Mickey Mouse Will Lose to trump

Or
On the Hazards of Early Voting

Goddam Facebook. I can’t get shed of it. I started up just before I went to the Standing Rock protests against the pipeline because I was told that’s where everybody was. That’s where the information was being posted—daily, hourly, instantaneously—about what was going on, and what you were getting into if you came. 

So I signed up, got an account, lied about my birthdate (a shout-out to all you folks who wished me happy birthday on January 1^st) and dove in, got addicted, and finally learned what selling your time off cheap really meant.

I remember when a long-distance call cost $2.00 for the first minute and 25 cents every minute thereafter. You had to find a supermarket that would trade your five-dollar bill for a pocketful of quarters, then a phone booth, not to mention needing to develop a fast flick finger reflex for when the operator interrupted your call and demanded more change. You had to have an innate aversion to bullshit, in other words. For that kind of money and effort you wanted to get right to the point.

Not so now, and goddam Facebook, because I do so miss that innate aversion to bullshit…

On the other hand, it is incredible, really, what’s out there these days, and how fast it gets around. Talk is cheap and Facebook’s cheaper, so maybe I shouldn’t get too worked up, but (fair warning) I’m going to vent about something I’ve seen on Facebook one too many times and, to be honest, it almost feels like I'm going to puke. Like when you eat some inconsequential sausa left in the fridge a bit too long, a mere triviality of substance and circumstance that shouldn’t have any impact whatsoever on you or what you do, and yet there you are, your stomach suggesting that you vehemently reject this inconsequential nonsense immediately, becoming more and more demanding until you’re rejecting what your stomach told you all along was no good. That’s what venting on or about Facebook feels like to me, disjointed and cathartic at the same time, and I’m sorry. As I'm trying to say, I can’t help it. I have this uncontrollable urge, and some things just can’t be deferred, or even stalled. The times are too epic. I’m gonna puke. So here goes.

This is a sentiment that is appearing over and over. On Facebook. Probably other places. There are variations on the theme, but the theme is now ubiquitous. “I will vote for the Democratic candidate for President no matter who it is. Period.”

Of course what this means is that if Mickey Mouse were to run against Donald Trump, you would vote for Mickey Mouse. And I agree. I would pick Mickey over Donald anytime. At least with Mickey we’d have to admit that we've become caricatures of ourselves, living in a cartoon-reality where there’s at least a fighting chance that the Great Illustrator will give us a break, unlike our chances in the real world. What's more, I have been a believer in this very sentiment since Richard Nixon times, my first election year to vote. And so of course I do agree that in the midst of this horrendous pickle we’re in everyone of us to the left of Atilla the Hun needs to understand what solidarity is, and to act on that understanding.

But this now-ubiquitous sentiment, repeated on wide-ranging platforms ad nasuem for the last year and a half (a full three years before the next presidential election or a full five years if you count the incessant Bernie-bashing) is having the exact opposite effect of solidarity, understanding be damned.

Sad to say, but what I mean to point out to you is that those of us who have been voting reliably for Mickey Mouse since Nixon Times (OK, I'm feeling a little better. Let's modify that to "since Reagan Times"), those whom the Democratic Party machine feels are in its pocket, always counted on, condescended to and then ignored, those kinds of peoples' vote (your votes), do not count anymore, at least as far as getting this current monster and his ex-wife’s anchor babies out of their public housing berth called the White House. I’ll explain.

All of the Mickey Mouses we reliably-blue voters have been casting our reluctant ballots for since Nixon Times (sorry, since Reagan Times), have been tepid, corporate Democrats. Most of us have known this all along (surprise, focus groups!) but we've done it anyways because we really have had no other choice. So now that we have real choices, opportunities to actually transcend and soar above their corporate wrecking balls and so many millions of you are getting scared off by talking TV heads with fluff between their ears??!! You’re prepared to admit to the world (so to speak) that you prefer being a corporate shills’ vote-o-matic over something better—and possible??!! Even more to the point, now that all the non-voters who will be the ones to decide this next election (not you, reliably-blue voter who will vote for the Democrat no matter who) finally MIGHT be given a real choice to vote for real hope if we allow the possibility, and so many millions of you are going to actively and irretrievably work to crush those hopes—and any chances for our own political, cultural and physical survival???!!! 

This, dear reader, is madness (or WTF in Facebookian). The elections are a year and a half away, and now is NOT the time to be “negotiating” like a corporate Democrat (read: from a position of capitulation). Mickey Mouse (aka: Joe Biden) will lose. Let me repeat: Mickey Mouse (Joe Biden) will lose, no matter how many times you vote for him anyway. If you want to be the responsible voter like you demand others should be you will not be giving aid and comfort to those deep pockets who are putting Joe Biden up as our only choice and and seem perfectly happy to usher us further into this existential pickle they're in large part responsible for. If, as you apparently are willing to think, we are doomed to have yet another corporate-tangled caricature of a human being up there at the convention podium next summer giving his calculated acceptance speech, you better be working now to make damn sure that the Great Illustrator makes him give a speech that, under no circumstances, should be anything but transformational. That means that, like any good caricature in a long-running farce, he will be predicting his and his handlers’ own end, politically-speaking, and that he will be convincingly-ready and willing to usher in the real change that those non-voters who will decide this next election will demand if he (and his backers) really want to see those non-voting fannies at the polls or their own fannies in any position of power, ever again.

Sound likely? Of course not, but it goes without saying. We need solidarity, now more than ever. Now then, now that we finally (FINALLY!) have a real and generational chance for something better, why, why, why (!?) are so many millions of you (reliable blue voters all) so bent on defeating the intensely-important goal of doing better by giving Mickey Mouse your vote a year and a half before the election and hoping for the best?

Human nature, I guess, which doesn’t speak well of our chances given what that kind of nature has gifted us these last few years. So let’s broaden the thread a bit about those seemingly-inevitable and unchangeable things, like Nature. Let’s talk in meta-terms for just a minute, and why not? If you’re casting your vote a year and a half before it has any meaning other than a bad one, you’re basically admitting that we have plenty of time to be reflective. So let’s do that, and here, finally, is my parting rant, which is also the only hope I’m still clinging to in these dreary times.

How ‘bout we quit parsing clever words over which focus group with the most talking-head time on TV gets to decide whether Americans can handle “socialism”? Socialism is as American as rhubarb pie and is in fact an integral facet of democracy and vice-versa. That’s why “they” hate democracy and, by extension, “socialism” so much. “They” have been saying so for decades in case you haven’t been paying attention. Literally. What do you think Koch-flavored libertarianism is about, if not corporate rule enforced by a strong Leader (Mussolini's definition of fascism)? “They” who would rule by caricature (fascist) hate the fact that democracy (and by definition, “socialism”) has been here long before the Pilgrims started parsing words in the hold of a fetid ship to better beat their world view over the heads of all who disagreed with that particular world view, which, to non-believers amounted to the above-mentioned fascism (Don’t take my word for it. Ask them). “They” and so many millions of you, haven't considered the possibility that, far from being democracy’s creators, modern-day Americans are merely its host species and that we ignore this symbiotic relationship at our own great peril. The proof's in the pudding. Democracy (and by extension, etc.) is part and parcel of the flora and fauna that the original inhabitants of this place reflected, that we mimicked and that “they” now seem so bent on destroying, along with us and “their” fetid world view. I may be struggling with words here, but after living in close proximity to relatively-intact ecosystems for so many decades (Western Montana) I think all this is obvious.

So how ‘bout it? Why not admit that unless we think and act otherwise, “they” are, by default, us, even those of us self-righteously voting a year and a half early? How ‘bout we look at the Big Thing, not the words, like the fact that, since democracy (and by definition, etc.) was here long before “we” showed up and started breathing oxygen from Her trees, then She'll be here after we're gone, and what does that mean? If you don't have any ready answers to these rants of mine, how ‘bout, at least you many millions of reliably-blue voters who will not decide this next election (please remember that if you reject the whole rest of this mess), acknowledge a couple basic, self-evident, ecological, social truths that may not be fully understandable but that we ignore at the cost of our very existence? 

It should be plain as the above-mentioned pudding by now to everyone whose worldview is not fetid that: 1. Nature (the non-human kind) does not necessarily have to include us in Her future plans, and, 2. that by giving up before we even begin to reflect on HOW we got here, by aiding and abetting in the non-voters not showing up next election day, your vote not only does not count. It’s toxic. 

In terms of (human) Nature then, how ‘bout we make more room for possibilities and less for fear. How 'bout we evolve or something? 

It’s just a thought. 

Note: The above is not meant to be an attack on anyone, including Joe Biden who, I'm guessing, is a "nice enough guy". It a commentary on his calculated public political persona combined with his unenlightened policies over the decades. To present such a demonstrable corporate neoliberal as a "progressive" to the tens of millions of potential voters who will actually be the ones to decide whether the trump crime syndicate goes or stays is either a bad joke...or a good cartoon. I rest my case.

Museum of the Future. Coming Soon

"Are we there yet?"
"Hope so."