By Willow (willowashmaple.sbs, formerly of willowashmaple.xyz)
Nov. 7, 2024
Just like eight years ago, in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, history repeated and now I'm hearing a chorus of whining and crying from middle-class white cishet women. Spare me your sob story. I don't want to hear about your "resistance" or even worse, "I want to move to Canada" bullcrap. Your words reek of privilege and I'm tired of it.
"Defend democracy?" Good deal. Democracy was working just fine exactly as designed. And that democracy lets anyone -- including a convicted felon with no character, no moral convictions, and no integrity, not to mention any real experience in public service -- raise money and participate in a national popularity contest. Being a TV reality show star cosplaying as "a successful businessman," he got lots of votes from no-information and low-information voters, including just about one out of two white Americans.
The joke's on you. You had the last four years of Biden and eight years of Obama. What did the Democratic Party really do other than give middle-class white cishet Americans a false sense of "everything is fine"? You made this happen because most liberals did nothing to question the systemic problems inherent in the United States, except when doing so was a cultural fad (remember Occupy Wall Street, the Women's March on Washington, and Black Lives Matter?) that was "cool" for you to take part in. Everything was just performative. It is laughable that big pharma, hospital systems, banks, and real estate businesses began their so-called DEI efforts -- and quickly scrapped them when the MAGA Republicans started trolling them online.
As a young queer person in Oregon, I literally had no legal rights protection until January 1, 2008. Until then I could be legally discriminated against by anyone for little or no reason, and I lived through that. I remember how white gay men and lesbians were just as racist and classist as their heterosexual counterparts, and acted oppressively toward BIPOC queer and trans folks as well as houseless folks. I lived through Oregon Citizens' Alliance's campaigns of hate. Sure, there were city and county ordinances that ostensibly protected LGBTQ+ persons from discrimination since 2001 or so -- but they only applied to the municipal governments and their contractors, and were largely unenforceable. I did not feel safe going to the suburbs outside the Portland city limits, even Beaverton or West Linn.
As someone who passes as an Asian (and occasionally mistaken for a Native American or Alaska Native although I have none of those genes as far as I know), I've had my own share of microaggressions and overt discriminations.
As someone who was chronically houseless, I've seen well-meaning liberals and their elected Democratic officials harming houseless folks either by action or inaction. In my experience, most liberals hate us as much as the Republicans do.
All these things happened under President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, and President Barack Obama. Heck, Obama was against same-sex marriage until Obergefell -- and same-sex marriage was the extent of LGBTQ+ advocacy for the progressives so that middle-class white gay couples can look like middle-class married couples and do middle-class things like having kids and buying a house together. I do not remember Kamala Harris as San Francisco prosecutor or as California attorney general doing anything to prosecute homophobic parents who throw away their queer kids for the crime of child abandonment and child endangerment.
The mass detention of immigrants began under President Bill Clinton (Democrat), who decided to become Newt Gingrich's lap dog. The extent of human rights abuses under Bill Clinton and Janet Reno's Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was so egregious that The Oregonian newspaper wrote a series of exposes and won a Pulitzer Prize.
President Barack Obama (Democrat) expanded the post-9/11 program of deportation dragnet and made the infamous historic record of deporting more than 2 million noncitizens -- a record that was not broken by Donald J. Trump.
Republicans are more blatant and in-your-face about their hatred, cruelty, and violence. Democrats are just the same, except they do bad things in secret while no one is looking while hiding behind performative gestures and occasional funding of progressive community organizations to pacify and distract the activists.
And only a fool did not notice this.
End of rant. Peace out.
W
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p.s. Listen to today's mass call:
Post-election mass call: Making meaning of the moment
Worth Fighting For
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