I gave up trying to write about this sort of thing years ago, but there’s a few thoughts that I have to get out.
This election felt uniquely terrible despite how similar it ended up feeling to 2016. For everything that was similar or the same—underestimating Trump’s cult of personality, acting like there are Republicans who would vote for a Democrat, watching the Democrats rely on surrogates, celebrities, and vibes instead of a platform—the thing that felt especially soul-destroying is that I was committed to voting for a candidate who supported genocide.
Everything about this felt wrong. In what reality could I witness the daily atrocities committed in Gaza and still vote for the candidate that was letting that happen? In what world are mountains of dead children not a dealbreaker?
It doesn’t feel good enough to say “The reality in which the other candidate is Donald Trump” because that feels like admitting without saying that “I will vote for the candidate supporting genocide provided they do more of the right things here in this country.” Is that really the only choice—trading the lives of Palestinians so that we can maintain some semblance of progress and normalcy here? Being reduced to utilitarian “do the least harm” voting makes me wish this country would be swallowed up by the sea.
After Biden dropped out and people started celebrating Brat summer, I was fuming every time Harris repeated the sanitized argument about how “Israel has a right to defend itself after the heinous attack by Hamas on 10/7.”
(Beyond serving as monstrous appeasement, this argument has semantic faults. Defense should necessarily refer to the actions one takes prior to and during an attack. What follows is better known as retaliation. And a team that has just had a touchdown scored on them does not retaliate by sending their defense back onto the field. Even supposing there is a right to retaliation, there used to be an idea of proportional response up until the United States obliterated that notion in the wake of 9/11. Now, if your response to an attack is a week, and then a month, and then a year of ethnic cleansing, maybe more people in power should be saying “No, you don’t have that right” instead of licking the boots of AIPAC and the ADL.)
So we traded an older candidate for a younger one that was using the same old justification as an excuse for sending billions of dollars worth of bombs to blow up civilians. There were plenty of days where this fact would recede into the background—after all, the last 8 years have conditioned me to limit my exposure to the kind of horse race pageantry that serves as our electoral politics.
But then a new story would come out or new footage would emerge—Israel bombing foreign aid workers, Israel blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza (US complicit), Palestinian journalist reporting through tears that his family was killed in an IDF bombing, doctors returning from Gaza reporting that IDF snipers are targeting children (these are the ones that I can most quickly recall). 41,800 dead in a year (which is only an estimate after Israel has gone out of its way to restrict and eliminate the capacity for journalism in Gaza). I’d watch and read—if nothing else, I will not look away—and think “How am I supposed to vote for someone that will let this keep happening?”
Then, in mid September, labor reporter Hamilton Nolan published a piece abrasively titled “How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself”. His article attempted to address the moral dilemma of voting for candidates who support unconscionable acts by reframing politics like so:
Untangling this ethical knot is, I think, a matter of perspective. It comes down to the way that you think of what politics is. For the most part, it is wrong to think of elections as contests between “good” and “bad” candidates. With few exceptions, it is more accurate to divide most politicians into two broad categories: Enemies, and Cowards. The enemies are those politicians who are legitimately opposed to your policy goals. The cowards are those politicians who may agree with your policy goals, but will sell you out if they must in order to protect their own interests. Embrace the idea that we are simply pushing to elect the cowards, rather than the enemies. Why? Because the true work of political action is not to identify idealized superheroes to run for office. It is, instead, to create the conditions in the world that make it safe for the cowards to vote the right way.
This made sense to me, and followed a pretty popular refrain that politics doesn’t end after election day, that’s when the real work starts, etc. I could get behind the framing of casting my ballot not for the Least Bad candidate but for the Most Malleable one. “Vote for Cowards, Not Enemies” isn’t a particularly inspiring mantra, but maybe it would help me keep sight of what mattered.
I carried this grim determination through the rest of September and into October. I had what I needed to go through with voting, so all that was left to do was make it to election day and then figure out what to do after that.
And yet.
I remember seeing this message from Bernie Sanders pop up on my feed about a week before the election. In the video, he explained that many people had asked him why they should vote for Harris if she was going to maintain Biden’s support for Israel. He said he agreed with these people, that there needed to be change, that what Israel had done was over the line (though he still made sure to say the line about Israel having a right to defend itself). And his answer for these people was that “even on this issue, Donald Trump is worse.”
And then he went on to talk about Gaza not being the only issue, but the essence of his argument was the same as Nolan’s: “We have a better chance of influencing US policy with Harris than with Trump.”
I’m probably projecting, but I think there was this look in Sanders’s eyes—one that I’ve seen from him several times over the past 4 years—acknowledging this isn’t good enough.
“I’m not Donald Trump” isn’t a platform for change. Giving people “a chance” to influence policy isn’t the kind of promise that can move people.
I wish I had kept better track of all the red flags that were popping up in that last week. Harris talking about how much she loves her glock. A rare and widely shared endorsement from Harrison Ford. Bill Clinton lecturing Muslim voters in Michigan. Harris making repeated appearances with Liz Cheney.
Liz Fucking Cheney.
And, of course, plenty of reports writing Trump off as a defeated shell of a man who, lest we forget, would be appearing in court to be sentenced before the end of the month.
I’ve been reevaluating the “Vote for Cowards” philosophy since Tuesday, and there’s a glaring issue that I’ve since realized. Beyond being another way of dressing up the illusion of choice we have between right-wing and center-right parties, there is the problem that not all cowards are alike.
Sure, some might be open to suggestions. If you yell loud enough and threaten to withhold a vote or a donation, it might spur them to do the right thing.
But there are also cowards who don’t want to listen. They freeze in a crisis and bury their heads in the sand instead of engaging with real problems and hard choices. These people can’t be swayed, and as we’ve been reminded now sometimes they can’t even get elected.
Here’s the part where I run out of steam. Because while I spent a lot of this week in a state of cold fury, I now just feel defeated and uncertain about what to do.
I don’t want to vote for cowards. I want to vote for people who actually believe in things, people who would rather burn up every last ounce of their political capital making something good happen than capitulate to the plutocracy steering this country into the abyss.
And I want to vote for someone who can say unequivocally that they will never support or condone genocide.
It shouldn’t be that big of an ask.
Part of me feels phony writing about any of this. I haven’t exactly been outspoken up until now, and I’m not some huge donor or persistent activist. But I’m also not going to play gatekeeper to myself for this cause.
While I have to figure out my own way to turn these feelings into action, others are doing the work right now. The folks at Remap Radio have been raising money for Anera this weekend, and I think it’s worth pitching in to help them reach their goal.
Free Palestine.
subjunctivitis 