I’m not doing so great. Burying myself in work and avoiding politics. I know I should focus on Canadian politics since I’m here and do what I can to prevent what happened in the States from happening here, but the choices we have are much less inspiring and I just can’t think about it too much right now or I’ll just sink. So I’m clearing my Netflix backlog, trying to get fit again and doing all the stuff I put off instead of reading or doing anything about politics.
I guess we should be glad the conservatives didn’t manage to pull out a win in BC at least.
i don’t need to know your specific details, but…
yes, yes you have, just as all women have suffered a gigantic blow.
i wish i could give something more consoling, but the gesture is lost in what seems to be a disastrous setback.
even i, a simple man, can plainly see that there is an ugly uprising gaining momentum and force.
i want ever so dearly to be something, someone, who can aid, comfort, or stand for women, and be of use in the greater cause for equality. i know that it is easy to be a “keyboard” ally, but i mean it with all that is left of my heart.
I’m coming out of panic mode and trying to start preparing, but the absolute flood of disgusting and oblivious victim-blaming is so disheartening. Harris went left too hard, while also ignoring the left and courting the right. She didn’t address the issues, while getting bogged down in boring policy. People were outraged that she replaced Biden without a primary, yet Biden was also SOOOO OOOOOLD and practically dead on his feet. Just endless excuses for why Americans couldn’t possibly elect a barely-flawed woman over the worst man imaginable.
Not just media talking heads either, people on Discord and other online spaces. Where are we supposed to go from here if even our allies act like this? At this point it seems like people are SO eager to obey in advance that I’m starting to think that’s why they didn’t turn out to vote. They could have stopped him from ever coming into power again but were such cowards that they surrendered before the battle even started, in the vain hope it would buy them mercy under his regime. Maybe that’s overthinking it and it was as simple as stupidity and apathy, but in any case, they’re sure as hell kissing the ring now.
So yeah, I’m not okay either. The feeling of betrayal and isolation, being unable to trust or depend on anyone, is making it hard to move forward. That’s exactly what the right wants, yet at the same time it’s completely justified.
No worries, and I agree that Harris and the entire Democratic Party should be way more left and push hard for policies that actually help people in meaningful ways, rather than the productive but sluggish and halfhearted way they’ve been going (for example, I’m very grateful for the ACA, but it’s not universal health care, and there’s no excuse for the USA lagging behind on something almost the entire rest of the planet figured out decades ago). But Harris was at least a levelheaded centrist who was no worse than any other Democrat I’ve seen in my lifetime and better than some. The kind of candidate who should have been good enough for anyone to at least reluctantly vote for if the alternative is Trump. Weird how when it’s a Black woman, good enough suddenly wasn’t good enough any more.
I agree… I keep wondering how so many people just didn’t see that, or didn’t care enough about it to affect their votes. I just don’t get it.
(I’ve also seen people complain they never got confirmation that their mail-in votes were counted… I don’t know how widespread that issue is, but it’s concerning.)
Out of desperation after 4 months unable to land a job with my resume (I’ve been a manager in logistics, transportation, warehousing and manufacturing for 25 years), unemployment benefits terminated and Pussycat’s medical bills stacked up, I signed with all the staffing agencies in the next town over. They all only had the same 2 jobs - 3rd shift at the metal door factory half an hour from my house for $19 an hour but a three week waiting list or $15 an hour first shift at the glass door factory 11 minutes from my house start immediately. So I took the $15 job - less money that I made 30 years ago when I lived in the fucking ghetto and my rent was $200 a month and gas was $0.97 a gallon. $15 an hour full time gets me about one third of the way to covering the monthly bills (mortgage, insurance and utilities - not the medical bills lol).
The displaced worker program did pay for my safety boots, so that was nice.
So I went to the Bethesda mission to sign up for food boxes, because once I start this job the SNAP subsidy (food stamps) goes away. As soon as I walked in the door I recognized the smell. Decades ago when I worked as a veterinary technician one place I worked was a wildlife rehab. We depended on discarded food from grocery stores to feed the squirrels, raccoons, opossums, and deer. Rotting bananas, slimy lettuce, wrinkled peppers, all the food bound for the dumpster. We had to sort out most of it to dump on a huge compost field out back and fed the animals with the rest.
That was the smell. Rotting dumpster food trash.
Sure enough, when they brought the box to my car it contained a huge bag of brown pre-chopped lettuce, bags of pre-sliced carrots that were distended into pillows from the rot-gas, a big bag of slimy mustard greens, a rotten English cucumber sealed in plastic, two dozen grey bananas, and enough soft zucchini to make six loaves of bread. The canned stuff was fine, and I think the apples and oranges will be ok, but goddamn this is what Walmart “donates” to food charities - fucking garbage. While I was briefly there two other families came to get their once-a-month boxes too.
I’m not good. I feel like I’m about to cry at any moment. I’m going to meet a friend for drinks tonight. Hopefully I’ll be able to have a good time or at the very least distract myself for a while.
