I Voted

:date: 2024-11-04 17:44 :tags:

I have voted in every presidential election I have ever been eligible to vote in. On Saturday, I cast my first vote for president.

And here in the wild places of Michigan (as John Oliver highlighted) I got this delightful "I voted" sticker which it turns out reflects a lot of my feelings about this election.

But first, there is so much to unpack.

Let's start with this ridiculous Maga talking point: Democrats are bringing in foreigners who will presumably vote for Democrats. To which I say why can't Republicans simply appeal to those immigrants on their merits with good policy sense? Could it be the unhinged xenophobia and racism? That's not an immigrant problem  —  that's a Republican problem.

This Magaland fear of importing foreigners is beyond un-American. It is fatuous. Foreigners can not vote. Magahats believe, however, that an illegal foreigner can vote in the same way they showed up in the country  —  illegally. Uh huh.

As a former (mildly - 8 USC §1304e) illegal immigrant let me tell everyone exactly how this works. Generally people come to the USA for dollars. They do not give a single shit about anything else. They are certainly not going to explore ways they can fill out more complicated forms in the presence of government officials who jeopardize their freedom and those dollars. It makes no sense on first principles and this never happens. For all practical purposes it is not a thing.

But but but!, say Maganerds, here's a case where a Chinese national voted illegally!! Oh my! So obviously it is "A Problem". In fact, because this freak occurrence has happened, Magafriends have elevated it to The Problem Of All Problems. I'm sorry but this is like believing that the biggest threat to the USA is Indians aboard container ships taking out critical bridge infrastructure. That also happened exactly once and deserves to be taken a lot more seriously than one Chinese kid voting.

And that container ship accident was an accident. I'm a little weirded out to not hear a follow up about the motive for the Chinese kid voting. Was it an unfortunate ESL cultural misunderstanding mistake? I used to work in a factory that printed PhDs for people to hang on their office walls in China and even at the PhD level, English to Chinese is a tough conversion and I can all too easily suspect simple prosaic confusion. Several times in my life, I have been handed a stack of forms by university officials and told to complete them all or Bad Things will happen. The only alternative to that obvious explanation is some kind of bizarre Chinese performance art.

But if this is the case to be made that filthy swine foreigners are illegally voting in American elections, I'm relieved and satisfied that for all practical purposes, it is not happening.

For a very large number of Americans to justify some very Hitlerific nonsense and demonizing foreigners, something is very amiss.

Just like all four of my grandparents  —  who all spent several years of their lives actively trying to kill as many as possible  —  I'm obviously worried about Nazis too. You know, like all sane people. But I have to confess that (because it is so obvious) repudiating odious failed political ideologies from 20th century Europe can be overshadowed in my mind by something more personally aggravating  —  the hypocrisy.

Apparently Maga needs an outgroup; while the OG Nazis went with Jews, and gays, Maga goes with foreigners and, uh, gays. Ok, fine. Obviously everyone hates those vermin who didn't have the good manners to be born in the USA.

Obviously. Except.... Hang on a sec... Uh, isn't Dear Leader's mother a filthy immigrant from the filthiest shithole archipelago in the entire world? Yes, true. And isn't his wifebot unit a Slovenian? Just saying. I'm pretty sure he's had two foreign wives. (Three if you count a bromance with Elon Musk.) Can you imagine if every Magalad imported two foreign wives? Chaos and barbarism! Lock up your pets! Ok, fine, Dear Leader is "special" and gets some exemptions. (Like being the only devout Bible enthusiast  —  a Bible publisher in fact!  —  who doesn't want to talk about the Bible! Now that is a miracle!)

Surely the rest of the Maga faithful faithfully shop American when looking for wholesome women. But, astonishingly, no! JD Vance's wife was the daughter of Indian immigrants  —  apparently her Telugu-speaking mother also worked at the same San Diego PhD factory I did. Well, fine, but that's technically an American wife, right? Obviously I think so, but some Magafriends question the Vances' commitment to the whole hateful xenophobia agenda. Do JD's in-laws eat pets? Because I have pet owning family members in San Diego who need to know!

The parents of Marco Rubio's wife are from Columbia. Though good ol' boy Bobby Jindal was born in Louisiana, his wife was born in India. And what about the Hypocrisy GOAT? Oh yes sir! He is the undisputed hypocrisy champion precisely for over-the-top exploits like marrying serial US cabinet official Elaine Chao  —  who was born in Taiwan. The people of Kentucky must be so proud of their champion hypocrite  —  well done, Mitch McConnell!

It is not hypocrisy that I think it's beneficial when Americans marry foreigners. And unlike the 37% of 2016 voters who would rather have a beer with Hillary Clinton, I would prefer to join the 45% of voters who would prefer to have one with Donald Trump. No, that's not hypocrisy, my friends  —  n.b. Trump does not drink beer.

But those are easy cases of hypocrisy. What about the tricky subtle stuff? The big one I get caught up on is Magaland's simultaneous obsession with xenophobia and crime. For example, here's an article (which I'm not even going to bother reading) on The Heritage Foundation's website titled "Secure America's Borders and Reduce Crime". Obviously these are the big concerns over in red hat country.

Well, it turns out  —  as some of you already know who recall my review of Bryan Caplan's book on immigration  —  that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native born populations. Shocking, right? Here's some recent research from Stanford expanding this to include the last 140 years. They say facts like these which I have yet to see contradicted:

Is this because immigrants are smarter and harder working and therefore harder to catch? Obviously if you say that 100% of illegal aliens commit the crime of being illegal, sure, that will pad the stats the other way, but that's not really a good faith representation of the criminality of the economic migrants out picking your food.

What this means is that you can either be interested in reducing crime or reducing immigration  —  but mathematically not both. Pick one. Given these trends, if you let more immigrants in, then the crime rate must necessarily decline. If there is one note of consistency in these contradictory policy objectives it is the craven fear.

Fear that those of us who don't own guns will take theirs. Fear that they'll have to use those guns. Fear that some foreigners will offer a better value to their employer. Fear that they need to return to the good old days for any hope of being "great".

I have never really been too concerned about Donald Trump's hypocrisy in the same way I don't worry about the hypocrisy of tornadoes. I've said since 2016 that the only policy position you can be pretty sure Trump will consistently apply is enthusiastically firing people. Every other policy objective a voter may have is total wishful thinking if you think at some time in the future Trump will still be aligned with it. Nobody has any idea what crazy direction he'll turn.

A president who is mercurial and chaotic can cause substantial damage. What does bother me from a policy standpoint are two main things. First is destabilizing the goose that lays the golden eggs: a predictable well regulated environment of fairness and trust that sensible capitalism and markets can make long term plans around. Trump has expressed a desire to do reckless things like fire all the experienced government employees, impose massive regressive tariffs, vindictively tamper with important institutions like the Federal Reserve, etc.

Magabros just fault the liberal media for spreading these rumors. The liberal media is definitely anti-Trump, right? Like that super leftist libtard hippy, Michael Bloomberg, right?

Fiscally I identify as a TheEconomistist  —  which is someone who respects The Economist and believes that what it says about complicated shit is probably as sensible as anything. And when The Economist says Trump is a wrecking ball, well, I take that seriously.

And tons of normal anodyne non-partisan news sources are showing measured reservations of Trump. Here's the AP and Reuters.

And democracies around the world are cringing. For example, from Deutsch Welle we see Germans  —  who are pretty good at spotting Nazis  —  being nervous about Trump getting elected.

Clearly a lot of credible somewhat fiscally conservative economic sources are fearful of Trump destabilizing the US and its economy in ways that will be difficult to repair.

The other serious problem with Trump  —  which now is pretty obvious to those not in his cult  —  is that he has been very destructive to the entire project of democracy. Thanks to Trump there are now people in the USA who are having a hard time understanding why having their favorite guy simply control everything with absolute power is a bad idea. I guess they never had a chance to talk to my antifa grandparents.

The people who are in Trump's thrall have no way to hear any evidence that he was properly voted out of office. If this is not scary to you, you may be in this cult.

Bernie Sanders put it well in a recent video:

This situation is grave enough that if you're an American and not doing all you can to stop this kind of autocratic thinking, then you are American in name only.

Maybe you are a woman, and/or someone who likes them, and you're not keen on the normalization of Trump's misogyny. Or you don't need Trump telling you what you can and can't do with your own body  —  "like it or not". For me, I'm blown away by the hypocrisy of calling immigrants "rapists" while losing court cases where he is accused of sexual abuse etc. Stacking the Supreme Court with unpopular anti-choice toadies is a serious injury to the government that will take a long time to heal.

I sympathize with real Republicans who are conflicted about voting Republican. But hey, I didn't get to vote for the candidate or party I wanted to vote for either. I had to vote for Kamala Harris. Sometimes preserving democracy is important enough to go out of your comfort zone to suppress anti-American despotism. Here is a list of a zillion prominent Republicans who repudiate Trump. A lot of them were stupid to go along with him in the first place, but at least they finally snapped out of it.

Whom would I have preferred to vote for? Astonishingly, neither major candidate paid any attention to what is likely the most important issue of our time. Bernie Sanders again...

So if, like me, you are concerned about the environment a vote for Trump isn't just one of the two politicians who don't care about the issue. It is a real endorsement of doing nothing and hoping you'll die before your descendants come to openly hate you for your apathy.

I usually do my best to see both sides to an issue. I like that Trump's not really religious  —  those of us who have studied the Bible are certain he is not. I like that he makes religious hypocrites look like fools. I like that he chaotically took a wild swing at the mortgage interest deduction (which strikes me as a bizarre welfare handout for mortgage originators). I'm impressed with his luck. I'm impressed that he is so brazen and mostly says what's on his mind. I kind of like that he called Liz Cheney a "radical warhawk" (perhaps conflating her with her father, who certainly is one). I like how while being nearly incoherent with statements like that he still forces some macho bros to think a bit more carefully about the woes of traditional Republican war frenzy. I think that paying consenting adult entertainers to have sex with you should not, in principle, be illegal. I like that Trump is a non-drinker.

However, that's it. That is all I can say about the guy that is not negative. I never watched his reality show which sounded like a waste of time to me. I never respected his business acumen which I consider kayfabe. I actually read "his" stupid book and fundamentally disagree with its sophomoric premise. Call me a snob but selling gold sneakers and faux emperor coins and scammy "luxury" watches and other ridiculous tat seems beyond gauche, c'est vulgaire.

He doesn't even drink alcohol FFS!

Just to rub our noses in crapulent stupidity here is Vance, no slouch when it comes to hypocrisy, showing the Magaholics what the conceptual difference is between the two candidates.

Trump is a mean-spirited, hate-filled, abusive, callous, tone-deaf, impulsive, mendacious, divisive, anti-intellectual, hypocritical, insensitive, hubristic, xenophobic, tawdry grifter. He may be the GOAT of narcissists.

That's pretty bad but, amazingly, it gets even worse. Trump has made suggestions that he would be comfortable using the military to deliver retribution to his political enemies. When his supporters defend this they must resort to the kind of logic that says something like, "Well, at least he's not really good at following through with anything so you're probably fine." I'm sorry, but that's a little too insane for me.

Why am I even writing this? Why am I even giving this clown any oxygen? Well, that retribution thing really rubbed me the wrong way. Regular readers may recall that I have a creative voting strategy. This means  —  especially now that I live in the swingiest of swing states  —  that I get mailings intended for the Magahoard. And this one really is a challenge to my commitment to pacifism.

First, I'm going to just skip the raging hypocrisy of Dear Leader previously claiming that early and mail-in ballots were all fraudulent.

Second, yes, it turns out that your voting participation is a matter of public record. That can come as a bit of a surprise to people. I hadn't really considered it. As the flier says, whom "...you vote for is secret." True. But it is also true that for reasons related to keeping people from voting twice, or letting ineligible people vote, there is a public list of who did in fact vote. Ok, that's a bit weird but I'm an assiduous voter, so fine, no problem. You should be an assiduous voter too.

The insidious thing here is that the flier seems to be saying that because they know you're a registered Republican, if you do not show up to vote, it's an affront to Dear Leader and the Maga faithful may have some vindictive "consequences" in store for you. At the very least, the town's Magabusybody (pictured?) will be shitposting on Facebook about you.

And to that, I will quote my favorite AI Taylor Swift-ish song: Eat a bag of MAGA dicks.

(Taylor Swift  —  real or fake  —  is not usually my scene, but I've lately been trying to buff the stats of patriotic memes. Driving the algo is probably the real "election" these days.)

Listen up Maga asshats - I did vote. And I voted as hard as I could fucking vote to immediately flush that orange shitball from the national consciousness. If that's a problem, if you're not happy with that and you'd like to send someone round from the local Maga Gestapo office to have a little chat with me, I'll be here, in my swamp, humming a catchy AI Taylor Swift song, and waiting for you. Looking something like this.