How Hillary Clinton is Like a Shitty Mechanic

The smartest of us can’t help but look around and find ourselves profoundly alienated by whatever world we stand to inherit. Who would be eager to inherit a nation on the last legs of empire? This house is falling apart. Do you know how much work it will take to bring this shithole up to code? Do you have any idea how bad things are? One out of five children in America lives in poverty while Donald Trump shits on a toilet seat made of gold!

That’s why I’m a radical. Radicals are just people who genuinely believe that the only way forward is radical. Radicals include climate scientists and human rights activists who insist that nothing short of extreme measures can halt our apocalyptic momentum. And they don’t whisper — they scream.

But then there are people who write popular political commentary who insist things aren’t so bad. “Don’t worry, kids,” they laugh like an antiheroic sitcom dad, “We’ll get this economy moving again. Go sext.” They would have us stay calm while they make haphazard repairs on a broken system that has repeatedly proven its own obsolescence.

I understand the seduction of reformism — it lets you have your cake and eat it, too. You get to feel good about yourself as you figure out the most profitable way to do the least possible. You just start from the premise that nothing revolutionary can ever happen and so perfecting a slick TEDtalk or delivering speech at Davos on how to adapt best to a machine forever broken sounds like a fine contribution. Lean in and climb the ladder. Be more productive and stop looking down. Stop associating with sad people who point out how many babies are dying and surround yourself instead with happy, productive people who are crushing business, having tons of sex, and Instragramming their brunch. #blessed.

Incremental-Americans know how to have it all because they don’t worry about as much as they should. They allow themselves to become desensitized to urgency usually because on the whole, they’re comfortable. Their kids will never be one in seven. When they see a dead Syrian child washed up on a Greek shore, they probably post about it on Facebook, but they don’t let it ruin their day. No, my golly, The Bachelor is on tonight and they gotta livetweet the shit out of that. Progress in increments, and with any luck this time next year, there will be fewer drone orphans.

Hillary Clinton says she hasn’t driven a car in 20 years. But the rest of us poor schmucks, when our old car starts breaking down and repair estimates exceed the value of the car, we start shopping around for new cars. And in the process of looking at all these new models, we grow increasingly dissatisfied with the shit we’ve been putting up with the old car. Your old car — the one with a John Kerry 2004 bumper sticker — is now definitively a piece a shit. They make better cars now with safety features and better emissions standards and fuel economy. These new cars don’t fundraise from assholes whose recklessness crashed the economy. These new cars don’t throw black kids in hyperprison.

Every pundit trying to paint Clinton as a pragmatist is selling me on my own shitty car. They’re the bankrupt mechanic who needs you to buy one last round of repairs. Don’t give up on the thing, they say. They don’t really care what’s best for you. The car’s already in the shop, they say. One more go, for old time’s sake? Think of all the progress this car has gotten you. Don’t get all crazy thinking about a new car when you can sink a few thousand bucks into this shitbucket.

As Lee Fang reported in The Intercept, most of the pundits being called on to talk about Clinton are quite literally in her employ. They run consulting firms that the Clinton campaign pays to advise them. They would be bad at their jobs if they told you to buy a new car. No, they’re going to tell you how great your shitty car is. Or that you’re not ready for a new car. Or that that the world is not ready for everyone to drive good cars. Or elderly Blacks in the South drive shitty cars so your new car is somehow racist. Whatever it takes to get you to sign on to pay for the same old shit.

Precious few people benefit from the way things are. We are quite literally melting the planet. Innocent black girls are being shot by cops in their beds. We are fighting at least eight wars at any given time, who can be sure. There’s a mass shooting every day. My God, American politics is such a garbage expo that anyone who calls for moderate reform of it is off the team. Go take a shower. Come back when you’re ready to take being a grownup seriously.