Get ready for some deeply unpopular and uncomfortable truths. I’ve got coffee in hand, one of my favorite candidates dropped out, and I’ve got a pile of axes to grind. Behold the pile of my blunt axes, for they are myriad.
I’ve been trying to be nice and play nice during the primary season, and I think that was the wrong tack. I’ve been trying to say “I like [Candidate]’s _______________.” Or “I have a problem with [Candidate]’s ________________.”
I’ve tried to find something I like and something I’m critical of in every candidate. Part of it is because I realize that people are more likely to listen to my critiques if we can find common ground somewhere. Part of it is because even with a reputation for being as feisty as I am, I still want people to like me, or at least to not offend anyone. Joke’s on me: not possible.
Even well-meaning savior-seeking is actually lazy as fuck
I say this as someone who desperately would love to find a savior. I say this as an idealist who wants to bring about a much more radically just and humane world. I say this as a non-Christian who likes a lot of what Jesus said, but don’t see the good stuff he preached being enacted in the world.
The reason why we don’t get a savior is because we don’t deserve a savior.
If a god were to literally drop a perfectly-formed and -suited savior in our laps, we’d fucking ruin them. Because people are terrible.
One person’s savior is another person’s devil, regardless of what humanity as a whole has to say. And saviors can’t do shit if everyone doesn’t follow their lead, no matter how right it is. You can’t magically conjure all the changes that need to happen. People have to work for that shit.
People– not one, but many– are both the problem and its solution.
People only deserve a savior, paradoxically, if they work individually and collectively to enact what they want a savior to accomplish.
I’m hearing lots of folks lamenting that the December primary looks to be one where, now that Kamala Harris has dropped out, NO PEOPLE OF COLOR are going to be represented. We’ve gone from the most diverse field of candidates ever to every shade of white, eggshell, and ecru. Spoiler alert: if you want to see diversity in the field, you actually have to donate money and time and pick one (or multiple) of the diverse candidates to support. Here. Now. Do it before you change your mind or forget or get lazy.
Direct links:
Julian Castro and Cory Booker
I get folks are fearful of a Trump re-election.
I’m fucking mortified and terrified, and I was already before he got elected the first time. I worked my ass off to get Hillary Clinton elected. Not because she was a perfect candidate or would magically change everything in the universe with a wave of her white privileged wand. But because she was someone who I knew I could work with, and work for.
People on the far left were pissed when Obama recently came out warning us against using purity tests in the Dem primaries. But here’s the deal: he’s right, in a way. What he’s saying is that it’s ok to have faves, but that literally no one in the history of ever has been a perfect candidate. No one. Nadie.
And it’s great that you have people you like! It’s ok to have people you don’t like! But don’t be an asshole about it. It’s just that simple.
Because Obama realizes that we’re going to have to come together, and being a pompous ass about one candidate doesn’t make other people like you.
EVERYONE IS PROBLEMATIC IN SOME WAY.
Obama didn’t mean we should just figure out which candidate is the most bland and choose them.
He didn’t mean they all suck and it doesn’t matter who we choose.
He didn’t mean that BIPOC and other marginalized communities should just throw up their arms and say, “we will again sacrifice our communities’ needs for a very unsatisfactory candidate.”
What he meant was that no one is going to be a perfect solution for everyone and stop looking for a fucking savior. Except with Obama, he probably didn’t even think ‘fucking’ because he is a better human being than I. But he’s no savior. No one is.
Castro/Booker/Warren/Bernie/Biden/Yang/FuckingBillionaires/TusliMarianne are not going to be your savior
Candidates will only stay in if you donate and if you volunteer. None of them will be saved by your stanning, or your moaning and groaning that the system is so corrupt that nothing can be done. Remember the purpose of Russian mis- and disinformation: to keep us too busy and too polarized to pay attention to real threats.
Russian PsyOps don’t just spread falsehoods. They don’t just spread negativity. They also amplify true stories. They also spread positive stories that make us harden in our quest for perfection.
Russia wants you to ache for a perfection that is unattainable in order to make you feel hopeless and disaffected, and to reject everyone and everything that cannot live up to that standard.
Upset? Disaffected? The system only changes when you get control of it– even marginal control. Even fractured control. There will be no saviors. Stop looking for one.