The Postponed: Now, I Don’t Know Much About Algebra

Daily dispatches from Post-Electoral Purgatory

Day 2:

So there’s been some movement on the blue front. Seems like everyone’s very excited for the gains of ol’ Joe — who’s up to like 253 electoral college votes by some measures — and also terrified that it could all go to shit with a quickness because, as we know, the votes are still being counted in most states. Thrilling stuff we got goin.

One candidate we know for a fact ain’t about to be president is one Kanye West, who garnered the voting equivalent of little more than a Virgil — roughly 60k votes across the country — bringing his candidacy to a screeching skkkrrttt. It’s gonna feel good to dunk on him about running as VP alongside a dude with a cartoon villain name but this is not some serotonin burst of political catharsis. Just things going as we very well expected them to.

(read the Day 1 entry of The Postponed here)

Today I’ve decided to turn away from the numbers and who voted for what and where. Not only because my workload is currently stacked but more that they serve no purpose outside of poking at my own sensitivity towards ill-informed, bad faith interpretations of those numbers. The votes will inevitably be counted, the president will inevitably be elected. I can’t speak for the other coloreds in the class but I can say that me and my house are exhausted by the framing of a Democratic win as some end of an era. Democracy will be saved. Fascism defeated. The crops will return a plentiful harvest. The rona will melt under the glaring rays of sun bouncing off Joe’s veneers.

The era hasn’t ended insofar as it has become a lie of partisan politics. Fascism doesn’t just extend from one person to another. From the mouth of one leader to the ear of one incel. That is not how fascists rises happen. 1 +1 does not equal three. In order for fascism to take hold in this country, there had to have been structures in place that permitted its ideological sustenance. There had to be nationalism first, there had to be dehumanization, there had to be exploitation. And these are all central to the construction of these looted states of America. Fascism was meant to be bred in societies like this. It will not be killed off by removing one administration. We may see how well fascism might live in Biden’s America. We may see it in the diplomatically immune’d white backlash that seems to feel as inevitable as a winner being chosen. We will see it in the expansion of local policing. We will see it in the deportation of political refugees from countries we’ve destroyed with economic policy.

This is the reality. Fascism is a philosophy that — while often is skewed toward far right wing politics — envelops both parties as an outgrowth of the neoliberal era, as the division between wealth and government dissolves. Even with the electoral math working in the favor of the blue bloods, it ain’t mathing up to liberation. That’s going to take a bit more work from us, the people. It’ll take our hands in the dirt pulling at our own roots; at our own carceral, and greedy impulses to remove. We’ve been in limbo but that doesn’t mean the care work has stopped. It’s time to roll up our sleeves.