YFPMMS

I'm not writing this post to tell you anything you didn't already know or to relate anything going on with myself.  I'm writing this post as history unfurls across the television set to record the experience for posterity, to revisit years from now to remind myself that it really happened.

Donald Trump is a malignant presence in American politics, a cancerous polyp on the undescended testicle of the body politic.  But he's not the problem.  The problem is the nearly 70 million Americans who still vote for him after four years of his divisiveness, his lies, and his narcissism.  After 235,000 covid-19 deaths.  After the worst economic performance of my lifetime.

His supporters will say none of those issues are real - it's the "radical left" that's so divisive, it's the press that lies, covid-19 reports are exaggerated, and the economy is doing just fine, never mind rampant unemployment and uneven distribution of wealth.  But those people are deluded, they're caught up in a fascistic cult of personality.  Those people make me sick, even as I pity them and mourn for them.

Right now, Pennsylvania and Georgia seem to be in a race to count remaining votes and erode Trump's razor-thin lead.  Whichever state declares Biden their winner first will likely be the state that gave Biden the national victory.  How ironic if it were to be deep-red state Georgia.

Georgia also has two Senate races heading to run-off elections, and hence will determine the majority party of the U.S. Senate.  Auspicious times to be a voter in Georgia.

But none of this should have come to pass.  It shouldn't be this close, and Trump shouldn't be getting 70 million votes in this virus-begotten  year of the plague 2020.  America did not rise to the occasion and repudiate his racism, his xenophobia, his self-aggrandization, and his disturbingly deep anti-democratic instincts.  Not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist, it's been said, but you can be sure that every racist voted for Trump.  And those non-racists who voted for Trump for whatever reason - party loyalty, fear of socialism, dislike for the other candidate - were perfectly comfortable with opting for four more years of Trump's divisive rhetoric and hatred.  That's the worst sort of cowardice and the least defensible moral position possible, and those fucking people make me sick. 

Michael Gira's post-rock band Swans recorded the song You Fucking People Make Me Sick for their My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky album, featuring Thor Harris on percussion.  The 2010 song could be the unofficial anthem of 2020.