Wednesday, November 9, 2016

And your vote changed nothing (you are still going to be replaced by a robot)

[Before I get to today's post, I would like to point out that I predicted a Trump presidency in 2011--and given my method of dramatic fortune telling (soon-to-be-trademarked) worked....despite the fact that I was supporting another candidate (Bernie...but I did vote for Clinton....because obviously I am a black magician)--I would like to predict who the first female President is going to be--Sarah Palin (again, a 2011 prediction).]

[The following post was written last week before the election happened...and I stand by it despite the fact that someone is sure to shot me in the face for what I say in it.]



By the time you read this, the longest election cycle in human memory will be over. Maybe. Or maybe it will still be going on, and we are still facing months, if not years, of outrage and violence because the wrong person won. 

Years ago, I made the decision that my goal (as a pagan writer and blogger) was to get pagans and witches to vote, but that I would avoid telling people who and what to vote for whenever possible. In other words, I wanted to remain neutral. Over the years, I would like to think that I managed to accomplish this goal—but I will admit that my own political opinions occasionally have bled though on occasion. Especially in this election cycle. 

For instance, as a satirist, I have made fun of both primary political parties…but let’s be honest, I made fun of one side much more than the other. Still there is nothing quite like saying, “Congratulations America, you just elected the worst President ever!” to make both sides hate your guts. And yes, I firmly believe that for the next four to eight years, I am going to see talk that whoever won is literally the worst President ever. 

I also believe that I am going to watch the losing side do everything in their power over the next four to eight years to prevent the winner from accomplishing a damn thing. We just had eight years of the Republicans doing everything in their power, to prevent the President from accomplishing a damn thing—even voting for things that they knew were bad, and against things that their own party originally suggested because their party didn’t control the Presidency—in other words, they automatically opposed the President’s position, simply because he belonged to the opposite party. 

Basically, the entire country was held hostage because voters elected the wrong person for President.
And we are going to see that again. The Republicans have already came out and promised to block every Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton puts forth. Think about that. If Hillary wins, the Republicans have promised to block every nominee she suggests for the next four years (or eight years, if she wins a second term). Already there are problems because the Supreme Court is deadlocked on many cases. Now, imagine the rest of the members of the Supreme Court dying one by one, and never being replaced—and that is what we have been promised. And if it is Trump that has won…well, he is a barrel full of monkeys that might have both political parties trying to slow him down. 

For the one person who have not heard read my satire—I believe that a Trump presidency will result in large parts of the Constitution being crossed out, numerous military personal being tried for treason for disobeying orders, several more wars, the use of at least one more nuke on a civilian packed city; and journalists, cartoonists and comedians being locked up after their professions are made illegal. And the punchline is that he won’t accomplish a damn thing that he promised.

Ok, maybe that is merely my satirist eyes looking at the situation. The real punchline may be that he goes back to the political opinions that he held a decade or two ago (which mirrors Clinton’s), and it does not matter who wins because we end up with the exact same decisions being made—the only difference is the plumbing of the person sitting in the oval office. 

And there are certain problems that it does not matter who gets elected, we still screwed. For instance, trade and manufacturing. If the borders are closed, and companies are forced to make products here, prices go up (because cheap foreign stuff doesn’t get in), wages do not keep up (and if they do, you find yourself replaced by a robot). If we continue being part of the global trade community, well, we are decades away from global wages being equalized; and years before that happens, the workers who end up with higher wages  (no matter where they are) are replaced by robots.  In the end, it does not matter what solution that you try, people get replaced by robots. The only bright note is that if you follow the trend, and assume that businesses always go for the cheapest labor option, is that everyone in the entire world eventually is replaced by a robot—our country, being first world, merely got to experience the problem sooner than the rest of the world.  

Let me be clear here—some problems are so big and nasty that it doesn’t matter who gets elected; the problems are still going to screw almost everyone. Issues with healthcare, social security, the impeding mass student loan defaults, and unemployment are not going to go away, and are going to get worse—and there are no solutions that will magically fix them. We are talking structural problems that sooner or later will have to be dealt with. It is just too bad that no politician actually wants to be the villain that fixes them. 

And the reason that no politician wants to do what is actually necessary to fix them is the voters will automatically howl at them for being villains. The voters firmly believe that these problems are not part of their world; and that if only the poor people worked a little harder, poor people wouldn’t be so poor and need government help in the first place. Basically, voters believe that all poor people are lazy (even if they are working two full time jobs) and that is why they are poor, and that all welfare recipients are cheats. Furthermore, the reason that the federal budget is so out of control is welfare…and not the fact that we are secretly (or not so secretly) fighting five simultaneous wars, allowing corporations get away with paying no taxes in some cases, giving wealth-aid to corporations who know that they are not paying their employees a living wage (as in they instruct their employees how to file for food stamps), and a bunch of other stuff that seems to only aid the rich. 

Ok, maybe not all voters. But enough that we will have to go into a depression before anyone is allowed to fix any of the big structural problems facing us. 

My favorite example is the Florida mandatory testing of welfare recipients (because all welfare recipients are drug abusers) where the governor’s wife’s company got the contract and they did not even catch enough violators to offset the cost of the testing program. In fact, they caught less than a hundred. But people still demand it, despite the fact that all it really accomplished was making a rich person richer…because everyone who gets government aid is a drug addict. 

These same poor people are accused of voter fraud because they love welfare. This idea completely ignores the real and very legal voter fraud in this country where congressional district maps are redrawn periodically, so that congressmen can maximize the number of voters that support them while removing those areas populated by those most likely to vote against them. It also conveniently ignores the fact that voter id laws are designed to remove poor people and minorities from the voter rolls. But whatever because all poor people are lazy and welfare cheats. 

But the most interesting thing I experienced this election cycle is people calling me a traitor to the United States for talking about these very things. We now live in a culture that believes, on some level, that voting for the “wrong party” and the “wrong candidate” and for the “wrong issues” is a form of treason. How did we get here? I am not surprised by this, for I have seen every President in my lifetime be called the “worst President ever”—but I am a little unclear when it became an act of treason to exercise my right to vote for whoever the hell I wanted to vote for. 

And the really sad part is that four years from now, it is going to be worse. We are going to continue making the rich richer while blaming the poor for all the problems, continue to ignore the structural problems that will result in a recession, if not a full-blown depression. And continue to call people who decide that they don’t like such things, traitors. This election will have changed nothing, and is merely the warm-up act. 

But then again, I could be wrong—after all, I am just a happy little cynic.  

We are all going to die...because Trump is the second coming of Jesus Christ.


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