Next month in November, it’s another election, which may actually be important in that the midterms and the 2024 presidential race will determine whether our votes will ever matter again.
To skip, there is no point in me going over the partisan races (Republican vs. Democrat) because I’m voting Democrat in all of them. This is not because I went whole hog liberal Democratic partisan, it’s because I am a single issue voter. Some people’s single issue is abortion (on one side or the other). Some people’s single issue is more gun control. My single issue is: FUCK TRUMP and everybody who enables him. Which at this point is the entire Republican Party. Yes, even the reasonable ones. Because at this point, the reasonable ones are just the Republicans who still remember how to play both sides of the street. They hold to reasonable (or at least non-whacko) positions during the general election and then as soon as they’re elected they goosestep in line with the whackjobs because once they’re in office their loyalty is to the whackjobs who own the Party, not the general public.
And I can hear the cult chanting now: “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Let’s go back over definitions: Bush Derangement Syndrome was when liberals only believed the worst about George W. Bush. Obama Derangement Syndrome was when conservatives only believed the worst about Barack Obama. Trump Derangement Syndrome is when anybody believes anything that sack of shit says.
It should be obvious, just from looking back at the Helsinki press conference with Putin, that Trump has given more aid and comfort to the enemy than Jane Fonda ever did. If you still can’t figure out why, just read THIS, and then READ IT AGAIN, and keep reading it until you get it.
You want to know why I’m against that? Look at Russia and what that “post-liberal” agenda has done to that country. To its pride. To its military readiness against its neighbors. To its peoples’ survival.
That’s why.
And Putin, unlike Trump, is not a titanium hammerhead who has to stare at the can of orange juice for five minutes cause it says “CONCENTRATE”.
Even without Trump, these “conservatives”, and the Alito Supreme Court, are on track to create a legal system that would make the Islamic Republic of Iran look as libertarian as Burning Man.
So if that’s what you “patriots” want to turn MY country into, why don’t you just move to Asia and get a job doing this:
Right now, I have only one position in any partisan race. That position is:
FUCK.
TRUMP.
UP.
THE.
ASS.
Now to the ballot initiatives for Nevada, and this election there only seem to be three of them.
Question 1 is an initiative to ban all discrimination “on account of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin.”
While equal rights amendments are part of some other state constitutions, they normally haven’t included sexual orientation or gender identity. In principle, I have no problem with doing this. In practice, the definitions of non-standard gender identity are still sufficiently vague that I wonder what protections would mean and how they would be implemented. In its ballot initiative analysis, Reason Magazine stated: “A more fundamental question surrounding the proclaimed need for an equal rights amendment is whether the protections they would offer are already accomplished by the Equal Protection Clause within the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Adopted following the American Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment states, in part: “No state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Yes, but as we’ve seen, the Supreme Court can look at the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause and decide it doesn’t apply if they don’t feel like it.
Accordingly, even with my reservations, I support YES on Question 1.
Question 2 is an initiative to raise Nevada’s state minimum wage to $12 an hour. I have already stated my position on this issue: All minimum wage means is, if it were legal for the company to pay you less than that, they would. Because the cost of training your replacement would be worth that much to the company, or less. Especially since COVID, the demand for jobs has gotten to the point where gas stations and other shit jobs will actually pay more than $12 starting out now. Meanwhile the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour, but then Congress is run by Southern “conservatives” who are that much more stingy than heartless capitalists. Believe it or not, the marketplace does correct itself, and often it does a better job than government. (Again, I’m not a liberal, I’m a Democrat Just To Fuck Trump.) I support NO on Question 2.
Question 3 concerns whether to convert Nevada to an “open primary” state. I have also already stated my opinion in favor of this initiative.
In theory, the two-party system could correct itself with one of the current “third” parties taking over for the weaker of the two ruling factions, as the Republicans ended up replacing the Whigs. But the duopoly has calcified even as it gets worse. Few people who still are partisans see any need to try alternatives to their registered party. With Democrats, they think any “third” party candidates are spoilers who are just going to increase the chances of a Republican getting elected, and Republicans are all theocratic fascists. Of course, that’s what they’ve been saying since at least 1964, but as of 2015, they’re actually correct. Meanwhile Republicans won’t consider any alternatives to their party because they think politics is a spiritual battle of Good vs. Evil, and the Democrat Party are all gay Muslim Communists who hate the Little Baby Jesus and want to send him to jail. And by Little Baby Jesus, I mean Trump, cause most of the Republican “base” won’t admit there’s a difference.
The alternative among people who have real lives and don’t think politics is like following House of the Dragon (except less plausibly scripted) is to quit being partisan. This really means that those people don’t have a vote in party primaries, which in many places is the real vote. Which makes the public at large that much more alienated from politics in general and reduces the voter pool to make it even more devoted to ideologues. To many in the duopoly, that is a feature and not a bug.
Remember, the whole premise of America’s party system, and the perceived need of the duopoly to limit competition as much as possible, was to serve as gatekeepers, to make sure that political movements were still capable of moderation and compromise and did not allow radical ideas to become part of mainstream political thought. But in our civics illiteracy, we lost sight of that and confused the mechanism for the goal. Now in at least one case the party institution is itself the vehicle for radical, un-American ideas. Ideas like, “democracy’ just means we impose our will on everybody else and if we can’t win an election with a minority of voters, it just means we didn’t use enough fraud and force.”
An open primary system would remove this emphasis which in turn would mean less focus on a politician’s brand identity.
Because no matter what I said earlier about voting down the line for Democrats, it may not matter cause gas prices are skyrocketing – for SOME reason – hurricane season is screwing the infrastructure network and Democratic candidates are in increased trouble. Adam Laxalt is totally on board with a nationwide ban on abortion, and he’s leading Catherine Cortez Masto in the Nevada US Senate race. In Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock is up against Herschel Walker, who is basically Trump, only more belligerent and inarticulate, and there’s at least an even chance that Walker could win.
Further proof that we could present objective evidence that electing Republicans would send this country to literal Hell (or, in 2020, COVID Hell), and Americans would look at Hell, then look at the Democrats, and say, “Fuck it, let’s see what Hell is like.”
Changing states to open primary would be one way out of this trap. You are still going to have people running as Democrats and Republicans, but the channelling mechanism would be who among the general population gets the most voters, not who can win the party primary by being the most mindless political robot. That in turn would mean politics is less dictated by issues where no one will agree (like abortion) and more in terms of which individuals would do the best job running the government.
What a concept.
I support YES on Question 3.