Losing My Perspicacity and My Mind November 6, 2024

Good morning/early afternoon, LMP fam.

I’m sorry I didn’t get this newsletter out at the usual time this morning, though I’m positive you all had other things on your mind. I’ll be honest. I stared at the blinking cursor on my screen for a good two hours last night. I had nothing to say. This morning, I still feel empty.

There’s a lot to say about the way this election shook out, of course, including the racism and misogyny that pervade our culture and keep all of us from moving forward. Personally, I can’t help thinking about all the people who keep returning guys like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to Congress, then complain that “the government doesn’t work for people like me.” Derp.

I’m not going to tell you not to despair or that it’s time to put on our big kids’ pants and fight. Frankly, I think everyone who put their heart and soul into organizing for losing candidates deserves a few days of wallowing.

I do, however, want to share what a I wrote on Facebook this morning, because, while I think racism and misogyny (and people who just shrug at outright cruelty) were the biggest problems, I think there’s another problem that we haven’t spoken much about:

The OTHER elephant in the room, of course, is that a huge portion of Americans have absolutely no understanding of how government works. The president does not set the price of gas. The president can not unilaterally impose pass tax cuts. The president can do little about inflation. Large corporations and corporate greed have far more of an effect on our daily lives than people seem to believe, and corporations jacking up prices just because they can has been a huge driver of inflation. In other countries, there are laws about how much, say, landlords can increase rent. But of course, that’s evil socialism and must be stamped out in favor of the free market, which is working out so well for all of us. Most Western European countries, for example, have universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, and state-subsidized child care. Not having to pay through the nose for those things would leave a lot more money for things like the bacon and eggs that conservatives keep caterwauling about. But again, socialism is evil.

There's a failure in the public school system when it comes to teaching Americans basic civics. And there's been a huge failure in the media, whose job it is to remind Americans that the President is not a king who can change everything with the wave of his magic wand.

Do you know what the president can affect strongly? The individual rights of marginalized groups via his Supreme Court selections. America's standing on the world stage. What dictatorships America gets into bed with. The lives of the people in Gaza and Ukraine. Whether we move forward or backward in the fight against climate change. Whether or not Title IX regulations protect sexual assault victims on college campuses.

If you voted for Trump because you think it will make a difference in what's in your bank account, be prepared for bitter disappointment. And also, you fell for it. I don't want to hear "the government doesn't work for me" or "Washington doesn't care about me" from any of the Trump voters. That's who you voted for. The guy who's going to spend the next 4 years lining his own pockets and doesn't give a rat's ass about the rest of us. You also just handed over the keys to our national security to Elon Musk and anyone else willing to contribute to Trump’s pocketbook.

In the coming days, I’ll be sharing organizations that protect the most vulnerable among us, because they are going to need our support desperately. I encourage you to send me links to those doing good work that are near and dear to your heart, and I’ll include a list of them in Friday’s newsletter. You can get me at [email protected]. or you can just leave them in the comments.

Take care of yourselves today.

Onward.