So Joe Biden has picked his vice presidential running mate, and it’s Kamala Harris. The stage is set, its players are chosen. All that comes now is the feature presentation.
The next few months are going to be very weird, by all accounts. Now that Harris is semi-officially the VP nominee, we’ll likely see a more visible Biden campaign – even if we still don’t get to see Biden himself that much. The conventions will happen, the candidates will be rubber-stamped into position, and then will come the question of how campaigning will work in a country where it still isn’t safe to gather in groups larger than like eight people. Trump likely won’t give a fuck, though there doesn’t seem to have been many follow-up rallies after the debacle that was Tulsa. Will there be debates? Will people be allowed to attend them, or will they be like the last Bernie-Biden debate back in whenever that was.
But I think the biggest question, at least for me and a few of my friends, is who the fuck gives a shit? Don’t get me wrong. I’m voting for Biden. I don’t want to see Trump in office for another four years. But I have no urge to campaign for him, no desire to do any kind of work on his behalf. I am almost as disgusted that the Democratic Party picked Biden to be the presidential nominee as I am that the republicans picked Trump four years ago.
The fact that Biden picked Harris to be his nominee as a summer of protests against police brutality and the carceral state winds down is unsurprising, but still a slap in the face. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that the author of the 1994 crime bill that condemned thousands, if not millions, of Black and brown people to what is essentially hell would find the most affinity in someone who put trans women in male prisons and refused to authorize gender reassignment surgeries for them, brought sex trafficking charges against Backpage and voted for SESTA-FOSTA.
Ultimately the only reason I’m going to vote is just because I can’t stand that piece of shit Trump being in there. But I’m not going to make any kind of moral or ethical argument for voting for Biden. I’m not going to spend an ounce of energy convincing my friends to vote for him, or do anything else that would be beneficial for him. Because I don’t think he’s Better; he’s just less Worst.
Assuming Trump doesn’t pull some kind of half-baked coup between now and November, and assuming voting doesn’t turn into a worse joke than it is, and assuming that people do find the intestinal fortitude to vote for a dude who just, like, really likes sniffing hair, then Biden will be #46. And y’all, it gets said every single time there’s a new president, but seriously:
Make Biden’s life miserable.
Hold him accountable for everything he’s promising. Make it clear that if he doesn’t at least try to follow through, there will be consequences. People are not risking injury, disappearance and death in the streets against armed state-backed thugs right now for a couple of meager reforms – they want structural change. That doesn’t stop because the rapist-in-chief shifts from red to blue. If Biden is half the hardened politician all of his supporters desperately want us to believe he is, he can handle this kind of pressure.
And also, apply this pressure to every elected representative you can. Especially democrats. If they want to be the party of equality and justice so bad, they can stop constantly carrying water for republicans. They can stop being the compromise candidates – because compromise isn’t what republicans are going for and it flat out doesn’t work. And if your representative doesn’t want to listen? Make their lives miserable too.
This is what it should mean to be a public servant in the United States. And if you can’t handle that heat, you shouldn’t have signed up to be on kitchen duty for two, four or six years.
And while you’re doing that, consider the following: it’s well past time to build grassroots alternatives to state power. Mutual aid, community defense, solidarity unionism, and liberatory technologies are as necessary now as they ever have been. We need to build an alternative infrastructure – not for the “next time” overt fascism tries to fuck us all over, but for right now, and moving forward.
No Escape is primarily a blog about video games, yes, but it’s also about how we relate with each other, the politics of life in the world we live in. As we get closer to the election, and after, we will do our best to aid in making alternatives to the world we’re quickly exiting possible.
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