Wake up and smell the autocracy!

Let’s talk about privilege.

I have a metric fuck ton of it.

Yes, I’m brown but I’m “I forgot you were brown” brown… (at least till I board your plane.)

I am (in a global context) ‘rich’.

I was born into a family with resources.

Educated in amazing and expensive schools.

Grew up surrounded by connections and support from day one.

I’m a man.

I’m straight.

I’m employed and highly compensated.

I’m healthy and have insurance.

I live in a very affluent community with very few problems.

I reside in a DEEP BLUE state.

I’ve got privilege in spades, and every bit of my life reflects it.

I acknowledge this privilege.

I’ve learned to see it, to feel it.

I see how I live in it.

How it shapes my world.

My privilege doesn’t mean I’ve never struggled.

It doesn’t mean my life has been a cakewalk.

This only means that I have never had to think about many of the struggles that others have to face.

When you have it, it feels normal.

It’s your baseline, your default.

You don’t see it because you’ve never known anything else.

It’s like air — you don’t notice it until it’s gone.

This is why it takes listening, empathy, and understanding to be an ally to those without it.

Recognizing privilege isn’t about feeling guilty; it’s about seeing beyond your bubble.

It’s about understanding that others navigate a world full of barriers you’ve never had to face.

It’s about stepping out of your comfort zone and realizing that not everyone gets to enjoy the same security and ease.

Americans who’ve been here longer than a generation have immense privilege.

It’s baked into the fabric of your existence.

You have lived your lives in a country that, for all its failings and ills, is a liberal democracy with a modicum of respect for the rule of law.

This isn’t something I grew up with.

I grew up in the Middle East.

I grew up in autocratic nations where the ruler makes the law with caprice and no checks or balances.

Where fear is the rule of the day and survival is not a given.

Where favor is bestowed and withdrawn at whim.

Where seeing today’s sunrise does not in any way guarantee seeing its sunset.

I’ve lived in countries where corruption is so embedded in the government that getting the simplest thing done without payment or favor is impossible.

I grew up and lived in nations where the idea of voting is a laughable pipe dream.

Where equality before the law is a delusion.

Where you are openly and explicitly asked for bribes to avoid prosecution or approve permits or ‘get things moving.’

Places where the rot doesn’t just run deep; it’s part of every corner of your life.

Where hope is an imaginary thing, and despair is real.

I’ve lived in countries where you assume that nothing is private.

Where you can always be tortured.

Where those you love can be tortured or imprisoned to get to you.

Where you can be ‘disappeared’ because someone doesn’t like you.

Made to go ‘behind the sun’.

Where the cab driver might report you or the waiter might call in your dinner conversation.

Where your phone is tapped.

Where there is no recourse to the law.

Where there is no real “law”.

Where there is no right of appeal.

It’s a suffocating, ever-present dread that’s hard to imagine if you’ve never experienced it.

If you haven’t lived this, it can be hard to understand.

If you haven’t lived this… you might not see how incredibly fucking close this is. Here. Right now. In this country.

You might not see how real this is.

How sphincter-puckeringly close we stand to a reality like this.

With this deeply corrupt bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court.

With this neutered Republican-Party-cum-cult-of-personality that worships their shit-filled-diaper-wearing tinpot Shitler.

This unloved son who takes out his traumas on the nation with inane ramblings, mean-spirited hatreds, revenge fantasies, and narcissistic tantrums, tightly wrapped in an orange-stained shit-gibbon skin suit as he performs an insane solipsistic dance performance of “L’etat c’est moi.”

Wake up and smell the autocracy… it’s cooking.

The countries I grew up in are poor nations.

Without real resources.

Without the ability to truly turbocharge the state’s organs of power and terror.

That will not be the case here if Trump takes over.

This will be a fully armed, resource-rich autocracy.

An autocracy with freshly minted ‘immunity for official acts.”

An autocracy with an NSA, and a CIA, and an FBI, and a Justice Department, and a Bureau of Prisons, and a captive Supreme Court, and a toothless Congress.

So yeah…Do I like Biden?

Not particularly.

I think he’s a mostly decent man with a blind spot for Palestinians.

I think he’s been domestically good.

But he’s a pretty meh old-school centrist.

This is the guy who ran the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing.

He ain’t my favorite candidate ever.

I don’t love the guy if I’m honest.

I don’t particularly love Kamala Harris either.

I don’t find her inspiring or uplifting.

But I do love this country.

It has shortcomings.

It does not always act in ways that live up to its ideals.

But for all its failings, it is an amazing country.

Like all countries, it fails.

But like precious few countries, its people push it to become better and it mostly does.

Too slowly mostly, but relatively consistently and inexorably.

Improving and lifting itself up.

If the Democratic Party were to field as its candidate an animatronically-puppeteered, maggot-infested mixture of cowshit, burnt tires, and vomit that speaks with Baby Elmo’s voice and speech patterns… that’s who I’ll be voting for.

Not because I’m stupid.

But because autocracy, once installed is not easily reversible.

Look at the Arab Spring and how well that shit went.

Trump is a nightmare we can’t afford to live through and from which we will struggle to wake.

Should Biden drop out?

Should Kamala run?

Or Gavin?

Or whoever?

Yah bro… interesting questions, but I’ll be honest…

Completely and utterly fucking immaterial to me.

I know where Trump wants to take this country.

I grew up in the low-rent (sepia-colored because it’s the Middle East, no-duh) version of the wet dream he strokes his reportedly deformed and no doubt orange mushroom-shaped Cheeto to.

Those autocracies couldn’t have dreamed of the power he would have.

So, for me, this isn’t a hypothetical.

When you want to know, “How bad could he really be?” ask an immigrant from an autocracy. We fucking know. Real fucking bad.

This is a battle for the soul of the nation.

This isn’t just an election.

It’s a choice between maintaining a flawed yet working democracy or descending into authoritarian darkness.

The stakes are higher than ever.

I’m voting not just for myself.

I have resources.

I have options.

I can leave.

I’m voting for the rule of law, however imperfect.

I’m voting for the continuation of this country that I deeply love.

I’m voting for those whose lack of privilege means that when Trump and his shithead cronies come for them, they will have nowhere to run.

I’m voting for this country’s minorities, for women’s control of their own bodies, for immigrants, for the poor, for the disabled, for the unemployed, for LGBTQIA+ folks, and for everyone else who’s marginalized and oppressed.

Not out of some patronizing sense of being a savior.

Out of the certain learned knowledge that authoritarian regimes never stop.

They expand the categories of the oppressed and tighten the circles of the privileged.

I vote to stand against the expansion of darkness.

Every election is important, but the word ‘consequential’ cannot even begin to encompass the criticality of this vote.

This a choice, and one that, however much you might wish it to be otherwise, is an utterly binary one.

It is a choice between a future in which we can at least strive to be better and one in which we slide inexorably into an abyss of authoritarianism, which we will struggle for decades to claw back out of.

I have lived in worlds where power is unchecked and leaders rule by fear and division.

I don’t want to live there again.

Trump’s vision for America is not an expansive vision of greatness but a bleak, mean-spirited vision of darkness, oppression, and the erosion of a freedom that I hold dear.

I am voting to avoid an America where we live in fear of our government, where justice is a commodity, & where no one has a fair shot.

I am voting to avoid an America where our children have to fight the same battles we did, where truth is malleable, & where power is the only currency.

It’s a stand against tyranny, against the erosion of democratic norms, and the very real threat of fascism.

I will not be complacent.

I cannot afford to think that someone else will handle it.

This is my fight and my opportunity to say that whether it happens or not, it didn’t happen because I let it happen out of apathy and stood idly by as my country was torn apart by greed, hatred, and lust for power.

I will vote not because I think Biden is fucking amazing but because I know that Trump is fucking terrible.

I will vote because I’ve seen what unchecked power does.

I will vote because I believe in a future where justice is not just a word but a reality for everyone.

I will vote because I love this country and believe it can be better.

And that starts with stopping Trump.

This isn’t just another election. This is a battle for the soul of our nation.

Your vote is your voice, your power, your stand against the darkness.

Use it to build a better future.

Use it to say: not on my watch.

Comments open, but fair warning…

a. I ain’t debating shit with you.

b. I ain’t interested in your third-party brainworm candidate

c. I ain’t interested in your magical thinking

d. Yes… there is a lesser of two evils.

e. Feel free to fuck all the way off… and when you get there, keep fucking off.

Have a lovely weekend.