“Try to see your future from the line.”
Once more, if you’re a family member or a friend of mine and you’re reading this and you voted for Trump, I urge you to read this whole thing anyway, and try to at least consider the points I’m making without just tossing them out instantly. I don’t expect to convince you, but I hope you’ll listen anyway. More than anyone else, this post is for you. You don’t have to agree with all, or even any, of the points I make here, or even believe that they’re true. But I hope that at least some of this makes sense, or you think about it in a more critical way. For everyone else reading this who didn’t vote for Trump, I hope that these posts help you to think more seriously about what we want America to look like, and how we’re going to get there. Let’s get started.
So here we are again. Thanks for joining me on my irregular soapbox. Now that you understand why I feel so urgently about this (per last week’s part one post), and that America can’t afford to sit around and wait another four years again for the Democrats to “try again” (the Democrats are incompetent either too incompetent, too unwilling, or both to affect real change anyway). Now with Trump in office and the right holding all the levers of power in the American government, things, both socially and environmentally, are gonna happen in the next four years that cannot be undone. So here’s the big question: what are we gonna do about that? What are we ok with those uber-wealthy ghouls getting away with? Here’s what they’re already planning/promised/have started: stripping rights and healthcare from women and LGBT+ individuals. Forcibly deporting immigrants and instituting policy that is, at best, straight-up racist, and, at worst, borderline genocidal. Encouraging global economic and social tensions (via tariffs, threats to take over Greenland, etc.) that aggravate consumer costs more while enriching the top 1%. The list goes on and on. Maybe you support some of his policies and would paint them in a less-degrading light than I have here. Maybe you genuinely think that he’ll do something good for the country. Maybe you genuinely think that he isn’t just in it for himself, and that he isn’t just doing this for his own personal wealth and ego. Maybe you’re right. Maybe not.
Here’s how I see it. America is run by the wealthy, and they do not care about us. This has been true for a long, long time. Maybe since the founding of America, depending on who you ask. But it’s more pronounced than ever. The rich are richer than they ever have been, with the income gap between the wealthy and the normal people growing greater than ever. Almost half of the inflation we’re seeing today can be explained outright by corporate greed and businesses raising costs while wages remain unchanged. Around 100 million Americans owe, collectively, $220 billion in medical debt (which, mind you, is a distinctly American thing; no other wealthy country has medical debt like this. And the news wondered why Luigi was so mad.). Wages remain stagnant while profits grow, equating to over a trillion dollars that rightfully should belong to the working class, but instead went to the pockets of the top 0.1%. This is even more pronounced for women and minority groups. To put it bluntly: the rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting poorer. Life in America is getting worse across the board, and it’s because of the wealthy people in power are pushing all the buttons that benefit them.
We are in a class war, not just in America, but worldwide. This is not about right or left, or black or white, immigrant or citizen. This is about haves and have-nots, capital and labor, uber-wealthy and struggling to get by, bourgeoise and working class. This is the rich versus everyone else, and they’ve been playing this country like god-damned fiddle. Trump is the ultimate embodiment of this. He’s a billionaire capitalist mogul who’s used hatred and vitriol to grab his way to the top, awarding the highest positions in his cabinet to other billionaires. Every move he’s promised to make and/or currently making can be demonstrably shown to better the billionaire class in some way. Everything is either a power grab, consolidation of wealth, or ousting of opposition. It isn’t just Trump, either. It’s all of them. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, you name it. And it is absolutely going to snowball until he’s either stopped or there’s nothing else to grab, and the wealthy have sucked America dry and left everyone else in the slums. This is the way things are going in America now, and the only chance we have of stopping it is if everyone else joins together to fight this evil.
So. Draw an imaginary line in the sand with me.
Do you see it? Good. Stand in front of it. That line is your upper limit on acceptable human suffering caused by the life that you live. We all have one, whether we want to admit it or not. Nestle’s third-world slaves to produce their chocolate, Amazon warehouse workers dying in a tornado because they weren’t allowed to leave, a bulldozer demolishing someone’s century-old family home in favor of a new settlement of someone else’s family home. Whether we choose to think about it or not, we all have a line of acceptable collateral damage for a certain way of life, because all choices mask suffering passed far beyond our own self. I’d like to think my line of acceptable suffering is low, but by virtue of living in the imperialist core (i.e. “the West,” primarily the United States and wealthy European nations, Sweden included), it isn’t zero.
This isn’t an individual condemnation, mind you. This is true because the system we are forced to live in creates the circumstances for this deferred suffering. Capitalism thrives off of it, and those in power actively work to guarantee its continuance. You are not a bad person because you live in this system. This is not your fault, not individually. It is systematic, designed and implemented at a grander scale than we can hold in our thoughts at once. But we have to be aware of the consequences of how America operates. We cannot abdicate our responsibility within the system. I live with the fact that my presence alone conveys a level of privilege unthinkable to vast swaths of the rest of the world. If you’re reading this, chances are you do, too. And at the same time, you personally can also feel this collateral damage. You can live in America and benefit from its exploitation of the developing world and, at the same time, still be exploited by the system.
For example, I live with the fact that my video game consoles are made with rare earth metals that are killing the planet and crushing Africa beneath the West’s bootheel. I live with the fact that my Uber rides are built on the backs of gig workers who are treated as second-class laborers. At the same time, I’ve been a victim of a healthcare system that exists solely to extract profit from every nook and cranny of a sick person’s body. Do you know how much ambulance rides costs? Or a more general example: perhaps you get cheap fruits and vegetables because we import them from tropical nations that we’ve purposefully kept poor in order to make more money off of produce. At the same time, you may have worked in construction for forty years but have no retirement saved up because you’ve been working under the table in order to get by. Or perhaps your chronic illness has drained any savings you did have. You, too, are a victim of this system. I guarantee that some kind of this idea largely true for everyone reading this. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but almost always true.
I’m not happy about this collateral damage, obviously, and I like to think that I’m making changes in my life to reduce this extraneous suffering. My ultimate goal is to reject it entirely. But that isn’t possible, now or maybe ever. Because I also have to live with the fact that if I want those things, if I want to live the life I have now, I have no other choice than to participate in this suffering. We are all in this system of exploitation together, and we have to break this system together, too.
The people in power would fool us into thinking that there is no collateral damage, but the history of human progress is accounting for and negotiating someone else’s suffering. Nothing about this is new or unique to America, or even to the Western world, but in America and the West there has been an increasing of this passed-on horror. America’s influence is reaching, or at least maintaining, historically unthinkable levels of both national and global collateral damage. As much as Trump touts “America First,” America can not afford to be isolationist or shut its eyes and ears to the side-effects of its own imperialism both at home and abroad. For example, see: the waves of Latin American migrants fleeing to the United States because we destabilized their home countries for economic gain, again and again. See: the American opioid crisis, ignored for the better part of a decade because big pharma kept seeing those profit margins soar. See: the cultural demonization of the homeless and extended aggravations of the unemployment problem, which is really a side effect of electing officials on both sides who say they mean well but really just want to confer wealth to their own hands. The wealthy continue to exploit everyone and everything if it will benefit them in the slightest while putting on a good show of “doing the right thing.” And by electing Trump, America has chosen to champion an official who pledges to do exactly this same thing but on a much, much bigger scale; maybe the biggest America has ever seen. Shut your eyes, look away. They aren’t Americans, they aren’t us, so their suffering doesn’t matter. Even as we suffer at the same time. Where do you draw in the line where enough is enough and the suffering has to stop?
I don’t think the solution is more division, more hate, more suffering. I don’t think the solution is separating yourself from the people you disagree with, be that telling MAGA men to eat shit and die or telling the libtards to huff paint and sodomize a dog. Maybe it’s easy for me to say that, being a straight-passing white man with a college degree and a very manageable disability. I will, really, never feel the worst of what the Republicans want to pass and will never bear the brunt of American policy. That suffering will never fall to me, has never fallen to me, so what the hell do I know? I don’t even live in America right now (partially because I don’t want to be a part of this suffering, but that’s a topic for another day). But I have to do something. I believe that, deep down, most people want to do the right thing, and together we can do the right thing. Because we need each other, this is why I will not reject people outright based on their vote. Maybe I’m too hopeful, too idealistic, too naive.  I have always relied on the kindness of strangers, which I have never found to be lacking. And yet, I have been let down again and again by believing in the fundamental goodness of people, and by believing that everyone deserves the grace to make mistakes and the chance to be a better person. But even as I’m let down, I can’t stop believing in it, in the goodness and the second chances and the grace of human kindness. Gods know I’m alive because of that grace. But how many times do we have to try and fail before we give up?
I mean that as a hypothetical. I don’t have an answer for you. I am genuinely asking: how many times? How many times can someone make mistakes and you still let them back into your life? How many times can a recovering alcoholic fall off the wagon before you stop supporting their next attempt at sobriety? How many times can your mentally unstable brother kick you out of your own house and sell you out to the cops before you stop giving him shelter? How many times can you tell your deadbeat child, “fine, three more months, then you’re gone,” before you cut off financial support and force them into destitution? How many times can you trust the person you love to keep your confidence, only for them to spill it across the community? How many times can you accept help from a man who will put out cigarettes on your arms and lock you out of the house when he’s pissed? How many times can you threaten to kill yourself and still expect forgiveness? Five? Ten? Fifty? Is there a limit? When do you decide? Every day, we make choices. Every day, we decide.
How many times can a country vote a fascist, racist, sexist, homophobic, unstable, narcissistic weirdo into office and still make amends? Twice with Trump, I guess, though the “making amends” part remains to be seen. Well, four times, really, if you count Bush the Second, and six times if you count Reagan, and eight times if you count Nixon, and ten if… but I digress. The trend goes back decades. But eventually we say “no more will we do this.” That’s our line in the sand, then.Where do we, as a nation, draw the line before enough is enough and the bad decisions have to stop? Apparently, America hasn’t hit that line yet, though I’m hoping we change that. But beyond that, beyond us as a nation, what about us as individuals? Just as importantly, where do you and I draw the line in the sand before I can’t call someone family because I don’t feel safe introducing them to some of my friends? Where do you and I draw the line in the sand when the current political system is murderously ineffective, and more radical actions must be taken? Where do you and I draw the line in the sand where love and mutual humanity are no longer enough to reconcile differences? When do we say enough is enough, and some gaps can never be crossed?
I haven’t hit that particular line yet. I can’t hit that line, not now, not ever. We must always try to bridge that gap. My decision, my line, to the best of my ability, is to keep trying until nothing’s left to try for. I didn’t not kill myself to give up now. It is my solemn hope that I’ll be long dead of natural causes and/or firing squad before I ever decide to give up like that again.
Well. We’re getting into a bit of a mixed metaphor with this line thing, so let me bring it back around. You see the line in the sand, yes? You’ve got the part about it being about how much human suffering you’re willing to turn a blind eye to, right? Currently we’re standing on the side of the line that represents “I am ok with the world as it is” (even if you maybe aren’t ok with it, we aren’t collectively at the point of “overthrowing the government” yet, though I think we should try to get there; think of the Overton window and the grounds for acceptable debate if you prefer that over the current metaphor). Ok, here’s the next part of the metaphor: very, very soon someone, or something, is going to come to push you over that line. Someone, or something, is going to happen that throws you down into the sand past what you’re comfortable with. Maybe a little or maybe a lot. We’re not talking casual beach volleyball-over-the-line here. I’m talking about a scenario you’re facing down a 16-ton bulldozer, and it is not gonna stop for you. Maybe this is environmental destruction. Maybe this is deportation. Maybe this is a national abortion ban. Maybe this is soaring grocery prices. It doesn’t really matter what it is, because the way things are going now, Trump’s time in office is going to be bad for everyone except the very wealthy. But something is going to try to shove you over. And once you’re over that line, once the irreversible has happened, it’s very, very hard to go back. What’s your limit? And how hard you gonna fight to stop it?
I’ve got a message for every American reading this. For those of you who voted for Trump, maybe you did it because you, too, are a racist weirdo. Be better. But I don’t think that’s all of you, or even most of you. Maybe you did it because America’s recent leadership failed you and you couldn’t pay rent just so you can have a roof over your head and couldn’t afford gas to get to work and couldn’t afford the grocery bills that kept going up and up and couldn’t afford the medical debt you’ve been forcibly saddled with and one day you looked around and decided something had to give. And so you voted. Well, you decided once, and you chose Trump. But things are different. Now, you have to decide again. You have to decide how far it goes. Your party controls the American government now, for whatever that means. Your party is in power, and you resoundingly put them there. The momentum they have is immense, and the things they want, the things they themselves have advocated for, will spell a big red “DANGER” sign for millions of people across all walks of life.
Even if you don’t agree with everything they want, even if you think most, or all of it, is a load of horseshit, this train ain’t stopping. So your choice is this: Where’s your line in the sand? What is your upper limit on collateral damage? How many people are you willing to let Trump step on to Make America Great Again? How many people are you willing to risk for the hope that something good can come out of this, hoping beyond hope that “maybe it won’t be so bad”? How many people? How many lives? Maybe the answer is none. Perhaps you hate yourself for voting for him because you know, deep down, there’s a significant chance he’ll put your loved ones at risk. Or maybe the answer is everyone who isn’t me, because at the end of the day this is America, land of the free and land of the rugged individual. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, damn it. “I’m all that matters.” But I don’t think that’s most people. Either way, you have to draw your own line in the sand. A line beyond which you go no further, because beyond that line are the lives of not just the people you care about, but the lives of countless people you will never meet.  And when push comes to shove you over that line, how hard are you fighting back?
And then there’s the rest of us. Regardless of if you voted for Harris or not, for those of you who are LGBTQ+, undocumented immigrants, mentally ill, a person of color, disabled, saddled with debt, chronically or seriously ill, impoverished, a union worker, suffering from addiction, aren’t Christian, and/or more, I am sorry things turned out this way. Hell, for those of you who just happen to be women, let alone any combination of all of the above: I am so sorry that the rest of us have failed you so badly. For those of you in my life who fall into any of those categories, I am so sorry. For myself, too, as I am at least some of these things, I am sorry. You/we are strong, and you/we are loved, and hopefully you/we are not going anywhere. I know these are hollow words from a man who doesn’t even live in this country and who did next to nothing to stop this. I voted. That’s what I did. It all feels a bit hollow now. It feels a bit hollow to say that we’ve seen four years with Trump before, hopefully our fears aren’t quite as founded. We’ll see. We’ll see. It’s been a week and shit’s already hit the fan.
For those of you who voted third party, knowing full well it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to get your preferred candidate elected, I can’t hardly blame you. But poor Jill Stein never stood a chance, and a vote for her might as well have been a vote for Trump. I suspect you knew that already. That being said, even if all of you voted for Harris, she almost definitely still would have lost. At least you voted.
And for those you who didn’t vote at all because you couldn’t bring yourself to vote for either candidate or didn’t vote because you just didn’t care? Well. I don’t have a lot else to say to you, besides that, in theory, I do get it. I really do. I, too, despised both options. But we’re all stuck with him now. Don’t like it? Welcome to the club. Beyond that, I always figured that if I don’t have anything constructive to add, better to add nothing at all. And the things I want to say to you aren’t very constructive to anybody.
Here’s a concise way of putting all of this: You may not support every Trump policy, or even most of them. You may not even like the guy, and maybe you only voted for him out of desperation. But you still voted for him, and, to a certain degree, that means you have given your personal approval to what he does next. “What he does next,” as we’ve already seen, includes, but isn’t limited to; environmental disaster, destroying women and minority rights, absurd economic reforms, state-sanctioned political violence, mass arrests without trial, and more. So I’ll ask you one more time: If, where, when, and how will you revoke that approval you gave him with your vote? If you wanted to, will you? Where will you draw the line? When the time comes, will you do the right thing?
But just as importantly: how will we do the right thing? It’s more than just “where do you draw the line;” it’s “what action do you take?” It’s all fine and good to say that you hate Trump, or you regret your vote, or you wish things were different. Once you’re there, what are you gonna do about it? If your child’s friend is an undocumented immigrant but they’ve never lived outside of the US, do you offer them shelter and resources? Do you hide them in your attic, or help them apply for emergency visas to go somewhere else? If your cousin or sibling or niece or nephew or parent or child is trans, or queer, or otherwise gender non-conforming, will you support them against hate crimes? Do you love your family enough to see the person underneath whatever color of “woke” is the scare word of the week? Or will you let them be erased by a system of hate? How many family and friends are you willing to lose because the people in power told you that’s how it has to be? And if the answer to that is “zero, I won’t stand to lose anyone:” what will you do now? How will you organize? Will you join your local labor union? Will you campaign with your friends and neighbors to resist draconian laws and oppression? Not just how hard, but how, literally, will you fight back?
These are all big ideas here, and they’re a lot to consider. If you’ve never thought about political action or America in this way before, how do you even begin to tackle this stuff? Where do you start? What is to be done?
For now, for my blog, I’m gonna say “let’s start… tomorrow. Or next week. Or whenever my next post is out.” This has, once again, been a long one, and I’m trying to break the heavy stuff up into things that are a bit more digestible, both in terms of what it takes me to put them together (I’m a busy guy!), and in terms of what it takes, mentally and emotionally, to read and think about this. Not, of course, that I expect everyone to do a close reading on these things, but it’s exhausting to continuously read news articles and think pieces about the disaster that the world has become. It’s exhausting for me to write about it. So, let’s take a break and come back to it next time, in part three, and by then I’ll a whole bunch of suggestions and actions and real, concrete ways to work with this, so it isn’t all just doom and gloom. We may be on borrowed time, but we aren’t that close. We can take a few days.
Rest, relax, reinvigorate. Take some time to do things you love, be with friends and family, and help those that you can. Things are really starting to ramp up now, but it’s still important to take care of yourself. Don’t burn out. Things look like shit, but they might get better, and the only way to know is to be here. And I, for one, want everyone to be here, including you, especially you, regardless of who you are, who you voted for, and what you believe. This is the way we change things. This is the way we fix the world.
See you next week.
