Hey everyone, its yours truly Jessie Staffler, writer of the Monday GNR, coming at you on late Thursday/Early Friday with a special article I felt like writing.
Its the new year, and yet again I am seeing a ton of “Hot take” articles of “2019 sucked and guess what 2020 is going to be even worse!”. I hate articles like that. I hate people who think like that. Look, you’re not gonna get a worse year than 2016 was. I ended 2016 in a massive depression complete with panic attacks, loss of appetite, insomnia, the works. It was a nightmare brought on by that orange piece of garbage Donald Trump.
But you know what, I survived it. I got back up, Hell WE got back up, I joined a local Indivisible Facebook group, which introduced me to the original writer of the Good News Roundup, and eventually led to me getting involved with it. It was at this point I realized is what I was meant to do during the Trump administration. This is how I could help: I am an introvert without a car or drivers license, living in the middle of nowhere, I can’t go to protests, I can’t donate my time easily to help the cause directly, I can’t even really make phone calls because my phone time is limited. What I can do is spread the good news, speak the simple facts as I, a simple man, see’s them, fight back against the doomsayers who only see the negative or spew gloom and doom for no greater reason than to satisfy their angst fetish, and I can just try to make people feel a little better, to have the strength and courage to keep fighting.
And that’s what I’m doing here tonight. I’m putting together a little list of the facts of the state of things as I see them, where we are, and where we’re heading, and maybe give some helpful hints to maybe help us out in the following year. 2020 is gonna be a big one. Our best chance of getting rid of Donald Trump once and for all.
So without further ado, here’s your needs to know as I see them.
We are winning. They are losing.
This really can’t be understated. We’ve come so far in the past three year, we’ve united like I never thought possible, and we’ve done great things. Donald Trump has just been impeached, a black mark on his record that he will never recover from. GOP politicians are quitting in droves, we are slowly but surely correcting crooked district maps, and we have kicked ass in almost every election since 2016 (Hell, its hard to remember this, but we actually made gains in the house and Senate even in 2016. Just, you know, not enough to matter).
The GOP propaganda machine is showing cracks. Breitbart has lost most of its sponsors due to the efforts of the Sleeping Giants movement. Infowars recently had to pay out to the Sandy Hook parents for spewing their bullshit, even Fox news viewership is down. The Alt Right, the Nazi jackasses who were crowing and shouting “Hail Victory” in 2016, have been revealed as the jokes they are and run out of town. The NRA , once considered one of the most powerful lobbying groups, is also on its way out.
Meanwhile, 2018 proved what we can do as a united voting block as we came together and took back the house, the first major step in taking back our country. The Individible movement has helped to create a strong, tightly knit network of politically active young people who can become a powerful voting bloc. Despite skepticism from the main stream media (And I’ll get to them in a bit), the blue wave happened in a big way, and helped turn the house and several states blue. My own state of New York finally ousted the fake Democrats who always lobbied with the GOP, which means we’re finally getting some real progress in my state (I might be getting 15 dollars an hour in a few years. Which means I might be able to live on my own eventually).
Every poll seems to indicate what we all already know: That we are on the way up and the tired, hateful old GOP is on the way out, its a dying animal and in a few years it will be gone.
Dying is not dead.
Yeah, don’t take that last statement as an indication we can take it easy. The GOP is not dead yet, and they aren’t going to go quietly into that good night. They are going to pull every trick in the book to hold onto power for as long as possible, every single loophole, every judge they can appoint, every district they try and fix, they’ll do anything to hold onto power. And if they can’t hold onto power, then they will try and fuck up everything as bad as they can on the way out. I’m sure you heard of the former Kentucky Governor who, prior to leaving office, pardoned a ton of violent felons and other criminals, seemingly as punishment to the state for voting him out, or in Oregon when the GOP lawmakers fled into the woods rather than participate in the Democrat controlled state senate. Or how they held a vote to veto the Governor of North Carolina while the Democrat politicians were attending 9/11 services. The GOP are sore losers, and when they are cornered they’ll do any crazy, spiteful or shameful stunt to keep their power or make things worse for everyone.
But that’s fine. You know why? Because they are showing their weakness. These are acts of desperation and weakness. You don’t act like this when you are winning. You don’t act like this when you are in control. You act like this when you have lost the plot and are acting in fear. The fact they are going to these extremes means that we are winning in the long term, and we need to continue the course.
Just be aware, things are gonna be rough for a bit, so be prepared to see the GOP at their very worst, cause they aren’t going down without a fight.
Mentally prepare yourself for the worst now.
Gonna say something right now some of you might not want to hear: Donald Trump might win in November.
It could happen. We didn’t think he would win in 2016 and here we are three years later. I think part of the reason I was hit so hard by Trumps win is because, despite my deeply rooted anxieties, I didn’t think he was going to win. I listened to Pollster Sam Wang (the guy who famously said he’d eat a bug if Trump got over a certain share of the electorate, and to his credit stuck to his guns) and believed Hillary could not lose. And then she did and it destroyed me.
I do not want to be destroyed again, but since I can’t wave a magical wand and make whoever the Dems go with win, I’m going to have to settle for controlling what I can control: Myself.
So fight with all your might to make sure Trump doesn’t win in November, but keep in mind its still a possibility. Prepare yourself mentally for that possibility. But keep this in mind: You’ve already lasted this long in a Trump Presidency. The fact you are reading this is proof of that. Things will be bad, but we will get through it together. We have to get through it together to make sure our Democracy survives.
Get used to the idea that your guy isn’t going to win the primary.
I’m gonna call it right now: Biden is going to be the Democratic candidate. That is not an endorsement on my part, I can’t actually vote in the primary because I’m registered as an independent. But I have a gut feeling Biden is going to win. So get used to the idea that Bernie or Kamala or Buttigieg or whoever else isn’t going to be the DNC’s guy in this election. And then go vote for Biden anyway. Vote for whoever the DNC put up there. If someone tells you not to vote for them, then they are either an idiot, or a Russian bot. Don’t be a chump. This isn’t something we can play around with this time.
I am serious. If I see anyone talking about not voting because Bernie didn’t win I swear to God I will start posting pictures of kids in ICE detention centers to show you exactly what that sort of thinking gets you. We are currently waging a war for America’s very soul. We don’t have time for this petty infighting bullshit, and if you stay home and don’t vote Democrat because you’re pissy your guy didn’t win the primary, then that’s the same as voting for Trump in my opinion. If you don’t pick a side in the war against good and evil, then someone is going to pick a side for you, there’s no standing on the sidelines here.
Things are bad. Don’t talk about how they could be worse.
This is something I see Doomsayers do a lot. Where they will sit around and speculate about what will happen when Trump starts suspending elections, or when he refuses to leave office when he loses and inspires militias to rise up and start engaging terrorist activity on his behalf, or he tries to stage a coup.
And…. really? Are things not bad enough? You have to speculate how they could be worse? Really? I mean fuck me, Trump is locking little kids in cages, Australia is on fire. ON FIRE. LIKE THE WHOLE CONTINENT. And people are sitting around wondering when Trump is going to start putting heads on pikes.
I call these kinds of people chicken littles. You remember the story of Chicken Little right? its a story about a chicken whose so preoccupied with speculating about the doom that might befall him and his friends that he blinds them to the actual danger in front of them and leads them blindly into a foxes den. My point is, if we waste time worrying about the awful stuff Trump might do in the future we will probably miss the actual bad stuff happening now.
Seriously, shut the Hell up about the judges already.
This one is pretty much the doomsayer filibuster whenever we talk about how things are getting better: “None of it matters because Trump has appointed all those conservative judges. They’re going to be around for decades and so things will be bad forever.”
Yeah, I’ve heard that one countless times before, and its getting really old. Firstly, I don’t think a lot of the guys who bring it up even really think about what it means. Secondly, while it is bad, as I’ve said before its a stop gap for the GOP, a way for them to artificially extend their shortening lifespan, but its akin to patching bullet holes with band aids.
I admit I don’t really know enough about how judges work to really comment. But I will say this: I don’t think there has been a period of history where judges or the judicial system in general hasn’t been largely conservative. Hell, I’m pretty sure there has never been a point where there have been more liberal SCOTUS seats than Conservative ones. All of the great progress made has been made by the people, in spite of the courts not because of them.
So enough about the judges already. Seriously.
The Mainstream media is bullshit
You want a hot take? Here’s your hot take right here. One thing I’ve learned doing the Good news roundup is a healthy hatred for the Mainstream media, who always seem ready to foretell the doom of the Democratic party, and how everything is gonna work out for Trump in the end (And yeah, we saw how well that worked for them in 2018).
So yeah, I’ve come to the conclusion that the MSM will almost always come to defense or be quick to condemn the DNC no matter what they do. And quite frankly I’m tired of it, so I just tune them out now. And I suggest you all do the same.
Remember what we are fighting for
I am in a position of privilege. I am a white CIS male who lives in a blue state. Most of the awful stuff Trump does will never directly affect me or anyone I am related to. If I really wanted to I could just ignore all of this and go about my life and nothing would change. I do not do that, because I know there are people suffering right now because of what Trump is doing to them, and the planet is suffering because of what people like Trump are doing to it. I don’t want to live in an America where kids are thrown into cages, or where people get stabbed while celebrating their holy days, or where entire ecosystems are on fire. I want to live in a better world. Keep that in mind, that even if none of this affects you, it does affect all of us. And things lost now might not be felt right away, but their absence will be felt.
Take care of yourself.
Finally, let me say that you know what? Maybe sometimes its okay for you to take a step back and disengage from all this insanity. That’s what I’ve been doing for most of this year; keeping my ear to politics to a minimum, trying to disengage from the news of the world in order to help my mental health. There’s no shame in taking a break and looking after your own mental health. I’ve seen too many people who just scan the news all day and look for new things to be miserable about and that is just…. its exhausting. Its no way to live. I implore you, take a break. Take it easy. Go for a walk, turn off the social media. Watch a movie, read a comic book. I mean come on Disney+ just launched. Go watch the Mandalorian. They got Baby Yoda. He’s adorable.
That’s it for my little ted talk. I’m sorry if this was weird and rambling. These are just some things that have been on my mind, and I wanted to articulate them. Thank you for the time.
Lets make 2020 a great year for Democracy. Resist, vote, impeach, save the world, fight for the future.