I wanna be clear, screw anyone who is for the draft

 So I watched a Breaking points segment with Krystal and Saagar, about the Trump administration raising the age of enlistment, and Saagar came out in favor of the draft. And...uh...yeah...no dawg. I don't care what your moral justification is, I don't care if you're otherwise on "my side", screw anyone who is for the draft.

It's bad enough to think Trump and his ilk might be stupid enough to start forcing people into the armed services for this war, but when people do it for leftie/anti war reasons, it's just as bad. Some lefties and anti war folks like the idea because it gives everyone skin in the game and it makes people less likely to be pro war, rather some being pro war and externalizing that onto the economically underprivileged or whatever. Removing the draft in 1973 was moral progress. I can understand, in times of great emergency and need, why some might be pro draft. But...unless we face an existential threat to the country, NO, NO DRAFT, PERIOD. 

Anti war leftists and the like have this idea that if people had to go, they would be more likely to be anti war. But when in history has that EVER worked? Did it work in the civil war? No, if anything, Lincoln sent in the troops to put down riots over it. In WWI, Wilson locked people up over it. In Vietnam, the war dragged on for a solid decade even with people having to go. Even when the people voted against the war in practice, like Nixon being against it in 1968, he still took like 7 years to get out. Hell he wasn't even in office any more when we finally pulled out, Ford was. 

And honestly? I dont think it would change anything. These MAGA people are dumb enough they'd die for this stuff. And anyone with half a brain is already against the war. So this is just some super self righteous sentiment.

But beyond that, I find the draft to be inherently immoral. No one should be forced to die in wars. Wars are state sanctioned violence, and using violence to coerce people to participate is immoral. War is generally immoral unless defensive for the most part IMO, and and coercing participation is doubly immoral IMO, as youre forcing your own people to die for some cause they want nothing to do with and might not even believe in. 

And let's face it while most people see draftees as being 18-25, they can be as high as 44 in the US in theory, so I still have skin in the game here. And as someone who had skin in the game with Iraq and Afghanistan too as I WAS in that 18-25 age range back then in the 2000s, uh....if you were for the draft, F you. Like...there was this democrat named Charlie Rangel who was pro draft back then. often for the same reasons. Blah blah blah underprivileged, blah blah blah everyone should have skin in the game. 

NO! And anyone who tries to force us into the draft gets my ire. I was fundamentally opposed to dems back then because I was told they wanted to draft people because of that guy. So if this is the dem answer to this war, rather than simply opposing the war, no, F them too. 

And let's face it, on the economic coercion argument, who is anti economic coercion here? My entire ideology is about opposing economic coercion. I want everyone to have a UBI, I want them to have a college education. A lack of those things are what entice a lot of people to enlist. And honestly, it always makes me laugh when people who dont normally point out that our economic system is inherently coercive kind of admit the fact in the edge cases that suit them, like prostitution sometimes being tied to sex trafficking, or people enlisting in the military "voluntarily" due to their economically underprivileged position. So dont even try that crap with me. Because I'll go in the opposite direction. Yes, coercion is bad, yes it's a problem, I have my own solutions to it. Let's not coerce people into a war they don't wanna fight. 

Honestly, if Trump can't get the troops for it, maybe we shouldn't fight it. That's my honest opinion. And unless we or our close allies are under direct attack, I'm generally not gonna support war. Period. The Iran war is an unjust war. There's no valid reason for being there. I want nothing to do with it, and if MAGA wants it so bad, let them enlist and die for their clown of a leader. That's my honest opinion. 

Reacting to 107 Days

 So I finished the book, and where should I begin? I guess I'll go in chronological order. The book is basically Harris's account of the campaign. It started back around the same time I started my last post, when Biden had his debate. And uh...yeah, the media reception was a lot worse than my own. Of course, as I said, I value facts along with presentation. Most people want presentation. The hollywood people freaking out screaming about losing our democracy stands out to me. Reminds me how I felt the whole time. 

Anyway, Harris didnt want to really get too involved. VPs are supposed to be loyal, and she didnt wanna do anything that would appear as breaking from the president to advance her career. That's kind of part of the environment. You dont want an overly ambitious VP who uses you as a speedbump to their own rise to fame. So she tried to be loyal, support Biden as she could, but in the long term it held her back.

It seems clear that being in that circle and that "swamp" to use a Trump word corrupted her sense of objectivity, if you want my honest views. She was in Biden world. She thought what Biden did was great. She was more focused on loyalty to Biden, even into her own campaign, compared to actually responding to the will of the people. This theme appeared late into the book as she was reflexively trying to defend Biden, only to be reminded by campaign staff that the public HATED Biden. It just didnt click with her. Like, she was just too lost in the sauce for her own good, and I feel like this was a fatal flaw of her campaign that I can't help but point out. 

As things started, these kinds of errors in judgment kept appearing for me. Like one of the first things she had to do with pick a VP. I can't disagree too much with the logic she ultimately followed. She didnt like Kelly in part because he was soft on labor. Shapiro was too ambitious and had liabilities on Gaza. Walz was loyal, and much like Biden, she wanted loyalty. She didn't choose him because he was progressive, but because he was loyal and didnt even really want the job it seemed. Anyway, why do I criticize her here? because her first choice was actually buttigieg but she didn't feel she could go that route because idpol. She thought a gay guy with a black woman was too much for america to accept. First of all, I wish dems would stop thinking this nonsense. It's not too much. Most people don't really care. And those who do wouldnt vote for her anyway. I mean, there's that 40% of America that's just so beyond the pale and in their own little alternate reality, you can't reach them, and shouldn't try. And honestly, Pete Buttigieg? Ew. He's more moderate than Biden. Nah. Walz was a better pick, although I guess it doesnt matter since the campaign went right anyway. 

The convention got relatively little discussion. Her platform didnt get much discussion either compared to how much importance I put on it. For me her platform was a disappointment, and the convention alienated me, but that was Harris for ya.

One thing that irked me was the whole Gaza thing. She seemed to "not get it" on this too. She was a staunch defender of Israel, although had a similar middle ground position I did. But when approached by protesters she actually got annoyed. She was like "dont people realize it's me or Trump?" Which is...the same entitlement complex that dems often fall into, and often alienates me from supporting them. Like really, if I'm making demands of politicians, that's the last thing I wanna hear. And she leaned into it in her response like they're being irresponsible and want trump to win and the whole "I'm speaking" thing she often does. 

To be fair...I wasnt particularly sympathetic to these guys either. Like, I get it, they're loud, annoying, and I thought the gaza obsession was a gross misuse of political capital. if you're gonna go ride or die on an issue, why some foreign policy thing halfway across the world that doesn't even have much to do with us? But yeah, I just didnt like how she handled it. Because the "its me or trump" thing just gives me PTSD flashbacks from Hillary. And we as know....she lost much like Hillary, and part of it was democrats staying home, and this cause was...a factor. Im not saying it was THE factor, or even the biggest factor, I think economic angst probably sums that up, but it was a factor. 

Yeah...like...she just wasn't the person for the job. To be fair, the DNC wouldnt allow us to have "the person for the job", you know how the DNC is if you follow this blog, but yeah. It was just apparent. Anyway, this is a huge reason I dont want her to run again, and I wish she'd take a page from Hillary and disappear into the woods afterwards. Not permanently, but I dont want her to be the future of democratic politics. She had her chance and was done. But I digress.

To be fair, some of her frustrations are akin to mine. She seemed deeply frustrated that Trump and his campaign could lie and throw so much crap around and people believed it. She was swarmed by protesters on 9/11 who were MAGA and while secret service wouldnt let her engage them, she genuinely wanted to know wtf she wanted and what she was doing wrong. And she was even thinking economically, like, is it your healthcare? Your wages? What? Why do they hate her so much? 

And here I'll do a quick plug. First of all, as I said, a lot of MAGA is a cult. Cant win them over, won't win them over, they're brainwashed. Dont even try. BUT...as someone disaffected, let me give an elevator pitch. 

Yeah...it is healthcare, wages, the whole shebang. The economy sucks. Reaganism has ruined America. I'm soured on job creation. We are working for rich people who dont care about us and who wanna work us as hard as possible while paying us as little as possible. Democrats have historically been the answer to that, advocating for solutions that make our lives better, but in the modern era, they don't. They end up compromising to the center, offering band aid solutions at best, and they don't get it. And Harris also doesnt get it. For as many little tax credits as she had, they weren't big enough to actually fix the problems. We need a UBI. We need medicare for all (or at least a public option a la her 2020 healthcare plan). We need free college with TOTAL student loan forgiveness. We need to realize jobs and work aren't the answer. If you want a more detailed explanation, I'd advise her to read Andrew yang's "The War on Normal People" and to consult with him on the subject. He's about the only one in America who DOES get it. But until we get someone like that, we're gonna go back and forth in this 2 party system swinging between fascist republicans and do nothing democrats, and yes, I consider her a do nothing democrat. yeah, she had solutions but they werent big enough.

And before people like her ask, gee it sounds like you want life to be easy and you dont wanna work. No crap. And that's another reason I dislike harris on a visceral level. She has this attitude like "were not asking for things to be easy, we like hard work." Leave that kind of virtue signalling crap to republicans and that 40% of the country that's too brainwashed to know what's good for them. For the rest of us, yeah, we gotta abandon this obsession with work and life being hard being a good thing. It's not. it sucks. And quite frankly, a huge aspect of social progress is that life SHOULD be made easier for us. Maybe you'll face a lot of resentment from people for saying it. Well, a lot of them are gonna hate you anyway, and you should just resign yourself to that. But I honestly think economic angst is the biggest reason why her campaign didnt go over, and why we keep losing to Trump. Because Harris, as well as the dems before her, keeps coming off as an out of touch dem who doesn't understand anything. Like, all those Biden solutions dont matter if your wages arent keeping up with the cost of living. And idk, I feel like Harris kinda cared but she didnt understand the reality we're facing and we need to think beyond that. 

Anyway, I will say, for much of the middle of her campaign, I do sympathize with her otherwise. Imagine trying to offer something, even if it is anemic, only to be met with some dude who just lies about everything, and goes on about immigrants eating peoples' pets, and half the country STILL wants that guy. It's frustrating as fudge. But that is the modern reality. And the sooner we realize those people should be written off and ignored the sooner we can get to focusing on the people who do matter and winning them over. 

 She spent a lot of time focusing on the hatred she and her supporters got from Trump. Again, those guys are irredeemable, they're buttholes, the best we can do is try to be better. It sucks things are like that, but that's just how they are and again, you cant win those people over, you shouldnt even try. 

Which brings me back to the frustrations. Going into the final stretches in october, I was deeply frustrated with Harris going full centrist, campaigning with Liz cheney, going on interviews not to distance herself from Biden. And this moment infuriated me. I think she was on the view? And she forgot what she was gonna answer to how she would be different than Biden. She answered nothing really, which is bad enough, but she was frustrated with herself for failing to remember her actual answer: that she would put a republican in her cabinet. NOOOO!!!! HELL NOOOO!!!!!! THIS IS THE LAST THING I WANNA HEAR!!!!! And she did eventually give that response IIRC based on my own blog and yeah...I hated it. I HATED IT! Like...this is what dems need to learn. We got 40% of the country. They are deplorables. They're cult members. Screw them. Stop trying to appease them. Stop compromising our values and our ideology to try to win them over. I dont want republicans in the cabinet, if anything, look at trump. Trump doesnt give AF about our half of the country. And while our policies would help theirs, they won't accept them because of their twisted ideology and values. So you know what? Just dont even listen. Govern based on how the half that vote for you want. Stop trying to appease these people. 

One thing that I wanna talk about that I didnt know was that she actually did try to get on Joe Rogan, but Rogan played games with her with the scheduling and scheduled trump for the day she wanted. And then she didnt wanna be in texas on a different day because it would take away from her campaigning and yeah. That's why she didnt appear. It seems pertinent to mention because she was blamed for not going on Rogan. She wanted to, but Rogan wasn't really playing ball with her, and she even basically said that yeah, Rogan wanted Trump, and gave preferential treatment to Trump while being more standoffish with her. JUst thought that should be mentioned since she got hammered for that afterwards. Like she didnt reach out to the dudebros because she didnt go on rogan. Well, she was a very busy woman being campaigning and all and rogan wasnt really intent on making it happen. Ya know, because the dude lost his mind after COVID and it's no secret he's pro Trump.  

Going into the final stretch, she seemed more optimistic, same as me. Her internal polling had her ahead, the Selzer poll was a huge indicator that she was ahead. There was some guy who thought she would win Nevada, which would indicate she would be ahead. So she went into election day thinking she was gonna win.

And then she didn't. Strangely enough despite being a candidate, her knowledge of the math seemed hazier than mine. I knew something was up early on just based on how the safe states were performing. Like...if the entire map is R+5 relative to predictions, well, that's not a good sign. And it seemed like the swing states went in a similar way. But yeah she didn't seem to realize she lost until well after midnight. I was dooming starting at 10-10:30. It stung her. She went to bed, didnt give a speech. I stayed up until it was called around 2 AM. She conceded the next day. And yeah she certified the election on January 6th, unlike Trump, who incited his followers to attack the capitol. 

At the end, she realizes that yeah, we just voted for fascism and she seems on a similar page to me, saying our immediate concern is the mid terms so we can get checks and balances on the government. She realizes project 2025 was a long term plan by conservatives. But hey...this is why I take a more direct, abrasive approach that's confrontational to them. She decided to take the wimpy moderate approach, and it failed like it always does. She didn't win over people on her economic vision, and millions of democrats who voted in 2020 stayed home. She done screwed up.

Again, from the outside looking in, her msitakes were obvious. She was schrodinger's candidate early on, both moderate and progressive, but then the wave function collapsed and we got a moderate biden clone except she had no public option and she wanted more republicans in her cabinet.

At the end of the book she talked about how her thoughts are with gen Z. And how we needed to create the jobs of the future for them. And I'm just thinking, no, no more jobs. No more talk of jobs, and work, and employment. We need mass redistribution. FFS, talk to Andrew yang. He'll explain it better than I can on such short notice and she'll probably take him seriously as he was one of her campaign opponents in 2020.  

And uh...yeah. We all know my views on Harris at this point, why she lost. So yeah, final thoughts? She was NOT the person for the job. To be fair, Im not sure who would have been, given the options realistically available, but yeah....this book soured me on her. She doesn't get it. I dont think she really understands why she lost and what she did wrong. She's part of that establishment dem culture that just...is in their own little beltway world and doesnt understand how normies think. She means well to some degree, and at times I could sympathize with her, like her final remarks about how people regretted their decision in Trump's first week in office were "yeah, people really are that dumb." But yeah...she didn't really connect with the voters she needed. Her policies didnt connect. Her message didnt connect. She just was a poor fit for the job. Another centrist dem who no one fricking wanted but we had to vote for her or we got the other guy. And that isnt a winning message. 

I hope in 2028 we get someone better. SOmeone who actually has a vision. Someone who actually understands politics. Who doesnt cede ground to the right in appeasement, and who proposes an ambitious vision for the country that CHALLENGES the right, not concedes to them prematurely. The problem with biden is he didnt do enough. The problem with harris is she didnt propose enough. People didnt want Biden, they didnt want that brand of politics, so they voted for Trump instead. And that's the core reason she lost. And yeah. That's where I stand on this. 

Okay book, Im glad I read it, but really. I hope she isn't it in 2028. Or Gavin Newsom for that matter. Or Pete Buttigieg. Or the rest of the worthless centrists. Ro Khanna, AOC, Andrew Yang, a few early names that stand out to me. That's who I want.  

Summarizing Harris's campaign and why she lost in my own words

 So...I'm reading Harris's 107 days, and I'm pretty close to the end. However, before I write my response to it, I want to outline my own ideas of her campaign. This is a summary of stuff I've written from Late June through mid November on this blog, you can go back to that time era and read what I wrote, but I do want to separate her campaign into distinct "eras" and my overall evolution of thought. This will serve as a framework to help me react to the book better. Her book is structured where she gives her thoughts on the campaign day by day based on what she's doing, and I want to give a short abridged/summarized version of where my head was at the same time.

Late June-Late July

Joe Biden was never gonna win 2024. That much was clear for me. I was always realistic about his odds, despite there being a ton of copium from establishment democrats. The fact was, the guy peaked around a 30% shot, and often hovered in the 20s. The 226-312 result that we got was my typical prediction for the end results. Public opinion had shifted roughly 6 points from 2020, and yeah, Biden was always fundamentally unpopular. I accepted his campaign for what it was, recognizing that trying to convince democrats was like talking to a wall and they'll just do their typical delusional condescension and claim im not a "team player" if I dare point out the obvious. I recognized Trump was the fascist and knew his second term would be roughly as bad as it has been and I wanted to stop that from being a reality. 

However, then Biden flubbed the debate. And his chances cratered. I didn't think much of his performance. Quite frankly, given I rate on style AND substance with about equal weight, I thought that Trump's lies were worse than Biden's obvious malfunctions. But given the public reacts more to style than substance and the fact that Trump can tell like 50 lies a minute doesn't seem to matter. All that mattered was Biden malfunctioned. Suddenly the floodgates opened and criticizing Biden was fair game. There was a huge push from the top to get him out, Biden remained stubborn, and I remained skeptical of the idea if doing so as I feared it could make things worse. The polling data at the time told me that yes, Biden was bad, but everyone else was worse. Still, because my big concern this election was simply winning and surviving to live to fight another day (because Trump really is a threat to democracy itself), i resigned myself to the numbers. 

As this month dragged on, I updated my model, putting it into a google spreadsheet and digitizing it. I updated it daily with all the new polling data and updated whenever it was worth doing so. Toward the end of the month between June 27 and July 21st, I noticed the pushes to get Biden out were more desperate, and I remained convinced it was a bad idea. If anything it went against my ideological interests as well since those wanting to push him out wanted a more centrist candidate and I obviously didn't. 

Still, eventually, he was forced out. I thought it was a huge mistake at first, but he quickly endorsed Kamala Harris and her polls shot up appreciably in the coming weeks.

Late July-Mid August

Harris injected new life into the campaign. No one REALLY wanted Biden. Rather, we were STUCK with Biden. And Harris brought new enthusiasm into the party. The fact was, no one knew what we were getting. We were just glad it wasn't what we had. I was enthusiastic too, and her campaign was initially very aggressive and willing to fight MAGA. We had memes coming out of it like crazy, enthusiasm went through the roof, but I also kind of remained cautious. I understood this much. Harris was Schrodinger's candidate. She was either going to be insufferably centrist, or the most progressive candidate in a generation. It depends what she did. And I kind of engaged in watchful waiting, trying to observe what decisions she would and wouldn't make. I looked at her VP choice as a barometer. Tim Walz seemed more progressive, but someone like Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro seemed to indicate a more centrist direction. She went walz. But still. She needed a platform. Was she going to be progressive or not? Who knows?

Mid August-Early September

Schrodinger's box was finally opened just in time for the convention. And we got...centrist. I never had too high hopes for harris, my expectations were already tempered by the fact that the democratic party is inherently a conservative institution, but I graded Harris by her own standards. I wanted to see her govern at her most progressive. In 2020, she ran on the lift act, which was like a mini UBI, and she had a healthcare plan akin to the public option I support. But she didn't run on a public option, instead abandoning the issue, and she ran hard to the center.

The convention REALLY soured me on her. Again, I know she isn't me and isnt gonna align with me, but the centrality of her message on "hard work" and the "opportunity economy" made me cringe. She had this conservative attitude like life shouldnt be easy, we're not asking for it to be easy, we just want it to be somewhat fair. DAE LIKE hard work? Opportunity economy! That whole thing just soured me on her, being the anti work "life should be easier, that's progress" progressive that I am. If I wanted work worship, I'd vote republican. They're the ones obsessed with the glorious job creators. Harris had some good things in her platform, but what she didn't have disappointed me, and her overall economic message soured me on her. By this point, the honeymoon period was over, and I saw what we were stuck with. Biden, but if anything, slightly more conservative. 

It was a disappointment. 

Early-Late September

For much of September, I went on vacation to Myrtle Beach. This led me to post a lot less and to have a lot less time to do so. My mind was on the campaign and I did check in here and there. I updated my model daily in the hotel and would occasionally post an election update. I'd also post philosophical articles on work during this time. The thing is, this book I've been trying to write, I've been working on it for a few years now. It still sucks, but I was using my blog as a springboard, and given how Harris really pissed me off on the work topic, I did flirt with a few different ideas about it.

Two things that stood out to me during this time. First of all, I read Harris's book that she had out on her ideas at the time, and I saw how some of them made it into her platform. She seemed so close to getting it, but just stopped short. And it did soften me on her through this time. Harris is a weird figure. She has a progressive side, but she's moderated by institutions, and again, it really is a matter of what side comes out. And hearing her own case with her own words did soften me somewhat from my anger over the convention.

The other thing that stood out was the debate. It was so laughably one sided for Harris that it was actually funny. Trump went full blown THEY'RE EATING THE CATS, THEY'RE EATING THE DOGS, and even harris on stage was like "what the actual ####?" That was my reaction too. I knew Trump would be bad, but holy crap, he was so bad it wasn't even funny. Honestly. I dont see how anyone can support the guy. I mean, yeah, we can nitpick harris all day, she aint what I want, but Trump just lied about EVERYTHING and seemed completely unhinged and insane. Still Harris's numbers were growing and the campaign reached a dead heat between Harris and Trump. I figured she would keep improving and hopefully, eventually take the lead. Again, for all the cardinal sins that the democrats and harris were doing that would normally piss me off, I just ended up trying to be the better person and accept it, understanding that this is our Weimar Germany moment and we all gotta pull together to avoid suffering the same fate.

 Late September-Early October

 This could be seen as part of the same arc as the previous section in the campaign, but it's a bit different for me. The bulk of september was spent on vacation and at the end I got back. As I settled into my routine, Harris was still going strong from her debate performance. But then she started nose diving soon after. It seemed to coincide with the VP debate on October 1, when I think back. While September was a strong month for Harris, her energy began stalling out going into October. She went from having around a 59% chance, just about the highest you can get while the race still being a tossup, back down to around 50, and then back into the 40s. I didn't know if this was a trend, but after a few weeks of this, I started panicking.

The reason I separate this segment of the campaign from the rest of it both before and after is because the end of this section is when I voted for Harris. I live in PA where everyone can do mail in voting, and I LOVE mail in voting. I dont have to go out, I can just mail it in. I can research candidates more. It's more convenient, but it does go to show that yeah, some of us were already voting during Harris's decline. 

I myself took great pleasure in filling out my ballot. It was more an F U to Trump. Keep in mind, my entire motivation by this point was to keep Trump out of office, because I knew that he literally would be about as bad as he ended up being. The writing was on the wall. For some reason, most didn't seem to care. And entire election has felt like watching a train wreck happen from the get go. I can see the danger but people were just like "well we had him once before, he's not gonna be that bad, right? Besides I cant stand the thought of 4 more years of Biden." I get it, harris kinda sucks, just as biden kinda sucked, but uh...yeah. We really did need to pull together to save democracy here. 

Early October-Late October

Post vote clarity hit me like a motherfricker. And it was very obvious by this point that Harris was in decline. We were entering the final month of the campaign, the most crucial month, the one that we can't screw up, and WE WERE LOSING! On my blog, I was sounding the alarm bells. I pointed out the states, and I became a lot less filtered about my true views on harris, flaws and all. We saw this before. The convention soured me on her, but then seeing her galavanting around with Liz Cheney and saying that she wanted moderate republicans in her cabinet made me cringe. This is NOT what I wanted to vote for, and this was almost enough to make me regret voting for her.

Keep in mind, in 2016 and 2020, I didnt vote for the dem nominees. Because of crap like this. I HATE these people. I really do. I hate the democratic party. They're so consultant brained and obsessed with moderation, and those people CLEARLY got to harris's campaign. She went from taking the fight to trump and getting down in the dirt with him early on to the consultants coming in and cleaning up everything where now she was basically "Biden but more moderate." Which is the last thing I wanna hear. I also think it's the last thing the country wanted to hear, based on polling. 

Really, the dems dont seem to get it. And even now, they're trying to pass off all of the blame on Joe Biden for their loss, but in reality, no, it's because this brand of bland centrism is just fundamentally unpopular. Harris had somewhat of a platform, but here's the thing she doesn't get. It's not big enough, it's not what people want. But still, despite my obvious criticisms, the race was still in tossup territory, it just went from Harris being the frontrunner to Trump. But it remained in that 40-60% range for both candidates. It's just that they flipped who was in the head. All in all, who won would come down to what direction the polling error goes in. I normally like to ready the energy but it was hard this election. Trump had his lovers, but also his haters. So did Harris. For this period, I'd say Trump had more energy through October, but it did seem like toward the end, things seemed to fall off for him too.

Late October-Election Day

 For me, the final turning point of the campaign was that rally in Madison Square Garden. It flopped and made Trump look like a massive racist. And given how one of the key demographics needed for victory was gonna be Latinos in PA, I was very very happy to see it. Between that and a bunch of other small things leading up to election day, I honestly thought the energy was shifting toward Harris at the last minute. 

But then Trump won. It was a painful defeat and one that I watched with horror. In 2016, the first time he won, I had schadenfreude. I felt like the democrats clearly had it coming and I knew that Trump the first time around wasn't gonna be that bad. He wasnt the apparent threat to democracy he evolved into, and honestly, I thought Hillary sucked. My opinion at the time was that if Trump won, people would FAFO and next election we'd just vote him out, and show the public once again why we dont elect republicans.

However, I kinda realized in 2020 that people actually LIKE that orange psychopath and Biden BARELY won. And then he threw a hissy fit during January 6th and tried to overthrow the election. And as the data came out on that, I was like, yeah, this guy can't be elected again, he's too fundamentally dangerous.

So when he won again, I was like oh god no. But the result was what it was. And it was decisive. Despite trying to dig ourselves out of the hole that Biden dug us into, the party couldnt' do it. Again, I dont think the problem was just Biden. I think the problem was the democrats just suck, to be frank. Their brand of politics is fundamentally unpopular, and it doesnt resonate. Democrats dont listen to voters. They tell voters they cant have what they want, argue with them about that fact, and tell them to support them anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, Trump won in part because he had some increased turnout, yes, but I think the bigger problem was a lot of democrats just stayed home and didn't vote. Some of it was cost of living, the Biden problem, Gaza. but ultimately, the GOP base ended up being fired up and the dems ended up not being so. Just like Harris was Schrodinger's candidate, both progressive and moderate at the same time, where the wave function collapse landed on moderate, the campaign was the same way, and it landed on Trump.  

And that's why we lost.

Conclusion

Anyway I just wanted to set up this framework because I'm probably finishing Harris's book in the near future, and I figured that while I process the events from Harris's perspective over her campaign, I wanted to see what I was thinking at the time and where my head was at around the same time she was. In a way, reading this book isnt just reading the book. I also went back and read my own blog posts from the same time period in order to see how I viewed things at the time. With that said, my next post will probably respond to Harris's book directly. Idk if it will be longer or shorter than this. 

The Air Canada disaster is Trump's fault

 So...I saw the disaster on the news but didn't think much of it. I found out today that the pilots were interacting with one VERY over worked air traffic controller. Why are they understaffed? Probably because of another government shutdown. Why are we in a government shutdown? because the orange manchild decided that no more legislation would be signed until he got his Save Act. Ya know, that draconian voter law that would gut American democracy. 

That's it. That's where we are. This guy is basically saying allow him to gut voting rights and establish these draconian voter ID laws that mass disenfranchise Americans, or the country gets it. Democrats, DO NOT CAVE. IF YOU DO IT COULD MEAN THE END TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AS WE KNOW IT. And let everyone know, this is Trump's doing. he could just fund the government, but he won't because he wants to rig elections in his favor. 

This is the kind of crap we gotta put up with this year. This guy wants to destroy American democracy, or at least gut it. Why? Because he knows his party is gonna lose if they don't. Quite frankly, I'd rather put up with some pain this year to avoid having to live in a hellish dystopia for the REST OF OUR FRICKING LIVES! Do the right thing. Don't cave to this guy. And let everyone know, this is all on him.  

I don't hate tech, but MAN I hate tech bro CEOs

 So...this is a bit of a rant post. So, I went out the other week. Took my bag with my I put my tablet/gaming handheld in when I go out. Had some earbuds in one pocket. I still used wired earbuds because I have a strong dislike of wireless for a variety of reasons I'll get to. Long story short, my bag flipped over at one point, and I lost my wired earbuds. Thankfully, my dad bought some wireless earbuds for himself and my mom, and my mom didn't really want them, and he offered me them a while ago, but I largely declined because I hate wireless earbuds. Well...now I'm using wireless earbuds. And it got me thinking about the state of the tech industry and the world right now. The predicament of us all having to use wireless earbuds now is a lot like modern AI trends. The reason we gotta do things this way is because some tech bro CEO with a god complex who thinks he's a "visionary" basically forced it on us. And that's kind of what I wanna talk about.

Once upon a time, most earbuds were wired. Earbuds were never a great option, but they were portable. If you had one of those old anti skip CD players back in the day, earbuds actually did a relatively good job at complementing them. I never got into the ipod era. Too expensive and given I listened almost exclusively to like...4 Rammstein albums back in the day, kinda pointless. But eventually, I did modernize and start using tablets and all. And Tablets and phones...used to feature 3.5 mm headphone jacks. And I could use like $5 earbuds from five below with them on the go. It wasn't intended to be the best quality, it's just a cheap, portable option. I got better options for home. But if I go out, ya know, I need something cheap and lightweight that's easy to carry and just stuff in a bag, and if I lose them, like I just did, it's not the end of the world. Eventually, the $5 kind kinda stopped being made at decent quality, so last year I got a slightly more expensive but still affordable $15-20 ones...which are the ones I lost. 

Anyway, at some point, Apple decided to kill off the 3.5mm jack. You know how apple is. They're the epitome of the whole "visionary" tech bro CEO types. They sell overpriced products with proprietary blah blah blah, and it seemed obvious that the reason Apple was doing this was so they can sell you their fancy $200 airpods or whatever. After all, Apple is relatively anti consumer, they got their fanbase by the balls making this closed operating system that only works with their proprietary blah blah blah. it's the reason I hate them and why I've never bought their products. I'm purely a windows/android guy, and while I have problems with windows and android, I never saw a reason to go apple. Their stuff is expensive, the value questionable, and it just reeks of anti consumerism.

Unfortunately for us all, apple is considered the "industry leader" in the smartphone and tablet industry, and when apple does something, all these other wannabe tech bro CEO visionaries copy it. Monkey see, monkey do. They think it makes them money, and over time, they've been waging war on the 3.5mm headphone jack, removing it from phones and tablets, to the point it's darned near impossible to get newer devices that have them. Still, I manage to patronize the companies that do. My razer edge handheld has a 3.5mm jack in the razer kishi controller attached to it, and my samsung tab a9+ also features it. So I'm good to go for the immediate future, and I dont wanna do wireless.

Why do I hate wireless btw? A few reasons. First of all, while yes, wires are annoying, you wanna know what I hate more? Having ANOTHER FRICKING THING TO CHARGE! My earbuds going dead because they havent been charged. I have enough devices to charge, i dont need more peripherals to charge. It's a pain. Bluetooth is a pain. I just want to plug something in and have it work. Not go through pairing, unpairing, blah blah blah. Third, price, earbuds are more expensive for the same level of quality. The point of earbuds is them being a cheap, lightweight, and disposable option. I just want something cheap where if i lose it its not a big deal, and i can stuff it into a bag. Not only are earbuds typically more premium, but the case these new ones come with are super heavy and bulky, far more so than my wired ones were. And for some reason it charges using...microusb? Why? Why would it use such an outdated charging standard? I've been on USB-C since like 2020. Again, pain in the butt. More complicated, blah blah blah. I thank my dad for them, but still, my complaint aint about him, it's about the way we do things now.

Some jack### decided he wanted to make money fleecing his customers by making them buy into expensive proprietary peripherals, and then the entire industry decides to copy the guy to the point that it's darned near impossible to get headphone jacks in mobile devices any more. I HATE it! I didn't ask for this change, but these tech bro guys don't care. They just decide "well this is how things are now, and you have to get with it, blah blah blah, look at my genius, muahahaha! look at my money! how dare you peasant not be happy with the way I made things, dont you understand that this is how we do things now? now fork over all your money to us for something you dont want, but you have to buy because what you actually want to buy no longer exists!"

Like, really. All this crap is, is the downside of consumerism. Consumerism is nice...in moderation. It's nice...when it's actually consumer driven. But the problem is, it's often business driven. Rather than appeal to customers based on need, you got these stupid CEOs with a god complex trying to make our lives harder to force us to buy more stuff. They do planned obsolescence. They literally expect you to constantly replace perfectly viable products by either making them break before their time, or just flat out reducing their functionality. They remove the ability to say, replace the battery, which used to be a thing in early phones and tablets. They try to take away your "right to repair". They update their apps where they dont work on the older versions of the OS, even though they used to. They design things to keep us on a never ending cycle of spending and consumption so number on chart goes up. 

I guess this is kind of adjacent to my big topics of work and capitalism, because consumerism is the alternative the powers that be came up with instead of working less. As we know from the benjamin kline hunnicutt books, we couldve worked less, but instead we implemented consumerism to keep people spending and people working, because people feared a world in which we no longer had jobs and businesses could no longer make money. So they designed a system in which we constantly have new needs to keep us spending, to keep us creating jobs, to keep us working. It's absurd, and when framed like this it's completely counter to a system based around actual human wants and needs. it's just a system designed to artificially keep us on a treadmill so that people keep working, businesses keep making money, and line on chart keeps going up. 

Like, if this were my ideal system, products would be made to last. Maybe some progress would be slower, but honestly, when it happens it would be more meaningful. We'd improve things because the improvements actually benefit people. We wouldnt be taking away the headphone jack standard that people like to force something new on them whether they want it or not. We shouldnt do planned obsolescence just to create more jobs, that's insane. We'd work to meet our actual wants and needs, and to improve things because the improvements actually matter. I'm not advocating for never ending stagnation. I'm just not advocating for constant change and never ending consumption either. You should buy something, it should be yours. And you should use it until eventually it either breaks (not because of design flaws, but actual age), or becomes genuinely obsolete. 

But instead we live in a world where rich people write articles yelling at you if you dont replace your phone often enough because youre ruining the economy...for rich people. Well, F the rich people and F the tech bro CEOs.

And it's not just headphone jacks or smartphones in general that has this behavior. It's this AI nonsense too. Look, I'm mixed on AI. I think it's an interesting tech, but I'm not really sold on it as this end all be all of everything. And once again, it's an industry run by the tech bro CEOs with a god complex. I reported on this in 2023 when I just got my i9 12900k. Suddenly new CPUs were gonna use NPUs meaning they'd have AI on board. But why do I care about that? I don't care, quite frankly. My main use case for having powerful hardware is gaming. That's all I care about. But suddenly they're trying to obsolete old CPUs with new ones that have an AI processing unit on it? And yeah. Ever since then, everything is AI, AI, AI. AI is the solution to everything. AI has to be shoehorned into everything. Every site needs an AI bot integrated into it. My fricking PDF reader (adobe) got taken over by AI nonsense. You realize most of us non professionals just use acrobat reader to read PDFs, right? I mean...I DONT CARE about AI, and I was very pointed with them when I uninstalled acrobat reader and they asked me why I did so. It was because the app no longer did what I wanted it to be. It was made overly complicated and taken over by all this AI bullcrap that I don't care about!

And here we are with talk of windows 12 being an AI centric OS with ridiculous system requirements because, again, these corporations don't care about making a good user experience. If anything they make things inconvenient for you to make you spend money on them. Subscription based everything? AI hardware required? No sideloading? Oh, speaking of no sideloading, let's go back to something I've ALWAYS hated about apple. All of their closed garden BS. Needing to use their apple store, and buy their stuff, at their prices, to get a user experience I can get for a fraction of the price elsewhere. But now with the internet going nuts over android clamping down on sideloading, and windows 12 possibly doing it too, guess what? That's the future! And what are you peasants gonna do? 

Honestly, at this point I might consider linux/steam OS in the future at this rate. It's so ridiculous. These companies are trying to ruin and monetize everything. There's a term for this. it's called "enshittification", or because I try to avoid the curse words, let's call it encrapification instead. These companies are making stuff worse to extract more profits from you. And it's not just some of them. if it was the userbase would fight back, probably leave en masse, and these guys would go out of business. but because we have so few options at this point, and they're all doing it at once, we really dont have a choice but to go along with this stuff. They're ruining the open internet, the open operating systems. In the future it's not gonna be open anything. "You will own nothing and be happy" as a lot of people covering this issue are saying.

Hell, in the future, it's being speculated that the same will be true of PC hardware. Because these same tech bro CEOs with a god complex are why PCs are so fricking expensive these days. They're all buying all of this hardware to build AI datacenters...to force AI on us...because it's supposed to make them money at some point, even though it's not profitable because everyone hates it.....but hey, in the future, if you wanna game, maybe you wont be able to because no one can afford a PC any more. So...guess what? You can just do game streaming. All future computer needs will be run through these massive servers they're building which they own while you get some locked down peasant device with anemic specs where you have to pay for subscriptions to LITERALLY EVERYTHING. That seems to be the future these guys want. They want to kill tech as we know it, to replace it with their apple like walled garden BS, and consumers have little choice in the matter. because like 3 companies control everything, you gotta go through one of them, all of them suck about as bad, and if you dont like it, screw you! What are you gonna do? They're forcing us into their bullcrap ecosystems one way or another?

Again. I'm a tech nerd myself. But Im kinda old fashioned. I like my gaming PC, which I built myself. I like my open OSes like android and windows, I like my fricking 3.5mm headphone jacks. I like being able to put whatever software i want on my stuff, and use it as I want. And I don't give a flying fudge about AI. Honestly. At this point, give me the 2000s back. Things were better in the 2000s. Even the 2010s are looking great compared to the modern 2020s hellscape at this point. I used to think the future was gonna be cool. We'd have flying cars and robot maids. But instead because of capitalism's excesses, we have the death of traditional computing and OSes, and being forced into walled gardens because it makes some tech bro CEO with a god complex money. F this decade, F the tech bro CEOs. I want nothing to do with this, and I'll resist trends to get on board with it for as long as humanly possible.  

Reacting to Andrew Yang's "The Last Election"

 So I'm a bit late on this one, but Andrew Yang wrote a fictional book about his vision of how the 2024 election would play out. It's not as good as The War on Normal People or Forward, and it's an entirely different kind of book. Rather than being a nonfiction and fact based book, it is a fictional novel set during the 2023-2024 election cycle, ending in early 2025 with the next president being elected. The names of the candidates are changed or left out altogether, although they seem based on real people. The third party "Maverick Party" candidate is basically an analogue to himself, running on things like UBI and human centered capitalism. The republican is very clearly Donald Trump, and the democrat seems to be based on Jared Polis, based on the contextual clues in the book (white male Colorado governor who happens to be a billionaire, all the primary candidates seem based on real figures too). It follows the Yang like character and his campaign through the election cycle, with different days being different pivotal moments. He faces scandals, there's talk of extreme political violence, a plot by the military to seize control and to call for a contingent election. Public officials are assassinated, party conventions erupt in violence. and it seems like America is breaking down at the seams. 

 Given Andrew Yang has been talking about America heading toward a civil war, it makes sense, but it really does express the worst case scenario of his fears. The fact is, he seems to "both sides" things too much. On the one hand, I admire his emotional distance from the democratic party. Even if I hate the dems and kinda have the same views as him, I still believe we should stick by the democrats, and that, ultimately, change needs to come from within them. And given that we do face threats to our democracy, we need to rally around the democrats to prevent America from descending into the worst case scenario. He looks at the democrats from the outside in, viewing leftists as figures who eat their own and can't be pleased, while seeing the liberal democratic establishment as being completely and utterly worthless. if theres anything I agree with him on, its his portrayal of the democratic party and figures like chuck schumer, who are quite literally going down with the ship as it sinks. The republican party he seems to ascribe as being more violent and more authoritarian, and let's face it, even if he doesn't say it, we all know the republican candidate is trump, and that many points in the book are very similar to how trump would act. From pardoning J6ers, to inciting violence and undermining faith in the election system, yeah, it's trump. 

Of course....again, he both sides it in a way. He acts like this breakdown of America and its norms and faith in democracy and the polarization is a both sides issue. It isn't. I blame the republicans FULL STOP. They've been constructing an alternative reality for their officials and voter base to live in, a "post truth world" if you will where many people no longer know what's up or down, left or right, and quite frankly, I fully blame the disease of modern partisanship, polarization, and loss of faith in our institutions and elections on them. Yes, democrats are worthless and complicit. And maybe they're shady with their primaries, but those are the worst things I have to say about them. If America IS in a civil war, it's one where one side is fighting and the other is refusing to fight back, for the sake of those institutions. 

Still...despite the greatly exaggerated takes on political violence, there are some events that werent all that different from the real world. Like in the book some guy tried to assassinate a SCOTUS justice. In real life, a similar figure took potshots at Trump but failed, and many of the same forces of polarization and the blame game happened. We had Charlie Kirk get shot last year by a sniper. We had Luigi Mangione shoot a heathcare exec. So yeah, we are in a period of political violence, just not as extreme as indicated.

 **SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT** 

Ultimately, Yang's character, who was named Cooper in the book, basically ran as an independent against the republicans and democrats, taking it all the way to election day and screwing up the vote in a way where it did force a contingent election. No candidate secured the popular vote, no candidate secured an electoral college majority, so it was thrown to congress and the republican candidate won because most states are red leaning. Our contingent election procedures are basically a vote by geography, not people. And the result was very undemocratic. While all 3 candidates all won roughly 1/3 of the vote and won 1/3 of the electoral college, the republicans won because they controlled the legislatures. And they defended it in traditional fashion. "Well it's a republic, not a democracy." Yeah yeah yeah. Weasel words of weasel people who have disdain toward the will of the people. That is, by the way, how the contingent election would play out. Doesnt make it right, but it is the system. I agree it should change in that regard. 

But yeah, that's why it's considered "the last election", the republicans win, undemocratically, and it's wondered if we even will have future elections. The country is so divided, again, there was a plot by the military to take control of the country, and it looks like the country is so fractured and no one trusts the institutions that it's unclear if there will be elections. ANd it is assumed that the republicans probably won't let there be anyway. They consolidate power, and yeah, that's the end of the system. 

Im not sure if this yang scenario is better or worse than what happened. In the real world, the violence was significantly less. Yang's third party run didn't happen (and i wonder if this book is why it didn't happen....he knew that if he did run it would screw things up and split votes), but due to low voter turnout on the democratic side, a democratic president whose mind turned to jello, forcing harris to step in last minute, and a general malaise surrounding inflation, immigration, crime, gaza, etc., Trump won. I know he didn't have to win. I even considered the race a tossup on election day, and I already dramatized my reaction to the results as they came in. And I myself wondered if this was the last election. After all, Trump is a danger to democracy. He's been so since January 6th. He was the one who undermined american faith in elections in Yang's book. HE did. By making up fake narratives of it being rigged and inciting his followers to attack. And in the real world, we tried to hold him accountable, but failed because the legal system didn't act fast enough. He talked about how if you vote for him "you'd never have to vote again." He had that project 2025 ready to go. The American people shouldve known what they're getting into and they didn't.

To some extent, I do blame the democrats for this. Their complacency and internal problems are responsible for this mess. They forced Biden on us without much resistance, covering up his mental decline. They were the ones who pushed party unity so hard that we never had a fair and open primary process. And when Biden stepped aside, it was Harris. To be fair, even I supported Harris. She was the best for the job on such short notice. However, all of this comes back to the democrats core problems. Even now, democrats like to make Biden out to be a scapegoat. But let's face it, the rot of the democratic party went deeper than that. They were supposed to stop trump, and unlike in the book, there wasnt a third party insurgent mucking everything up. The closest thing was RFK Jr and Trump disarmed that threat by bringing him into his administration and letting him do his MAHA thing, to the horror of thinking Americans with at least a high school level understanding of medicine.  And...btw....if you ARE gonna run a third party campaign, THAT is the end goal. It's a pressure campaign to pressure the party closest to you to give you concessions. if Yang ran on UBI, it would be to pressure the dems into supporting UBI. In RFK's case, he ended up appealing to anti vax cranks and Trump basically brought him into his administration, giving him a prominent position with real world policy concessions to keep him happy. Arguably it helped win him the election, because those RFK voters went to MAGA. Again, if you're gonna go third party, that's how you do it. You ideally dont take it to election day. And if you do, you do it in an election year where the consequences of that isn't the system imploding followed by a republican coup. You do it where the assumption is "oh well, the dems lost, maybe they should listen next time." But if it really is potentially the "last election", and 2024 very well could have been....that's suicide. So basically, democracy committed suicide at the hands of Andrew yang's character in the book. In the real world, again, we didn't have that insurgent campaign, and what happened instead was that Trump just outright won the election. In some ways i guess the real world scenario is preferable, after all, the results were so straightforward that they were called the night of, and they were largely beyond (reasonable) dispute (I add the word reasonable because if Harris won by similar margins Trump would've thrown a tantrum and probably incited more violence). 

Either way...idk. I kinda feel somber either way. I mean...here....we lost, it was straightforward, but it does have a weimar germany feel to it. There are questions of whether we will have fair elections in 2026 and 2028. I've covered a lot of the screwery Trump is trying so far. One story I didnt cover that I probably should have (I guess I'll mention it now) is how Trump trying to seize voter rolls in stuff in states like Georgia could be dry runs for him attempting to seize the ballots come election day 2026. After all, it's not the voters who decide who won, it's the person who counts the voters, to paraphrase Stalin. And Trump is a lot more like Stalin than many of us would like to admit. So can we come out of this mess that is Trump's second term? Well the history books arent written yet and it feels like reality is its own thriller novel. 

I guess I'll end it there. All in all, was it a good novel? Eh, it was okay. Quite frankly, the real world version of what happened is far more interesting and realistic. Mainly because its real. Yang's version is kinda just him playing out a hypothetical 2024 where he runs and his forward party splits the vote screwing everything up. Many elements are greatly exaggerated and unrealistic, compared to the real world version. 

All in all, I will say one more thing though. If Yang does run in 2028...he should run as a democrat, explicitly to stop this from happening. Will he win? Probably not. But honestly, I would like to see him try. I still believe in his vision of UBI and human centered capitalism. I just recognize that things are so screwed right now we gotta fight to preserve democracy first, and that means siding with the democrats and getting Trump and his goons out of office. Like, that's priority #1 for me. Even above my UBI crap. Third party protest votes make sense when democracy isn't on the line, but when it is, you gotta protect democracy first. Sucks, but that's how it is.

So yeah, yang 2028...but hopefully as a democrat, not as an independent third party splitting the votes. Unless your plan is brinksmanship with dems to get them behind UBI and election reform....don't even try it.  

If you thought Kristi Noem was bad, look at this guy

 So...I didnt actually cover this, but Kristi Noem is out at DHS. And it should be a moment of celebration. I mean she oversaw ICE locking people up into detention camps unconstitutionally and shooting people in the face, so that ain't good. Anyway, she's gone, but before you celebrate, get a load of her replacement. His name is Markwayne Mullin. The first time I mentioned him to anyone, I got a response like "oh that ###hole who challenged a teamster to a fist fight. And i was just like O_O what? Yeah....

But it gets worse, he's said things like he understood why Rand Paul's neighbor wanted to beat the crap out of him. He supports bringing back dueling. He even challenged a senator to a fist fight on the senate floor until Bernie basically shut that crap down. He seemed to romanticize the caning of Charles Sumner. So let's face it, hes a very violent psychopath. He's so bad he makes the puppy slayer look good.

Look. What we should want from the next director of DHS, who is also in charge of ICE, is someone who can cool down the temperature and bring a sense of levelheadedness to the situation. Someone who isnt going to advocate for wanton violence against protesters. This guy wants to throw down with anyone who disagrees with him, imagine what ICE will look like with him in charge. He will ramp up ICE's violence against Americans with that attitude. He's a bomb thrower, not a bomb defuser. I mean, what the fudge?

I mean, it is the trump administration, they dont give a crap. The cruelty is the point and this could just be a passive aggressive pick of "oh you didnt like Noem? Let me find the loosest possible cannon to serve as her replacement!" I mean, that's what this feels like, if this were intentional. Im not even sure if it is, because while Trump is cruel, he's also an idiot who puts comically incompetent people in important positions of power. It's hard to tell at this point.

Either way, this is a terrible idea. I will lose all faith in humanity if this guy is confirmed. Because holy crap this guy is insane. There's no way he's qualified for this, and his demeanor is so bad it's like putting Kristi Noem in charge of animal welfare. Just a terrible idea.