanser, I enjoyed the forthright nature of this message I recently found stuck to a guardrail in a parking garage:
 
I don’t imagine it will change anyone’s mind, but on the other hand, if everyone already knew it, we wouldn’t have any Nazis. But we do, so. 
 
But most of all, I liked this sign.
 
 
“JESUS CHRIST IS THE ANSWER.” In this photo, the man who stands there with the sign is just setting up for the day, and you can see the giant wooden cross he is about to put up next to it. He just stands there with the cross and the sign. What else is there to say? 
 
He’s set up in the same spot as the Trump Thumber used to be, and for a while, I tried to convince myself it was the same dude, and that he had massively upgraded his hero. But I’m pretty sure it’s a different guy. No matter. I wave and beep whenever I see him, because I’ve had a lot of questions in my life, and let me tell you, this man is correct. Between him and the watermelons, that’s a whole-ass political theory right there. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

In which a real American explains the election to Australians

[Note: I wrote and submitted this essay on Nov. 12, which explains why it is, even for an essay by me, unusually obnoxious. Read at your own peril.]

When The Catholic Weekly hired me a few years ago, they made a few things clear: We’re really Catholic; we’re not terribly uptight; we spell things weird sometimes; and most of all, we do not want to hear about American politics. All of this was fine with me, especially that last part. Even in those innocent days of 2016, American politics was already just about intolerable, and I didn’t want to hear about it, either.

But here we are in 2020, and I’m getting a steady stream of Australian friends and readers helpfully giving me the inside scoop about what goes on in these United States. So either you’re all a bunch of masochists deliberately exposing yourself to our political system as some kind of elaborate form of penance, or else there is some part of you that can’t look away.

So be it. I will indulge your unholy fascination with this ominously pulsating egg sac we’re calling an election season. You want to hear about American politics? Hold onto your butts.

The short version is, Trump repeatedly promised his followers that, if they elected him, they would get tired of winning. And so it has come to pass! They are so tired of winning that they, in fact, lost.

Really, that is what happened. I know it hurts some of you to hear this, for some reason, but he lost. Lllllllooooosssssssttttt, lost, lah-lah-lah-lost, L.O.S.T., as in “lost the election,” as in “did not win the election,” as in “failed to secure victory in the election,” as in “you can take those ridiculous flappy flags off your boat now, you weirdo.” He lost because, even though a shamefully high number of people did vote for him, one cannot win an election simply by being shameful. No, not even with the help of the [haunted house music] electoral college.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: by Jericho on Deviant Art Creative Commons

 

Pray for our country, but try not to get too attached

“I felt so sad that I groaned aloud an Old Testament lamentation AAAAIEOOOOOW! To which responded a great silent black man sitting next to me on the blocky couch: ‘Ain’t it the truth though.’ After that I felt better.”

                                                                —Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy

 

For the last several months, I’ve slowly turned into Father Rinaldo Smith, and wish to spend my days in a tower, watching for fires, pooping into a bucket, and most of all not talking to anybody. It may not be helpful, but it feels like the least bad thing I can do in a most bad year. But today’s the day, so here’s my little speech:

If you’re a Catholic voting for Biden because you just love tearing innocent babies limb from limb in their mother’s wombs, don’t do that! That’s bad! Bad Catholic voter!

If you’re a Catholic voting for Biden because you think he has the guts and the grit and the vision and the know-how to turn this country right around, please send me your address so I may invoice you for your new bridge.

If you’re a Catholic voter and your parish has started playing the Star Spangled Banner at the elevation at Mass, and you definitely don’t want to vote for Biden, and yet HERE WE ARE, I’m with you. I’m going to vote for Biden, because I’m pro-life, because I still stupidly believe in the Constitution, because I don’t want war, civil or otherwise, and because some things are just not tolerable. It’s not a sin to do the best you can in a crappy situation, no matter what bozo told you what bozo thing, even if it was a priest. I’m with you. 

I’m going to a little town to pick up election results for an election night results aggregator, and I keep wondering if I should bring a gun in case someone flips out and gets violent (and despite the repeating riot loops you’ve seen on Fox, it’s many, many, many times more likely to be a far righter flipping out and getting violent than a far lefter). I doubt it’s necessary, but it pisses me off that I even have to wonder. Get it together, America. We will always have 99 problems but this should not be one of them. 

I guess before I leave, we will pray this litany to Mary under all her various titles as patroness of each state. (And get it together, Colorado!)

“You’re a fake Catholic going to hell” comments will be given the Mr. Tiddles the Obliging Kitty Cat treatment, so if you want to waste your time and mine, feel free. I’m just sitting here making meatballs anyway. 

Before I go back to my fire tower, what I really want to say is: Our duty today is the same as it ever was, which is: To keep our humanity, to remember the humanity of everyone we meet, to walk away if we’re having a hard time with that last one, and to remember our death. Pray for the dead. Pray for my friend Elizabeth who starts chemo today. Pray for my friend who’s having a very important disability hearing today.  Avoid useless fights. And pray for our country, but try not to get too attached. 

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Image by Royalbroil via Wikipedia (Creative Commons)

2020 election sign roundup and whatnot, thumbs up

In 2016, there was a guy who would park on the shoulder of the ramp to route 12 with Trump signs propped up all around his car. He would just sit there for hours, day after day, mutely promoting his guy.

The heroic part, though, was his thumb. The whole time, he had his arm stuck out the window, offering an everlasting thumbs up to everyone who passed. Thumbs up for Trump, thumbs up-thumbs up-thumbs up for Trump to all, including the commuters and the truckers and the motorcyclists and the state troopers and the crows scavenging the asphalt for squashed porcupine.

We laughed at the time at this man and his thumb. But I guess his plan worked, because now we all have squashed porcupine, I mean Trump. 

He was there again the other day! But this time around, his message is more specific:

No thumb, though. 

So I pulled up behind him to take a picture, just in case I want to remember the year 2020 for some ungodly reason; and then as we drove by him, my 13-year-old daughter rolled down her window and shrieked, “YOU’D LOOK PRETTIER IF YOU SMILED MORE!”

Then we laughed until we were dead. 

I’m warning you, this post goes downhill from here.

I’ve been so good this election, overall. Maybe not every last second, but in general, I’ve been twisting myself into pretzels trying not to think the worst of people who admire Trump, and, like Tobias Funke, with deep, deep concentration and great focus I am often able to achieve  . . . some modicum of empathy for people I disagree with about the president.

But last weekend I saw this flag on someone’s porch

and I was like, never mind. Like, even if you yourself wouldn’t fly a flag like this? You’re supporting a president who absolutely would, if Melania gave him the login for Amazon Prime. 

But truly, no one I can see is covering themselves with glory lately, and so elsewhere in town, we have the perennial “I’ll show you! I’ll mess up your sign!” wars, ably represented by both sides. Notice that someone appears to have taken a bite out of this Trump sign

whereas the response to this Biden sign is a kind of inarticulate yowl in black spray paint.

There are also Trump signs altered to read both “RACIST” and “RAPIST” at various intersections, which definitely helps people to think clearly about the issues.

But of course there are other elections going on besides the presidential one. Surely if we focus on more local issues, we’ll feel more grounded and more secure that the fires of democracy are still being well tended.

In our area, for instance, many new signs have recently sprung up, some that say “Aria DiMezzo for Sheriff” and some that say “Aria DiMezzo for Sheriff * Defund the Police” and some that read “Aria DiMezzo for Sheriff F*** the Police.” One of these appeared at the entrance to the county jail and nobody has disturbed it yet. 

If you look closely, you will see that DiMezzo’s logo is an anarchist star superimposed over a sheriff’s badge. This is because (?) Aria DiMezzo is a republican transexual anarchist satanist who is running for sheriff of Cheshire County, NH. I often see Aria hanging out in a spangled mini skirt at the parking lot where the pho truck and bitcoin embassy used to be. Now you know as much as I do. 

The “Write in Earl Nelson” campaign was launched a few weeks after DiMezzo showed up, apparently on the theory that [waves hands] SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING, but honestly everyone is going to vote for Eli Rivera like they always do anyway.  I don’t find myself thinking, “Dammit, why isn’t the sheriff doing his job?” very often, so I guess it’s fine.

Now if you would follow me into an entirely different aesthetic space, I present the Amanda Elizabeth campaign, which has a small number of carefully dispersed signs promoting their gal for state rep.

Amanda Elizabeth, who does have a last name but is keeping it a secret for some reason, is a progressive Kripalu and Jivamukti yoga instructor who wants to fight fiercely for you, and/or to be elected treasurer of the junior class, where she promised to get ALL the best Chumbawamba songs featured at prom, not just “Tubthumping.”

These are all the standard two party candidates, normal, boring, yawn. But we do have a libertarian running for public office, and he has got a message for you:

Because my life is ruined anyway, I went to his website to find out what the hell “an appeal to heaven” is supposed to mean, and it didn’t say. But I tracked down a Facebook comment where he clarified:

“the Appeal to Heaven on the early Pin Tree Riot flag which referred to armed rebellion as an appeal to a higher power when appeals to the government or courts yielded no easy to grievances. Today, this appeal to heaven is voting third party instead of armed rebellion.”  

Someone on my diocesan Facebook page stated today that it’s a mortal sin to vote for anyone other than a third party candidate, so you can see we’re all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?  [shoots computer]

Possibly in a similar vein, here’s an evergreen:

This is where the new Bitcoin embassy is going in.

There’s also this little passion project, which isn’t political, but I think someone noticed everyone was putting up signs and didn’t want to feel left out. The signs say “RALPH SMART ON YOUTUBE” and they have a nice stencil of a heart and a green sneezing dog.

I did look Ralph up and even watched five minutes of one of his self-help videos, which was mostly slow pans of Amazonian waterfalls, CGI of a car cruising down a city street at sunset, and Mr. Smart himself repeatedly saying “one love to all deep divers!” while grinning at his computer monitor just off screen. If you click on the “about” section of his site, it leads you to “upcoming events” which leads you to “buy clothing.” Now you know as much as I do.

For a palate cleanser, here’s something we saw last weekend in some dude’s driveway:

Well, thanks! I must drive away speedily now, but again, thanks.

But we’ve strayed from politics. What a shame.  Here’s someone downtown who’s been paying attention:

And why not? Wu Tang is for the children.

Then we have folks who have transcended voting for mere candidates and want to register their entire worldview with the universe, possibly while they rest up from a sprain incurred while patting themselves on their own backs. These two signs are on the same street, right across from each other, having a quiet little staring contest all day. 

On the left side of the street:

and on the right:

 

Amen I say to you, they already have their reward. 

My kids have declared that, if we ever get a self-righteous yard sign designed to impress strangers, it has to be this one:

And finally, someone went and had a number of these printed up:

To our credit, no one has defaced these particular signs yet. Thumbs up for that.  

 

Stop telling me Biden’s not so bad.

A little over twenty years ago, I got hired to do some grunt work renovating an old Kmart. This job was nobody’s dream, but I was pretty desperate. I was pregnant and trying hard to move out of town, and I needed to make as much money as I could before I got really unwieldy; and I needed to get hired somewhere before I started to show. 

The job was awful. Just awful. Nine hours under fluorescent lights on my feet in a windowless cavern, and I had two chief duties: shoving metal shelves over tile, inch after screeching inch, and scrubbing gummy residue off walls where the signs used to be. The smell of the solvent made me sick and dizzy, and I worried constantly that the fumes, and strain of pushing those metal shelves, would kill my baby. 

And there was something else. On the day I was hired, the manager’s computer kept freezing up, and he struggled to enter my information in his files. “I’ll have to enter her manually,” he said. My supervisor laughed and said, “I’d like to enter her manually.”

I was sitting right there, three feet away. Ten of my co-workers were sitting right there. All the men laughed. And then we went to work for the day. It did not occur to me to ask any of those men for lighter work, to accommodate me and my unborn child. I was 22 years old. It did not occur to me. 

This memory came back to me today, for the first time in years. The question of Biden’s fitness for the presidency came up, and a vocally anti-Trump man told me that, if it comes down to it, I should “choose wisely” and support Biden. He admonished me to remember those who do not share my privilege. Biden, you see, may feel free to put his hands on women, to smell their necks and hair, to come up behind them like a snake, to use his power and wealth and fame and security as a free pass to the body of any women or girl who whets his appetite.

But he’s nowhere near as bad as Trump. And so women like me need to remember our duty and once again roll over for the man who thinks we’re here for his entertainment. Because we are desperate. 

The truth is, I am privileged. When I got out of work at Kmart, I would scour the want ads, and pretty soon I found something better: a job making sandwiches at Subway. It was a pay cut, but I leaped at the chance, because I had to get out of that place where I never felt safe. There was another pregnant young woman working on the renovation, and I doubt she even realized she had another choice. She had no one on her side. The father of her child was long gone. Her face was blank and bewildered as she worked, and she didn’t even flinch when the men talked about her and her belly. 

When I gave my notice at Kmart and mentioned my fears about the fumes, someone said, “Oh, she just doesn’t want to work.” That was not true. I did want to work. But at my new job, my boss was a woman who expected us to do our jobs . . . and that was all. And it felt like pure, intoxicating freedom to be able to simply put on my apron, wash my hands, and begin my routine without that constant prickle of terror and shame that comes with being vulnerable for nine straight hours every day. 

How many anti-Trumpers spent a delicious season thrashing around in the warm, shallow waters of the #metoo movement, preening themselves on their righteous indignation in defense of the vulnerable? But when it comes down to it, if Biden raises enough money and grins his way into enough votes, they’ll give him the nomination and they’ll tell women it’s their duty to be quiet, it’s their duty to be docile, it’s their duty to be forgiving, it’s their duty to take one for the team. 

I talked about shame. That’s part of the power of the sexual predator: He knows his victim will feel shame, and that will make her less able to fight. Less willing to fight. More likely to tell herself, “It’s not so bad. I can put up with this. Why am I making a fuss? It could be so much worse . . . ”

Biden is just an old school perv who refuses to take responsibility for his perviness. Is he as bad as Trump? Of course not — not by magnitudes of awfulness. But the real question is, are democrats as bad as republicans?

I long ago abandoned the idea that the political party of family values actually cares for either family or values. The republicans have made it clear, over (Trump) and over (Roy Moore) and over (Kavanaugh) again, that women and their suffering and their alarm and their shame do not matter. What matters is power; and women are expected not only not to fuss, but to take part in their own degradation for the good of the party. 

But what about the DNC? Are they any different? Here we are, still months away from the nomination, and democrats are already clearing their throats to make exactly the same point as the GOP made: It’s power that matters, not the vulnerable. Biden isn’t so bad. You can put up with this. Why are you making a fuss? It could be so much worse . . .

Now stay still while we enter you manually. 

Pay close attention, women: The democratic party is not your friend. They do not care about your dignity as a person. They care about power, and if the fates invest an old school perv with that power, then that’s who they will nominate. Brace yourself, because another election bus is bearing down on us, and your friends in the DNC will throw you under. 

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Image by Ancho. via Flickr (public domain)

The GOP is forcing me to stop them because they won’t stop themselves

I’m a lifelong registered republican, and I’ll probably vote straight democrat today. I’m not trying to persuade anyone. I’m just telling you what I’m thinking, because I know there are plenty like me.

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I’m pro-life, always have been. I’ve always voted for whoever seems the most likely to benefit unborn children. That’s the most important issue for me, because you can’t be any poorer than dead.

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But there are no abortion-related battles in my state right now, and anyway, the moderate republicans are identical to the moderate democrats in practice on abortion issues. It may be different in your state.

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Our current republican governor voted to expand Medicaid for another five years, and I’m tempted stick with him as a pro-life voter based on that. This is how I vote pro-life: I look at abortion first, and then I work my way outward to intertwined issues. The next closest pro-life issue is healthcare. This isn’t code for “I’m really pro-abortion, and I think it’s pro-woman to allow choice, but I’m co-opting pro-life language to salve my conscience.” Nope. I’m fiercely opposed to abortion, because it hurts women and children and men and society. I think republican policies tend to create conditions that make abortion seem necessary. It means nothing to say “You should give birth” but then make it impossible to survive giving birth unless you’re rich. But as I said, our current governor is about as pro-life as his democratic rival, and he did vote to expand Medicaid. So as a pro-lifer, I’m on the fence with that race.

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Why am I on the fence? Why not just vote for the republican who more or less does what I hope he will do? Why even consider voting straight democratic ticket?

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Because the republican party as a whole is directly responsible for Trump and for what he has done. It may be true to that there are multitudes of reasons Trump came to power, but it’s also true that you can blame original sin for the guy who knifed my tire, but I’m still gonna look at the guy actually holding the knife. And the guys egging him on, and the guys who held his jacket while he did it, and the guys already working on the “More Knifings 2020” campaign.

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So yeah, the GOP is responsible for the 2016 election. And most importantly, they are responsible for what he and his coreligionists will certainly do more of as they get bolder and bolder, in the next election and in general. I love my country and I hate what they’re trying to turn it into. As a woman, as a Jew, as the granddaughter of immigrants fleeing poverty and violence, as a lover of the Constitution, as a parent who values decency and justice, and as a follower of Christ, I see no safety or goodness in the GOP as it exists today.

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They’re not going to stop unless someone stops them. They’re just getting started. They need to be swatted down and told, “NO, this is not what we want our country to look like.” So I will most likely vote straight Democrat. There is very little else I can do, except love my neighbor.

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I don’t want to vote democrat. I don’t like the democratic party. I don’t like most of the ideals at their core. They hold dear many values I have always found repugnant. But even in their errors they are recognizably American, and their mistakes can be remedied. That sets them apart from where I see the GOP taking us. The GOP is taking us down a road that leads off a cliff. These things do happen. You can ruin good countries. It could happen to us. It is happening to us.

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I’m angry that the democrats are putting me in the same position that the republicans have done for so many years: saying “hey, we know you hate what we do, but what other choice do you have?” That’s not representation, and I’m angry that I’m not represented. This is not how the system is supposed to work.

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But what I keep coming back to is this: We are becoming a nation that is learning to accept atrocities. Before atrocities happen, people must become accustomed to them, and this is where we are now. The worst are gleeful about what’s happening to us, and the best are measured and patient. That’s not good enough. If my grandchildren ask me what I did to stop atrocities from happening, at least I should be able to tell them I freaking tried to vote them out.

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So that’s my course of action, as a voter, with very limited power. I’m not falling prey to relativism; I’m refusing to pretend there’s an easy solution. But you know who did have an easy solution? My party. My republican party, for whom I stood out in the snow with homemade campaign signs when I was eight years old, because they told me they loved our country and I believed them. They’re the ones who could have done the easy thing and stopped Trump and Trump wannabees in their tracks.

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They had so many chances. My party had a chance to not nominate him. They had a chance to not support him. They had a chance to repudiate him and his rhetoric. They had a chance to distance themselves from his policies. They had chance after chance after chance to constrain the ugliest impulses of the far right, and they decided not to, over and over again. In many cases, they modeled their approach after his, which in turn emboldened individual citizens to do the same.

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They didn’t stop him. So it’s up to me. I usually vote for or against individual candidates based on their merits, but today the GOP as a whole needs to be swatted down. They are irredeemably polluted.

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If republicans had done the right thing, I’d be voting for them now. But they didn’t, and so I won’t. It’s not a punishment or revenge. It’s an emergency.

To enthusiastic fans of Donald Trump

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Two people were facing the congregation at Mass last Sunday: The priest, of course, and an interpreter, who was signing for the deaf people in the pews.

Scratch that, there were three people facing the congregation. The third was a profoundly disabled man, his body twisted permanently into a pretzel, his skull misshapen, his features preternaturally mobile. He didn’t seem able to face the altar, but spend most of the hour bobbing and grinning and leering at the rest of us, while his caregiver patiently redirected him over and over again, calming him when he got agitated, soothing him when he got loud.

Why is it so hard to meet the gaze of folks like this? If ever there was a low-risk social interaction, it’s making eye contact with someone who can’t talk at all, much less expect something witty or suitable in response. “Just smile at him,” I tell myself. “Just be friendly and sincere, and then move along.” Still, I avoid eye contact. It’s obviously not about him. It’s about me.

That hour nagged at me.  Two faces, the translator and the disabled man demanded our attention, their eyes shining, their hands busy with gestures that meant nothing to me. If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts. If today you see a face and it keeps grinning and winking and nodding at you, at least you could ask the Holy Spirit what’s up. Here’s what I think it is.

The sign language translator was there because there are some folks in the congregation with a disability. They cannot hear, so they need extra help to have God’s word conveyed to them.

I am disabled, too, spiritually. I need a translator. There is something in my heart that fears and rejects mentally and even physically disabled people, and I’d rather they just turn around and leave me alone with my smart, attractive children and friends. I’m a pro-lifer, so I am ashamed to respond this way to any of God’s children. It is a common but severe defect. I want to be open, but I am not, and I can only fake it about half the time. Most of the time, I just avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. I’m not alone or unusual in this, but that doesn’t make it all right.

I don’t mean to reduce another human being to a symbol. This man was attending Mass, and certainly wasn’t there just for my benefit or edification. He has a name, and he obviously has at least one person who loves and cares for him. But he was also, for me, a translator, someone turning to face me to convey a message that I wasn’t able to hear on my own without his help. Sometimes you don’t realize you are deaf until a translator turns up.

So there is more. It made me ask myself: Who am I having the hardest time facing right now? Who do I not want to look in the face? Who am I reluctant to treat as fully human?

Easy to answer in January of 2017: Enthusiastic Trump supporters. Over and over again, despite my resolve, I lose my temper with them, I get nasty, I get personal. I am just so angry at what they have chosen for me and my family and my beloved country. There they stand, shamelessly twisted in their worldview, not even hiding their faces, just leering and gesticulating. Turn around! Shut up! Get away from me! I want to yell (and sometimes do).

I’m not proud of behaving this way. I call myself a pro-lifer. This is a severe defect, that I allow myself to respond to other human beings with open, personal contempt and derision. It’s especially egregious because I often write about our obligation to show love to each other.

I don’t know what to tell you. I’m working on it. Yes, this post is the best I can do right now. Those of you who happily voted for Trump and continue to champion him, I think you are wrong, wrong, wrong, and I will not apologize for calling it twisted and awry to admire and champion a wicked man. Whatever your motivation, you have done something objectively terrible to our country.

But the way I respond to you is my problem, not your problem. I have a defect, and I know it. Thank you for looking me in the face and helping me be more aware of my defect. Thank you for being the translator who alerts me to just how deaf I am. Please pray for me, and I will pray for you. And then maybe we can all just turn around and face the altar, like we’re supposed to.

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Image: Detail of Self-Portrait as a Deaf Man by Sir Joshua Reynolds (Creative Commons)