Autumn of Our Discontent

 

Election Day 2021's warning sign, for me, was the peculiar gathering in Dealey Plaza, of all places, of Qanon faithful assembling for a grand announcement by either JFK Jr. or Sr. (both deceased, and to the best of all inquiries of public record to discern, Democrats at last breathing memory) with the expectation that it would lead to the revelation of the One True President Trump and usher in some kind of new era. What we are looking at here is a phenomenon where an off-shoot of a somewhat incidental and transparently bullshit conspiracy theory (Pizzagate) has transmogrified into a kind of syncretic conspiracy theory cult, looking for a singularity that finally unifies all the conspiracy theories into one big satisfying thing. 

(I kid you not, the allegation that the Kennedys--kinfolk of Brian Boru, represent the Sang Real or Holy Grail legend of human nobility possessed of the bloodline of Christ via the Merovingians combined with the notion of a kind of Elders of the Priory of Sion finagling of an eventual theocratic United States victorious over the bloodsucking Satanist human traffickers that otherwise have been in charge since whenever the cultists deem shit went haywire under the auspices of some kind of God-appointed figure really does seem both like entire nonsense, and kind of cohere if you have studied  US conspiracy theory. )

When JFK Jr. or Sr. did not appear at Dealey Plaza (a morbid location for a revelation, in any event) and it also began to rain, some believers shifted their attention to another location: well surely, at the Rolling Stones concert something might happen (an example of High Boomerism if I ever witnessed one). However, they literally got no satisfaction. 

That is, however, a veritable shit-ton of people collecting themselves over a far-fetched pseudo-prophecy launched by pseudonymous randos on yon internets relative to the guano-based nature of the claim. And if you can get that many people together over the phosphate rich leavings of the transient fledermaus, imagine what you could accomplish with more established bats, and more aggressively gathered shit!

So, in the blessed memory of 2009, the launching of the good ship Tea Party, and the antithesis of whatever right-wing goysplainers have to say about the machinations of George Soros, I give you Panic! at the Discontent 2021, a joint production of the remaining Koch Brother brought to you by the letters CRT and a political news media that learns nothing ever at all from anything ever, and breathlessly reports on whether a campaign message is "strategic" or "effective" rather than, get this, actually true. 

US elections are only somewhat about facts. They have been about feelings. Regular people aren't necessarily going all Q on us, but they are pissed, for lots of reasons, and not all of those reasons are under anyone's particular immediate control. And consider that, even in non-swillian times, this would tend to lead to a "throw out the bums!" ethos. But we are living in an era of the triumph of the swill. They see the media cover the sausage-making of legislation and surmise it is about politics in and of itself, not helping them, because if people wanted to do right, they'd have gone ahead and done it. 

In 2009, Republicans won both states. In 2013, Chris Christie was re-elected in NJ--a supposedly blue state, and McAuliffe won in VA--the bleeding edge of purple. No Democrat has won re-election in  supposedly blue NJ for decades. VA seems historically to return governors of the opposite party to the one in the White House. 

In Virginia, McAuliffe tried valiantly to tie Youngkin to Trump, when maybe he should have tied Youngkin to Youngkin, and also not been Terry McAuliffe, but probably a younger person named Jennifer. And when Youngkin post primary didn't exactly clasp Trump to his bosom, he literally had all the plausible deniability he needed to present as a not-crazy. Even if we will definitely see what's up with that. But the closeness of the NJ election needs to definitely give us pause--people are mad in blue states--in blue districts. They are taxed, they are stressed, they feel like bad shit has happened, and they want something to go down to make things better--even if implausibly. They don't want "messaging" and emails talking doom and asking for money.

They want results. They want a sense of control over the COVID-19 pandemic nightmare we all experienced but didn't all experience equally. They want satisfaction. 

What does that tell us for 2022? It says Democrats need to get their shit together because there is not one thing you can take for granted. You can't count on the media to explain the b.s. astroturfing, so you have to respond simply : It's a lie. Don't call anyone racist or whatever. Just: did anyone even hear of this thing before last year? Suddenly it's all they talk about. Why? It isn't taught k-12. So--why?

 (Free of charge, if the GOP goes all in on Parents Rights re: schools, look that bad boy over. It sounds like a recipe of a free-for-all of opinions interfering with an informed process. What about, schools are schools and parents are parents? If your kid has a problem at school, parents often do ask to meet with the teacher and try to come to an understanding--this has always been an option. That's just personal responsibility. Why are Republicans trying to fool with something that had been working and why are they trying to exert a censorious attitude to the learning process? Also, see the difference in voting with college vs non-college whites re: Democrats. Think: offer whatever policies get more asses in college as cheaply as possible.)

I don't directly blame Sinema and Manchin for ah, ah, hah! oh. Shit! I don't blame them for the election results but I don't think they are helping and they should consider teamwork if they want 2022 to look not awful. Among the post-mortems many have drawn from the 2010 midterms was: maybe Democrats could have gone bigger. I think about that a lot. What if? 

Frankly, ending the filibuster and doing some serious voting rights legislation because it won't happen any other way would be a great start on fixing the 2021 problems before they become 2022 problems. Following it up with a robust BBB plan would deliver tangible long-term economic successes. Doing simple messaging like "Jobs", "No bullshit", and "We love Brandon" could get people back in the game. The VA election was sort of high turnout for an off-year which was assumed (problem!) to be good for Democrats. We need to turn out and energize people for Democratic Party policies.  

People are looking for something better, more, faster, now! And it doesn't make perfect sense. But if you don't want a long, lousy winter, you give them something to hold onto. Because people who feel fucked up enough about the process can disconnect entirely and find themselves in their own private Dealey Plaza. And that helps no one. 

(Also the Lincoln Project guys don't understand that Democrats don't do stunts because we can't do stunts. Welcome to our nightmare. Thanks I guess for trying? But no, this is not how it works.) 

UPDATE: Just as an aside, because Murphy won and it was close, some folks are going to make an issue of whether NJ was stolen, because of a counting error that was more or less swiftly corrected and because they can. Some people (republicans) will also mourn that NJ was assumed to be a blue state stronghold and could have been won by the GOP with more love and care, but actually, strategically, it wasn't--the GOP invested there rather a lot. I don't know exactly what to think about this, but I do know Murphy stayed campaigning as a progressive throughout. I don't think that hurt at all.