There’s no such thing as a disposable Trump voter

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 3 Comments
Voters

Voters

Life hack: skip the alarm by waking suddenly in the middle of the night to think about how Donald Trump is the next president. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last week, and it really cuts down on unnecessary neck mobility. It’s hard to decide which is worse: his presidency or the knowledge that people voted for him. Handed the reins of our democracy, a little under half of Americans failed to see a lying egomaniac for what he was. Or they did and thought, “At least he’s not a woman.”

It sucks to think about all the people who voted Trump, because the reasons they might have done so seem awful. In the search for the most likely explanation, the contest between misogyny and racism continues. If you prefer to think the best of people, the sunniest plausible narrative is that “economic anxiety” scared people enough to turn against the system but not enough to learn about it. If people only voted for Trump because they’re scared of going broke, they still couldn’t grasp the candidates’ platforms well enough to recognize their own interests. Economic anxiety voted to cut taxes on the rich.

Yet you cannot contemn these people, because we need them. Without at least some of the people who voted for Trump, you can’t put a women in the White House. You can’t make public college free. You can’t fix Obamacare. You can’t even keep a reality TV celebrity from taking the Oval Office. If we intend to run this democracy better, “half of voters are stupid assholes” cannot be our operating principle.

Racism, misogyny, and Republicans’ ongoing hypnosis of the white working class made a lot of people vote for Trump, but did they make every person vote for Trump? It’s dangerous to say there’s no such thing as a good Trump voter, because it puts the blame for this disastrous election on everyone the Democrats failed to convince. Maybe they’re not the problem.

If I could say one thing to the Democratic Party: It’s not our job to vote for you. It’s your job to convince us. Hillary Clinton and the DNC did a good job of convincing me to vote against Trump, but they never gave me a clear sense of what I voted for.

Trump said he would deport immigrants and watch Muslims. That’s disgusting and I voted against it, but what was Hillary’s counteroffer? The college thing was nice, although she kind of stopped talking about it after the primaries. More intervention in Syria sounded both bad and likely—more likely than financial regulation or taxing the rich. Her central promise was to continue the Obama legacy. In a year that saw 16 experienced Republicans wrecked by an anti-establishment bomb thrower, offering voters more of the same seems like electoral suicide.

In retrospect it seems that way. At the time, we all knew she was going to win. Now our comfort feels like complacency, and everything is fucked. Birds crawl along the ground as our blood flies up into the clouds. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

Impeach Judge McKeon? Sure, but he’s retiring anyway

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
District court judge John McKeon sentenced a man to 60 days in jail for raping his own daughter.

Judge John McKeon sentenced a man to 47 days in jail for raping his own daughter.

Last month in Valley County, Montana, a man pled guilty to repeatedly raping his 12 year-old daughter and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, with credit for 13 already served. The state-mandated minimum sentence for incest is 100 years, but judges are allowed to mitigate that at their discretion. In this case, a psychosexual evaluation found that the defendant was not likely to reoffend. Judge McKeon also cited the support the defendant had received from his “family, friends, church and employer.” These supporters included the victim’s mother and grandmother, who requested that he not be sent to prison.

A petition calling on the Montana Supreme Court to impeach Judge McKeon for this sentence now has nearly a quarter million signatures. But it doesn’t really matter, because he’s retiring at the end of November, anyway. It’s frustrating. No sanction we can impose on him now would satisfy us. Like the crime itself, this situation wrecks our sense of justice, partly because nothing can balance the scales but also because it’s kind of our fault. You can read all about it this week’s column for the Missoula Independent.

For lighter fare, or at least for fare that does not center on the most awful crime imaginable, this is also the Indy’s election issue. You can read my introductory essay here. If this feels like the longest election of our lifetimes, it’s probably because it is. Ted Cruz announced way back in March 2015, and sixteen other Republicans followed him—the largest slate of primary candidates any American party has ever fielded. Somehow, we would up with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two most disliked major-party candidates in history. It’s tempting to view these options as both and therefore equally unpalatable. But it is a choice between licorice and shit, and in such moments, it is imperative we not surrender to the luck of the draw.

Besides, there are plenty of exciting races further down the ballot. In Montana, voters can choose between another multimillionaire with no experience in politics and a lukewarm Democratic successor to a more popular executive, in the race between Greg Gianforte and Governor Steve Bullock. Our limited polling suggests that contest is close, and so is the supreme court election between Dirk Sandefur and Kristen Juras, who has never served as a judge. She did try to shut down a sex advice column in the student newspaper, though. Politics may be gross this year, but it’s gross like Chthulhu, which is to say gross but also interesting and potentially apocalyptic. We’ll be back tomorrow with the very last Friday links of this election cycle. I hope it is, anyway.

Cultural appropriation? Day of the Dead parade ignores Mictecacihuatl

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec goddess of death, goes totally unrepresented in Missoula's Day of the Dead parade.

Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec goddess of death (artist’s rendering)

Next week, Missoulians will put on skeleton costumes and parade down Higgins Avenue in one of this town’s oddest observances: the Day of the Dead parade. They’ve been doing it for 24 years, despite the fact that approximately 0.0% of the local population is Mexican. We love parades, though. This one concludes the Zootown Arts Community Center’s monthlong Festival of the Dead, which the ZACC describes as an “all-inclusive multicultural event that honors life and death through community involvement in the arts.”

Again, this all-inclusive multicultural event mostly includes white people. Is it therefore not a little problematic? Might the good people of Missoula not be appropriating someone else’s culture by celebrating this holiday? I agree Missoula’s Day of the Dead festivities stray unconscionably from cultural tradition. They make no mention of Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec goddess of death. In fact, when it comes to appropriating the culture behind the Day of the Dead, the only people worse than Missoulians are Mexicans.

You can read all about in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, in which we chart the fine line between resisting cultural appropriation and enforcing cultural segregation. Centuries from now, when ape-robot cyborgs are marching through the ruins of Washington-Grizzly Stadium in skeleton costumes, people who are a quarter Missoulian will lambast them for stealing our culture. Fortunately, I will be dead. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

 

Ryan Zinke should rescind his endorsement of Donald Trump

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment

trump_gestures-copy

In last night’s debate with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump refused to say whether he would accept the results of the election. “I will look at it at the time,” he said. “I will keep you in suspense.” Let us take a moment to consider the ego that assumes the whole country would wait, in suspense, for him to ratify the president we voted for. Now that we’re done with that, let’s move on to disgust. It is disgusting for a major-party candidate to tell America, with no evidence, that its election is rigged. Trump is yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, but on a larger and potentially more destructive scale. Republicans who have not done so already should withdraw their endorsements of him.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R–MT) is in a position to do that at very little cost. A recent Lee Newspapers poll finds him 13 points ahead of his opponent, Denise Juneau. It seems unlikely that many of his supporters find him objectionable but are voting for him because he endorsed Trump. Rescinding his endorsement would be an act of conscience in keeping with his stated commitment to defending American democracy and values. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Missoula safe from clowns at this time

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 0 Comment
My god, he's WALKING THE DOG!

My god, he’s WALKING THE DOG!

As of press time, Missoula schools no longer live under threat of violence originating from clowns. The ZooTown Klown has been not just apprehended but unmasked, as a 15 year-old boy screwing around on Facebook. It was the thrilling conclusion to a story in three acts—act one, in which the county informs parents of clown-related threats, and act two, in which the police remind residents to please not just attack clowns, many of whom are “reputable professional entertainers.”

Setting aside the question of how many professional clowns Missoula can support, I think we should put the blame for this hysteria squarely where it belongs: the internet teenagers society. Sure, it’s social media’s fault for ushering in a golden age of hoaxes. And it’s teenagers’ fault for simulating clown-themed terrorism on Facebook. But it’s our fault for making that funny.

Over the last 15 years, our culture has become so fixated on safety that it’s no wonder teens are teasing us. We have made identifying and protect ourselves from perceived threats the only sacred element of American life. Teens must overthrow all that is sacred. In this sense they resemble satirists, who exaggerate the foibles of their times. Our time’s most protruding foible is fear. You can read all about this wild, totalizing theory in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which also contains many clown jokes. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!