Unstructured thoughts as I look towards hope
Gruesome Details
The Ferguson Uprisings of 2014 were a clarion call and, 10 years later, they are never far from my mind. I lived in the Midwest at the time, but proximity wasn’t what made them so vivid in my political imagination. Rather it was the demand: the end of policing, the occupying right wing force in our communities. The demand was clear, immediate, understandable, and necessary (even more so now). It felt obvious to anyone who had ever had interactions with a cop.
It also taught me of my country’s history—a history I had thus far ignored or avoided. I knew I was implicated in the crimes but had, thus far, shirked the work. The Ferguson Uprisings made it impossible for me to ignore my own part in the direction of our country. It was clear Ferguson and the Civil War stood on a single, unbroken line. The Uprisings were a demand to fulfill the United States’ promise of Reconstruction.
It is unsurprising, then, that Gamergate and Trumpism came to prominence in 2015. (Although white women of a certain stripe are always rediscovering 2nd wave feminism, the freedom of women of all races is dependent on the liberation of Black Americans.) Trump, utilizing a reputation granted to him by hundreds of hours of scripted “reality” TV and the shields of entertainment and business “journalism,” was the perfect avatar for terrified whites. He rekindled the great white American pastimes of misogyny and open racism.
Ferguson questioned the entire system. Trump was the system at work, a white failson granted endless chances as he was infantilized and coddled. (You can still see this today as the wallet inspector press promises he will one day turn “presidential.”)
In 2015, for the first time in my life, I phone banked for a national candidate. Hillary Clinton was, for obvious left-leaning reasons, not my favorite politician. But an alternative to Trump was one I would fight for. To paraphrase Peter Shamshiri of If Books Could Kill, Hillary Clinton is the worst, but her critics always manage to surpass her in awfulness.
When the Brexit vote went through, I knew we were fucked.
The Trump regime was as profoundly bad as I expected. Every day, I was driven to distraction by the new terrible thing. It was hard to move forward, personally or politically. Hate crimes rose rapidly and the worst of the U.S. felt emboldened to say and do awful things. Many people—at home and abroad—didn’t escape with their lives or families intact. We live in the fallout.
On a personal note, I stopped drinking in February 2020. In retrospect, I could only do so as a result of some newly freed up emotional space.
I feel more hopeful this time around, even as the ogres crawl from the shadows again. They want to terrify us and take up all the air in the room.
Neoliberalism and white supremacy can die in tandem, I think. But it depends on us avoiding the space Trump would take, if we let him in again.
The UAW is planning a general strike in 2028 and this will be infinitely harder if Trump gets in. These are the things that will, again, shift my attention to a national election. They’ll get me, again, to phone bank for someone I don’t love. A general strike and renewed regulation and more taxes—these are the fires upon which neoliberalism can further burn. (I understand they are boring fires, but legislative gains are boring. This boringness is likely why we remember the protests that sparked them better.)
I hope in 2024 we can leave Trump and his violence and his rhetoric behind. We need to put a resounding end to him, and the people who brought him to prominence. The white supremacists in this country are billionaires, aspiring demagogues, losers, and freaks. It is a belief system for the angry and bitter, as conservatism always is. To hold progressive values is to embrace hope, to carry optimism. Conservatives will choke on their anger at home, if we can leave them to it.
To stop the American war machine, we need space. We need time to dismantle it piece by piece, and police station by police station. In reaching towards Reconstruction, a United States in which we can take some pride, we need space. Ending Trump’s electoral hopes is part of this, as far as I can figure. It is harder to fulfill our destiny as he throws us further toward the worst American realities of racism, pre-New Deal economics, Christian cults, and internment.
On a practical note, the GOP is absolutely financially reliant on this man. If he loses, they are fucked. They have redirected all their cash, time, and efforts towards a single conman. They have doubled and tripled down on hateful speech. They have their churches and their racists, but that’s a small slice of the public. (Atheists and agnostics now make up nearly 30% of the electorate, although the government has yet to reflect this.)
(Relatedly, the Republicans seem determined to kill their small base of freaks by encouraging them to eat raw meat and drink raw milk to own both the libs and their weakened, unvaccinated immune systems.)
Meanwhile, to anyone with eyes to see, it becomes clear the system is collapsing inwards. The media, operated using the money of four guys named Jeff, is determined to make their nut in the “excitement” of another Trump presidency. (For any Jeff, the lack of labor regulations and killing of labor unions will make it the most exciting presidency of all.) Personally, I’m determined to deny them that particular show.
There is nothing I want more than to watch the Republican Party fade from view as we elevate progressivism (the neoliberal alternative). As someone who was alive to see Republicans star and spangle themselves in the wake of 9/11, ending their bloviating racism has never felt closer to my grasp.
There is much hope to be had. We will not only turn the tide. We will set ourselves on a course to win it all. We can create the space we need to get us ever closer to fulfilling the promises of Reconstruction. The setback we’ve suffered does not mean defeat. I truly believe, if we keep working, we can see the dreams of Ferguson fulfilled.