So, some number of Americans survived Election Day. Well done. I bet that some will even survive the coming month of exhaustive media analysis, Republican legal complaints and lawsuits, not to mention evangelical numbnuts praying in front of election offices.
And as the votes get tallied, as the Biden campaign seems to be rushing ahead on the back of mail-in ballots, and as the Republican base can’t fathom the late surge in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, or even Georgia, the US may be turning the page on a very dark chapter of its short life span.
That is assuming, of course, that the gung-ho supremacist groups that the Orange Administration has been courting, like the Boogaloo Boys or the Proud Boys, because apparently it’s always “boys” with this chuckle-fucks, don’t up-end the prototype democracy with a dash of civil insurrection. Which is still a big assumption.
But on the back of this relief and disappointment of an election, one factor has cropped up as particularly interesting to me. Most polls just straight assumed that the Orange Hydra would be swiftly and unceremoniously punted out of office at the polls. It turns out though that most swing states were an awfully tight race. In some of them, the difference is but a few thousand, even a few hundred votes. After the Covid-travesty, the tens of thousands of lies, the “good people on both sides” overt support of racism, the Orange monster still held onto a lot of confidence among US voters. Which should, but certainly won’t, prompt the Democratic Party to do some serious soul-searching. How is it that their neoliberal politics and policies could just barely win by the skin of its teeth against a compulsive liar, a sycophant, a criminal, an authoritarian, a demagogue, a cognitively impaired chauvinistic pig?
It seems, according to some pundits, to stem from the fact that to the average US voter, none of those travesties are their biggest concerns. Because to the average voter, a global pandemic that kills some and leaves others potentially permanently brain damaged isn’t the biggest problem of their lives. Galvanized racism, sexism, and lgbtq-phobia isn’t their greatest concern. A destabilized world order, a trade war with China, and the squandering of diplomatic reputation isn’t their greatest concerns. Even the failing environment, causing storms, draughts, and continent-spanning wildfires isn’t their single most urgent concern. No, what turns out is the absolutely most important issue during an election for oh so many US citizens turns out to be the state of their personal wallets. Their own private bank accounts. Their income security. All other concerns are distant seconds, even the viability of the planet and their country as a habitat.
I think that says a lot about the condition of the nation state of the US. It is a society that is so desperately dependent on an income, on jobs and private assets, that not even a global plague can compete. That the US is so engorged in haywire capitalism that the average voter doesn’t give a shit how despicable you are as a leader, so long as you promise them a pay cheque…
Must be nice, non? Must be nice to have turned your citizenry into such desperate pawns that you can do whatever you want to them, treat them however callously as you wish, lie and cheat and steal from them, so long as they believe you can provide them with an income. Must be nice to have taught them that the only decent, the only truly “American” way to live is to slaver and beg for a slip of money at the end of a month or week of hard labour. It must be nice to lord over such an Objectivist utopia. Because as it turns out, if you’ve imprinted that notion hard enough into the mind of the average voter, you won’t have to supply any other services as a government. You don’t need to make sure that everyone’s fed, that everyone has a roof over their heads, or that everyone can get medical care if they need it. Give them a pay cheque, even minimum wage, and their desperation for another slip of credit will make them blind to anything else.
Perhaps this is why the projected nightmare of socialism haunts the mind of the “True American” as it does. The vilified notion of the “Handout” stalks among the downtrodden, threatening to turn the able-bodied worker into a beggar. Pay no mind to the fact that you’re just as much a beggar under the ultra-capitalist boot of the “American Dream”. Pay no mind to the fact that paying taxes can earn you subsidised healthcare just as well as you can “earn” it by remortgaging your house. Or by pawning off your kidney to afford a new liver for your husband, which has failed over the course of decades of eating corporate garbage food originally intended to keep livestock stupid and pliant.
No wonder “socialism” is so demonized in the US discourse. Even though public healthcare, education, housing, are all “socialist” ideas that have been adopted by otherwise capitalist governments and societies across the globe. But not in the US. Never in the US. Because if you undermined the desperation of the US voter, perhaps their leaders wouldn’t be able to lie, cheat, steal, grab a woman by the pussy, or fondle pre-pubescent children the way that they do. Perhaps, if the average voter didn’t have to fear for their life and well being, constantly worry that their inherently unhealthy lifestyle might send them into crushing medical debt, or slave away at the plant, or stress out over their private business endeavour, then they might notice such abhorrent behaviour. Maybe they’d even take umbrage with it? And maybe, just maybe, the pliant and gullible masses would start making demands of their government.
But of course, that’s not the reality of the United States of America. For so long as the average voter is more concerned with the state of their private finances, none of the details will bother them. Raging wildfires, unrelenting storms, pandemic plagues, senile and insane leaders, none of it will come close to the very private concern of the wallet.
Must be nice…
/Sebastian Lindberg 10/11-2020
WastedWords 