Full Circle

Well, now that I'm sufficiently "inspired" to write, might as well continue and bring this full circle to one of my earlier blog posts where I contemplated out loud the idea that I may not live to see another year (spoilers: I'm still here)

Here I am, whiny 20-something cis, straight, white male, spending half of my time an insufferably opinionated politics wang, spending the other half being insufferably depressed. Is it any wonder I don't make new friends and I can't keep prospective romances from fleeing after a month with my simultaneously infuriating, frustrating, and neurotic mess of a mind?

It's been about two weeks on the dot since my last depressive meltdown. Hardly enough time to get used to not constantly feeling broken. Every time, I wonder if it'll be the last. I wonder if I'll magically get better this time, or alternatively if I'll finally feel so broken that I'll do something stupid and either life changing or life ruining.

The first thing I did when the depressive wave hit full force today was give heavy consideration to finishing my work for the day, telling my boss I quit, going home early, packing up a pillow, my cat, and a few necessities, leaving a check for several months' worth of rent, and just leaving with absolutely no plan or idea what I was going to do. Shit, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't still turning in my mind as I write this. Or maybe I'll finally write down a date and plan a trip to somewhere where assisted suicide is legal (turns out the four US states that have it require the patient to have a terminal disease, and somehow I doubt the rhetorical argument that depression is terminal would work on them. That and you have to be a resident).

I worry about becoming a statistic- a note on a page and a stain on the ground. But I worry more about having these feelings for the rest of my life. Feeling trapped in this body- in this mind- in this life.

The real thing I'm worried about? I'm worried I won't have someone who can support me through that decision. And I'm worried about how terrible it would be to ask someone to do that- to be there with me through the decision to kill myself. How on earth could I possibly ask someone who's presumably a close friend to travel with me- to help me find closure in life and in death and hold my hand before I take that step of finality. How could I do that to someone I care about? But how can I continue to do this to myself? To keep going when it hurts so much so often? To persist even when I've built my life so poorly on a foundation of dust and cobwebs; structurally nonexistent. I'm a runaway train that just hasn't crashed yet, but is destiny-bound for disaster.

I go through this song and dance every month- through therapy, psychiatry, drugs, coping techniques, hobbies, friendships, extra sunlight, extra sleep, and all I do is get more resigned, more neurotic, and more miserable. Even as much as I would have wanted companionship, I don't want to put anyone through that, knowing how bad I've been in relationships past and how much worse I appear to have gotten since.

So maybe it's about time I throw in the towel and embrace the stoic inevitability of death (who says I can't be cliche, even in times of despair?).

Who am I kidding? This'll end up like all the others- a plea for attention and recognition because my sense of self-worth is wrapped up entirely in what others think of me, despite going so far out of my way to alienate people and tread my own path. I'm too paralyzed by self-doubt and fear to make any decisions on the finality of death.

Here's hoping I figure it out someday so I can finally get off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride~

Voting Third Party for the General Election

Preface: This only applies to states that have the potential to matter in the general. If you live in California, I don't care if you vote third party, the democrat will still win. I'm also about to yell at progressives despite being a staunch progressive who supports things as far left as universal basic income.

So, I was scrolling through my feed today, when I happened upon a friend of a friend admonishing people who advocate for voting for Hillary if she's the eventual nominee. This person chided those of the position as "a thinly veiled attempt by cis straight white people to tell marginalized people to sit down and shut up and vote Democrat."

Well, color me pissed. Mostly unrelated, but the poster was a straight, cis, white male (I'll address this more later). Second, I get the exact opposite impression (though I try to be mindful of such concerns). Incremental benefits for marginalized demographics as opposed to direct detriments for marginalized demographics seems like a pretty obvious pick, but more germane, the argument that not voting against Trump represents a huge amount of privilege was never aimed at marginalized groups. It was aimed at white, middle class college students who would rather watch the world burn than see the status quo perpetuated (I'll hit this in a bit).

Lastly, it advocates instead for something unhelpful and impractical: voting third party.

Sorry, the green party isn't viable. Libertarian party isn't viable. None of the third parties are viable. And they won't be until our fundamental election rules change.

I want it to be- I really do. I like a lot of what they have to say (although surprise, they're kind of anti-science with their stances on GMOs, holistic/alternative medicine, and nuclear power)!

But they're not viable. Progressivism is getting more popular, but the country is still mostly moderate. Even if it wasn't, convincing almost literally everyone in a political party to abandon ship basically isn't going to happen for a dozen different reasons.

The thing that a massive movement to a third party would do is spoil the election. Enjoy President Trump.

Acknowledging this isn't some sort of DINO conspiracy to get minorities to keep establishment dems in power (okay, I bet there are some dems who feel this way, but don't generalize everyone who believes in the "lesser of two evils" phenomenon), it's an effort to literally get the best outcome we can out of a shitty situation.

I get that you want to burn it down to remake it. "Watch the world burn." The DNC "deserves" it. To a large extent, I agree with all of that. But this isn't about me. This probably isn't about you either, given that most of the people on my friends list (and most of their friends) are white and closer to middle class than anything else.

This is about Muslims losing rights, potentially being monitored, counted, labeled, and possibly being shoved into camps depending on how the general public runs with Trump's message.

This is about immigrants being able to seek the American dream (whether it's a bit of an unattainable lie or not) without being literally walled out.

This is about refugees being able to flee a wartorn country to the safety of our arms.

This is about choosing between a status quo warhawk or an egomaniac who cavalierly announced he would employ worse than waterboarding to get what he wanted- announced he would kill the innocent families of suspected terrorists.

This is about making sure that women's rights start climbing back up finally. Safeguarding the right to safe and accessible abortions and birth control.

This is about making sure that impoverished people have some hope with SOME kind of minimum wage hike, even if it's not as much as we want.

Seriously, I get it- I've been a Bernie fan since long before he announced his candidacy. I've wanted him to run for president for the last two elections, and I think he's got the right idea to push for a sweep of new, progressive congressmen. That's how you change a party; change it from the ground-up. You're never going to get the party to change by wasting 5% of the vote on a third party candidate. Do you remember Ralph Nader? He didn't change anything. No one in power saw that 2.5% of the vote he got and thought "we're losing the people! Quick, veer the party left!"

Bernie supplanting the democratic establishment by operating within it is the closest you'll get to a party coup on the left in this generation.

But you, white, straight, educated, cis male- you voting third party is the fucking height of privilege because you'd rather see the world burn down out of ideological purity (hoping naively that it would swerve hard left upon being rebuilt) than to make incrementally beneficial changes for marginalized demographics.

There's a common rebuttal that Hillary and the DNC are holding supreme court seats hostage- they're acknowledging that they're the lesser of two evils, but that they're still evil. And it's absolutely correct, and you're right to be pissed about it.

And you know what you should do?

Participate in politics. Get Debbie Schulz kicked out of the DNC chair position. Participate in local politics and get progressives into whatever positions they can. Once the party has been taken over at the ground level (or even a little before that), progressive presidential candidates will be seen as more viable by the establishment- they'll be a part of the establishment. Does playing the game suck? Absolutely. Should you have to? Nope.

But we have a lot of obligations that we shouldn't have. And the best way to solve them as long-term problems is to change policy and the people who push policy. Our democracy is set up to be slow, deliberate, and with high inertia. You can't just change that by pissing your vote away. Even if, Jill Stein (Green party candidate) got 5% of the vote and we managed to get through 4-8 years of Trump without any catastrophes, she would get to participate in debates and be able to get ignored by the media like other outsider candidates do (remember Ron Paul?). And what then? She'll continue spoiling the vote? How many lost elections do you expect to have to go through before something "clicks" and the DNC "fixes" the party? And what happens during that time? Are you okay with abortion becoming totally illegal during that time? What about South American immigrants being totally banned? Or Muslims being put in registries?

What are you willing to allow in the name of ideological purity?

Hillary sucks, no question. I actually hate her. But if you held a gun to my head and asked me to pick between her or Trump, the idea of picking Trump baffles me. If you legit think his social policies are acceptable, then this post isn't for you and we shouldn't know each other anyway. But if you think Hillary and Trump are the same, I have no idea what world you've been paying attention to. They're both wealthy corporatists with a penchant for war. And those are big things; but that's not even close to the sum total of their positions or the expected consequences of voting for them. One of them will be neutral or potentially good for marginalized groups. The other will definitely be actively detrimental. It shouldn't even be a discussion if your focus is on marginalized groups.

Hillary sucks, but she's popular, and there's no way in hell she'll lose by enough of a margin to make the DNC rethink everything they represent, even if that was how political parties tended to work (they don't usually).

Change the ground landscape. Bring a progressive age to local politics and the people around you. The rest will come naturally. And with a country of 300 million people, you're not going to get much better than that.