United States Postal Service 2: Apocalypse Weekend
They’re dabbing on us.
The continued existence of the USPS isn’t just under credible threat, it’s already being dismantled. Despite all of our quarantine-addled brains, a few of us might remember the story from a few weeks ago (or five years ago, I can’t remember) that a bunch of post offices were planning to cut hours to save money. More recently were the reports that blue boxes are being removed in Washington towns -- in an election year -- due to “low utilization” and mail-in ballots may not “arrive in time” for November.
All of that is well and bad, the damn Chito in the White House etc., but the more interesting thing here is how the opposition candidate is responding to what appears to be a double barrel shot at dismantling an essential federal service and interfering with mail-in votes months before an election that will be carried out in the middle of a resurgent pandemic.
Here’s the quote that was shared in an Axios newsletter:
So, three potential interpretations I can glean from this:
He’s senile
He and his campaign do not give a fuck
1. and 2.
Even accounting for the remote possibility that he was being sarcastic, to respond to a situation like this with a little riff of Boomer gee whiz sarcasm is telling. If you’re in a presidential race where you appear to be winning against the incumbent across all the key indicators, how much would it cost you to even just lie your ass off and say you pledge to sign an executive order in your first 100 days authorizing full funding for the USPS through 2021 until Congress can barf something out?
That he won’t even commit to that is even more telling. Even if the joke response is soon replaced with a hurried “how dare you, sir” rush response through more official campaign channels, the point has come across. What it’s telling you is that they have supreme confidence that they have your vote no matter what.
And you know what? They’re probably right.
Pretty much all the polls are showing that the overwhelming majority of people who voted for Bernie in the primaries are going to vote for Biden in November. Biden polls nationally at 50% vs. 42% for Trump, and he appears to be ahead in most of those “key battleground states” where working class counties have been gerrymandered to the point that you need to clear the Legends of the Hidden Temple obstacle course to be able to vote. So why bother making overtures to anyone, much less a handful of intransigent Millennial and Zoomer leftists, when the data seems to be showing that a platform of I’m Not the Chito is enough?
This isn’t to call out anyone who’s voting for Biden, nor is it to call out anyone who isn’t voting for either candidate. Instead it’s a reminder to not to feel too haughty about how you decide to vote.
There’s no moral courage involved in a choice between cancer and AIDS regardless of which one you choose. (#TeamAIDS) Moreover the Democrats themselves made it clear that they do not care if you sit this one out. Hell, they don’t even really care if you DO vote for them. By their calculus any votes they amass in November are votes they’re entitled to (because where else are working class racial minorities and LGBTQA+ voters going to go?), and any exodus of disgruntled leftists is going to be too small to make any electoral impact but big enough to allow the establishment centrists to consolidate their power over the party even more.
So if you hold your nose and vote the response you get is, “Oh uh cool. Welcome to the Resistance I guess. Take a number.” If you don’t vote the response is “no lo queremos, no lo necessitamos.”
So get over yourself.
But that brings up the second point I wanted to mention. It’s the far, FAR more important point by far since it’s about randos on social media and, more specifically, shitposting in niche subcategories of Twitter.
Despite everything described above there are still people on Twitter who seem to believe that there’s a massive movement of disgruntled Bernie supporters who will single-handedly tank the Democratic ticket by staying home in November. These people see it as their personal mission to either seek out left-leaning people who’ve expressed their reservations about Biden online and bawl them out, or, more typically, shake their first and scream to the virtual heavens about this supposed conspiracy to get Trump reelected and prove some kind of abstract Marxist point about historical materialism.
As far as I can tell there are two potential reasons behind this strange behavior:
They’re genuinely misinformed and don’t know most Bernie voters, including Bernie himself, will be voting for Biden
They’re projecting
By projecting I mean that they are taking the anger and frustration they feel about the situation they’ve been put into and are directing it outwardly. I mean, this has to be the reason, doesn’t it? Why else focus so much of your energy on rancor towards a constituency that by all accounts is extremely insignificant and will influence nothing in November? A constituency the actual Democratic operators in charge of the actual campaign are not shy about calling insignificant and not worth offering any kind of policy concession to whatsoever?
By projecting I mean that you act as if the people you target are committing a grievous moral hazard future generations will revile them for because in your subconscious mind that’s what you believe about yourself.
Deep down you know that what you’re going to do is neither right nor moral. What you’re hunting for online is not conversions of Bernie bros but absolution for yourself.
If you can convince even one person who’s nominally to the left of you that yes, it’s worth making an amoral (not immoral) choice to vote for Biden, then that frees of you of this clawing guilt that won’t let go. If this tankie is willing to do it, why should I feel bad about doing it?
So yes, everyone, please get over yourselves. In the paraphrased words of the dearly departed Jordan Peterson, you’re not so “good,” bucko.