I hate writing about politics so I rarely do it. But in the past 30 years I’ve written about what’s going on around me, and this week I’ve been up every night until at least midnight watching Rachel Maddow moderate the Republican National Convention. Why? I don’t know. I’ve seen comments on social media calling it “the season finale of the United States,” and, while dramatic, that’s a good description.
As a queer Democrat, I’m as lefty liberal as you can get, so I’m supposed to be one of those people who goes around talking about how Reagan was practically in a coma for his second term and he was fine, and saying “I don’t care if Biden is 99 and has one foot on the grave and one foot on a banana peel, he’s better than the alternative, I’m voting for him.” And in many of the important ways, that’s true.
Ultimately, I’ll vote for whoever the Democratic candidate is because of reproductive rights for women, LGBTQIA + rights, the environment, and a humane and reasonable approach to immigration. I’ve lost “friends” over my beliefs, and that’s okay. Women shouldn’t have to die in back alley abortions again; “leaving it to the states” is barbaric in certain Handmaid’s Tale states unfortunately. Women who’ve been raped or who are simply making choices for their own bodies shouldn’t have to leave their own states for medical care; medical professionals shouldn’t be criminalized for doing their jobs. And I’ll say “love is love” until I die.
Now then. The Democratic candidate. Look, do I love that somehow our party, including its leader, had four years to nurture, encourage and support an alternative option so that we weren’t forced to unenthusiastically “rally” behind the senile Biden? No. I don’t love it any more than the senior party officials who’ve taken turns slapping Biden around like the long line of “Get a Hold of Yourself” people in Airplane trying to slap some sense into the passenger.
They’re worried about the big picture: beating Trump, obviously, or “saving Democracy” as the more melodramatic and probably realistic line goes, as well as preserving the party’s control of Congress and Biden’s effect on down-ballot races.
What I know is this: I’m losing sleep over politics again, just like back when Trump was elected. I know this doesn’t mean anything to you as a reader. But I’m not the only one worried about the future of our country. As a faithful Rachel Maddow fan, the only scheduled TV I usually watch is her show on Monday nights at nine p.m. (and Jon Stewart on the Daily Show Monday nights at 11 if he’s on). As a news junkie, I normally pour candles with CNN or MSNBC on during the day, at least during heavy news times like these.
I saw the Vance speech, and the absolute hypocrisy of a party who cheered for his wife’s introduction. Usha Vance, a Yale lawyer dressed conservatively in a blue dress with simple hair and no makeup, appeared in stark contrast to the ghoulish likes of Trump Jr. fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle in her manufactured face, hair, nails and messaging, yammering on about national pride in a place where “high school girls only compete with other girls, not biological men.”
I wonder how, as a child of parents who came to the U.S. from India, Usha sat and listened while Vance railed on about “illegal aliens” to a crowd filled with signs declaring “Stop Biden’s Border Bloodbath” and “Mass Deportation Now!” Probably not much easier than Trump’s foreign-born immigrant wife Melania did… except she wasn’t even there until her brief pained appearance last night. I’d say, “I Don’t Care Do You,” except, in spite of myself, I do.
