Reminder
Dear Becky from Facebook…
Dear Becky from Facebook,
I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. We have a mutual friend. This mutual friend has taken to spam-posting anti-Kamala memes lately (along with the memes that “never trend” and self-referentially ask why is that), many of which were suggesting Kamala is now campaigning to fix problems that—surprise twist—she herself caused. Here is the meme in question, emblematic of several they had already posted:
I asked my friend to clarify. I have only on one other occasion commented on one of their right-wing posts, one about guns I found in particularly bad taste. They took that one down. This time, I wasn’t trying to challenge them with the below comment, I was actually genuinely confused:
My friend did not answer.
Four days later, Becky, you came at me with no small amount of heat:
I tried to clarify my position for you, saying I was specifically asking about this meme, about the promises she herself was making and how those were in response to the problems she herself caused. You… brought even more heat.
…but not clarity. I still had no clear example that satisfied both of my qualifications, namely a specific policy that she both created and now wanted to repair. So I replied again. With just, maybe, a smidge of my own heat. I tried not to. I’m really trying to be better about this. But some did sneak in there, I’ll acknowledge.
Finally, some clarity arrived.
Alright, here’s something we can work with oh you’re not done.
…Cool.
You may have noticed I did not reply to you yet. I wanted to be thorough. I want you to know, first of all, Becky from Facebook, I do not hate you or bear you any ill will. In fact I want to take you seriously, because you are making some serious accusations, and making them seriously, and because there are thousands of people out there just like you. Perhaps millions. Which means there are probably also thousands of people like me, which makes me feel a bit better for never getting a novel published, if the market is so saturated with other people like me. But I digress.
I know already you won’t take me seriously, regardless of the evidence I may present here, and there’s no hope for me to change your mind. I’m just Aaron from Facebook. The only way you might change your mind is if someone whom you already know and like and respect presents you with—let’s be honest—probably something very similar to the laundry list of facts I’m about to unveil. But I’m not actually writing this for you, am I? I think we both know that. Still, I want to treat your perspective with respect.
First, a recap of your grievances regarding the Vice President:
She wants an open border and is responsible for the current border crisis. She wants to offer free food, living, laundry, phone, and credit card, and $150k to immigrants. Why not veterans instead.
She won’t debate Trump. (I’m obviously not going to address this, but it is worth noting you cited this before the debate was scheduled and took place. And that Trump is now the one saying he won’t do another.)
She’s mirroring Trump’s policies.
We left equipment in Afghanistan to be sold on the world market. I am choosing to understand this to mean you have a problem with the entire exit and not just the waste of taxpayer funds on lost equipment.
She killed the Keystone pipeline in order to buy dirty oil from Venezuela.
She sent money to Iran.
She sent money to Ukraine, which is the most crooked country.
She was the deciding vote on the Affordable Care Act.
She was big for inflation. Which I am choosing to mean she was responsible for the inflation and not that she was just, like, really into it.
Free college. Period. End grievance. Sorry, excuse me, “FREE college.” Apparently you hate this idea.
Elderly retirees going back to work. I will choose to take this as a reference to a bad economy.
On other posts, it became clear, you would also very much like everyone to understand a few other things, not policies, but more personal statements that would demonstrate you know exactly what you are talking about, that you represent a fair and balanced perspective, and that people who disagree with you are missing the obvious.
You are not a Republican because you have voted for Democrats in the past.
You are reasonable because you can argue politics with friends and stay friends. In fact, your friends are responsible for convincing you that the media was all lying to you, that they knew the actual truth, which they shared with you.
Trump is the voice of the people. Democrats are the elites. Trump is not even that rich anymore. Trump is the financial victim of the elites, which furthers his understanding of the common people who have also experienced losing money. The Obamas are billionaires.
Alrighty. Let’s take it from the top.
1. The Border
Harris never had anything to do with border policy. Biden asked her to address the root causes of the Central American influx from the Northern Triangle and see what could be done to stem the flow. She kept away from the actual border, possibly for political reasons, sure, but the fact was that was not her job. And how much did she actually accomplish by going to Central America? Hard to say, possibly not much at all, although Northern Triangle immigration has been trending consistently downward.
Practically the moment Trump left office, people wanted to take a chance on America again and flooded the gates.
While the Trump era immigration was coming mainly from the Northern Triangle, Biden saw an immediate spike in migrants from South America and the Caribbean. Before Harris could take her first flight to Central America, those countries were no longer the thrust of the problem. But hey, her assignment was what it was. The only country of the three that was even accessible to her was Guatemala, where she made a speech and basically said “Don’t come, you’ll just get arrested.” Then, the focus became aiding and improving the countries of origin so they wouldn’t want to leave in the first place. And by countries, I mean Guatemala. A new president got elected, conservatives tried to invalidate the election (you know, that old story), but the US pulled their weight and said let the election results stand! and Harris was at the front of that effort. Only time will tell if the corruption that led to the violence and danger which compelled people to leave their homes has been effectively dealt with, or if it’ll just spring back up later from another source. Anyway, like I said, border policy is not exactly my favorite part of her platform, but it’s nonsense to say she’s trying to make an open border—much less give away houses.
I can only assume you’re referring to the California bill to allow any first generation home buyer with a social security number (read: a taxpayer) to apply for a voucher that would put them on a waitlist from which would be drawn about two thousand names (based on the first round of Dream For All loans) who would then be granted 20% of the purchased home’s cost to be used for either the down payment or closing costs, the final amount of which would have been not to exceed—wait for it—$150,000. So yes, technically, a non-resident alien could have conceivably been given $150,000, assuming they get approved for a loan for a $750,000 house. But even that is not happening. Gavin Newsome axed it because it was getting used for political fodder against Harris, who had—again—nothing to do with it.
Skipping ahead to…
3. Mirroring Trump’s Policies
They agree on exactly one thing: taxes on tips. I know we live in a contentious age, but Republicans and Democrats are not legally bound to be opposed on every single issue.
She does not support building the wall. She said she would sign the recent bipartisan bill, which Republicans made sure included provisions for the wall. Not additional funds, just additional time. That was the compromise. It was all political theater anyway, on both sides. Democrats conceded on such points in part because they knew Republicans would kill it, which makes it easy for Kamala to say she would have signed it, or even that she will sign it in the future, if another similar bill is introduced. But this bill (which you strongly implied you read, although, at almost 45,000 words, I tend to doubt you actually went through it line-by-line—although is this what you meant by retirees going back to work?) is dead, and a new one will have to be negotiated and written, and by then the campaign will be over at which point we’ll see who really supports what. But nobody involved with the creation of this bill suffered from the delusion that it would get passed in this form, this year. The most optimistic might have hoped this will be the bones of the real bill that eventually gets passed. The more realistic were probably more than aware that immigration—and the xenophobia that word inspires—only ever matters to politicians in election years.
4. Afghanistan
Leaving Afghanistan was indeed a clusterfuck, and there’s a lot of factors that went into why it happened and why it went so bad, but laying this at the feet of Kamala seems pretty harsh, even if you count her and Biden as one and the same. A particular quote from Biden in the April before the withdrawal stands out to me: “It is perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself, but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that means something.” The agreement he’s referring to was made by the Trump administration, negotiating only with the Taliban and not the Afghani government, which made demands on the Taliban to keep the peace, and in exchange we’d leave by May 1, 2021. However, virtually no oversight was put in place to ensure the Taliban was holding up their end of the deal, and as the deadline approached their violence against the Afghani government and citizens even increased, as if daring us to renege on the deal. There was pressure put on Biden to renegotiate the deal, and pressure from the other side (including Trump) to go ahead with the May 1 pull-out. Taliban forces made their move even before we had officially removed all of our own troops, which, Biden made it clear, was his priority, and the Afghani puppet government folded as their leadership fled. Trump continued to brag how his deal with the Taliban caused it all and gleefully mocked Biden’s inability to figure out a better way. Biden tried to justify the move afterwards saying the rapid unraveling of the government in favor of chaos proved that pulling out had indeed been the correct decision, but the Taliban’s rule is an outcome hard to cheer for. So if you want to hold it against Kamala, fine, but it’s pretty clear Trump had a major part in the whole thing, too, and he doesn’t even deny it.
5. Keystone XL Pipeline
Did Biden kill the Keystone pipeline? No. The Keystone pipeline already existed and continues to exist. What he killed was the Keystone XL, a shortcut for the current Keystone that would have pumped more tar sands oil to its destination at the US refineries in the south even faster—where it is usually then sold and shipped to other countries.
If we would have just been selling that extra oil to other countries, how would the KXL have brought down gas prices? Good question, Becks, in fact it would have had no effect on current gas prices, because on top of us not actually using that oil ourselves, the pipeline would have still been years away from actual production. And the oil produced by tar sands is generally too dirty for gasoline anyway and mostly gets used in the production of plastics. So. I guess yes, give that one to Kamala if you want, but if you’re determined to be mad about it, be mad for the right reasons.
6. Sending Money to Iran
She didn’t send any money to Iran. $16 billion of frozen assets were unfrozen as part of a hostage negotiation. I don’t know precisely how much Harris had to do with that negotiation, but the Biden White House owned it, so sure, it can be hers, too. $10 billion of that had already been unfrozen during the Trump era, the funds originally coming from Iran selling energy to Iraq, for which the Trump administration gave them a waiver to do after backing out of the nuclear deal. I don’t know precisely how much Trump himself had to do with any of that, given that it seems the entire White House did anything they possibly could to prevent him from making any real decisions, but what’s good for blaming Harris is certainly good for blaming Trump, too. The hostage deal extended Iran’s access to the $10 billion and added in another six. All of it can only be used for humanitarian purposes. None of it has been funneled towards strengthening Hamas. The paper work to access these funds is so extensive that we always know exactly what it would be used for, and most all of it remains untouched, including all of the funds held by South Korea, who are themselves preventing access to it because they don’t want to deal with the headache.
We did not inadvertently give money to Hamas. We are, however, profiting off the weapons we’re selling to Israel, to whom the term “collateral damage” has no meaning, as they see every man, woman, and child in Palestine as nothing more than a future corpse, affiliated with Hamas or not. We did not fund the attack which trigger this current iteration of the war, but we are sure as hell profiting off its continuation.
7. Ukraine
Oh lord, Ukraine. Yes, it is painful to spend money on Ukraine. Maybe we shouldn’t be. You know what I remember, I remember being really proud of the first Gulf War. The big bully Iraq invaded little Kuwait, and well, we just wouldn’t stand for that. Of course, there was a lot more going on behind the scenes of that war than my six-year-old brain could comprehend at the time, and my forty-two-year-old brain still probably isn’t up to the task. But the word ‘invasion’ stuck in my craw, like how dare they, a nation’s border are inviolable. It bothered the shit out of me back then, it bothered me again when I learned in history class about Germany invading Poland, and it did again when Russia invaded and occupied Crimea. And no one did anything. They stole the Crimean peninsula from another sovereign country and no one stopped them or made them give it back. Russia owns a permanent veto in the UN, they aren’t going to do anything. The US imposed sanctions and Russia laughed. I’m not fond of slippery slope arguments in general (what’s next, something exponentially worse??) but this one isn’t a hypothetical. What’s next turned out to be trying to take the entire country. If Putin succeeds there? With China backing him, and North Korea as well lurking in his corner? He’s already lost somewhere between 120,000 and 180,000 troops, with estimates as high as 728,000 combined Russian casualties (killed, injured, or missing). You think he’s at all concerned about the toll? Putin is now in his 70s. He’s beyond worrying about keeping power at home. That is now a given. This is about his global legacy. He will not quit. He will only escalate until someone is willing to negotiate, to make concessions to him that would allow him to maintain his image, and thus far no one has been willing to, and I’m not sure they should be, even for a peace or ceasefire. Because I do not necessarily believe he will stop even then.
If we pulled funding and basically allowed Russia to take over the country, do you really think he would stop? Putin himself acknowledges his own imperialist ambitions (making some people question whether NATO had anything to do with Russia’s original invasion of Crimea at all). Or—do you even want him to stop? Would that be okay with you, if Putin rolls through, keeps going, takes over a few more countries? Kicks off a new era of land-grabbing imperialism? Some of the Fox News folks have publicly suggested that Russia is actually where it’s at, they’ve got their shit figured out, and life under Putin is better than life here, in these socialist states of comm-erica. Is that where you’re coming from? Or do you have an even better idea of what we should do? Because I for sure do not.
8. Affordable Care Act
This one I had trouble confirming. I was going to just say I found no evidence of her casting the tie-breaking vote on the ACA, but then in passing I thought I saw someone else reference it, on Twitter or somewhere, Obama or Biden or perhaps Harris herself saying it, a reference I, of course, didn’t save and can’t find again. She did vote on the Trump-era attempt to repeal the ACA, although that vote was 51-49 and John McCain is generally given the credit for its defeat. She was the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, is that what you meant?
Speaking of…
9. Inflation
Yes, she was the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which people generally tend to refer to as Biden’s infrastructure bill. Now, did it actually do anything to reduce inflation? Probably not. Almost immediately after Biden took office, inflation went from less than 2% to over 5%, topping off at 9.1% in June of 2022. The causes for this are largely twofold, one being the supply chain issues (remember those?), first as a result of the pandemic, and then later caused by Russia invading Ukraine (remember that?). Second, during the pandemic the Fed dropped interest rates to practically zero to make sure people kept borrowing money and the economy didn’t die. This increased spending power, meaning buyers could afford to pay more, which led to higher inflation, as well as a robust economy. The reason it doesn’t always feel like a robust economy is that in many cases the excess profits were absorbed by the larger corporations without passing along their good fortune to the lower level workers (which also led to more inflation). Now, exactly how much of that are you saying belongs on the shoulders of the Biden-Harris administration? Did they cause the supply chain problems? Did they go back in time and make the Fed drop interest rates during the Trump administration? Do they determine how much companies pay their employees, or don’t?
10. Free College
If you’re talking about Biden’s efforts to forgive student loans, calling it “free college” would mean you don’t understand the concept of loan forgiveness at all. Though many of Biden’s initiatives have been held up by federal courts, this sums up what he wanted to do, which was provide up to $20,000 in relief to the people who need it most. People in the lowest income brackets, many of whom have already spent years paying towards their balances, sometimes already having paid more than their original loan balance.
Harris’s website says nothing about free college, although she does plan to “continue” addressing the student loan crisis and wants to make college “more affordable.” Although, if there was a way to make college free, why on earth would you be against that? Do you believe college is bad?
11. The Economy
The economy is fine. Doing quite well, actually. Some would call it robust. Falling trade deficit, low unemployment, GDP increasing. If it doesn’t feel like the economy is thriving, it is mostly likely because, again, corporations are gobbling up all the excess (wages only went up 4% this year, and with inflation factored in that only felt like 1%). On top of this, you are constantly being told to ignore the traditional evidence, that the economy is not in fact thriving and it is actually in the toilet. You just have to know how to interpret the evidence differently than all the experts.
So if the economy is fine, why are retirees going back to work? Specifically the ones doing it for financial reasons, I mean, not just folks who got bored. In most cases, yes, their money will run out if they don’t. They simply have to. They are trying to delay their social security payouts (as well as other retirement payouts) so that they are more likely to have it last the rest of their lives. Many of these folks are citing inflation as the reason they think their pension (ha!) or 401k balance might not be enough. I guess, to help them stay retired, we would want to keep inflation down to healthy levels, somewhere in the 3% range we are currently in, as well as to increase funding for social safety nets, then, right? Right? I mean, what kind of monsters would suggest gutting Social Security or Medicare and also raising the age of retirement eligibility to 69?
Right?
Quickly then, addressing your other points:
1. You Are Not Just Some Blindly Loyal Republican, and You Have Even Voted For Democrats In the Past
Congratulations.
2. Your Friends Talked You Into This
I mean, ‘I succumb to peer pressure’ is kind of a weird flex, but I too like to be able to discuss things rationally without going for each other’s throats.
3. Trump Isn’t That Rich, But the Obamas Are Billionaires
The Obamas are worth about $70 million. Trump is worth almost $4 billion. Which is 4,000 million. 4000 million is about 57 times 70 million. You need 57 Obama families to equal Trump. I don’t know what your own income per year is, but multiply it by 57 and imagine your next door neighbor makes that much, and see if you can imagine how much different their life would be than yours. If you make $100,000 per year, your neighbor would be pulling in $5.7 million per year.
Of course, in that case, the Obamas’ income would be 700 times yours. You’d have to work 700 years to bring in what they bring in in one year. That doesn’t make me feel especially valuable, either. But at least that’s less than a millennia. You’d have to work 40,000 years at that salary to match Trump. If you’d started working for $100,000 per year at the time Cro-Magnon man first set foot in Europe, you’d perhaps be able to retire this year on equal financial footing. He is rich. He is profanely rich. Saying he isn’t makes you sound profoundly ignorant.
All of this is to say, I hear you. I have looked into your claims and accusations. You may believe me, but since I’m not your friend, probably you won’t. Probably you write all of this off as a biased, blind, agenda-driven rant, and you won’t click through to my sources to see if they are valid or if I used any of them correctly or misquoted them for my own purposes. Probably you don’t read a single word of this post at all.
But if you do read a single word, I hope it is this next one:
1. Liar
Do you remember the Trump years, Becky? It wasn’t so long ago. In fact, lots of people took the time to write it all down, in case people like you, Becky, my dearest friend Becky, Becky from Facebook, ever considered advocating for this man or anyone like him again.
Most importantly, Becky, I need you to understand this fact, I need you to drink it in like water and accept it: Donald Trump. Is. A. Liar.
HE IS A LIAR. I will repeat it as often as necessary. He is a pathological, unabashed, self-serving, unconscionable, malicious, LIAR. And the worst part? He’s not even that good at it. Most politicians are good liars, and the best ones never have to lie, they simply pick and choose from facts that best support their cause and leave out the rest. Not him. He’s got obvious tells. He never admits he’s wrong about anything. He’s never accepts blame for anything, it’s always someone else’s fault. When he’s caught in a lie, he doesn’t retract, or even rephrase—he doubles down. This is the number one tell for all bad liars. Even if he accidentally lies, he defends it to the death. Do you remember this? The map he altered with a Sharpie to suggest he wasn’t wrong about the hurricane prediction? And then denied being the one to alter it? And then when pressed, he said it was a bad map anyway and the White House had “a better map than that, which is going to be presented where we had many lines going directly, many models — each line being a model — and they were going directly through. And in all cases Alabama was hit, if not likely, in some cases pretty hard”? And then even gave a specific number to his claim, saying it had been a 95% probability that Alabama would get hit? Remember?
How about that noise causes cancer? Specifically the noise from windmills. If people challenge him, he doubles down. Now he’s saying the noise from windmills is killing whales.
He is an inept, obvious liar. And yet, you are falling for it. And that makes it very hard to respect you, because it is as plain as day to anyone who’s ever been or known a horny teenager, or been or known a kindergartener trying not to get in trouble for something they just did in plain sight of the teacher. It’s obvious to anyone who’s ever tried to write or had to read a freshman Composition persuasive essay, to anyone who’s ever pulled someone over or been pulled over for speeding. His lies are not foreign to us. We know them. We have them inside of us, and we can and do let them out in our not-so-finest hours. To deny their existence, to say Donald Trump does not lie, or that his lies are not harmful, or that he lies only for the sake of what, patriotism? the greater good?—all of that equates to you refusing to be responsible for your own decisions and falsehoods, to be responsible for your vote, and your influence on the future. If you believe him, or believe in him, then either you have somehow made it to adulthood with the gullibility intact of a four-year-old going to bed at 7:00 pm on Christmas Eve, or you just don’t care. You don’t care about the damage his lies are doing to others. You are only concerned about yourself, your own personal sphere. You are the person in the car ahead who flings an unwanted fast food bag out the window, you are the person who parks with two wheels on the line, you are the very last person to merge. You are the person cutting in line if you notice someone not paying attention, the shoplifter who figures out a way to blame it on the store for making it too easy. You don’t put the seat down. You in every situation will determine the path of least resistance to you personally and take it. You are the reason Jesus came. To quash that very part of our natures, so that we may live for each other. Specifically that part, that selfish, arrogant, antisocial part that would follow the will of the crowd up to and including crucifying a man who had harmed no one, whose only crime was claiming to be the son of God. Which means, in the best case scenario for those calling for his death, they taunted, tortured, and stabbed a man to death for the crime of having a mental illness. And worse case, which you should believe, if you happen to be a believer: they actually killed God. Because of peer pressure. Which, and I’m not a religious man myself here, but I would have to assume, is bad. Bad news for you. Probably don’t want to be heading to the afterlife with that on your rap sheet.
Since there’s about a 99% chance you are a Christian, either by being born a Christian or by identifying as one later in life, you should then look at your own selfish, malignant, misanthropic impulse, that would punish other people for being different from you, for going against your own personal grain, for being in your way, as the worst part of you. And yet—you believe him. You trust him, because it’s convenient to you. You empower him. You propagandize for him. And you refuse to listen to people like me, who would only want to help you.
I do only want to help you. I want to shame you, but thereby help you. You might think I don’t understand, could never understand, but I do understand. The things that are important to you are also important to me. I too prioritize myself and my child and my family over other people. When I find out some of them are Trump enablers, I can very easily see myself choosing that side as well, because I love them, because I want to support them, and even though I may have my own doubts, I truly believe their minds cannot be changed. So I don’t try. I opt for the easier way, so that I might stay close to them. I will say what they say, meme what they meme, belittle those whom they belittle.
All I’m really trying to say in this section here is, maybe you should ask them. Maybe the A-number-one reason they support Trump is because they think you wouldn’t change your mind either.
There are, of course, plenty of reasons (34 felony convictions, 2 impeachments, 1 insurrection, his hard-on for all things Putin) to keep this man out of office besides his affinity for falsehood. But I’ll save that discussion for now, because it’s the lying that lets him get away with everything else. No, not the lying. The fact that he never sees consequences for his lies. That’s what empowers him to do whatever he wants behind closed doors, whenever he thinks the cameras are off.
I just want you, or probably not you, Becky, but anyone else who might be reading this, all I want is for you to open your mind to the possibility he might be lying. Give him the benefit of the doubt no longer. Demand proof. 26 different women have accused him publicly of inappropriate sexual behavior, most commonly (and in Trump’s own words) saying he would move on them like a bitch and grab em by the pussy, because they let you do that kind of thing when you’re rich. Twenty. Six. Women. He says, to each and every one of these accusations: nuh-uh. Wasn’t me. Didn’t do it. Don’t remember her. I don’t even know her. Oh you’ve got a photo of us, well I don’t remember taking that photo.
Jesus had one person betray him. When Judas accused him with a kiss, Jesus didn’t try to weasel out of it or make excuses. He never said, Wasn’t me.
Just listen to the man. Imagine his words coming from not a 78-year-old billionaire, but a 12-year-old boy who has never been held accountable for anything. When I close my eyes, I can’t tell the difference.
Have a good night, Becky. I’ll see you in the comment section.