OK, I’ve had a day to think about this debate #2 debacle now, and there is one thing I want to talk about: Trump’s threat to put Hillary Clinton in jail.
Not just because it’s despicable or because it’s scary. Because it is the best proof Trump has given us that not only is he not qualified for the job of President of the United States, he doesn’t actually understand what that job is. He does not actually plan to do that job. He is running for another kind of office entirely.
The thing is, if Donald Trump loses by even one vote we’ll be safe for now, but if he loses by a LANDSLIDE, we could be safe for a very very long time.
If he loses by a small margin, then hooray! Everyone who is queer, a person of color, disabled, neuroatypical, poor, and/or a woman is safe! I’m not being sarcastic, that would be fucking wonderful, holy shit. We would be
saving our country and ourselves from 4-8 years with Donald at President as well as another lifetime with a majority conservative republican government. That’s a big win.
But if he ONLY loses by a small margin, the message that sends to all the people who agree with him is that all they have to do to become president of the United States in the future is be SLIGHTLY less of a publicly raging racist, xenophobic, islamophobic, queerphobic, ableist, misogynistic, sex offender than Donald fucking Trump.
Bigots would not be discouraged, or learn. They would just be bitter, and bide their time.
If he loses by a fucking LANDSLIDE, however, then maybe they’ll actually learn that emulating his views and behavior WILL NOT earn them power.
In conclusion: even if you think he stands no chance of winning, PLEASE STILL VOTE. Maybe your vote will be the one vote that keeps him out of office, but even if he would have technically lost either way, even if they start calling it early because he’s losing by a large margin, PLEASE STILL GO OUT AND VOTE.
Yall thinking Trump’s run for the presidency is over the same way yall thought Brexit wouldn’t happen. Yall gon stay yall lazy asses home on November 8th and wake up to a nightmare on the 9th.
As a Brit, EXACTLY THIS. People thought Brexit wouldn’t happen, so they either stayed home or they voted for Brexit to protest while thinking they were still safe and would stay in the EU. And now we’re leaving Europe, our currency is worth less and less all the time, stuff is already getting more and more expensive here and hate crime rates are exploding.
You CANNOT count on ANYTHING in an election. Trump is not out of the race until Hillary Clinton is voted President. You HAVE to vote. Don’t protest vote, don’t third party vote, don’t stay at home. We screwed up here in Britain – you don’t have to.
The fact that Trump seems to think that Hillary should’ve been able to DO EVERYTHING in her career underscores exactly how little he understands how government works. More, it tells us everything we need to know about what kind of power he’s is expecting to be handed and is anticipating wielding.
I think it’s so funny how every endorsement I see of Clinton HAS to be framed as like “Is she perfect? No, but she’s better than Trump.” The problem I have with this isn’t that it’s keeping politicians accountable, it’s that this accountability is only ever applied to Clinton and its done in such a way that make it seem like she’s somehow uniquely problematic.
No one, not a single god damn person reblogs pictures, news stories, or quotes from President Obama and says “Damn, I really don’t like how he bombed the shit out of thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East or how he ramped up deportation raids and ruined the lives of tens of thousands of peaceful undocument immigrants living here in the United States, but like he’s alright I guess.”
No, instead every single post I see about Obama is about how much we’re gonna miss him and I don’t disagree, I think he was a great President, I just think it’s amazing how the callous or problematic decisions he made as Commander and Chief don’t ever taint his public image, at least not the image that his base has of him.
Yet we hold Clinton to a completely different standard, the handful of problematic decisions she has made during her 30 year career define her in a way I haven’t seen before, to the point that the only “acceptable” way to support her is to speak about it in a tacit or even hesitant tone, like “yeah, I know she’s a corrupt bitch, but I’ll still vote for her I guess.” The notion that she is somehow more problematic than any other candidate who’s been elected prior to her is patently false, being a world leader is a implicitly dirty job, it just so happens that we’ve come to expect men to do these dirty jobs so we reserve our judgement.
I mean, people aren’t even allowed to celebrate the fact she’s the first female candidate for president because it’s apparently “white feminism” to take note of the accomplishments of women in our country if they also aren’t literally perfect feminist icons. It’s not just enough to be exceptional as a woman to be celebrated, you have to be perfect.
Also, if a single god damn person brings up another candidate in this race and tells me how their record is spotless I swear to god I’ll lose my mind because the reason for that is that no other candidate in this race has a mother fucking record of having any sort of governmental leadership position. Its not that they are somehow magically more pure than Clinton, it’s that they never got promoted to a position that would actually force them to make difficult decisions of national importance.
It’s easy to keep your hands clean when you’re an irrelevant congressmen from butt fuck nowhere or simply have exempted yourself from the political process altogether until magically deciding now that you deserve to be President.
(full disclosure I edited the original post, but only to insert line breaks, because walls of text are next to impossible for me to read and I had to do that just to get through it, and I figure a lot of my disabled folks will appreciate it too)
Thoughtfulfangirling 