Wanna think about something that's not the election tomorrow? Let's talk about the city of Vancouver's amazing new climate emergency action plan. It will cost $500 million to implement over 5 years & contains 5 big moves. council.vancouver.ca/20201103/docum…
1: Through land-use changes & sustainable transport options, by 2030, 90% of Vancouver residents will live within an easy walk/bike of their daily needs & will not need to own a car.
2: By 2030, 2/3 of all trips within the city will be made by foot, bike, or transit.
3: By 2030, 50% of all miles driven on Vancouver roads will done by zero-emission vehicles.
4: By 2030, carbon pollution from buildings will be cut to 50% of 2007 levels.
5: By 2030, embodied emissions from new buildings will drop 40% compared to a 2018 baseline.
Performative, thuggish masculinity is *extremely* appealing to a lot of men -- enough to outweigh other group/class/racial identities, enough to outweigh self-interest, enough to outweigh a quarter million dead Americans.
The single most terrifying & depressing thing of these last five years (which is saying something) is just how many American men witnessed Donald Trump & felt a deep, deep brainstem affinity. "Yes. I want to emulate/follow that."
Even more than the politics or policy, that aspect has been incredibly alienating for me. I'm separated from so many other members of my gender by an unbridgable gulf and it turns out I'm the weirdo, the outlier. I'm not articulating it well but it has really fucked my head up.
Having a real dad moment here. My 17yo's in his room, talking to his friends about politics -- "if Texas goes blue, that's it" & "if Trump wins after losing the popular vote again, there's going to be unrest" & various other things I've ranted while he pretended to ignore me.
Your teens are only pretending to ignore you!
"The Dems keep going after him for trivial stuff, when the problem is he's a f'ing fascist!"
"I wish Biden was less moderate too, but you have to take what you get."
Probably the single most depressing thought bouncing around my head these days is that, absent the pandemic, Trump would have won easily. Even with all the Twitter.
Yes, all you #actually's, I am aware of what the polling showed pre-pandemic. I just think the economy would have kept growing, the news cycle would have been more favorable to BS fake scandals, & swing/wavering voters would have "come home."
He only had to make it close -- close enough for the natural R bias of US electoral institutions (and/or, y'know, cheating) to get him over the line. As everyone is saying, Ds have to win by a landslide to actually win, & sans pandemic, I don't think you get a landslide.
One of the most disorienting things about this election is that American democracy is at stake & it really seems like the bulk of the population -- even the bulk of the politically engaged population -- does not understand the stakes.
A second Trump term would not just be more chaos & bad tweets. Much of the first term has been grinding against institutional barriers that are barely holding; in a second term, they would crumble. The damage would be far greater, far faster, than the first term.
It's not exaggerating to say a second term would put future elections -- I mean having them at all -- in question. Law enforcement would become more explicitly a tool of Trump & his party, at all levels. The few remaining competent/knowledgeable professionals would leave.
This is not some fringe blogger, it is the official voice of the Texas Republican Party. There is no longer any line between the rightmost fringe & the party establishment. They are all in the same paranoid bubble together, floating farther from reality, closer to violence.
One key to understanding reactionaries is that horrible people believe, at a deep level, that everyone is horrible. Virtue & decency strike them as tricks, as someone trying to pull something over on them. They literally cannot imagine good people.
On this same theme, read this piece about the RW militia group Oath Keepers. They work each other up with scary tales about what the left & "antifa" are doing (or preparing to do), in order to ease the way for their own escalation. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Early in the piece, Oath Keepers guy is like, "we're not going to start anything, we're just going to be ready when the left acts." But of course, everything they think about the left is fantasy & never comes to pass. So by the end of the piece ...