The Vote: 4 days in

Work peeps did not discuss the election until Friday. It seemed we needed two days of stunned silence before the venting began. Then Friday was vent day. 

• I noticed if any man interrupted me that day I was especially bitter. “Oh, of course, don’t listen to me, I’m not important. Not like I’m going to be President someday.”
• I had an hour-long complaint session with a black friend and a lesbian friend and realized how much worse things are for them. But then I also saw friends from the other side who truly felt they had saved democracy with their pro-Trump votes - democracy being the rule of the majority against the individual. In their eyes, anyway. Those friends are boring.
• I remember the days of my youth when you couldn’t even buy alcohol in a restaurant because you might use it to get someone drunk enough that it would influence their vote.  But now evidently Trump buddy billionaire Elon Musk can hold a lottery and give away money in swing states to undecided voters. Maybe that decision will move up to the Supreme Court - and - oh wait, never mind, nothing will happen.

I am telling myself things will be fine for me. I don’t live in Ukraine. I don’t have children who will have to hide who they are. But then votes are the way we influence others' lives, for better or worse. I’m just sad for the interesting individuals I know and for our country's global standing. So, sad for friends, sad for the earth, annoyed with the nation in between.

Comments

[KC]

There are a lot of things I don't "get" in the world right now. (although I do gather that the Trump votes were a mix of fear-inspired, anger/hate-inspired, single-issue-inspired, stupidity-inspired [seriously, y'all, did you even *look* at what evidence Trump actually put forward for his 2020-election court cases? or Sidney Powell's "no reasonable person" defense? or the evidence in the Trump court cases? or in general all his reality-denying stuff???], "we had recent inflation, we don't like it"-inspired [which is common, but... did any of them look at global inflation numbers for the same years???], and targeted-advertising-lies-inspired, and I REALLY wish I knew which was which and how much was which parts, etc.)

I don't like any of it, though. If you try to overthrow the government, then *people shouldn't vote for you next time around* and if you recycle Nazi talking points, *people shouldn't vote for you period* and ugh.

[theQueen]

KC - the only Trump ad I saw was very fear and hate-inspired, the transgender prisoner's ad. I think - and this is me stretching my imagination - if I believed in him I could see telling myself that he didn't explicitly say “Go to the capital and Kill Mike Pence and overthrow the election.” And he didn't stop it fast enough, but as I say if I believed in him I would say “he was busy.” I think many of the people voting for him were watching soap operas on Jan 6, not the news. I think they have a very limited worldview and political views. Plus, women with power are new in the U.S. and new things are scary.

[KC]

There were apparently a lot of "Trump is the more reasonable option, look how bonkers Harris is [except we're lying]" ads on Facebook, which I believe given the targeted "Clinton doesn't deserve your vote" ads in 2016. But I'm not one of the voters who would be shown the targeted (lying) ads.

I mean, he teeeechnically didn't but it was very much a "who will rid me of that meddlesome priest?" situation very obviously, from his rhetoric leading up to the "rally" and then what he said on that day.

But also yes, listening to Fox News about how it was just a peaceful protest, etc., it would be very easy to not get much of a story and to assume that oddments that diverge from your expectations/preferences are just skewed reporting or fit in somehow. BUT COME ON PEOPLE go read a speech or two and get some direct data instead of what is carefully pureed to be more palatable to you than the actual candidate?

[theQueen]

KC - “Who will rid me of that meddlesome priest” -- EXCELLENT comparison. You are right. But read a speech? And lose that righteous indignation high?

[KC]

He also literally *gathered a giant, angry mob* which he sort of didn't-quite-order-to-do-illegal-things.

And also 'his people' were in conference with some of the more competent and armed of the coalition, so orders in private were likely different from his public statements to the crowd.

And also he knew Pence wasn't going to do the literally-illegal-thing for him *but* pretended that he had "just learned" that Pence wasn't going to do it, at the last minute, to the crowd, to get them angry at Pence and think it was Up To Them To Stop It. But yes, "who will rid me of that meddlesome priest" is probably about as close as you can get outside the mafia...

I think people having a 'just a peaceful protest' view of Jan 6 is due to serious, serious editing for Fox News et al.

Re: transcripts, I assumed in 2010-ish [whenever that particular story about the legal case for providing birth control was] that I would strongly dislike Rush Limbaugh but also assumed that the [liberal] reporting on it was skewed against him largely because no one could actually be *that* bad [most of my sources of info were liberal-ish] until I finally went to his website and read one transcript and went "uh... this is even *worse* than reporting indicates" and then read another transcript just in case the first one was an aberration and... nope. Nope nope nope. He literally said 'don't send me facts, I don't care about facts' in addition to being both factually wrong and inflammatory about things and... ugh. Nope. He knew what he was doing, to a significant degree, and: nope.

I endorse reading transcripts; sometimes you do miss things - inflections that indicate jokes or meaningful pauses or whatever, but in general it is 1. so much faster and 2. knocks down the emotional response by a *LOT* (although anger will still exist when exposed to Rush Limbaugh transcripts and Trump transcripts and other pathological manipulative liars, if you know *anything* about what they're talking about).

[theQueen]

KC - I need something to knock down Gary’s emotional response. Maybe we switch to an all-transcript news source.

[KC]

Seriously, yes, do it, 95% of written news is gentler on the amygdala (or whatever bit of the brain says "panic!!!"), at least for me, and it's not like there is a *shortage* of written news/transcripts (not quite everything NPR puts out has a transcript, but most of it eventually does). The other factor is read *one* article on something then read the "primary sources" [speech transcripts, actual legislation, legal opinions, journal articles] instead of reading 8 more articles on the same thing, because 1. you [generally] get a clearer, more precise picture of what's going on, and 2. a lot of the time you will end up getting bored and going "good enough." (the "generally" is the exception for when you either simply do not understand what the primary source is saying, or when the primary source is deliberately obscuring its likely consequences, but usually the news article hits *those* just fine)

Good luck, though. TV is *very* grabby.

[theQueen]

KC - I always ask Gary his internet source, and he usually goes straight for the indignation. I think he should just go to Reuters, and leave it at that.

[KC]

*sigh* at the straight for the indignation. Sounds like a good option, but... yeah. Good luck weaning him off.

[theQuewn]

KC - This morning he went on quite a bit about some assassination squad out for Joe Biden.