What Do You Do With the Mad That's Inside You?

Note: This piece is cross-posted from my Substack. That's where I talk about horrible political shit. My rule is that if anyone directly asks for a paywalled post over there to be available here, I'll provide, so that everyone gets their money's worth. But Substack posts are rarely cozy, and this one is just a howl of despair and rage, so if that's going to affect your mood on a holiday week, give it a miss and look after your own well-being. What I wanted to say to US, I did in this month's Patreon essay. All my love to each and every one of you all in these garbage times.

Goddammit, America. Why are you like this?

Well, that happened.

Followed by a simply wonderful fortnight of sifting through the ashes of the social contract looking for charred chunks of hope and decency and finding pretty much FUCK ALL. Also sifting through the WhAt WeNt WRonG hot takes of everyone from Bernie Sanders to Elon Musk’s ketamine dealer to the feral diaper-hunting meth-opossum prowling around behind my house who’s got all the answers.

It’s been a real treat.

There is a palpable, completely revolting sense excitement among the media. They got what they wanted—Hate Island is back on! All new episodes! Ooooh what hot little monster is Trump gonna couple up with this week? Time to get called heroes of the resistance for shitposting on the internet just like we were going to do anyway! But among regular goddamned people who didn’t want to actually set the world on fire to cook their horrible burgers and yuk it up with the other sadists in the Bad Uncle club, there’s a real well, fuck it vibe going around.

What else is anyone even supposed to say at this point? It’s gonna be real bad? Yeah, we’ve all been saying that. No one cared. Trump is going to fill the cabinet with whatever Spirit Halloween remote-controlled jump-scare ghouls he thinks will make out with him most enthusiastically or hurt the most people or piss off liberals or, hey, fingers crossed, all three? Yeah, apparently that was a plus. Nothing’s going to get fixed, rights will be lost, and every piece of the country that still works in any way is gonna get its teeth kicked in while a nation of aspiring Mad Max extras laughs and pretends it’s awesome? And all that’s assuming we don’t get into a war because Putin told his monkey to get dancing? I don’t know, man. Guess so.

I’m not a politician, I’m not an analyst, I’m not an economist—hell, I don’t even have a podcast, which means I’m barely a real person. I feel just as fucking defeated and cynical and scared and hopeless and holistically disgusted as everyone else who can define the word tariff without Google and doesn’t own a major newspaper.

But as the shock has begun to wear off, and the sadness numb, what’s left over?

Oh, Christ on a fully-fueled megayacht I am so fucking angry.

And finally, I get to say: IT’S BOTH SIDES, BABY.

And that’s why this particular primal scream of useless rage at the oncoming Snowpiercer baby-eating bug-train of the future is under a paywall, because EVERYBODY’S GONNA GET SOME today, and if you want me to fight with you about it, you gotta pay the troll toll.

Well, goodness gracious me, class! I’m angry at so many different kinds of people! YOU GET A PROTO-REPTILIAN SCREECH OF RAGE! YOU GET A PROTO-REPTILIAN SCREECH OF RAGE! DINOSAUR SHRIEKING FOR ALL!

I’m mad at the right, not just for being stupid sadistic assholes, which the right has always been, but also for being stupid masochistic assholes whose total lack of rational self-interest and abject worship of that guy—that guy—makes Trashcan Man look like a strong stoic alpha with a solid stock portfolio going.

This guy really knows what’s up

I’m mad at the left for being just totally incapable of not vigorously cannibalizing itself while uncontrollably screaming at anyone tries to help for two fucking seconds. I’m mad at the “center” for refusing to pay attention, understand basic concepts, care about anyone who isn’t directly related to them (and even then) or vote. I’m mad at Republicans for being horrendous ichor-oozing monsters from beyond the kingdoms of the sun, and at long last, yeah, I’m mad at Democrats for still standing around all mopey-fuckin-Eeyore-faced shrugging their shoulders and playing by the strictest interpretation of “the rules” to preserve a system America clearly doesn’t actually care about whatsoever. I’m mad at independents for being such a useful little box of tools for conservative imperialism. I’m mad at the techbroligarchy for slithering in, after ruining most of everyday life, by weaponizing the social networks we built against us. I’m mad at how many conservatives have quite literally sold out their country to Russia, of all foreign powers, and none of them even bother to protest nuh uh did not, and why would they when no one playing at home seems to give one sad, dry shit floating aesthetically through the autumn air. I’m mad at EVERYONE for violently shoving COVID so deep into their hungry, hungry memory holes the question are you better off than you were four years ago was even allowed to be spoken in 2024 without a swift smack in the mouth. I’m beyond mad at the media for working so hard to make this happen, by the sweat of their oh-so-noble-and-principled brows, then having the utter balls to look us all in the eye and tell us it’s not the end and we just have to fight harder next time, fellow plucky rebels!

EVERYBODY SAY IT WITH ME!

Now, there’s a whole Super Colon Blow cereal mountain of maybe we should have/maybe we shouldn’t have going around about the campaign itself, but honestly, almost the only people I don’t want to go full Gordon Ramsey on are Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

You can armchair quarterback this thing all you want, but those two did exactly what everyone was telling them Democrats had to do to get elected. Dump Biden, the only person who has ever actually beaten Trump, and get someone young, attractive, and charismatic? Check it off the list! Coalesce quickly so a murderball-primary from hell doesn’t annihilate the entire Democratic bench for the next ten years jostling for position? You got it! Shore up the scary brown lady with a safe, scandal-free, super-progressive, comforting white straight Dad from the Midwest! Oh, you betcha! Inspire people, give them something positive to vote for, not just against? Coming right up! Hold big rallies, get people excited, short campaign season, don’t be Hillary, crush the debate, talk plain-spoken shit about your opponent instead of getting intellectually in the weeds? No problem, coming right up! Go left on policy to get the progressives, but they’re not enough, so don’t mention race or gender and reach out to moderates, especially suburban white ladies? Now we’re cookin’, baby. Legalize weed? Build new housing? Call for a ceasefire? Cool it on gun control? Offer lots of money for having kids and starting businesses? Talk about greedy corporations and plans to reign them in? Here it all is, America! Everything you said would get you to vote for a Democrat! You like?

America:

I want everyone to take a moment, sit right there, and know that when I googled “mean laugh gif” to get this image, three of the top hits were Kamala laughing.

Harris and Walz had to be everything to everyone, and half the country still went with the guy who promised, every single day, on nationally broadcast television, to be nothing to anyone but himself. So, no, I’m not mad at them. They tried. And I don’t want to hear anyone say 2016 was just about how uniquely bad Hillary was, because that’s pretty clearly not the issue.

I sure am mad at us, though. And I’m not doing the thing where I only breathe fire at my own side. I blame the media’s malfeasance if I have to point in one direction. But Republicans did all this to us, and will continue to, on purpose, and they are, collectively, a festering untreated taint-fistula of pure cackling evil that must be fought, must be stood up to. Problem is, we didn’t. We aren’t. The “left” spent four years protesting every slight Democratic intake of breath while not bothering to protest Republican speakers or events because it’s not safe and they won’t listen anyway when no Republican should have been able to saddle up to a mic after 2020 without being drowned out by protestors. Whining that the government wasn’t doing enough to reign in billionaires on Elon Musk’s Patented Election-Manipulating Website for Manipulating Elections. Telling each other not to vote to “teach Democrats a lesson” as if that’s ever done anything but put arch-conservative pigs in charge of the public food trough.

The millisecond Biden won, the left, which, I hate to break it to everyone still thinking we’re in some kind of 501 postgraduate-level Political Science course where full communism is on the table and not Remedial Civics 101 Summer Make-Up Survey, now must cater to every single American human who isn’t all-in on MAGA and none of them agree on A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G, got REAL FUCKING BUSY turning on its own and ripping the guts out of each other.

I know it’s very popular at the moment to wrassle up one’s best britches, climb the horse-jumping platform, aim low, and just fully hoofhead Democrats into a fine paste, but…YOU KNOW THAT’S KIND OF THE PROBLEM.

The only thing the left and the right can really come together on in this cursed country, the thing that brings them both to the cookout with big smiles on, is hating Democrats. The greatest trick the captive conservative media ecosystem ever pulled was making liberal such a profane curse word that it doesn’t even matter what kind of podcast you put on, all you’ll hear is how evil these liberals are—and doing it for so long half the young progressives out there don’t even know why they have such an instinctive, knee-jerk, visceral hatred of the word, but no two people have the same definition of it. You know, the word that means regular people who agree with progressives most of the time. Who want progress and rights for all and social programs but maybe not violent bloody revolution and a complete reimagining of society along lines that have been problematic at best, historically. All over the internet and television, people apologize for being Democrats, or liberals, or supporting the current mainstream Democratic candidate, before they say their piece, like a ritual incantation in Church. Hail Mary full of grace, fuck those liberals, am I right?

You can’t win an election if you tell people to be ashamed of supporting the party you really, really need to win and barely discuss the party that wants to make your beliefs illegal. It’s not even enough to just stop talking nonstop shit about the only non-fascist party, no one even felt comfortable talking about the objective successes of the Democratic President. Instead, the country treated him like shit, made fun of him, slapped his successes our of his hands, chased him out of the race, and then turned right around, with zero hesitation, and voted for a guy who actually was way too old, riddled with dementia, responsible for inflation, determined to dismantle the country, in the pocket of big business, and incapable of coherent public speaking. It wasn’t and isn’t about policy whatsoever, too left or too right. It’s just about who controls information.

You can find DEMOCRATS BAD, REPUBLICANS GOOD everywhere.

You can find REPUBLICANS BAD, DEMOCRATS ALSO BAD anywhere.

Occasionally, you can find REPUBLICANS EXTREMELY BAD, DEMOCRATS NOT QUITE AS BAD or REPUBLICANS NOT THAT BAD, DEMOCRATS STILL LAME.

But you cannot find REPUBLICANS BAD, DEMOCRATS GOOD, without qualifiers, almost anywhere.

And we’re surprised at the result?

And then there’s the far more delicate problem that no one wants to get into, because it risks coming across as one of those mouth-breathers who learned the word “woke” around Memorial Day and hates it so much they smashed their alarm clock. Please trust and believe I am not one of those people. I got tired of “basic manners” being called “political correctness” and then a whole bunch of idiots getting rich off of what cheeky rascally un-PC dashing rogues they imagined themselves to be before I hit middle school in the 90s.

It’s not that. But when an election like this happens, you gotta look at the mess with fresh eyes.

The left has no idea how to talk to people. Just…at all.

The right at least knows how to terrify people. We don’t even know how to say good morning without dunking on Joe Biden for the right.

You can’t just yell READ THEORY at normal people and expect that to bring in voters. My siblings in Christ, Americans barely read at all. You can’t win hearts and minds by spending a year telling people on your own side that they can’t celebrate holidays or events, enjoy a food, or post about anything else until the oldest continuous conflict in human history is resolved precisely according to what Emma and Oliver, who have never been to the region, read a paper book on the history of the region, voted, or bought their own health insurance, have decided is correct. Today.

And while I agree that as a culture, not using certain words and rhetoric is a profound good, maybe we shouldn’t have hamstrung ourselves by howling ABLEISM at every single person (even doctors) who dared to point out that Trump is bugfuck spinny-eyes crazy, or AGEISM for suggesting the guy who sways in silence for 40 minutes listening to Big Tammy’s Mom Rock Playlist on Spotify might be suffering from dementia. Or shut down discussion of his incredibly poor health and obvious lies about it with accusations of fatphobia. Or quieted any discussion of JD Vance or Mike Pence’s extremely weird histories or attitudes about women because asking if someone who wrote in a bestselling book that he believed he was gay his whole youth and is the mentee of the most famous gay billionaire who thinks women only exist to procreate, or his predecessor who believed the same and refused to be alone in a room with any woman at all, might be massive hypocrites gay themselves is homophobic. Or run around attacking anyone saying positive things about Biden or Harris because they weren’t posting sufficiently about Gaza. Or, even after the election, crushed any mild burble of groundswell questioning the election results when the math is seriously corkscrewed, because we don’t want to be “like them” and it’s just a crazy conspiracy theory—I mean, it’s not like Trump looked direct-to-camera on multiple occasions and said I don’t need any votes and I have a secret plan to win this election after the votes are counted.

Hell, I’ve had people come at this very Substack because I’ve said Trump was a malignant narcissist, which is an ableist slur that’s hurtful to the neurodiverse. A thing which, you know, I am.

On top of that, a big fat slab of the reason there’s a nasty roided-out ass-circus of center-right to far-right podcasters and influences ruling the media landscape and so few center-left to far-left figures with huge mainstream followings is that anyone who manages to reach an audience other than the leftest-of-left (by this morning’s praxis, subject to change by end of business) or says something that even a small portion of the club disagrees with, small-ly, they get harassed and dismissed and torn down from within. The right’s unity is an illusion—those dorks don’t even agree on what color the space laser is. It doesn’t matter at all. Because they understand that as long as you’re on board with hating women, taxes, and minorities (even if you are one! It’s fine, just hate all the other ones we hate even harder to make up for it and you’re good, brother!), you’re in the club and you’re never really in danger of being drummed out. It’s a political party—you’re supposed to want to be in and stay in.

And the left will absolutely shun their brightest stars until the end of time for twinkling weird in 2003.

Presented without commentary BECAUSE IF YOU KNOW WHO THAT IS I DON’T NEED IT

Harris didn’t go on Rogan because her staff felt the progressive backlash to her even talking to him would be too risky. Think about that. Give it more than a few minutes.

We turn up to these knife fights, tie both hands behind our backs, stick a rose in our teeth, and start gloating about winning while spitting petals in the wind. Our own side told itself not to vote.

I’m not saying we should have been running around hurling slurs or hurting anyone on purpose, but we done played ourselves. It wasn’t on purpose or organized (lol, come on, we’re the left, we don’t do that) but we went ahead and purity-policed our coalition into a coffin. Because the other side has no rules, and can and will say whatever pops into their pickled brains, while we voluntarily took the following off the table for the rank-and-file online world to even discuss: Trump’s mental state, Trump’s psychological issues, Trump’s intelligence, Trump’s physical health, Trumps’s age, his VPs personal lives (we don’t care except for the hypocrisy, but they 1000% do), ANY positive messaging about the incumbent Democratic administration, and the very possibility of election interference by the party that spent all of 2024 giving formal statements saying “Yes, we plan to interfere in this election.”

What did we let sit on the table? While it stood untouched, getting cold, because nobody asked us to bring that dish and now they feel weird we won’t put it away so they’ve started side-eyeing the hostess, who also didn’t ask for it, but it’s her party and we’re her family so she’s gonna get the blame, and she hasn’t eaten any so now we’re mad at her, too? Oh, no big deal, just that thing regular normal everyday people who like Marvel movies and Kraft mac n’cheese and televised sports and whose main structural complaint is wanting to consume more mass-produced goods, entertainment, and convenient services than they are right now can’t get enough of: FULL COMMUNIST REVOLUTION.

What are we doing?

You can’t freak people out like that. Regular people, of whom there are many more than there are of we terrified few pickled in politics. You especially can’t, then tell them to educate themselves and read theory when they ask what exactly you mean by kill all the kulaks. Yeah, Republicans say scary stuff, all the time, but Trump has always had the uncanny ability to almost say The Worst Thing, but stop just short. He didn’t actually say he’d be a dictator on day one, he said he’d be one only for day one. And every single MAGAt will be happy to explain to you their personal interpretation of whatever shark-chum just exited Trump’s mouth, even if it’s bullshit, and tell you the scary thing isn’t even possible, don’t be silly.

The online left, which is all Big Tammy and her Mom Rock Stylings ever see when they log onto social media, is just out there LARPing DETAILED plans for a full communist takeover. With a personal definition of communism about as clear and accurate as a Republican voter’s understanding of tariffs. Then poor, dim, undecided Tammy stammers out “I rent out the other half of my duplex, does that mean I’ll be killed as a landlord and a class traitor?” she gets to hear that she shouldn’t expect anyone to do the free labor of answering for her. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU TALK TO HUMAN BEINGS AND EXPECT THEM TO WANT TO HANG OUT.

And pushing back against the idea that communism is the only answer is so fucking rough that even I put the most mild “you don’t actually want a revolution” offside remarks under a paywall because a white queer lady who 90% agrees is the brigade’s favorite treat. (Spoiler: it’s because people who 90% agree care, and you can make them cry and quit the internet and that feels like Doing Something Important, whereas conservatives don’t give a fuck, can’t cry human tears, and fighting them is just hard, miserable, long, and most of the time doesn’t feel like Doing Something Important because it takes more than tweets and not voting.)

I know Kamala wasn’t actually even close to a communist. It doesn’t matter. Maybe nothing does. The left dismissed her as a Republican and voting for her as complicity in genocide. The right called her Stalin and voting for her adultery. It has nothing to do with her actual positions and actual positions won’t win the next election, if we have one. The Democrat is where America projects its overwhelming shame for itself, Republicans are where they pile up their overweening pride. How do you change that?

Not by kicking everyone who isn’t perfectly radical out.

I know these voices are not representative of actual campaigns, AND IT DOESN’T MATTER. We have to start acting like we are. They do! They’re on the same page while we argue over whether the book is approved. It does not matter how wrong it is for the right to treat politics like sports. They do, so they act like a team. So fucking stand up for your team because there isn’t another perfect one ready to go. We can’t have it both ways—be heroes of the resistance, democracy, the revolution, and the put-upon bearers of the truth and the light and the Right Way because we shitpost about Trump like real big kid journalists but then just shrug and claim we’re not responsible for how anything turns out because we’re just shitposting on the internet. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS JUST SHITPOSTING ANYMORE MUSK AND PUTIN AND ZUCK AND BANNON TURNED THAT INTO A GUN.

GOD DAMMIT. America needs a therapy and a behavioral IEP, everyone to the right of center needs a radical media detox, everyone left of center needs to take basic communications classes, and the far left needs to organize ONE successful neighborhood potluck, block party, and/or charity drive all by themselves before opining, while looking away from the explosions conservatives have already set off, on their imaginary societal reorg based on the idea that humans naturally co-operate.

But I mean, don’t worry, like a good leftie commentator, I’m fucking livid with the mainstream Democrats, too.

I wasn’t, for a long time. I understand how difficult their position is, how much America just shits in their mouths rather than acknowledge anything they ever attempt. I understood that politics requires plans and feints that I as a civilian probably don’t have close to enough information to assume are or aren’t happening, and shouldn’t, because if I know, Republicans know, and that sort of clotheslines the point of a feint. I even sympathized with not nuking the filibuster (which may end up being a good thing, as the new Majority Leader at least says he won’t either) or packing the court, because someone has to stand up for the system and not break precedent when the other party is just a bunch of shrieking bat-hyenas debating what parts of the house we all live in to eat first.

But surely, the time for that was 2016-2024. When there was a possibility that 2016 was an aberration and Biden being back in could restore enough sanity that the system still had value and could be put back into working order. WHAT THE PANTS-SHREDDING SHIT ARE THEY DOING NOW? The system is gonna get broken anyway! Time to put the big Machiavellian pants on and get to loopholing, bridge-burning, whistleblowing, and strategizing. Suck up to his stupid eogcentric centaur-butt, I don’t care. But so much silence. So much compromise. So much navel-gazing and flagellation. WE DO NOT SIGH AND FADE INTO THE WEST LIKE FUCKING GALADRIEL IN THE FACE OF FASCISM. But they seem to be preparing to do just that. Quietly wait for 2026 and hope there’s still a country, or an election. And maybe there’s action going on we don’t know about, but I’m not encouraged by the fact that no one is really out there telling us to fight, to push hard, not to let him get away with an inch without contesting it. There are real irregularities with the vote tallies, maybe leading somewhere, maybe not, but we are all being actively pushed not to question it. THAT’S WEIRD. The Republicans never stop fighting and scrapping (and lying and hating) and pushing for recounts, and we just cry and eat ice cream and give up?

And if no one in our own party tells us to fight, will we?

Since election night I’ve thought, many, many times, that there won’t be a million-strong protest, with pink hats or without, at Trump’s inauguration. There might not be any at all. The “resistance” energy the media ecosystems and micro-ecosystems so longed for isn’t exactly what it was. COVID broke us. We’re all tired and broke and even Big Tammy can see that spending the last nine years hyperfocused on everything the Tangerine Trujillo did and said, stuck to the news in a rictus of dread, turning out to tiny marches and big events, taking to the streets to fight everything, from the Secretary of Education pick to George Floyd, watching it make no real difference to the outcome, losing the very site we used to organize all that, just trying so hard to push the broken pieces of the social contract back together with people who never wanted to sign it to begin with, trying to disseminate information and question the regime, did absolutely nothing and not even young people cared.

It takes the wind out of your sails. And other than a couple of blue state governors, no one seems to be trying to turn the ship to catch a new gust.

And I think that’s how it’s gonna be. I think blue folk are going to retreat, online and off, into their own communities and try to protect our way of life there. The problem as a whole is so big and feels so hopeless, and as I’ve been yelling about, it’s not like our own blue circles are warm, fuzzy places of acceptance, nuance, understanding, and solidarity. They need to become that, and I suppose that’s where I locate my hope: that in this retreat, they will become so again.

But I think it’ll be hard to rally everyone the way we were mobilized the first time, at least without big changes and a once-in-a-lifetime leader (as usual for us). BlueSky is part of that, suddenly, and I can see everyone remembering what life was like online before all this is bringing a lot of joy. I think, with a bitter, sad, irony, that Kamala’s joy campaign did actually awaken a hungering for that in people—just not enough to actually vote, I guess. (After COVID, leaving your house is…a greater ordeal than we’d like to think for far more people than ever before.)

We feel helpless because we did all the things our parents told us would fix society and end wars because when they were in college it seemed to sort of work, and it meant nothing, accomplished nothing, and put us behind where we started. The fuck do you do with that? Other than be angry.

All my life, America. All my life.

Mr. Rogers sang a song once called What Do You Do (With the Mad That You Feel?)

When you feel so mad that you could bite/When the whole world seems oh so wrong/And nothing you do seems very right?

Maybe you retreat, take care of your own, look to the helpers, and get ready for the fight instead of throwing yourself into every single one that comes along like its the only one. Maybe you try to find tatters of that joy in small groups and spaces and non-centralized sites where you can just exist and live for a minute. Maybe you hide, in a way. Maybe it’s not healthy or helpful, but it’s fucking human. And maybe it is helpful, because boy does the MAGA crowd seem to hate the retreat more than they ever hated the resistance.

I’m not okay, you’re not okay, none of it’s okay. But we can’t get off the ride, so we have to figure out how it works. No one wants to fight all the time, but we don’t get to choose the era we’re born into, and there’s always a fight. This one’s ours, because fuck us, I guess. It wasn’t a landslide. It was a tiny margin that looks big on the map. We hope for the level of competence they’ve always shone and try to protect each other. That’s all there is. We’re here to make things and look after each other. Everything else is…well. Theory.

And learn how to talk to people, for fuck’s sake. WE NEED PEOPLE.