Our household went to sleep sometime after midnight, when the handwriting was already on the wall. It is astonishing to me — because I’m always an optimist, I suppose — that American voters have chosen a dementing racist and misogynist, a twice-impeached convicted felon, a malignant narcissist, serial philanderer, and adjudicated rapist to lead their country. They have chosen a fascist in a girdle and lifts who projects a bizarre sort of supposed strength and stokes an irrational fear of an other, whether the other is a trans kid or an immigrant or a Democrat. (Hi, my name is The Enemy Within.) And American voters have chosen an aspiring autocrat who has promised to weak our alliances, the prosecute his political enemies, to end any effort to reverse climate change, to end of the Affordable Care Act, to end women’s reproductive rights, to hand healthcare policies over to a nutcase, and build concentration camps as the prelude to mass deporations. I could go on.
If your only concern is the price of a loaf of bread (on PBS last night, David Brooks helpfully told us that it’s $1.93), you’ll vote for the strongman. The cost of groceries is a legitimate concern. But so is the cost of healthcare. And so is everything else. A vote based on the cost of a loaf of bread might come at a much greater cost.
All I will add is that I won’t obey in advance. And I won’t despair.
[I keep tinkering with this post. No moving on from it, not today.]
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
What now?
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comments: 6
I’m with you and your house, Michael. ❤️
My. latest blog is entitiled, Quotation for America's New Dawn, November Six. The only line in the post is, "We have always been at war with Eastasia."
me, too! unfortunately short term thinking was in abundance for the election. my washpo subscription gets cancelled today. they keep sending me emails that i can get it for 50 cents a week. they are hurting for subscriptions.
kirsten
Sean, I saw your post in my RSS. I'm prepared for another four years of new "realities" with Eastasia, North Korea, Russia, et al.
Kirsten, I've been reading The Guardian. My WP doesn't run out until next May. No offers for me so far.
The (ahem) "gentleman" across the street has had a sign up suggesting that the cost of a bag of groceries under a Kamala Harris administration would be three times that of a similar bag under the administration of the other guy. Pure fantasy, of course, nor do I believe that anybody's cost of living is going to go down as a result of electing a lunatic sociopath whose real natural constituency is billionaires. Prices don't respond well to jawboning, not even when it's the jawbone of an ass.
No, and if he’s able to implement his tariffs on everything, calamity awaits. It just hit me: remember how so many people were baking during the pandemic? If store-bought bread is too expensive, why not bake?
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