Traditionally, this post would only be sent out to the paying subscribers to this newsletter, considering the severity of the last 48hrs, this goes out to everyone. If you do enjoy this sort of talk I would be very grateful for you to share this newsletter and support it with a monthly subscription. Or you know, buy a t-shirt when I put them out. Thank you kindly.
Two sleeps post election night and well, shit, there is a lot of takes so far and none of them really float my boat. It’s 530am at the time I am writing this and like many of you, I am sure much, the last 48 hours have been a weird mixture of “told ya so” to “wtf” to sheer bewilderment. As I can see it now, Biden might well carry a “win” and Trump is doing what he said he would. No real surprises here but I would like to offer a few thoughts that necessitate discussion.
Before I get into the results and reactions so far, Glen Greenwald wrote a piece that has been a recurring thought with most US elections since Bush vs Gore that I highly recommend you read here:
The richest and most powerful country on earth — whether due to ineptitude, choice or some combination of both — has no ability to perform the simple task of counting votes in a minimally efficient or confidence-inspiring manner. As a result, the credibility of the voting process is severely impaired, and any residual authority the U.S. claims to “spread” democracy to lucky recipients of its benevolence around the world is close to obliterated.
Regarding the actual results of this election, so far, what in the flying fuck already? I do not feel the need to discuss why Trump received as many votes as he did but more importantly, why Biden and the DNC didn’t win this in a huge fucking landslide! Biden was never going to be a candidate to excite anyone, his persona and more importantly, his political record and the solutions on offer are so destructively stuck in the past and quite frankly weak that creating a broad spectrum of support was never on the table. However, the fact that the entire campaign was essentially based on “Nothing will fundamentally change” and “Trump is a dick, but I’ll do the same as he did, just in a better suit” resulted in what I can only interpret as one of the biggest losses for the DNC and the country. Aside from the White House, both the Senate and Congress were at play here and the losses incurred in both houses are possibly even more telling than the presidential results so far. The amount of money wasted on all three races to essentially net losses that will render a possible Biden White House a lame duck from the get go are staggering. Shitting on any and all progressive ideas and movements in the US, that clearly reflect more people irrespective of party loyalties, was the same damn mistake the DNC made with H.Clinton campaign and everything since the early days of Obama. The reasons are clear, Wall Street, who pays for these hacks and depend on predictability, but come on. What should have been the easiest walk through election wise, after a crashed economy, 250`000 dead citizens due to crazed non-handling of a pandemic and well, everything Trump, for it to be up in the air like this- I am stumped.
Lastly, for now any way, the news are just rolling in that NO ONE could have predicted, swarms of Trump Bots are now surrounding polling stations to force them to stop counting ballots. The US has invaded and bombed entire regions for far less than this, but that’s a different story for another day. Going back 24 hours - and I know at some point some future kids are going to write entire PhD’s on this past week - no one was, or should have been, surprised when Trump declared victory at the end of Election Night. He said he would, and the entirety of his political term led to this. I am not going to bother with “ooooh fascism”, shit, every warning had been ushered already and at this point I am no longer interested in stating the obvious. When at least 30-40% of eligible voters look at the last 4 years and goes, “sure thing, fucko, let’s have more of that” the rest of the world has to ask itself some serious, honest, questions about what to make of the biggest imperialist empire of modern age and its relationship to it. As to the rest of you good people in the US not down with this, first of all, you’re not alone, far from it, and there is plenty of hope for a better tomorrow around. I am going to invest my time to talk to you and see what is possible to turn this shit show around.
I am going to leave you with a number of takes from my bubble that you normally would have seen over on IG that are more than worth sharing, screenshot this stuff and get it out there.
This entire cluster fuck contextualised here in Australia "So trumps the drunk guy at the bowling club yelling re draw in a meat raffle before the number has been called out", em, yeah.