Biden will probably win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, but the TV trained us to believe politics are a TV show and the TV President was in the lead when the show signed off.
Politics as spectacle will be our undoing if we don’t reject it in totality.
I hate to say it, but everything so far has happened pretty much as expected, including Trump attempting a coup, which a lot of us told you he would do.
The problem is this circus, the TV show around the process. Put a lid on it, announce a result when there are results.
Yes, Americans still support Trump. Nobody should’ve expected a Reagan-like landslide. Defeating Trump is only the beginning of a much, much larger fight. But sitting here looking at results like you’re watching a football game only feeds into Trump’s narrative.
Trump’s attempted coup is based on TV politics, the idea that he was ahead when people went to bed. It’s a lack of object permanence turned into fascism. And what’s worse, he told you and those of us studying his authoritarianism told you this is what would happen.
The way this has played out isn’t surprising in the least. It’s what a lot of us have been predicting for weeks. Chill out and understand Trump’s coup attempt depends on you feeling hopeless and shocked. Our country depends on this election being carried out in totality.
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Before Trump speaks, I want to be very, very clear about something. Everyone needs to get this.
We're in the middle of a fascist coup. It may not work, but that's what's happening and we can't let the tally-jockeying obscure that fact.
1/
Obviously this is a moment where we're dealing with shifting numbers, but the Right's attacks on polling places, threats against officials, and intimidation of the public at-large can't just be dismissed.
This is a fascist movement.
Fascist.
2/
If you have watched even a shred of Right Wing media in the past couple of days, it is fully unhinged, conspiratorial paranoia and is discussing killing people, executing opponents, undermining voting altogether, and using the power apparatus of the government.
3/
Joe Biden is winning the election and Donald Trump is trying to pull a literal coup.
Let's talk about where we are, what we know, and separate the things we shouldn't be worried about from the things we absolutely should be worried about.
1/
First and foremost, this election has largely played out as some of us expected it to. There hasn't been some cataclysmic loss. Biden made in-roads, including in Arizona. We're still looking at a possible 300+ electoral college victory if votes are counted.
2/
Last night felt AWFUL for a variety of reasons. Lingering trauma from 2016. A desire to watch the country reject Trump in a major way. The bizarre feeling of watching the race not get called on Election Night as the networks have trained us to expect.
The choice isn’t just between candidates. It’s between a society where facts and laws matter and human beings have basic dignity or a purposefully decaying country where fascists keep us imprisoned in conspiracy theories and petty, murderous feuds while plundering everything.
This moment with Trump, these past few years, have been disastrously bad with countless incompetencies and cruelties and unnecessary tragedies.
But it’s only going to get worse if we don’t reject this madness and get to the hard and necessary work beyond Trump.
I keep trying to warn people. Reality is malleable and for Trumpism to continue, whether by victory or plunder, is to dedicate this country to a murderous and self-ruinous alternate reality.
Yes, Trump and his base peddle obvious lies. But this election is about making them real
Donald Trump's victory in 2016 was made possible through a variety of factors, but it was the culmination of a generation-long project by the Republican Party to reestablish white aristocratic supremacy.
It was a rewinding of the clock and inherently fascist.
2/
The disturbing truth we must wrestle with is that American history has been manipulated, edited, and weaponized.
Trumpism is an attempt to roll back time to hidden white aristocratic supremacy and if he wins we might be trapped forever.
This moment, this attack on democratic institutions, the theft of the Supreme Court and a possible stolen election, is a result of generations’ worth of lies, manipulations, and an anti-democratic project.
If we’re going to escape it, we must learn how we arrived here.
Hope is not lost.
History teaches us that once we separate truth from fiction, when we organize and act in unison, we can overcome great injustices.
The truth is that this feeling of powerlessness is by design. Read AMERICAN RULE. We’ve been here before and we can still win.
It’s a false choice to say you have to choose between getting the pandemic under control and saving the economy.
Republicans and their wealthy constituency are unwilling to try anything because to even cede an inch would mean admitting our economic order is intentionally unfair.
The powerful in this country know our economy, with its cruelty and vast inequality, is a fragile order in their favor and to even attempt to address the pandemic or people’s suffering might topple that rigged game.
It’s really very simple.
The wealthy and powerful value their wealth and power more than your life, your family’s lives, and the lives of every other American. They’ll sacrifice millions without blinking.