I’m a politics junkie. I have been one for many years. I used to get in fistfights in sixth grade with a kid named Mark because he loved Nixon so much and I was a staunch McGovern man up until Eagleton.
After that, nobody was on George’s train, and Tricky Dick skated on in. Parallels with current Brett Kavanaugh machinations could be drawn.
Dark gods help me, I watched every moment of both sides of the testimony on C-Span. One of my side hustles involves collecting quotes and anecdotes from such public spectacle, a clipping service sort of activity that I usually perform by copying and pasting quotes from articles, but sometimes I get involved enough to watch live and just transcribe on the spot. Perhaps I should have been a court stenographer…in any event I type very rapidly and accurately when I’ve enough caffeine in me and it’s early enough that I have some energy.
Anger has its own forms of energy, and so I didn’t flag very much through the nine hours, live-posting to Facebook, writing down fun quotes and impressions, getting all wired on the unfairness of it all.
This even though I am an unreformed white hetero cis male. I am, however, not now, nor ever was, an abuser. No means no.
I have other ways to be an asshole, like hating everything 80s and 80s-based, and disliking large swaths of content in the horror field that I nominally work in. I’m on the spectrum, but sometimes it’s not really clear where such contrarianism stems from. I’ve just always had it.
People have excoriated me roundly for it, too. They say “Not liking the things other people like doesn’t make you cool.”
Word. Neither does liking those things. Usually I’m just trying to work out why I don’t like them, but sometimes I just troll. I admit it. Some things are just too much for me to take, like GHOST.
Or the modern-day Republican party. I’m a card-carrying Dem, and determinedly sinister on social issues, being a disabled-American among other persuasions, and because, while both sides take the money, the Democrats occasionally dither in the direction of social consciousness and trying to improve the lives of their constituencies rather than the Tweed class.
Occasionally. But the liberals are in bed with the neoliberals and most of the progressives have less financial backing for their ambitious programs than they do for their eternal campaigns, and pass less good legislation than gas.
It’s difficult to remain positive when there really isn’t a side to anything.
And there we come full circle to the Kavanaugh hearings and the state of politics now. It’s possible to have a side, to feel right (at least some of the time). Granted, a few take greater liberties and try to police every thought and action in a sort of spinach inquisition, and they’re very busy and visible, but they’re just a few in the grand scheme of things and they usually vote the right way, so what the hell? Just don’t argue with them. It isn’t worth it.
It’s very much like arguing with a Trump voter, who they closely resemble.
Everybody wants to be the Judge. Even those of us who don’t believe in a Final Arbiter.
RetroGrade A 