#voting may only shift our trajectory a tiny bit

[sanyu-choi]

I have never transcribed a video before, but this one feels too important not to.

Transcript:

"Hi, I have a degree in political science with a concentration in politics of different regions of the world, but I don't need these credentials to be able to explain to you why saying "both parties are bad" in this election in particular is wild.

Full disclosure, I was like a C student, I spent most of my time doing Theatre Club at the Air Force Academy - as you can see, I followed my bliss.

And listen, to preface, I've already told you about my experience in the military (for context, she has separate videos about her time in the military under Trump), I told you about how the climate in the military changed once the Tangerine was elected - such as the trans ban, such as getting rid of diversity and inclusion, such as the number of members from certain types of groups joining the military increasing, and that y'all should care about how it impacted the military - whether you like the military or not - as it is a group of American citizens that the president has direct control over. It is a preview of what he would do if he had direct control over the civilian population.

And for accounting my experiences and giving all of these facts as to why it would be dangerous to let this guy back into the White House again, some of the DMs I received were spicy.

Some person in particular called me a house slave.

They were not black.

I'll leave you to that.

And, uh, that person was not right wing either.

Very interesting to see what people have become comfortable with saying to us lately, and I'm a little heated, my hand is shaking cause I just read a little piece of Project 2025. So let's get into it.

Also, if you have anything to say about me being a black veteran, a former military member- I got something for that ass and I will embarrass you. Don't do it to yourself.

Okay, "Both parties are bad! Both parties are bad!" So I'm a political scientist, I understand. I realize that both main parties pander to marginalized groups, usually as a tool to get elected and nothing more. I know that candidates from both prominent parties very often make promises during their campaign that they don't end up keeping in their term. In the past elections people have used this as an excuse to stay home and not fucking vote.

Here I would like to introduce a term that I learned in dialectical behavioral therapy called Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance means observing the facts, examining your feelings about it, and realizing that you have to make choices based on how things actually are, not how you wish it were right now. It doesn't mean lying down and giving up on a different or better solution - it means you're gonna have to do the best that you can do right now.

In a given election you are never going to get to choose between Superman and Lex Luthor. The nature of politics is grimy. Even if a viable third party just rose out of the ground at some point, it will also never be delivering you your picture-perfect-morally-pure candidate.

I've been seeing a lot of content over the last few months about how a lot of far left rhetoric mirrors evangelical Christianity. I feel like this is kind of an example. Your Messiah is not coming. Sometimes you're going to have to choose between Lex Luthor and the Joker. If those are the only two viable options, guess who I'm voting for. Lex Luthor may be corrupt, but the Joker blows up hospitals.

Also hot take - given that the nature of politics is grimy and dirty; given that the United States of America has accumulated a lot of sins over the course of its existence; given that the nature of geopolitics is complicated and we are living in a world that is basically held together by the promise of mutually assured destruction to its several nuclear powerhouses, each having the ability to clap this planet's cheeks with a push of a button - it's not exactly an environment where one country can just go and unfriend another country on Facebook and just block and mute on TikTok - given all of that, Kamala is actually a decent candidate. You don't have to like that, you don't have to like her, but that resume is pretty strong for this job application - including the part where she is the sitting vice president.

By the way, this is not candidate worship, by the way. We really need to do something about the collective brain rot that has made people somehow unable to understand the concept of nuance- a word that makes me lose 10 brain cells every time I have to say it on this app, cause people love to engage in bad faith. Perhaps y'all have just become accustomed to seeing how the members of the Tangerine Club act; now you think that it's that or nothing at all.

You are allowed to be excited about a candidate. You are allowed to support a candidate and also be a little skeptical and also hold them accountable. Oh, you're allowed to have expectations of them and then when they get into office and if they don't meet those expectations, you're allowed to be disappointed. Showing support for a candidate does not mean that you have now joined a Scientology-like cult that you just can't get out of. You're allowed to change your thoughts on things as time goes by as you get new information. That's how people that voted for the Tangerine last time are gonna vote for Kamala this time. You know how that works?

Oh it's comical to me when people come into my comment sections about videos that have, actually, nothing to do with politics and they'll be like, "oh you voted for Biden, you voted for Biden! How's that going now, how's that going now? Do you regret it, do you regret it?"

No.

No. Me voting for Biden did not automatically anoint him as Jesus Christ, just that I had to choose between him - who had been the vice president of the United States before - and the guy that literally threw our country into a trash fire for four years and is a criminal and a predator. Yeah, that was an obvious choice for me.

Even though identity politics have not been part of her campaign, she has laid out her policies pretty clearly, but y'all are gonna say identity politics anyway because a black person- a black woman existing in any other context that a- any other kind of person exist can, just, automatically be seen as political. As a black woman, I'm allowed to be excited about the prospect of the first black woman President of the United States.

When Obama got elected, I was a teenager and I was being raised by a conservative, black, self-hating father who was a preliminary member of the Tangerine club - I was not allowed to be excited about that. It was not safe in my father's house to be excited about that. And his reasoning was actually, comically, the same as a lot of far leftist reasoning, that "it's not enough to just put a black person in there if he's not a good president, then it just doesn't count, it just doesn't count. If it's not perfect, then it's not really progress." Yet it's a standard that no construction paper colored man has ever been held to in pursuing this office. Another mirroring of toxic evangelical Christianity - moral purity.

You can hold space for both skepticism and excitement. You say you stand for progress, but then you turn around and do exactly what the far right does - hold people of color to an impossibly higher standard.

I'm gonna hold space for both skepticism and excitement and I'm going to allow myself to be excited about this - no one's taking that away from me again.

Dad if you can hear me from down there, I hope that just gave you heartburn.

"Oh both parties are bad!" I'm so glad that we still live in a reality where a qualified black woman can be considered as an equal choice to an unqualified Tangerine - but originally construction paper colored - predator, felon, treasonous orange, with no qualifications for the job, but alas he was given the job before anyways - because construction paper colored men - and sucked at it.

And y'all were all there.

The repeal of Roe v Wade, Covid- we were all there, we all saw the same things, did we not? He has literally laid out every terrible thing he wants to do if you allow him to have this job again. And some of y'all are really like 'mwemeh.'

Some of you may be too young to remember when it was actually sane to be able to say "oh both parties are bad" in an election. The impact that this guy has had over politics over the last few years - We are in distress!

This is a code red - Do you understand that? We don't have time for this.

During the Obama and McCain race, obviously those who were left leaning - "oh you want Obama, you want Obama, right?" - But no one was talking about leaving the country if McCain won!

You get what I'm trying to say here?

Pessimism is not only annoying- it is not productive. It is dramatic and unfruitful.

"Voting doesn't work anyway" - voting doesn't work as quickly as you would like it to. It's something that you have to continue to do over time to affect change, you have to have a consistency.

If voting doesn't do anything, well I guess that our ancestors who fought and died for us to have that right just died for nothing, right?

Okay!

Last point - if all of this seems a little too 'kaka!' to you, let me submit to you this: the United States is the biggest military power in the world. It is a lethal weapon, a missile, a bazooka. Whether you decide to get your ass off that couch and participate in November or not - that bazooka is going to be handed to somebody in January. Like it or not, there are only two actual options of people to hold that bazooka. Who do you want holding that bazooka? Hmm?

Keep in mind that one of those people wants it to be an option to be able to turn that bazooka onto us.

I just can't stop thinking about the things that black women have been called over the past few weeks. I can't stop thinking about somebody calling me a house slave. How, pray tell, do you expect to be able to keep on bullying black women into being beasts of burden for every single one of your social justice issues if we have less rights of Protection than we already do now?

Food for thought."

We don’t have time for “both parties are bad” this time - Nicque Marina

You can't build a better country or world, solar punk or otherwise if you don't have the freedom to do so. Citizens of the United States of America are responsible for the impact our policies have on the world. The previous Republican administration dismantled the government organization focused on dealing with pandemics and then COVID spread and killed so many world-wide. That is just one of millions of reasons to vote against the Republicans. It's easier to focus on mutual aid and community gardens when we aren't living with long COVID and burying our family and neighbors. Vote blue 🔵 and buy humanity a little time.