Dreading the Biden administration
I’ve been a bit out of the loop last few weeks as I’ve been hunkering down and trying to work through a tricky part of our documentary, but I gotta say that these post-election weeks have been more depressing and dispiriting than the usual shit that COVID’s been throwing our way. I don’t know about you, but I’m dreading the Biden administration, the next phase of American Decline.
We went out on November 3 to an outdoor spot near the LA river to watch the election results coming in. The place was packed with locals from the surrounding neighborhoods — Silverlake, Los Feliz, Echo Park. Our waitress wore a Bernie t-shirt. People seemed hopeful and sometimes let out yelps of excitement when CNN would call a state for Joe Biden. Still, the energy was very muted. It was clear that the Blue Tsunami that was supposed to wash Donald Trump out of the White House and drown him in the Potomac along with the rest of the Republican Party was not gonna put in an appearance. Not only that, but it looked like Trump had a chance of actually staying afloat and maybe even winning this thing. The Republican Party was doing good, too. It was set to dominate the Senate and even add a few Reps to the roster.
What the hell was happening?
After months and months of nonstop boosting for Joe Biden, and the wall to wall of get-out-the vote agitation painting this as the most important election in the history of the nation and forecasts about massive a Democratic turnout, cynical as I am, I too started believing the hype just a little bit. And I couldn’t believe how poorly the Democrats were doing in the nationals. They had pulled every corporate soft power and spy-fed xenophobic propagandistic trick they had to rile up and scare Americans into voting against Trump and this is what they were getting? Ha! What a bunch of useless neoliberals assholes. Sitting there that night it was clear that there was a chance they could actually lose to Trump twice in a row — and this is after he helped kill a quarter million Americans, many of them his own supporters! That’s how hated the Democratic Party is. And how good it is at losing.
Evgenia and Rowan enjoying American decline.
After a while it became clear that no matter how many times CNN’s map boy manically zoomed in on and refreshed the stats on Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin, we wouldn’t know the winner for at least a day or two. So we went home.
As we left, it seemed like Trump was still riding high. And being the spiteful man that I am, I was kinda hoping that he’d squeak by and win. It would be worth it just so that I could see these liberals lose their fucking minds. Obviosuly they’d blame it on anyone and anything but themselves: a foreign power, Bernie Bros, BLMers. Maybe New York and California would start putting Russian-Americans into internment camps for filtering and reeducation? Not that it would change anything, but these assholes needed to be punished for trying to sell a drooling, juiced-up ghoul like Joe Biden as the next great American hope, and that unfortunately includes Bernie Sanders.
With the Blue Wave not happening, the reserved mood at the bar on election night was understandable. But it all changed a few days later.
On November 7, the liberal stronghold of Los Angeles broke out in a spontaneous outpouring of joy and happiness. I had just woken up and didn’t even need to check the news, it was clear that the election was being finally called for Joe Biden. First it was the honking, then the hoots and random yells and people leaning out of windows to beat their pot and pans and squeal with glee.
When went out to try to get some lunch out in Hollywood later that afternoon, the city had transformed into a giant block party. People had gathered on street corners — dancing, cracking champagne bottles, pouring wine. In one spot, an impromptu parade formed down Santa Monica Boulevard, with people hanging out of their Teslas and Land Rovers and Porsches with giant American flags, manically honking and yelling as crowds lined both sides of the street to cheer them on. There were even a bunch of people in American flag pants. Pants! I had never seen anything like it. Who knew LA liberals owned so many giant Trump-sized American flags? Guess they had them tucked away in storage all during the Not My President Era. But now that Trump was on the way out they could once again be American First without embarrassment.
Naturally, the homeless encampments — and the people sleeping on benches and in doorways — that these people passed in their spontaneous parade didn’t factor into the equation. Los Angeles is a Democratic Party city in a Democratic Party state run by all sorts of Joe Biden-type politicians, and the place is one of the premiere neoliberal hellholes in America. It’s got the highest poverty rate in the country and the biggest number of people living on the streets and oligarchs privatizing our water. And it’s done absolutely nothing for the poor and vulnerable during all these quarantines and shutdowns.