Hoity-toity title, eh? But I do love that alliteration.
So, it’s Oct. 29th. 8 days remain before election day. Because this blog is at least semi-private, I’m not gonna go into the identifiable specifics. I’m managing a campaign in a part of the country two time zones removed from my own. That’s it, that’s all–at least as it applies to my whereabouts and current occupation.
Haha, wait, occupation typically denotes pay. I’m not getting paid. Trust me, we’ll circle back to that.
Anyway, I’m miserable, folks. Bolsonaro won, the fascist right is now using political violence, and I’m here trying to win a goddamn State Rep. campaign in a fuckin’ retirement community.
There’s nothing, NOTHING better at showing the inherent limitations of electoral politics like watching repeated rhetorical compromises on baseline social democratic policies at the doorstep while actual fascists are proliferating and killing and winning elections. Granted, part of that is the basic demographics of the electorate (these people are old and these people are white and they are extremely both of those things). But, goddamn if–as usual–working electoral stuff has disenchanted me with the possibilities of that politics.
Fact is that what’s coming can’t be answered by “voting blue no matter who.” Climate change disregards the ballot box–so, too, does fascism. What is actually needed is a radical street politics, the likes of which have not been seen in over 85ish years in the USA. What is needed is an acknowledgement that voting is the bare minimum–a necessary but wholly insufficient condition.
People are gonna have to get used to the idea that getting arrested is political action. People are gonna have to adjust to a world where placing your body between an agent of an increasingly out fascist state and a stranger is not only rational, but required. People are gonna have to accept that violence is a reality of politics in times of flux and chaos. People are gonna have to change.
But people don’t change.