(You Don’t Have To Have) Compassion For (Fascist) Losers
The United States Election of 2024 is drawing agonizingly close (it’s tomorrow) and I guess this means we’re going to get some thinkpieces about taking the high road and being the better person if fascism takes an L. Just one little L, please do keep in mind Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and the fight continues after he’s gone. (I know, it’s exhausting.)
I understand and can even respect to some degree where the sentiment for all this comes from. If Kamala wins, conservatives will be upset. If Trump wins, progressives will be uh, well, probably freaking the hell out and rightfully so. The problem with this is these are not equivalent things. Americans are steeped from birth in propaganda and inculcation. I can see why people would offer an olive branch, considering to themselves “if I grew up like that person did, would I end up any better?” Very cool, very noble, good stuff. Here’s the thing though, you can choose to stop letting propaganda dictate that it’s ok to harm people. What I want to talk about in my own little election thinkpiece here has less to do with if I think you should be nice to Trump voters if they lose (I don’t), and more about why I don’t think The Upset felt by one side or the other is interchangeable. Be nice or don’t, this isn’t about how you respond to election participants as much as the motivations from each side and the great thing about this is after this election, you can apply it to the next one. Provided there is a next one depending on what happens tomorrow. If you’re reading this after November 5th, 2024, I’m so [sorry/vaguely relieved] that happened.
Let’s get a little disclaimer out of the way, I’m going to generalize a bit here. We’ve all got places to be folks and I don’t want to type a list of caveats every paragraph. When I talk about conservatives and conservative voters, I’m coming at it with the current context of Trump supporters. I know some conservatives don’t think wind turbines give people cancer and whales depression, or really just care about economic policy, or whatever. (The distinction feels less and less like it matters but I’m being charitable here.) When I talk about progressives, it unfortunately comes with the caveat that the politicians on both sides are really into zionism or at least enabling it and taking money from AIPAC, as well as acting like big tough guys that just love a military that would get a great big trophy for being the most spectacularly violent which is ghoulish and dumb. It’d be nice if we had a viable progressive option that had a meaningful stance against war and turning Palestinian children into ash but unfortunately we live in hell and I have to type this hideous assembly of terrible words. Let’s get this shitshow on the road.
When we boil down the motivations of people on either side of this election and the material consequences of what they believe in, I personally see two things. Conservatives favor stripping rights and punishing the innate. Progressives favor protecting rights and limiting chosen harm.
Many conservatives claim to support freedom and limited government but who gets that freedom? Who is the government limited for? I know I’m pointing out what should hopefully be obvious here but the government does not feel small and freedom doesn’t quite feel free when trans people are persecuted and people with wombs are forced to carry non-viable, life threatening pregnancies to term. I don’t mention this as some kind of gotcha because these people do not even remotely care about the hypocrisy of it, it’s to point out that even when they say they are in favor of something, it either comes at someone else’s expense or is not granted to other people. Our access to a complete and honest history of our country, access to healthcare and bodily autonomy for women and trans people, equity for queer people in general, equity for BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color), all of these are things modern conservativism wants to hide, remove, or punish. This is what I mean when I talk about “the innate” and “chosen harm”. Being black or queer is not a choice, being bigoted towards these communities is.
Attacking the innate is at the very core of how I believe it is flawed to treat the voters of conservatism and progressivism (or at least the ideal concepts of these things) as interchangeable entities. Figures in power that maintain violent, oppressive, and exploitative structures? Blue MAGA? Sure but that’s another post for another day. Whichever side wins, others will claim that they will now lose rights and freedoms but it’s imperative to examine the what and how of those claims. Should conservatives win an election, the rights and freedoms of marginalized and vulnerable communities will be at risk. What this means is the innate existence of trans and queer people, women, BIPOC, the whole ass environment, just to name a few examples, will be threatened. If you’re a conservative reading this, maybe you’re saying “hang on that’s not even why I’m voting, I don’t care what trans people do I just want to keep my guns”, but the total material consequence of your party’s beliefs results in this (and maybe that’s something to reflect on). Should progressives win, the ability conservatives feel entitled to to control and harm these groups will be at risk. I really, really hope I don’t have to explain how these are not equivalent losses of rights. Losing the ability to exist as a queer black woman in safety, comfort, and dignity is not the same as losing the ability to take away that safety, comfort, and dignity. I have a headache thinking about the fact that anyone even has to say something so obvious out loud.
Regardless of party affiliation, people with strong convictions believe their actions and behavior are justified. For evangelical conservatives this means they have divine permission to be cruel. Again, in this regard I think the roots of conviction are crucial to examine. Bigoted conviction takes root in chosen and taught prejudices based on ideas fabricated by people; Queer people have no innate rights because the bible probably said so, immigrants have no place here because of imaginary lines we made up on maps. Conversely, leftist conviction takes root in protecting these people based on the simple, objective fact that they exist. Queerness is not a fabrication, even if conservatives think it is. Skin tone is not a fabrication, natural skin tone anyway (Trump’s bronzer is definitely not natural).
Of course I’m not impartial here and think my conviction is more valid than that of bigots. When anyone is truly convinced they’re right and just, that’s simply how things go. But the entire point of discussing this is to examine and underscore when those convictions grow from defending the innate, or if they grow from a subjective desire to harm the innate. Everything I’m writing here was in part inspired by people talking about the compassion they would or wouldn’t extend to Trump voters if he loses but it seemed like a good time to talk about something much bigger I’ve thought about a lot over the years and it’s this idea of the Weight Of Loss within the context of politics. I truly believe I am right just as deeply as a Trump voter might. Is it not the same if I should lose rights under a conservative president the way they would lose rights under a progressive president? Hmmmmm… oh right, yeah. Hell no it absolutely is not the same. When I imagine losing rights, it is my rights to a safe, comfortable, and dignified life as a queer person, an innate quality to my life that was not chosen or taught. When a bigot imagines losing rights, it is loss of the ability to harm my rights. They fear losing “free speech” which usually just means they’re upset at the idea of not being able to yell slurs at minorities. Their freedom is predicated by the loss of someone else’s. They fear losing the comfort they seek from religious supremacy granting them divine permission to be cruel to those they see as opposition to their faith, that they would have to see queer people in public or God forbid tolerate them. There is little equivalence between conservative and progressive loss. Comparing the magnitudes of Upsetness between these losses has little utility other than to dissect the origin of why either side would be upset to understand their motivations, and when you examine those origins, the point of ignition for this entire conversation seems somewhat ridiculous. Right?
The majority of my writing here is very zoomed out. I used this as an excuse to muse on some of the core motivations of the current iteration of conservatism in the United States and compare the weight of the loss of rights, intrinsic or perceived. To wrap this up, we can zoom back in on the entire reason I started typing all this; should we be compassionate towards bigoted voters when they lose?
When I think about progressive loss and conservatives mocking it, what immediately comes to mind is all the footage I saw when Hillary lost to Trump. I was no great fan of Hillary, just another lesser of evils in our embarrassing catalogue of imperialist losers, but Trump’s first victory left people anguished and terrified. The prospect of a second victory does so even more having seen what he is capable of and the myopic, stupid, barbaric animosity he has encouraged to bubble to the surface of our country. He was, and remains, a threat to protections for the innate in humanity. His supporters think people being upset about that is funny. When conservatives mock progressive loss, it is because they delight in the distress of people that either want to protect those imperiled by bigots or the people that need that protection. Truly grotesque and petty comic book villain behavior. Conversely, conservative loss deserves no such reverence, civility, or dignity. If it is mocked, it is because it is a victory to triumph over such idiotic cruelty.
There is no meaningful equivalence to be found between the loss of oppressors and the loss of the oppressed. I am not encouraging you to go out of your way to gloat and mock should Trump lose, or for that matter every subsequent iteration of his kind of vapid and spiteful barbarism. However, I also will not feel bad for, or try to relate to people whose political identity is predicated upon punishing innate existence and furthermore are gleeful at the prospect of doing so. No matter what happens (or has happened depending on when you read this), keep in mind the things Trump stands for do not go away whenever his political career finally ends and whatever deceitful, ghoulish bully eagerly steps forward to take his place in championing inflicting anxiety and suffering deserves derision. Fascists love to be feared, they do not love to be made into fools. Whosoever willfully grants such a person power has earned derision in kind.
It’s your prerogative to extend sympathy to such a person’s political losses if introspection on what you would be like having lived their life inspires you to do so, but there can be no false equivalences made between the losses of those that are harmed based on their innate qualities, and those that conspire to do harm based on ignorance they have chosen to perpetuate.
