#147 - Political Popularity Contests

or: leaders aren't really supposed to be likeable, they're supposed to lead

Kathy Hochul put congestion pricing on an indefinite hiatus because she was scared that by making the bold choice to implement a deterrent for bringing a car into lower manhattan, she wouldn't be liked by car owners from New Jersey anymore.

She's the Governor of New York, but that doesn't seem to matter to her all that much. The votes of 8 million people who live in the city and would like to breathe slightly cleaner air? They don't feel nearly as good as courting the dude from Hauppauge who drives an SUV into the city every day because he thinks he's above taking the LIRR with the thousands of other people who choose to commute in an efficient way that doesn't pollute the air, burn inefficient fuel, and take up space while it sits empty throughout the day in one of the densest cities in the entire world.

Hochul is a terrible governor, but we always knew that was going to be true because she was the lieutenant governor for a corrupt administration and only got the job in the first place because Cuomo was finally taken down for being a retaliatory serial sexual harasser and stayed in because she was technically the incumbent and the New York DNC is so inefficient they've made a once democratic stronghold into a swing state by allowing republicans to run on the democratic ticket and never held anyone accountable for corruption, which only then breeds more corruption, and now the whole state is rotten.

Kathy has an aide that just got arrested for actually being an aide of the Chinese government, and our Mayor is currently under several FBI investigations for bribery but oh also he's definitely got something weird going on re: being a foreign agent of Turkey (which...feels like treason and not just a whoopsie-daisy) (looking at you too, Senator Bob Menedez) oh and he's has accusations of sexual assault that are about to go to trial.

And AOC has become a democratic shill, but ever since I found out she was a former lobbyist I held little hope in my heart so I'm not like actively devastated, more so annoyed by how progressiveness gets folks elected only for them to turn around and treat it like a silly little idea because progressives "just don't understand how things work" inside the system, unlike her, the person who promised she was only entering into the system in order to change it.

Maybe if the system is broken, we need a whole new system.

(The Constitution was an illegal document to write since the Federalist Papers were ratified but that didn't stop a bunch of the richest landowners from creating a better system for themselves! And then the fuckers from Massachusetts had the great idea that it would only be ratified IF we included ten really important amendments to SHOW and DEMONSTRATE that it was a LIVING DOCUMENT that should ALWAYS BE UPDATED AND AMENDED. And now I'm 32 and we stopped amending it the same year I was born. Oh and the last amendment, #27, was to do with how much senators and reps got paid. Like. You really do just have to laugh.)

I just get really annoyed with America in particular for pretending to be stuck in the mud when we're really just being held hostage by like four mega-companies and our politicians are all spineless losers who we have to leverage through threat of their legacy to do anything.

And while like, hey, I'll use whatever leverage I can get, but I really resent that most of the politicians just want to be famous without talent. They want to be remembered, but refuse to enact any bold policy because they're all proto-conservatives who are so afraid of getting things wrong they refuse to get anything right.

The thing is, when you're bad at your job, everyone gets mad at you.

The republicans at least knock down the pins they set up for themselves so their base can feel like winners when they lose their fundamental democratic rights.

The left get treated like idiot babies who have too-high expectations that a politician might actually...pass a law every once in a while.

Kamala is so desperate to court "moderate republicans" that she's proudly declaring her gun ownership mid-debate and promising not to take them away from anyone. Which is really fucking stupid because:

1. Guns are an epidemic in this country and until we can prevent kids from being killed on the regular by guns, no one gets to have guns.
2. Most Americans are literally begging for gun control.
3. It doesn't set her apart from the other candidate which is just bad politics.
4. She has the secret fucking service around her at all times so why the fuck is she peddling the bullshit "personal safety" angle when like, gun violence between two civilians is actually incredibly rare and even if it wasn't she is one of the most protected people in history?

And while the country overall is safe and getting safer by the year, both parties have decided to lean into the chaos theory because idk they think panic voting is more likely than inspired-to-vote voting, I guess?

No ones making any sense anymore.

Why are we asking questions about her policy in Gaza. If the tireless ceasefire is really being worked for, why would this still be an issue for her in four months? (Not because the dissolution of Israel and re-establishment of Palestine won't be an ongoing task but because I'm flabbergasted by the blatant admittance that they expect to STILL be shipping millions of bombs to Israel so they can continue to enact genocide in JANUARY.)

When you're bad at your job, you actually please no one. And when you're bad at the job of Being The President, you don't just send out an email with a broken link, you might actually break the world and the condition of humanity as we know it.

Which is why I feel like ripping my hair out whenever a politician uses a Taylor Swift lyric in a pithy way to respond to things like the monopolization of industries and flagrant disregard of anti-trust laws.

LIKE. CAN THEY BE SERIOUS FOR ONCE IN THEIR LIVES THEY HAVE VERY IMPORTANT JOBS AND THEY ARE BAD AT THEM AND IT'S CAUSING DEATH AND DESTRUCTION DON'T THEY HAVE ANY SHAME?

And if not shame, idk, maybe some motivation to make positive change.

Why doesn't anyone want to be known for solving the gun crisis?

Or figuring out clean energy?

Why don't they want the glory of success rather than the measly scraps of being liked better than – checks notes – Donald Trump. A man literally no one ever liked! Famously kind of a gauche and tacky, actually. His mentor was Roy fucking Cohn, a man who hated himself so much he literally destroyed the world and that sounds like an exaggeration but it's literally not because he created and fed the monster of Rupert Murdoch and was the one who introduced ol' Rupes & Don in the 80s and guess who's divorce was used to establish The Post as one of the most culturally relevant rags of the time?

(The documentary Gossip which ostensibly about The Posts's ascension to prominence via Page 6 told through the lens of following Cindy Adams is actually a searing documentary about how culture became what it is at the hands of these "journalists". Paired with Bully. Coward. Victim: The Story of Roy Cohn, so many questions I had about how America came to this point got answered. And the latter is made by the grandchildren of the Rosenberg's, the falsely-accused spies who were executed by the government after a trial prosecuted by Cohn, which really adds an incredible layer of perspective. The title comes from what is written on Roy Cohn's AIDS Memorial Quilt square by the anonymous quilter who made it.)

And Murdoch is literally more powerful than the British Monarchy and that's been established 900000000 times and, again, in Prince Harry's book its laid out plain as day how the monarchy is used by the press and vice-versa (and the people like Camilla who help facilitate it most) but because Harry's brain is so broken by his upbringing he couldn't help but focus on the celebrity aspect of a memoir so we got a bunch of headlines about him doing mushrooms at Courtney Cox's house instead of focusing on the fact that an Australian citizen was able to cause Brexit because he didn't like the regulations placed on him by the EU and wanted to operate within Britain with continued impunity.

I don't want to feel despondent.

Despondence is actually what a lack of leadership is intended cause.

The measure of a leader is not only their ability to accrue followers, but what they inspire those followers to do.

And one of them inspired January 6th so he's definitely worse.

But this feels almost like trying to distinguish if abuse or neglect create more harm.

Both are bad!

I would like neither, actually.

And don't worry I'm not about to spew some bullshit about Jill Stein, who is somehow the biggest Putin puppet of them all? Third parties should exist but if the Green's ever want me to take them seriously they have to stop putting her forth as their candidate.

Personally, I would love to see an actual progressive party split from these right-of-center Dems but we all know that it's going to happen with the fringe far-right first because somehow they keep actually stumbling into electing people who are such weirdos they genuinely believe the bullshit they're saying. Madison Cawthorne showed up to a coke orgy after being raised in a militant-christian household and was so shocked/appalled that he actually told the American public so the Republicans booted him during the next election is still sooooo funny to me. The right invested YEARS into homeschooling these people (via the Quiverfull movement) to create the perfect republican monsters and then realized that uh oh, these grifters actually believe the shit they've been told and aren't just failed theatre kids like Ted Cruz who couldn't make it on the stage and drop the act the second they're out of the chambers and are therefore intolerable because they aren't just willing to perform a means-to-an-end capitalist protection loop. They think Jesus is really up there keeping notes on their behavior and you will not catch them slipping!

The world is worse-off due to 24-hour news cycles because it means the average person is now exposed to the opinions of poli-sci majors on a regular basis.

Reigning political theory tends to be very narrow-minded because a lot of people want to work for the campaign that wins and they just continue to use the same playbook until it doesn't work anymore and then everyone just buys the new playbook and no one learns any lessons and everyone has really low opinions of The Masses so people get spoken about in sweeping generalizations so no one sees their opinions being reflected so they feel isolated and tune out.

Everything is political, so nothing is political, but politics shouldn't divide us, except politics is no longer about tax rates (and, let's be honest, they never were) it's plainly about whether you think women are people. so. Of course it's divisive. I have autonomy over my body and am willing to fight anyone who thinks otherwise.

I keep writing these and not sending them because they're rants and they're harsh and angry because I am angry and I have been so so angry the last year because the leaders keep lying and saying hateful shit and the leaders of the democratic party continue to use slurs when discussing immigrants and we keep having conversations about antisemitism on college campuses when what we really mean is someone was asked to think critically about the actions of the state they claim to love and relapsed into cheese addiction but now we have to take her seriously because she really is causing a distraction from the literal genocide that is being committed with American bombs which means that every single person who works at the factory in Fort Collins, Colorado that produces the white phosphorus should be tried in The Hague as well because why did we read all of those books about how "just following orders" isn't really an excuse if they weren't going to quit their jobs when it became apparent that the weapons weren't being used on the targets that war usually deems acceptable but were instead being used to decimate refugee camps full of children who are already amputees due to the targeting of IDF snipers and the horrors never end they just compound and the complicity of people is what keeps the wheels spinning on the war machine that has become a full Audrey II and demands greater human suffering in order to increase, what? Profitability???? MONEY! IS! FAKE!!! We made it up! The stock market can go away tomorrow and no material harm would occur because stocks are IMAGINARY they are a collective delusion!!!!

(WHAT IS A STOCK BUYBACK AND WHY ARE THEY LEGAL?????)

But I have to send it publicly, because yelling at my politicians via their private inboxes has gotten me nowhere and there is nothing that makes me feel better these days but maybe I can feel less bottled up.

I don't want to come off as doomerist. I'm not!

We know how to fix the climate, we just have to give those people the funding and flexibility to do it. I don't care if car owners get sad, I really couldn't give a fuck if a gun owner gets their favorite lethal weapon taken away, and I think everyone needs to grow up a little and stop prioritizing themselves because collective action requires some sacrifice for the good of everyone because we are collectively living on this planet and it's weird that we have become so trapped inside our own minds that like 10 people are able to get away with ruining it.

I would love if this could all be solved by leaders. By others in general, really. But actually none of us get to shirk our responsibility to each other and the idea that we do is what's causing so much strife in the first place and the selfishness is a feature not a bug of capitalism because of course when they create competition for basic human needs we're much more likely to step over someone on the way to our jobs because we can't be late because we can't be fired or else we become the person people are stepping over on the way to our jobs.

It terrifies me how many people casually repeat, "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people." It was a pithy headline! But also, you don't??? Yoinks! Well. Start with why you care about other people and extrapolate from there, babe!

(If you don't know what someone else cares about, ask! Then think about how to connect it to the bigger picture, because we are a familial species and rarely encounter problems in isolation that would not be better solved by a group! The first step in organizing is getting a layout of the things people care about and then figuring out the best order of operations for the solutions in order to demonstrate active commitment to solving them instead of assuming we know what would solve everything for everyone when really we just mean it would solve things for ourselves!)

I know how to explain to politicians that their job is to care about their constituents, the problem is they've passed a bunch of laws that create an environment in which caring about businesses being allowed to cheat on their taxes is more important because they've created a system in which you need a ton of money to run for anything, and instead of curbing the amount of money you could spend and therefore negating the influence of these companies, they whine about how much time they spend fundraising and then sit on their hands and pretend they're not supposed to be the most powerful people in the country.

I think they're pathetic and we should stop holding so much reverence for the offices they hold until they prove themselves worthy of any modicum of support for their actions.

Pass public healthcare, fund public transportation, and do their fucking jobs! When holding office is no longer full of glory maybe we'll stop attracting absolute losers to the roles and get more people who just want to actually improve the education system to work in that department again!

(Okay well. I'm sending this one because I think I've been suppressing my emotions to my own detriment again because I forget every now and again that making myself/my problems the center of my universe actually incredibly self-aggrandizing and entirely unhelpful because then they get magnified with no context of scope and attempt to eat me alive but hey, I never said shame doesn't work on ME!)

Leadership is tough. Which is why most people aren't leaders.

And we really have got to stop allowing people with no leadership roles to occupy managerial positions just because they liked the pay bump it offered.