Vote Like It’s the Last Real Election
Because if Trump wins, it will be.
I woke up before sunrise. Masked up. Hoodie on. (59 degrees in Austin, Texas — what a dream come true!) Waited. Then, at 7 a.m., I made my move like a goddamned ninja. I pulled the lever and voted straight-ticket Democrat … the first time I’d ever done so in all my life, outside of a primary. I got home at 8, and briefly went back to sleep. I imagine I’ll have a lot of sleepless nights over the next 20 of ‘em.
Listen, friends. I talk a lot about fighting for happiness, making the most of your life, and how to be a better human. (I should take some of that advice, but, you know what they say: those who can’t, teach.) So, I don’t think it’s off-brand of me to argue that you can have a better shot at doing all those things if you go out and vote, and make damned sure your friends and fam do the same.
Another four years of this petty knucklehead in the White House and his army of death cultists brandishing AR-15s at Starbucks? Our ship is going to sink us in such horrific fashion, that you’ll look back upon 2016–2020 the way you look at the opening half of Da 5 Bloods juxtaposed against it’s second half. (Good movie. Y’all should watch.) Happiness will be harder to come by, you will not reach your potential, and you’re going to feel like — and be roundly accosted as — a complicit clown for the rest of your natural life if you don’t vote for Democrats all the way down, starting at the very top with Biden. Think I’m exaggerating? Damn, you must be new here.
Lemme ask you something, pardner. You like the last four years? With all the disinformation, corruption, conspiracy theorists, white supremacist violence, ICE raids, concentration camps, nuclear posturing, environmental destruction, hate speech, epic income inequality, reproductive rights rollbacks, border walls, international embarrassments, authoritarianism, uncontained pandemic, mass shootings, economic collapse, political violence, open fascism, and the erosion of democratic norms and public trust? Huh? Was that shit fun for you? Was it?
No. No, it was not. It unequivocally, unabashedly and unrelentingly sucked harder than a jet engine in a black hole. Not that the U.S. hasn’t sucked before — slavery, the Civil War, the depression, segregation, WWI…
