The Politician and the Plague: Magma Enemas, Shit Scorpions, And The Truth About How Many Boxes We Get

I went on a bit of a ranty-pants tear the other night on Twitter whilst coming down off the high that was SDCC, and so I’ve gone ahead and Storified it here, with some additional thoughts added below for your amusement, edification, or irritation —

This election is really something special.

And it’s something special in the way that watching a dog eat a baby is special. It’s not a special you want, but it’s the special you get, and you really can’t look away despite your greatest desire to do so. It should be awesome and unparalleled because Clinton represents for all the girls and women in this country something they have not yet seen before, but it’s also unparalleled because we have Orangutan Mussolini, because we have the cult of Bernie gone rogue from Bernie the man in order to worship the ideals of Bernie the imago, and because somehow, third parties are gaining some traction here.

I feel like that’s so, so bizarre. I just — I cannot comprehend what’s happening.

Let’s just get this out of the way: I like Hillary Clinton. I do not consider her the lesser of two evils. I do not consider her evil. I do consider her a politician, which is sensible because she is one. She is a progressive politician who knows how to play the game, and I want someone like that on our side. I know some liberals have railed at her for changing her tune and getting on board with certain progressive causes — but that’s actually how it’s supposed to work. Her opinion and policy is not supposed to be fixed to the table with a nail. She’s supposed to duck and feint — when we tell her, “Hey, get on board with this shit,” and then she does it, that’s not waffling, that’s not an act of prevarication — that’s called her listening, responding, and course correcting. Now, as a politician, I also recognize that she is far from perfect. But we lionized Obama and while we got an amazing menu of accomplishments, we also got, yanno, drone strikes. I know it sounds pedantic, but I like to think I live in the real world where ennnh, this shit is going to be messier than I like, and I’m really not capable of even imagining the burden it must take to lead not only the country but to take that country out and to face the chaos of the world beyond it.

So: Clinton. I like her. She’s progressive, legitimately. She’s imperfect, but imperfect in the direction I prefer. No scandal has stuck to her because the evidence doesn’t mount. It just doesn’t work. Sure, sure, “where there’s smoke,” you say, except you’re ignoring the fact that the GOP has been at her feet since she stepped into the White House, lighting a kindling of newspaper under her shows and fanning the smoke up all around here — again and again.

And yet, I see a lot of progressives who hate her.

Like, fucking hate her.

And I see them believing all the stuff that isn’t even true. (And yes, I know there are very real and very fair criticisms of Clinton, too — again, see Obama and drone strikes, or FDR and internment camps, or or or.)

And I see them still championing Bernie, like he will somehow split his flesh and his spirit will separate from it, becoming the MANY-HANDED SOCIALIST ANGEL they believed him to be all along — taking us all to a magical promiseland where the tickets only cost $27.

And I see them championing Jill Stein or Gary Johnson — and that latter bit is especially puzzling, given how far apart Johnson and Sanders are politically. You jump from Bernie to Gary and, yeah, maybe you’re not that fucking progressive, hoss. All this in the face of the fact that voting for a third party is a literally worthless endeavor. Like I said above: you get two boxes. You have the illusion of more, but you drop your vote into one and it goes into this series of tangled pneumatic tubes and ends up in Trump or Clinton’s box. We do not have a system that rewards third parties. We just don’t. That’s unfortunate, but it’s a little late to change that now. Change it over the next four years. Stack the decks with candidates up the chain. You don’t start with the presidency.

All this is completely fucking baffling.

Even if you don’t like Clinton, what the shit? You’re really okay with a Trump presidency? Are you? Because, lemme guess — you’re white. Probably straight. Maybe a lad. A Trump presidency won’t hurt you all that much. Maybe in some off-chance it’ll even help you. But women? LGBTQIA? People of color? Who do you think is going to be likelier to believe that Black Lives Matter — Hillary, or Trump? Who do you think is going to actually work for LGBTQIA rights? Who do you think will protect Planned Parenthood, or abortion rights, or women in the workplace? Trump sees women as a series of tits all just lining up for him to ogle and squeeze. And never mind the fact that Trump has a de facto alliance with Putin — sure, that’s not terrifying at all, that the Russians are actively trying to put Trump on the throne. It’s fine. That’s all fine. Nothing weird about that. I’m sure the country will be in great hands. Tiny-fingered, tanner-smeared dictator hands. The best hands. So good, those hands. Anybody who doesn’t have those hands?

Sad!

The politician versus the plague.

One is imperfect. But the other will lead us all to ruin.

It’s like —

Imagine a garden.

This garden will be our food source for four years.

We all voted on what foods will go in that garden and we voted to plant eggplant, okra, kale.

And you’re like, “But I hate those.”

And we’re like, “No, yeah, sure, I get that, but they’re healthy, even if they’re not ideal to you personally — and we all voted and this is the garden we’re going with. It’ll keep us alive, it’ll maintain the soil for the next gardener, it’ll give us energy to continue on not just surviving but growing our community.”

And you’re like, “But I hate them. They’re gross.”

And we say, “Yes, but please understand — it’s this garden or we instead have to go into the woods to eat like, random mushrooms. They’re quite likely to poison many of us. And they won’t really sustain us. There’s no evidence at all that we can survive if we go out there.”

“But I hate eggplant.”

“Buuuuuut toxic mushrooms.”

“Okra? Ew, no.”

“Toxic. Motherfucking. Mushrooms. Not fun trippy mushrooms. Not healthy, edible mushrooms. The kind you eat and then you get stomach cramps and then you shit out your own bowels on the forest floor. And also Dave saw wolves out there. Wolves, man. Here we have a garden. It’s safe.”

“Kale, though. You hipster shit. Kale? I vote we burn the garden down and salt the ground and go into the woods because the giant question mark about how well we will fare against poisonous shrooms and starveling wolves is better to me than having to suck it up and eat my vegetables.”

“But you can’t just vote for yourself to leave. You’re voting for the tribe. If you vote we all go, we all have to go out there. And we all have a pretty good idea what’s waiting out there for us, so please, no. It’s not just about you. It’s about us.”

“Meh, it’s about me. It’s about what I want. Personal liberty trumps the needs of the community. Now excuse me as I take a scalding dump on this bag of seeds, because seriously, vegetables are really gross. YUCKY FACE. Let’s blow this pop stand, nerds!”

It’s not that I don’t understand the people who really want a kind of revolution — the problem is, if you just want revolution in any direction, you’re dangerous. You want revolution in a progressive direction, fine — but we’re not going to get that. We’re going to get pragmatism. We’re going to get compromise. And I think those can be features, not bugs. Sure, I understand that incremental progress is not as sexy as FLIPPING TABLES AND DEMANDING JUSTICE, but progress is still progress. And Trump is the antithesis of that. Trump genuinely wants to dismantle everything. He wants to wipe his ass with the Constitution. He wants to destroy social programs. He doesn’t even want the fucking job, really. He just wants the chair and the sash and the crown. Pence will be our “manager” while Trump takes the mantle of Trumpmerica, then when we’re bankrupt he’ll sell us off to Russia and fuck off to some island where he can cavort with the rest of his Greasy Marmoset People until death. Everything we are and everything that aids us — he wants it gone. Your third party vote will never elect a third party president. It really, seriously won’t. I know! That’s a huge bummer. I mean that. I get that it’s very upsetting that the political system has delivered unto you the illusion of many boxes when all you get is two. And I get that Bernie woulda been your guy, and now he’s Hillary’s guy instead, and I understand that upsets you, too. But incremental progress is better than setting fire to everything. Moving forward — even more slowly than we’d like — is better than than shoving everything we’ve gained into a cannon and then firing that cannon at a line of porta-johns.

I need you to hunker down. I need you to toughen up.

I need you to vote for the conscience of the tribe, not for you.

We all need it.

Don’t send us out into the dark forest.

Let’s grow the garden together.

Let’s keep the ground fertile.

Let us maintain what we have and build on it.

Let’s help each other instead of kicking it all into dust.

In other words: eat your damn vegetables.