The United States of America has a troubled past. Our entire history is full of wrongs committed against those with less power than the ruling class. And we’ve never really tried to make up for it. That’s not what this post is about though. You can find plenty of those stories elsewhere.
On the eve of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election I, like millions of others, felt a range of emotions. Then, on the eve of an Inauguration I will not watch, my hopes for the future as well as my fears came into sharper focus. This past election season was one of the most chaotic of my lifetime. It has also never been more clear than now the differences (and similarities) in standings both major candidates views of the future were to those that voted for them.
I was raised as a Republican. I was raised as an American Midwestern Evangelical. I was raised a poor, at time homeless, but still privileged white cis gender male. Having spent decades in the conservative wing of the American church I was someone who listened to what my pastors said and voted how they directed for far too long.
It wasn’t until I met the love of my life that I started to really question things and find my own views on life, government, and the future I wanted for our kids. It was through her that I learned about things like privilege, systemic racism, and how religion has been a tool to control societies for millennia.
The binary logic of “being pro-abortion” meaning “saving babies” is something I grew out of when I understood more about the ins and outs of pregnancy. A birthing person’s body goes through all sorts of changes (sometimes traumatic ones) through-out the course of pregnancy. The end result of which is not always a healthy baby. There are a million reasons a pregnancy may fail and a million more why abortion could be the answer to ending that pregnancy. Sometimes with the result of it being saving the mother’s life.
Recently, there have been multiple stories out of Texas (a state with an abortion ban in place because of Republicans that has caused an increase in infant deaths) where pregnant women in the middle of a health crisis have died preventable deaths because of anti-science rules restricting doctors from preforming life saving procedures known as abortions.
Abortions should be a choice between a birthing person and their doctor. That’s it. There shouldn’t be anyone else telling them that they can’t have the procedure if they want/need it. Post-birth abortions aren’t a thing, let alone a thing that is legal. Women have died and will continue to die if abortion is banned locally/nationally.
This last election cycle broke me. I held out hope beyond logic that the American people would be heard, and the billionaire owned fascist felon known as Mango Mussolini would finally face the consequences of his actions. The dropping of insurrectionist charges, even with concrete evidence of action & intent covered in the Jack Smith report, is maddening. Yes, Drumpf is technically a felon, but he got away without any jail time or fines. It turns out, anyone with rich friends (because we know Donny’s companies keep going bankrupt) is indeed above the law.
The SCOTUS has been in shambles since Obama’s pick was denied and given to his successor. They don’t have any sort of enforceable code of ethics. There are even members of the court who are dismantling laws that were used in the past to grant them rights they wouldn’t have today if they had not been passed in the first place.
The fake national security concerns over TikTok and other foreign owned apps getting banned while American owned companies like Meta & Tesla do far more data mining on Americans without facing similar consequences is hypocrisy at its finest.
The President is not a monarch, yet Drumpf is trying to to act like one with Executive Orders attempting to unilaterally roll back the 14th amendment, allow an unelected tech bro to dismantle government agencies, and even modifying how our money is made. These are things that should be done (or not) by congress. The office of the President has no legal authority to command such things. Birthright Citizenship (for example) has been part of America since 1868 and is part of our constitution! No single individual has the authority to change it. So why are people acting like he does?
Authoritarians count on people to submit in advance. It is one way that they can find out how much they can get away with by simply testing the waters. And yet, Americans have elected an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon.
I started this post in November, just after elections results started to come in and trend red. It was honestly a shock to me. I believed better of Amerika back then. I didn’t love Harris as a candidate, but knew then (and now) that she was the far better choice to Trump. The shock has turned into fear, then numbness, and now it is birthing rage. Some of the things that have induced this last change?
- Trump’s party is trying to take away the voting rights of millions.
- Musk did the hate salute, people defended him, and he made jokes about it instead of apologies.
- Trump silenced government scientists.
- Musk illegally took over government systems & data.
- Trump pardoned hundreds of insurrectionists (many have already ended up back in jail for other crimes.)
- Musk offered employees benefits and buyouts without authorization.
- Trump has called for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
The list goes on and on, but you get the idea. The reasons for outrage are unending with them. And you, Amerika, enabled this (and whatever is to come) to happen on your watch. Shame on you.
