What Can I Say to Keep You from Putting Your Finger in that Socket?
What Can I Say to Keep You from Putting Your Finger in that Socket?
As I rounded the block of my polling place, I saw a couple bent over one of the VOTE HERE arrows on the sidewalk, filming a video. They were wrapping up, saying something about saving our country. Then they noticed me. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the look they gave me when they looked up and saw me approaching. It was a kind of chagrin, I think — but also a lot like the look a child will give you when you catch them doing something you’ve expressly told them not to do. “No hitting!” you’ve said and then, you round the corner and they give you this look. You know what they were doing.
Based solely on this look I received, I assumed those two had just voted for Trump and it made me wonder, “Do they know they’re being assholes? Is that why they look so guilty? Do they know they’re doing a destructive thing and is that maybe why they’re doing it?”
Now, gratefully, here in NYC, their votes will ultimately make no difference, particularly in our district, which is one of the most progressive in the country, but it does make me wonder about all those out there who might be making a destructive choice in places it can really do some damage.
I think about all the people out there, trying to convert Trump voters over, to sway them from their commitment to destruction. They’re trying to talk about the issues, lean into hopeful possibilities, remind them of ills and crimes committed by the man and his former administration. I’ve seen people make heartfelt pleas for their health, their bodily autonomy, the well-being of their friends and family. I cannot imagine reading such things and voting for Trump anyway. As Hannah Arendt said, “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.”
This makes me wonder if we need a different approach for those who are voting for Trump BECAUSE they know it’s the destructive thing to do. How do you reason with a child who wants to put his finger in an electrical socket just because he knows it’s bad? The only thing I can think to do is childproof your house and get some safeguards in place. I think Trump voters know they’re hurting a lot of vulnerable people with their choice and they’re giggling while they do it. They’re “saving” this country from women, from immigrants, from anyone who isn’t white, from trans people, from the dreaded DEI. They’re becoming quite explicit about it. Holding a rally at Madison Square Garden on the anniversary of the 1939 Nazi rally there is not an accident. Getting into Nazi rhetoric is, like, fun for them. Acting like Nazis is naughty territory! “Tee hee! Look at us, putting our fingers in the sockets! We think it’s fun to tell racist jokes, to denigrate women, to threaten violence against our fellow countrymen. When people get mad about it, we enjoy it.”
I heard that a lot of these folks prefer to be on Twitter, as opposed to the Right-centered Truth Social, because Truth Social is no fun for them without liberals to troll. They can’t hang out with their own because there’s no way to “own the libs.” The trolling is the point, I guess.
This makes me think about something I witnessed on the day Joe Biden was elected in 2020. It was this young man stalking through the spontaneous celebrations on the street shouting, “Suck my dick!” It made me realize the GOP had essentially become the Suck My Dick Party and I wrote about that then. It was one of my more popular blogs in 2020. It seemed to explain a few things to a lot of us. And now, a couple of days ago, Trump himself mimed this very action at a rally. The Suck My Dick party has become much more literal than I could even imagine four years ago.
So, it’s still the Suck My Dick party but now I can see that there is this additional shade of childish glee at putting one’s finger in a socket. Is it voting to troll? I don’t know.
And I don’t know how we help prevent people from putting their fingers in the socket. But the consequences, if too many people do, will be disastrous, beyond measure. Women are already dying in Texas, Florida and Alabama because of the terrible effects of the loss of Roe V Wade. We’ve lost too much ground on the climate crisis. We’ve only just clawed our way out of the economic crisis brought on by the Trump administration. People are ringing the alarm bells loudly because if we get another Trump administration, all the guardrails will be off. We’re going to lose all the childproofing we had in this house and it won’t just be the fiendish children who get shocked.
Now, it’s entirely possible that I have entirely misread this couple’s look at me. Maybe they were talking about saving the country from fascism by voting for Harris! Maybe they just looked chagrined because I caught them filming a Tik Tok when they were much older than your average Tik Tokker. I have no way of knowing for sure. But I had a feeling and I expect that they had a feeling about me, too — and our feelings were probably at odds with one another. I thought they thought they were going to “save the country” by sticking their fingers in an electrical socket and I think they thought I wouldn’t approve. And they were right.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on November 5, 2024.
