Where We Are This Week
the best essay I've ever written, typos and all.
I’ve been following politics since I was in middle school. Looking back, I realize how tolerant my parents were of my idiotic, preteen political leanings. I subscribed to Rolling Stone and I loved that
was critical of the Bush administration — not because I knew anything but because being against something was cooler than being for anything — but since I was twelve, I had neither the patience nor the intelligence to actually read any of the articles.One of the worst records I ever purchased was from a band called NoFX. I was into punk rock and somewhere between Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the Vans Warped Tour and the kids with the swooped hair, skinny jeans, and studded belts, I was convinced that this was it.
It had George Bush’s face on the cover in clown makeup and was called War on Errorism. Hilarious.
That must take real patience, you know? I think it would be a step too far to call them ‘political views’ but, even still, 12-year-old groupthink is groupthink nonetheless.
Not long afterward, sometime before the 2008 election, I became a hardened, socially liberal, conservative. Libertarian was only a word that sounded vaguely like librarian, neither of which was enticing enough to get me to do any real research.
I lamented at Obama’s election, not because I was certain he’d continue the post-2000 American tradition of bombing the Middle East into oblivion (which he certainly did), but because he was obviously going to ruin our country with his affable condescension and the fact that he was the blackest president since Bill Clinton.
My gay history teacher was happy. Some of my black classmates ran through the halls shouting ‘we won!’ and banged on the lockers. I, the reformed punk rocker, and a redneck first baseman pretended not to sulk in the back of the classroom.
It wasn’t about race or culture or anything like that. It was about politics. Left vs. Right.
I spent the better part of my twenties being a closeted liberal conservative. Working at Starbucks and playing in a band never lent itself to political honesty. I never harangued our audiences at house shows or established venues about the virtues of capitalism or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. My songs were almost exclusively about my future wife or my exaggerated atheism.
Similar to what we covered earlier, it’s way cooler to believe in nothing than in something. Also, singing ‘I don’t know, I’m not sure, I just don’t know’ isn’t the best lyrical content.
Rational, unbelieving, sober, and in love. My early twenties were a riot, let me tell you. If I hadn’t met the woman I’d spend my life with when I was eighteen, I’m sure I would have completely succumbed to the predations of cynicism and futility but, alas, we’re not telling that story.
I started to read books again and paid more attention to current affairs. Briefly, I considered a subscription to the New York Times because I was in the middle of fashioning myself as an intellectual — fortunately for me, my enduring frugality won out.
The Trump Years — though I wouldn’t attribute blame or credit to him — brought volatile swings to the left and the right. Like a top moments before falling over, my political assertions could be a little erratic, finding new, untrammeled territory that didn’t seem to belong to either side of the political divide.
For as long as I’ve been writing about these things, I’ve said it to anyone who would listen; the dialectical game we’ve been cornered into by the Democratic and Republican cartels is false.
I don’t know if it ever truly was, but American politics aren’t actually about a competition of progressive or conservative values anymore. On the surface, sure. But the real story of American political history and current is about the proletariat wresting what little dignity they ever had from their oligarchic governors. Hint: it hasn’t been going well.
Early voting for November’s presidential election — heard of it? — will begin on September 20th in South Dakota and Virginia. Mail-in ballots for North Carolina residents will be sent out on September 6th, four days before the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
We’re less than a week away from votes being cast and last night was the first (possibly only) interview (if you could call it that) that the Democratic candidate for POTUS has conducted.
Over a month has elapsed since Harris became the presumptive, then formal, presidential nominee of the Democrat Party, and until the CNN interview with Dana Bash, had not participated in an unscripted media appearance. Until Thursday night, the woman who is seeking the most powerful office in the world had not been forced to answer a serious question; not about her record or her plans on how she would govern.
The much-anticipated Harris interview wasn’t even a Harris interview. The current VP shared top billing with Tim Walz, her running mate, who served as an effective bodyguard for any line of questioning that might be a little too pointed.
How anti-feminist of the Harris campaign to force her to share her moment with that milquetoast whitey from who-cares-ville.
Instead of answering questions about all of the free abortions men and women will be getting under her administration, how giving first-time homebuyers a $25k credit won’t just make homes precisely $25 more expensive, or how the White House is likely to turn into one anti-zionist campus protest the moment she takes office, Walz got half of her airtime. Not brat at all.
The fact that when she finally deigned to sit for an interview she brought ol’ tagalong Tim for the ride is a farce in itself. It was a political safeguard akin to hiking in grizzly bear country with your out-of-shape friend. If things turned ugly, Kamala didn’t have to outrun the bear, per se, she only had to outrun Walz.
Not that it was ever going to come to that, though. It was a pre-taped interview which means that the ‘journalistic institution’ of CNN that was browbeaten into submission by accepting the terms of the interview could be coerced into selectively editing the conversation before it ever aired. They wouldn’t, would they?
Of course, I’m practically alone in my consternation; Harris continues to lead in the national polls. If I had my druthers, Americans would go on mass strike until our next president has to field one, un-telegraphed, un-reviewed, live interview with an actual journalist which I am not but would happily volunteer.
With the endorsements of Elon Musk, RFK Jr, and Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump can now, unironically, bill his campaign as one of ‘unity.’
Donald Trump, the guy who didn’t think Republican voters deserved to hear his record put to the test by challengers, is now the ‘voice of the people?’ America, the land of the free, where billionaires represent the working man.
What those three iconoclasts all have in common is that they also recognize the thing dozens of us have been pointing out. The left vs. right dynamic is superficial. The real tension in American politics is vertical. It’s up vs. down, authoritarian vs. libertarian.
Donald Trump, though clearly has his authoritarian tendencies, represents a decidedly less authoritarian option for America’s future than his code-switching opposition. At a minimum, he at least represents a choice seeing that he is the only candidate that was actually chosen by any part of the electorate.
It’s unclear whether or not those figures will have any real sway in a second Trump administration but it may signal (probably not, but maybe) a shift in Republican Party politics for the years to come. For the first time in modern history, America could have a coalitional government instead of the all-consuming, unerring political machines of old.
We get wiser as we get wiser, or at least that’s the aim. I listen to less terrible music than I did when I was in middle school and my political preferences are (gasp) supported by well-founded arguments.
America is close to 250 years into this experiment, there’s still time for us to find our way back to where we ought to be — though I wouldn’t be counting on our collective brainpower (or joy) to propel us to that brave and distant future.
In all reality, this election will recede into the annals of the past and serve as a footnote to the most significant event this side of the fall of Saigon; Oasis is getting back together. Hope springs eternal.
I got infinitely cooler the moment I stopped trying to be myself on stage, put my hands behind my back as often as possible, and wailed into the microphone in vain attempts to punch the lights out of a note the way Liam Gallagher does. If he did that for me, just think what they could do for us. If Oasis can unite, surely, so can we.
This November, you can vote for whoever you want that’s on the ballot, it probably doesn’t matter. As for me, I’m voting to live forever, I’m voting for the double Gallagher / John Lennon ticket, and I’m singing a thousand choruses of Champagne Supernova until my face turns blue.
To a better, brighter next week,
Cheers,
~FDA
If we had real media, real journalists and real concern for the country our plight would be easier. Once the media picked a team the experiment lost its ability to correct and forge a future. Lies and manipulation are like walking in a cave without a light. Did you notice CNN had on their chyron, Live, during the interview. Even though it was pre taped hours earlier and undoubtedly I would guess, edited.