The Genocide Election and the Kshama Calculation

State has top two primary, no party commitment required.  If the top two winners of the open field are from the same political party, that’s who’s slugging it out en noviembre.  My congressional district has several people vying for Adam Smith’s seat, Adam Smith incluye.  So.

Adam Smith: Did a better job of not fucking up gender on the webform to contact his office than either of WA state’s ancient senators, generally nicey and competent.  I would not hate voting for him again in November if I have to… but.  He’s been voting pro military even in these wretched times, when the US is supporting israel in its genocidal war.  The last time he had a primary challenger who campaigned against that element of his record, Melissa Chaudhry, she lost hard.  I do believe my household had voted for her in that primary.

Melissa Chaudhry – was also noncommittal on trans rights when interviewed by a local paper because she doesn’t want to offend the muslim community.  Not my only reason, but even tho she’s back, she’s no kind of contender and I’m not bothering with her this time.

Kshama Sawant:  The famous Seattle commie who got the city to change its minimum wage before the state did.  Also pro-trans rights.  Also committed what some may regard as cardinal sins in her principled radicalism, and likely to get less done in congress where making deals is more important than standing alone.  However, she has replaced Chaudhry as the anti-genocide candidate of choice.

The other fuckos:  Token gop nazi, random fools wasting their money and everybody’s time.

Kshama has good odds of splitting the progressive vote in a way that allows the gop nazi into November, and the area does have enough gop nazi voters that would give him a shot at winning.  However, Smith has won reelection pretty handily for a long time, so probably said nazi would just be advancing that far to lose.  However however, Kshama would be a less certain win against the nazi, so if Smith comes in third in the primary, it’s possible we could end up with a nazi over us after november.  In fact, the nazis are probably banking on this very idea, seeing her as more defeatable.  Wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve given her campaign shadow money.

But still.  This is the time.  Establishment dems who support genocide with their votes, regardless of what they do in their rhetoric, got to face a reckoning.  We’re taking the risk in my household and voting Sawant in the primary, which could have three different results in November:

Smith vs. Nazi.  This is the most likely result and is a no-brainer of a vote.  Would mean my household’s three votes were repping a fringe position and chucked in the dumpster of history.

Sawant vs. Nazi.  Another easy choice, but the added drawback of being a nailbiter.  Sawant has been slandered in national media hard enough that I’ve literally spoken to nazis in the opposite corner of this big-ass country that have opinions about her, even if they can’t say her name.  That slander can have an effect, and I’m sure I will get comments from people who don’t like her.  The question then.  Would you abstain and let a nazi win?  Probably not, but many in my district might.

Sawant vs. Smith.  Hard choice.  Seems likely Sawant will not be good at playing ball in DC, may get absolutely nothing done.  Or not.  After all, she helped get the min wage increased in Seattle, with everybody on the city council hating her commie ways.  Some kind of ball got played there.  Conversely, Smith may feel safe enough in his incumbency to do whatever he feels, and write more blank checks for murdering children in the Middle East.

So my choice now is between playing it safe and giving the dem establishment what it wants, or risking a nailbiter and possible nazi squeaking into congress, while sending a clarion message I’m done with genocide and the status quo.  I may come to regret it, but it’s message time.  What I’m betting is that if she gets in, she can beat a nazi.  This was, after all, one of the bluest blue states in 2024.

I can’t tell you what to do, but if you feel it’s a risk worth taking, vote Kshama Sawant for congress in Washington State’s 9th district.

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Tap-outs

Man, it was a bad month for writing.  I was doing well enough when I wrote, but there were certain demoralizing circumstances that have been messing with me for a few years and were worse than average this month.  So.  Road Rage goes on indefinite hiatus.

I might fuck around and turn in random Josefina+Blasfemia chapters occasionally.  I know that’s no kind of way to read a story, so if you’re so inclined, wait until I end it, then go back to the beginning and read the whole thing.  That story is probably my magnum opus of being weird as fuck.  Centennial Hills, The Septagram, etc, they’re intelligible enough, I think.

Anyway, happy crammed in roman asswipe month part Two.  Maybe shitler will get a month before he’s done, whaddyathink?  A thirteen month year?  It’s time.

Oh, and if it’s time to vote for you, vote!  I’ll be doing that tomorrow.

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No Nukes

If shitler and his “warfighter” get up their dicks enough to nuke somebody, I’d like to just be on the record here as saying whatever reprisal happens to this country will be justified.  I hope first and foremost that the fucking clown posse doesn’t do it, because fuck nukes, but if they do?  I hope the reprisal is a decapitating strike that doesn’t kill any of the civilians of Washington DC, who are mostly descended from the slaves who built the place.  We’ve done enough decapitating strikes lately to more than earn one of our own.

I am obliged by my “no doomerism” policy (please don’t forget it in my comments) to say I sincerely do not believe a full-scale nuclear conflict will result from whatever these horrific fuckups do.  It has been inevitable since the Cold War that at some point somebody is going to use smaller-scale nukes in a war scenario.  The technology exists to make a crater of small country, but restricting the scope of the blast to the size of a city is more “economically” sensible – preserve the value of more of the real estate.

Whoever ends up taking out the trash here, don’t miss newt gingler.  I like the version of him from this video better than reality…

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VOTE VOTE VOTE

this is a bonus post; for regular content see the previous &/or next buttons.

washington state midterms rolled right up on me.  not good.  there are reasons in the US why voting early can be a good idea.  i missed that boat.  but it’s not too late to vote!  ballots have to be postmarked no later than the 5th.  if you have to change your voter registration status or information and forgot past the mail deadline, you can do it in person on election night, but go early.  polling places close right at 8:00 pm.

another useful thing for last minute voters:  voter’s guides.  it’s good to have at least two you can check against each other.  there’s a guide for progressive voters online.  not sure who runs it or how they pick their endorsements, but you don’t have to take their word for anything.  they spell out their reasoning, list other endorsements, and line up well compared to other sources – at least for elections in my area.  useful enough for me, especially since my other main source does not make endorsements for municipalities outside of seattle.  you can also read what the candidates say about themselves in the official voter’s guide.  since that is often carefully worded to not offend voters on the opposite side of the political divide, it can be tricky to parse.  in that situation, look to who’s endorsing them for clues.

anyway, as slim as hope is these days, you’d be an asshole to throw away the tiny tiny say you have in things.  if enough of us get our asses in gear, we can make a difference.  it’s real.  my trailer park town had a city council that moved to ensure abortion access would be available here, right after roe v wade fell.  that’s because more decent people than asswipes voted here, at that time.

do what you can, and VOTE VOTE VOTE.

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Red State Leftists Please Start Voting

You heard about all the businesses capitulating to the fresh fashy vibes of the new ameriKKKa?  Tossing diversity initiatives, LGBTetc protections?  Amazon doing this is particularly shit because like many tech companies, they have a disproportionate number of trans women in computer programming.  You’d think that would count for something, but here we fucken are.

Red state leftists don’t want to vote because it feels hopeless, but here’s the thing.  If all of you got up and voted at the next opportunity and lost, it would send a message to the world, loud and clear.  The kind of message electoral politics can ignore, yes, but not the kind of message that corporate america can afford to ignore.  If the nazis win the next one by electoral margins but lose by 80% of the popular vote?  That is a show of force for human rights, for humane policies, for progress.  Corporations will realize that catering to the nazis is not the wisdom, and at least one source of human misery will become substantially less miserable.

That’s where the real power is at the moment.  Corporations.  They have all these fiefdoms carved out in the legalized monopoly game, so boycotts can only do so much.  But demographic information that their advertisers can use, that is something they’ll pay attention to.

Give it a whirl, please?  And who knows?  Maybe there’s still a sliver of a hope in hell that democracy can move this needle slightly away from endless calamity, right?  Throw me a fuckin’ bone here.  Do it on a lark.  Do it on a dare.  Do it high on bin laden weed with a six-pack of beer.  Just do it.

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I Knew It

Remember my post about leftist accelerationists?  Saw some evidence of it in the wild.  Couldn’t get a screencap and lost track of where it was, but it was one of those pro-palestine trans anarcho-whateverist tumblr gals who discourage voting and mock people for promoting it.  And in this post she said something like, “how can you be aware of the US and what it does in the world and not want it to fail?  not yearn for its utter destruction?”

This is what I mean.  The only way for the USA to improve, in their eyes, is to be utterly destroyed.  And if that takes X years of fascist rule and a million dead LGBTQ people and women who needed reproductive healthcare and unionists?  Fuck all those dead people, serves ’em right for being born in the wrong country.  And every other country that will be worse off because fascists control the USA, including Palestine?  Fuck them too.

Given this accelerationist impulse, I wonder if they would look at the terrorist actions of Hamas that inspired the current genocidal push and think, yeah, no matter how many Palestinians are slaughtered, it’s worth it to see the world being inspired to stop Israel and liberate the leftover living among the mountain of corpses.

Accelerationism bad.  Anti-voting leftists are accelerationists, and they’re bad.  Don’t be like that.

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