🇺‍🇸 Election Year 2024: Damned if we do, damned if we don't 🇺‍🇸

Over the past 6 or so months, I've become convinced that it doesn't matter who gets to be the president; either option will result in a fascist dictatorship. If Biden gets elected, the US will militarily occupy Gaza and the West Bank, but I get to stay alive for another election cycle. If Trump gets elected, the US will militarily occupy Gaza and the West Bank, and I and everyone like me will die over the course of the next 4 years. For some reason probably related to Ronald Reagan, queer people are the republicans' Great Satan. It doesn't matter what flavour of LGBTQ you are; if you're anywhere on that spectrum, republicans think you're bad and need to die. The US Government's collective reaction to the Gaza Holocaust has demonstrated that the democrats are starting to swing further to the right than any Glenn Beck fan ever thought possible, proving what I've been saying since 2016: there are no liberals in American politics anymore. Democrats are now the conservatives and republicans are fascists. The thing that armchair activists on Tumblr aren't saying is that the Heritage Foundation will propose Project 2025, regardless of who the president is. Re-electing Genocide Joe isn't going to hamper anyone's plans, especially considering how much of a conservative Catholic dong he is; he'll probably go along with it, believing the best interests of the nation are being served. Project 2025 is basically America's Enabling Act; once it passes, the republic ends and the empire begins, under the oversight of the worst kind of pearl-clutching, holier-than-thou evangelicals you ever did see.

Every single election cycle, my very right to exist is dangled from a stick by the democrats, saying "If you don't vote for us, you'll most likely die! Isn't that great?!". They never make any attempt to improve conditions for LGBT+ people, autistic people, disabled people, the elderly, the impoverished, the homeless, or any of the other traditionally downtrodden groups in American society, offering nothing more than strict adherence to the status quo. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" could be the American liberal party's epitaph. The worst part of it is, they're right. They're absolutely right that, if republicans gain any degree of influence, their first targets will be LGBT+ people, autistic people, blah-blah-blah, you'll excuse me if I'm sick of telling the same old story again and again. I use the term "corporate feudal state" a lot; this is what I mean. There can't be wealth without poverty, there can't be prosperity without slavery. All those economists who wrote thinkpieces about "in order to fix the economy, we need more people to be unemployed", registered democrats one and all.

This year is different, though. This year, we're poised to completely destroy the world as we know it, and I don't know how to react to that. On one hand, I want to run away into the Canadian frontier and never look back; on the other, I want to just sit back and watch it all fall apart around me. I mean, I know that Canada is not necessarily any better than the United States, from the standpoint of being all those things I just mentioned, and it's a little worse, in fact, from the perspective of a Native American; but it has the virtue of being relatively nearby. In a pinch, I can drive there; I don't need to involve the airlines. I wouldn't necessarily stay in Canada, because being so close to American brainrot as it is, it runs the risk of some of that fascism crossing the border; but it would provide a handy vector from which to escape to Ireland. But, see, all that comes back to money that I don't have. The corporate feudal state has decided that I shall be impoverished and has done everything within and without to keep me as poor as possible. It's really too bad we don't use steamships to cross the ocean anymore; I could stow away on one. It's rather infeasible to stow away on an airliner.

The only other option left is the non-option: slow death at the hands of a state that wants me to suffer for being what I am. Or, I suppose, quick death by a fascist bigot with a Glock-17 and a messianic complex. In all likelihood, the latter is less likely than the former; I live in the middle of a cornfield on the outskirts of Armpit, Nebraska, where I can only hear about things happening. Nothing ever happens here. The damnable truth of the matter is that I will most likely not be monumentally affected by whatever happens on election day. No one is likely to pop round my flat with a shotgun and blow my head off if I didn't vote the right way. No one is likely to drop a bomb on my neighbourhood or plant a bomb in my car. Even if another civil war does happen, I wouldn't be drafted into it, and neither would anyone else around here. All I can do is sit here at home, self-isolating from COVID-19 like I've been doing for 3 years now, reading reports of horrible suffering and death, be it in Palestine or here in America, watching news outlets become slowly consumed by fascist brainrot until everyone sounds like FOX News, being denied my HRT by a Catholic-run health insurance company and watching my pre-transition self slowly return every time I look in the mirror, and wondering if Descartes was right about all that cogito ergo sum rubbish.