Axios reports, “The party and the country are having real conversations about race and gender in politics. Yet those factors aren’t necessarily decisive for Democratic voters — so after all this, they could still end up with a white guy as their nominee.” Ugh! I guess people still have yet to figure out the underlying benightedness of America. For all this talk of America being a place of progressing ever-forward and freedom and democracy, people still don’t get it. Much of this is an illusion of spoken prose and a confirmation to mythology. Americans speak a good game of egalitarianism and justice and freedom for all, but in practice, these notions either do not much exist or are ephemeral, left to the whims of society, which is at best rarely engaged and usually apathetic where it counts — at the ballot box. I start, admittedly, my diatribe on the subject by saying America is collectively these things in order of intensity: (1) misogynistic, (2) racist and bigoted (tied), and (4) homophobic! Full stop!
The politicians elected to office are the expression of society’s priorities and values, just as those politicians who fail at the ballot box are a rebuke of competing principals. Moreover, the actions of one faction that overcomes the apathy of another are — equally — a jejune expression of such priorities and values, even if endorsed weakly or unintentionally. It must be the consideration of voters that not voting is, indeed, an endorsement of something despite the lack of ability to foresee consequence contrary to such protestations. That is to say, sometimes society stumbles into collective ignorance. I narrowly define the will of the people being the results of elections because whatever the other opinion polls state are meaningless. Do people support gay marriage now more than 10 years ago? They do but the answer is meaningless because this situation still exists: “No federal law prevents a person from being fired or refused a job on the basis of sexual orientation.” Do people want to see a female president? Sure, according to Newsweek, “Overall, a majority of Americans—66 percent—described some level of comfort with a woman being president, according to the YouGov/The Economist poll.” Again this is meaningless because the true will of the people rejected the most qualified (female) candidate — Hillary — in favor of an idiot white guy in 2016. It is true that Hillary won the popular vote, but that is not how our system works; I’m sorry to say. Sadly, this is a country held hostage by the minority populating small, red states. As long as these RepubliKKKlan states have an outsized vote in our political system and the will of the majority is thwarted then this remains a conservative country, which it is.
This leads me to perhaps the most deliberate expression of America’s racism: Obama. Society truly believed that racism was dead with the twice-elected black president, but what optimists failed to understand is that apathy fertilized the seeds of racism and misogyny to grow a never before stronger weed that strangles society. Obama in no-uncertain-terms pleaded with his constituents to vote for Hillary lest his eight years of work might be undone. So, what happened? Eight years of Obama’s work is being undone! This is stupid America where we say and want hope-y and change-y things but do differently! These Obama voters who voted for traitor trump is beyond reasoning. I can’t. I just can’t.
While MLK believed “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” it’s feeling pretty f***ing flat right now! Welcome to stupid America!