dear democrats

After the election happened, I was kinda glad that Harris was not our President, but even moreso, I was genuinely disgusted that Trump won. Obviously one of the two was gonna win. Then after a while I got hopeful. See, while Trump won the popular vote, he did so in a very unconvincing fashion - only a hair over 3 million more votes than he received in 2020. The voting age population grew by 12 million+ in that time. His base is shrinking at an unsustainable rate. Congress going the other color is more a common reaction to a weak Presidency, happens often. While related obviously, they are independent and certainly not indicative of a red wave. 

But it actually gets better! For some reason, nobody is taking about this: with over 6 million more votes for Biden in 2020 than for Harris in 2024 - where did all the Democrat voters go in 2024? They did not go to Trump, as noted above. Were Democrat voters really just THAT more engaged in 2020 (Covid - more time on their hands, easier to vote, crazy times, etc.)? Many articles have talked about blue voters going for Trump with a plethora of theories, mainly appeals to masculinity and those disenfranchised with the Democrat establishment, but from where I am sitting, it looks to me like those voters (and then some) just didn't vote. In WI, where I live, Harris got 1.668m votes, while the Democratic senator won with 1.673m votes. Look at those numbers, bigger turnout for non-Presidential races is not common, right!? 

Perhaps I am missing something, but I find this really interesting, and it gives me hope for the future - I believe that A LOT of people defiantly and triumphantly said that voting for the lesser of two evils is beneath them, despite the consequences. I've said this before and I'll say it again: I think many Democrat voters were turned off by the blue hubris that attempted to give them their new overlord. 

This is an excellent time for the Democratic Party to court those of us that are open to ideas that don't fall along strict ideological lines. Pander to us because our votes can help build something sustainable. Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden to Trump, are you seeing a pattern? If the alternative is Trump/a lunatic, it should be a slam dunk, but we probably won't be that engaged if you stay fringe-left. It's not asking for much, but simply "not Trump" is probably not good enough. Though a couple more months of Trump and that may change.

In the meantime, don't meet clown with more clown. Tacky, performative orange-man-bad antics don't help anybody. We want substance - meet bullshit MAGA lunacy with coherent arguments and facts, not myths that dodge hard truths. Trump hates remote government workers - then why is he golfing at Mar A Lago so much? Trump's insane numbers of government waste that has been cut? Debunk that again with actual numbers. Trump cutting DEI-related programs overseas that are monetarily meaningless (tens of millions vs billions) - pat him on the back and calmly explain how that money could be used to help Americans here. Obviously there is a strong case for overseas aid, but this is a smart optics upgrade. This could not be easier. Instead we are getting argumentative dismissals of perspectives because they are different and from the wrong "team".

Remember, marketing is important! How you market is just as important as what you market. Why do you think too many people don't care about climate change? You got a shithead like Al Gore moving the goalposts constantly and then you got the same people telling us that men can get pregnant and have periods - what the fuck did you think was gonna happen?! We are too busy to become climate scientists, and it's a lot easier to dismiss if you have crazy people in your ear. Almost the same exact thing with the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers - Anthony Fauci, jesus christ, can we not do better than this?

Don't lose sight of the forest for the trees, or whatever that idiom is. It is OK to agree with Trump (and conservatives, and anybody really) on things, and acknowledge good things that are happening (deporting criminals, trimming government waste), but also attempting in earnest to work with the Trump administration to improve things (not be fucking awful, not deporting citizens/noncriminals, sensible/strategic cutting). Keep an accurate tally of dollars saved, but have it be accurate, unlike DOGE's shitshow tally. Acknowledge wins even if you don't agree with the winning team. Educate Americans on government spending - where meaningful cuts would actually come from (spoiler: it's really not good for oldsters, and you're only young once but old forever). 

Imagine how powerful a public display of cooperation (christ or even sanity) would be vs the tacky "protests" at Trump's last address. If you want the easiest home run in terms of being the bigger person or party, now is the time because as of March 2025 we are seeing a very low bar to be met to win the future.

Realize that there are other viewpoints out there, and anything that differs in the slightest is not a canned Republican talking point. An open mind has taken me from liberal Democrat to Libertarian to misanthropic asshole, never Republican though. Many of us don't wholesale buy into liberal views, though we do have many, and we don't think that Trump is Hitler, but we are repulsed by most MAGA-anything. Honestly, right now, I'd say that MAGA voters are more vile than Trump, but that's based more on comment sections, as I don't know many MAGAs in real life. Regardless, and this is important: not automatically agreeing with you and not buying liberal views does not make one a Trumper or MAGA voter or whatever. Read that again because it's really unclear how actively turning away potential voters helps the cause. Understand where you sit relative to the Overton Window, and politic accordingly. 

The more I talk to people, I am realizing there are more people like this out there, more than I initially thought. Understand that there are not that many people that actually want to fully open OR turn off immigration entirely, but every poll indicates that it needs to be reigned in. Same thing with gun control, we want it to be harder to obtain guns, but we need to ask hard questions about gun violence. There are common sense easy things we could do that include trigger/gun locks, secure storage, improved mental health checks, etc., that would be a form of "gun control", but would be really hard to justifiably be against. Bottom line, the hick with three teeth and a bunch of AR-15s that likes to shoot stuff in his field is not the problem (regarding guns). Sucks to admit that, but pick better battles and worthwhile enemies.

There are people that: want better healthcare but probably don't think the government should be put in charge of it, want to improve healthcare by putting an end to the collusion between insurance companies and healthcare corporations, support abortion, support women's healthcare rights, support meaningful gun control while owning guns, support trans rights but are skeptical of the movement, support gay marriage, oppose war, want immigration and immigrants but want more control, support foreign aid done in strategic ways, support Palestinian people but not Hamas, among many other things.

Mainstream media really hosed us. There is plenty that correctly skewers right wingers and Trump, but Fox is the only right wing mainstream media that I know of. There are no other mainstream checks on Democrats/liberals. Joe Rogan maybe, but I've never listened to his podcast, and the other social media folks are small beans compared to CNN, Atlantic, NYT, etc. Which is part of a bigger and related problem - maliciously misidentifying things that we don't understand or don't agree with. Just because we don't like it doesn't automatically make it "far-right", "racist", "white supremacist", "fascist", "nazi", etc. And just to be clear, those are all Very Bad Things, but not always accurate. I often say, "not every asshole is a racist, but every racist is an asshole". Same thing. My take is that it is this wolf-crying fuckery in the media that desensitized many to Trump and MAGA shitwits the first time around, helping at least partly with the 2024 Presidential victory. Same with legit climate change folks being aligned with pregnant dude nutjobs - it just got dismissed due to association with straight up being wrong.

Biden's candidate-tanking behavior aside, I bet if Harris would have properly been disassociated from her senile corrupt piece of shit predecessor. then still run the campaign she ran, Trump would have been crushed in November. Worth noting, while audibly annoying and probably a bit of a bimbo, I think she might just have been one of the stronger Democrat candidates I've seen...though my first vote was in 2000 and that has since yielded awful candidates like Gore, Clinton, and Obama.

I was going to write a "Dear Republicans" one, but fuck them. 

Couple quick election 2024 thoughts

Last week I noticed that Harris received substantially fewer votes than Biden did in 2020 (more on that below), and that piqued my interest. With around 98% reporting in, here are some more numbers and what I think they say, without much weighing-in on the merit of either candidate.

- Voter turnout is usually around 60%, ranging from 55-65% since 1992. *TBD this year though.
- Trump got 50.4% of the vote, about 900k more votes than he received in 2020.
- Harris got 48% of the vote, about 9M fewer votes than Biden got in 2020.
- There are 12.5M more voting age people in 2024 than in 2020.
- Higher turnout in 2020 (65%) - in a pandemic, voting was easy, we were engaged politically cause we had a lot of time to argue about politics.
- 12.5M people at 60% turnout = 7.5M more voter age people probably/actually voting.
- 48% of 7.5M = 3.6M potential more Democrat votes than 2020
- 50.4% of 7.5M = 3.78M potential more Republican votes than 2020
- In WI, Tammy Baldwin got 1.672M votes (and beat a straight white male); Harris got 1.667M.

Trump's +900k vote count is important because if your voting base is not growing with the population, you have a problem. Obviously Democrats have a huge problem too - my guess is voters that typically vote Democrat, but skew more undecided, were alienated en masse by the hubris with which Biden dropping out was handled by DNC overlords. I think that was enough of a push for a lot of unenthusiastic voters to defiantly and triumphantly say that voting for the lesser of two evils is beneath them. We've been voting for the lesser of two evils for my entire voting life.

My take is that if the Democrat candidate had been stronger and had a traditional campaign, or been in the right place at the right time (like Biden in 2020), he or she would have had a good turnout and crushed Trump again. Harris was in a bit of a pickle as the incumbent VP for an outgoing single-term President that had a less than stellar term. Seems to be a party problem rather than a candidate problem as I don't think Harris is any worse than any candidate in my 24 year old voting life.

I could be wrong and what I see as a refreshing streak of dissent could just be pessimism and apathy, which is still maybe a step closer to unity, right?

it finally happened

Somebody used the word "microaggressions" in casual conversation. 

With a straight face. 

In a totally non-ironic fashion. 

I heard it. 

I was there. 

Up until this point, I'd only ever heard of "microaggressions" in shoddy journalism, never in like a real-life scenario.

Semi-thankfully I was wearing sunglasses so my reaction was half-masked. Well probably more like almost fully obscured. I tend to make exaggerated facial expressions with my eyes more than anything. So aside from a probably audible chuckle, my reaction may have gone unnoticed.

Here in Northwestern Wisconsin, trends tend to arrive a little after they hit in more metropolitan areas. And they might often be more of a caricature of the original idea. And in this situation, well I guess in any situation where one might feel micro-agressed-upon, the high probability of it being a caricature is certainly non-zero, dangerously approaching certainty.

I don't remember the full word-for-word offending conversation here, but it was relating to this chick going for a walk and tripping on the sidewalk and something about racism or the Patriarchy or Whatever.

fitting in is hard

But I'm trying man. It's been tough, but I've managed to include certified Chippewa Valley Normie language in just about every correspondence over the last week and a half and I am starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Referring to obvious non-sirs as "sir", was probably the first and easiest step to take in this transition. This aspect has been seamless.

After that super easy (shit, the "super"lative!) first step, I graduated to incorporating the ever popular and clearly incorrect usage of "myself" on it's own. Unironically adding it to the gratuitous, "circle back to follow up and loop myself in" phrase was a breeze.

I hate who I am becoming, but to put it simply, it's been liberating.

But shoot man, I am like one plural noun with an apostrophe away from wryly wearing Hey Dude shoe's.

Stay tuned for updates on this journey as I learn to live my current chosen truth.

guess I just never thought people really believed it

I'm just gonna come right out and say it. I'm kinda blown away, but I was recently taken aback by the revelation that people really believe stuff in the bible. 

All my life, I just kinda thought that religious people or people that think they're religious were always like "heh cool", and were just hanging out for the community aspect. Like a "wink, nod" kinda thing among friends. Disclaimer, I spent first through third grade in catholic school.

But it hit me recently, "holy shit, people really believe this". Like, I think there are people that genuinely believe an omnipresent ghost-like super-being created the Earth six thousand years ago and that dudes were fighting dinosaurs. I always just likened it to being similar to how children like cartoons. Can't knock it too hard though cause it was pretty sweet in high school when my friend and I hitched a ride with a church group to go see MxPx in scuzzy bar in Milwaukee. Punk rock, man.

It's not like those of us that don't believe that stuff don't actually see any value in religion. The community aspect is definitely there. There's some pretty reasonable but often ignored morals that humanity needs. It's convenient to explain away things that are hard to understand; I guess that's a way to live or whatever.

Even modern religions like diversity & trans fetishism and then like the whole anti-vaxxing/anti-masking doctrines are really similar. It's just a community of people that actively choose to believe things that simply aren't real. 

But yeah, again, I can see the appeal or comfort in following these kinds of myths.

is it a dogwhistle?

All this talk and blog posting about small weiners and big pickup trucks, got me thinking about yep, small weiners and big pickup trucks. But like, the backing-a-huge-pickup-truck-into-a-parking-spot thing, I'm curious if that's like the Jeep Wave, but for those with micro-peens.

It's like dogwhistling a "what's up" to a certain segment of the micro-peen population.

In what ways can other segments of the micro-peen population dogwhistle each other? Really makes ya wonder.

questions and answers

The other day I whipped out my pocket knife to cut open a box. My five year old noticed this, and asked, "Daddy, why do you always carry a knife?"

Because I am incapable of answering a question, and generally always do things wrong (have been for the last 40+ years), HeckYeahWoman jumped in and said something about how useful and handy it is to carry a knife.

As it turns out, that was not the complete answer. Yeah, my reason for carrying a knife is related to how useful it is, but for so much more than just opening a package. I like to think that it opens up opportunities too. I went on to explain my reasoning:

You see, whenever I am out and about in public, and if I have a couple extra minutes, heck sometimes I even make time, I like to pull the old "finger through the toilet paper" trick. And before she could ask what that "finger through the toilet paper" trick is, I explained. Check this out, if I have an extra couple minutes, I'll hop into a public restroom, go into a stall, get out my knife, and poke a tiny slit in each square of the already thin and cheap toilet paper. This will make it easy for the finger(s) of that toilet paper's user to burst through one or two squares, putting finger to butthole, the ultimate indecency when shitting in a public bathroom. I then meticulously roll up the slightly altered toilet paper, and place it back into the dispenser.

And what does my daughter say after this quick tutorial on being awesome? She said, "Papa, that's really clever; I want to do that when I am old enough to use a knife".