Libs Just Wanna Have Fun

Liberals don’t want politics, they want therapy.

This was my reaction to some of the scenes from the Democratic National Convention.

One viral post on Twitter shows Tim Walz’s kids doing bunny ears behind his head with the author writing that it “is the most relatable, Minnesota content.” The tweet has 4.4 million views.

The bio of Nate Morris, the author of the tweet, reads 'everything is gonna be alright’ which perfectly encapsulates the politics of too many liberals: a longing for reassurance over reality. Libs just wanna have fun.

In another viral tweet the crowd was seen chanting ‘lock him up!’ as Hillary Clinton spoke. The author of the tweet said this was ‘karma’ which is…not what karma is. But anyway. The irony of the Democratic base frenzily mirroring one of the most famous MAGA chants is obviously not lost on them. On the contrary, they self-awaringly embraced the aesthetic.

And this is when you realize that liberals hate Trump and MAGA as much for their vibes as for their policies. Maybe more so. They hated the MAGA circus because they were envious of it. Where was their feel-good circus?

Like MAGA’s Hillary hate, Blue-anon have their own bogey-man in Trump himself. But they didn’t have their own Trump. They didn’t have a vessel into which they could pour all their hopes, dreams, agency and cognitive dissonance.

Biden was fine for a while. They tried to do the dark Brandon thing but the enthusiasm was forced.

Kamala was the missing piece.

She promises to unburden them from all that has been.

With her, they can truly feel good again.

With her, the choice isn’t between two embarrassing old white men any more.

They can unapologetically vote Democrat now. Policies? Shhh. That doesn’t matter. The important thing is how she makes you feel.

Voting Kamala is a much more solid reflection of liberal identity, of liberal understanding about What America Is, than Joe.

Phew. For a minute there, voting Democrat was going to feel embarrassing. Biden had become a loser. Possibly with dementia. Gross.

How heavily this is driven by nostalgia for the Obama era vibes can't be overstated.

And nostalgia is in itself a reactionary political force.

And now I’m seeing people who post about climate collapse, about the failure to control covid, about genocide, uncritically sharing the softest, weakest, blandest pro Harris-Walz content.

Do they know who the vice president has been for the last four years?

What do they honestly expect to change?

So depressing.

Some people are probably not going to like this article.

But I’m into reality. And the reality is nothing has changed.

Kamala is pro-genocide, pro-unmitigated covid, and pro-fossil fuels.

I know these things because, again, she has been the vice president for nearly four years.

I know these things because in the last four years the Democrats have armed a genocide, allowed covid to spread unmitigated, and turned the US into the world’s largest producer of oil.

Kamala has had nothing to say about any of it, and says nothing new now. Because she agrees with it. Because this is what empire does.

I know these things because Walz was the governor who approved a pipeline through treaty land and cracked down on George Floyd protestors. A crackdown which, liberals tell us, is good because Trump, the bad fascist man we must stop, said it was good. The below revelation and tweet got a great reception from liberals.

Make it make sense.

We’re told that Trump will do mass deportations. But Biden-Harris are deporting more people than Trump did. If Trump wins then yes, he’ll probably deport more again, because he’s a racist pig.

But this is exactly where lesser evil politics take you - sliding incrementally to the far right.

And now the Harris-Walz team are briefing that you’ll have to wait until after she wins to find out about policies.

The pitch is she’ll save American democracy from fascism.

But the how of it all is their secret sauce.

This is democracy? This isn’t already a form of neo-fascism?

I think what people mean by the ‘save democracy’ line is that a Kamala win means you’ll still be able to vote for the type of fascism you want in four years. Trump might take that away.

Yes, he’ll do other bad things too. I’m aware.

But a mistake people make is believing that fascism is fully enabled by individuals rather than embedded in systems and institutions.

For example, it was Obama who enabled the militarization of police departments. It was Obama who presided over the massive expansion of America’s drone war architecture.

Trump took advantage of this embedded fascism and will do so again. But what we really need is someone to unwind it. For the US. For the world. Kamala won’t.

It all reminds me of Keir Starmer, the new British prime minister.

During the election campaign he offered no policies of note, hoping that revulsion at the alternative would carry him to victory. It did.

Then when he won, his fans reacted in much the same empty, apolitical way as we’re seeing with liberals in the US.

A leading centrist British commentator Otto English tweeted “Its nice, isn’t it. The quiet,” after Starmers win.

A month later fascists were marauding through English towns and cities.

Palestinians in Gaza might have argued about the quiet bit long before then.

Centrists have no analytical framework. No sense of how A leads to B.

They don’t want to engage in politics.

They don’t want the conflict inherent in politics.

They don’t want to confront entrenched interests.

They want to win, but they want it to be quiet.

They want to be told everything is going to be ok.

They want to feel good about their choices.

The only thing of note Starmer has done since winning power is approve the expansion of an airport against the climate guidance of his own independent committee.

Guided-by-science centrists have had nothing to say about it of course.

I don’t know how we get out of this slip slide to the right.

We are trapped in a horrifyingly abusive system.

The fact that it is necessary to trade off issues like genocide, existential threats to the climate, disabled people, trans people when calculating if and how to vote demonstrates this clearly.

I suppose my controversial idea is that people should get our vote when they have proven themselves worthy of our vote.