I’m so exhausted from being disgusted. I know, that’s where we’ve been for quite a while now but we don’t have to be. I think that’s what we need to remind ourselves of. We’ve been dragged down into the mud so long that the mud has started to seem like the normal place we should all be slithering around. That’s what was so brilliant about Tim Walz calling Trump and company weird. They should be considered weird. They should have always been considered weird. We never should have allowed ourselves to normalize any of this stuff. But we did to some degree, as much as I tried to never let it be normal I still got used to it being what to expect. But sometimes the right turn of phrase brings everything into light in a new wayB or turns it upside down. It does work both ways.
Take fake news as an example. In 2016 we were bombarded with fake news. Actual fake news. Bizarre conspiracies about Hillary Clinton running a sex trafficking racket out of a pizza joint for instance. It was tangible enough that a guy actually went to a pizza joint in D.C. with a shotgun expecting to save enslaved children. He went to jail for that when the people who spread these falsehoods happily went on with their podcasts or websites or twitter accounts. We were knee-deep in fake news. And then Donald Jessica Trump, I think that’s what the J is for, called any reporting on his actual shittiness to be fake news. In an instant, he managed to turn the whole world upside down. Within weeks the phrase was being used by right-wing media all over the globe and we were all plunged into an unreality of bullshit. That really sucked. And we’ve had to listen to this stuff for years now and watch millions of our fellow citizens repeat outright lies like they were the lyrics of the song of the summer or something. It’s been crazy-making, can we all just admit that so we can heal and move on?
And then, just a few weeks ago, I know it seems like years but it’s been only a few weeks, Tim Walz called Trump weird and somehow the sky opened up. All of a sudden the emperor had no clothes. See that? It can work in both directions.
So now when Ann Coulter tries to make fun of a kid for expressing love for his father, something that she could have gotten away with just a few weeks ago but obviously shouldn’t have been allowed to, she now has to delete her tweet. I mean we all know she said it, so deleting it was just her way of trying to make it go away. It’s not like she apologized or anything because she’s just a really shitty person. I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense, it’s just kind of obvious. She can change if she’s willing, but so far she hasn’t seemed inclined to do so.
So here we are. We have a new paradigm we can embrace. We can shake off the bullshit and get back to reality. Because like Oprah said at the democratic convention we have some serious problems and we need to be able to have adult conversations. Won’t that be nice? Adult conversations again about how to address our problems.
Don’t get me wrong, they will still be lying and name-calling and making false accusation and trying to turn reality on it’s head as hard as they can for the next however long until they have to slither back into the darkness and regroup. But some of their power has been diminished.
Well before I end this piece I thought I’d mention some of those problems that we should have adult conversations about.
We have to get the money out of our politics. It’s nuts. Back in 2008, we hit the first Billion dollar election. That seems quaint today and if we don’t think that’s a problem we’re fooling ourselves. So let’s have an adult conversation about that.
The Electoral College has to go. Kamala Harris will win the popular vote by 8 million and yet this election is still close. Can we do some adulting on that?
We go into debt every year roughly the same amount as we spend on the military. About a Trillion a year. I’m sorry, we have record homelessness, deficient education funding, our health care is bankrupting people, child care and elderly care is overly expensive, you name it. We need to either reduce our military spending or figure out how to raise revenue to cover what we actually need. Can we talk about that like adults?
The middle class needs help. The New Deal and labor created the best economy the world has ever seen. But it didn’t include everyone. We can do it again and make sure everyone is on board this time but we have to be adults and recognize the reality of our past. Good economies didn’t start with Reagan, he was the beginning of the end. Can we adult on that and quit listening to the gaslighting about what makes a strong economy?
So yes, I, you, all of us are ready to get back to reality. And unless we start talking about real issues and recognizing our actual history we’ll land right back here again. Because the same forces we have always had to fight to make this a better place are in many ways stronger than ever. That’s what we just witnessed. But we have a chance to put them on the ropes and let the adults in the room expose them as the selfish, entitled children with terrible ideas that they are.
Right now, at this moment the emperor has no clothes, let’s take this opportunity to reclaim our right to govern in a way that benefits everyone.