First Draft

Hasn’t condemned looting and property damage that follow protests.

Hasn’t put the flag in the background of the Democratic Convention or in any commercials or campaign events.

Hasn’t mentioned God and/or took God out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Is going to take away people’s guns.

“You are actively trying to amend your Second Amendment right and take away our guns,” the man said.

“You’re full of s—,” Biden replied, adding that “I support the Second Amendment.”

Opposes law and order. 

Hates police.

I can do this all day, you know. I can line-by-line refute what’s being shared around various circles and pages that might be owned by people you know or might be run out of a Fox shop or might be backed by Daily Caller pieces or might just be horseshit of the worst possible kind. I can show everyone where they’re wrong.

Are they going to listen to me? Or am I just some liberal loudmouth who hates their freedom and wants to destroy America? Or is there going to be another list full of other items that are terrible, of things Joe Biden has done and not done? And after I fact-check that list, another?

I’m not sure it matters what Joe does or doesn’t say. The past 7 days have been an object lesson in the power of Fox News, Facebook and other right-leaning partisan media in driving a false narrative about what Joe Biden and the Democrats do and don’t do.

I’m honestly not sure if the truth matters to people who are looking to express defensiveness and belligerence instead of honest political views. I’m honestly not sure there’s any profit in handing out Pinocchios to people who are still “for” their team and “against” the other one, citing issues that don’t exist and can’t be proven beyond a copypasta from your neighbor who knows a guy who heard from someone.

I’ve been tired of the meme wars since 2016 and my exhaustion has tipped over into aversion.

I don’t actually disagree with Michael Moore here: 

“I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much,” he later added.

He continued to voters: “Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!”

That I can give you those links, that I can check every fact, verify every statement, plus name four people who won’t be able to stay in this country if he has his way, that I can name 10 directly affected in verifiable personal ways by this administration to the adverse effect, holds no water with anyone when there’s a 24-7 propaganda network blaring that all violence is leftist violence. That Joe Biden would make it worse. That we have no choice but to re-elect Trump in some act of aggression against all the forces of the 21st century “ruining” America including some, let’s be honest, over which not even Trump has control.

Trump cannot make athletes play if they don’t want to. He cannot make the movies show the stories you want them to show. He cannot dictate that everyone be nicer to the cops. Don’t you think he would have if he could? The things people are so angry about — that the world doesn’t look like our past ideas of it, that nothing is the same anymore and the world is full of indignities and nonsense that drive us insane in a million little ways — those aren’t even all his fault.

But they’re part and parcel, aren’t they, of voting for him, since the same people who like the athletes and the movies like the Democrats? Isn’t it all just one big morass? Isn’t that the thing we liberals fail to get, over and over and over, through loss after loss after loss? That it’s not this or that percent, it’s God and the flag and traditional American values against … against. That’s what we don’t understand, right? That’s why we keep losing to him?

I haven’t felt so tired or scared since this all started. Not even in the early days of the pandemic. We lose this and we lose it all. And I’m not going to yell at protesters for protesting or even violent looters for violently looting because if they listened to me would be the first time that train ever showed up and who the fuck am I anyway to tell someone who’s angry at decades of subjugation to just put that aside? I am going to say, and I am not usually THIS pessimistic, that if we do nothing but fact-check and post memes and yell on Facebook, Michael Moore’s going to be right.

ACT NOW means register voters. It means volunteer to drive people to the polls. It means continue to post information about how to vote by mail. It means vote by mail if you can. The lines have to be out the door. The mail has to be an avalanche. It can’t be contested. It can’t be close. It has to be overwhelming and beyond dispute. It has to be a landslide the likes of which we don’t even think are possible anymore. It has to be something we ain’t ever seen in all our livin’ lives.

Can we do that? I don’t know. I look at what’s arrayed against us and honestly, until this week I would have said we’ll be okay. I would have said we’ve got a prayer. Now? I’m looking at maps to find a crossroads and I’m stocking up on salt and shovels.

ACT NOW means if you have five bucks and you haven’t given it to a candidate who needs it you need to do that. ACT NOW means sign up to text and send postcards and make your friends and kids do it too. ACT NOW means get the fuck off your social media and stop fighting the meme wars, it’s stupid, it’s unproductive, and it’s fueling the despair that, once and for all time, is NOT A PLAN.

Make a plan. Because those things up there, that Joe Biden did and didn’t do? On election day they don’t mean anything. True or false.

A.