still processing

Today is the 6th day of the 45th week, the 8th day of the 11th month, the 313th day of 2024, and: 

• Abet and Aid Punsters Day
• Cook Something Bold Day
• HBO Day
• International Day of Remembrance
• Intersex Day of Solidarity
• National Ample Time Day
• National Cappuccino Day
• National Dance Day
• National Harvey Wallbanger Day
• National Parents as Teachers Day
• National STEAM Day
• Shakespeare Authorship Mystery Day
• World Pianist Day
• World Town Planning Day
• World Urbanism Day
• X-ray Day
• and Voyager 1 is ~22h 59m 32s of light travel time from Earth

Quote of the day: 
“Grownups! Everyone remembers them. How strange and even sad it is that we never become what they were: beings noble, infallible, and free. We never become them. One of the things we discover as we live is that we never become anything different from what we are. We are no less ourselves at forty than we were at four, and because of this we know grownups as Grownups only once in life: during our own childhood. We never meet them in our lives again, and we miss them always.”
 ~ Elizabeth Enright, Doublefields, “The Walnut Shell”

from Low Quality Facts

The reality of what  50.70% of the US voters who went out and cast their ballots did is still sinking in.

According to Statista, there are approximately 162,420,000 million registered voters out of approximately 231 million eligible voters, according to World Population Review, or about 70.31 %.   About 87.78% of those registered chose to vote for POTUS - there were some [the "there is no difference between the two sides" crowd] who voted for other items and either  left the top position blank or voted irrelevantly [write-ins and other candidates],  willing to accept whatever someone else decided like a child waiting for the grownups' decisions.  

That's the first takeaway from this:   

The numbers will firm up in the future, but this was NOT a "mandate" or a groundswell of support from the American people.  This is about 31.8% of the population being given free rein because 38.38% of the eligible voters and 12.22% of the registered voters sat on their hands.  It looks remarkably like what happened in 2016.   In a way, not deciding then was more understandable because no one knew what chaos a Trump administration would bring.

This time?  They knew the cost of staying silent.

So, why did so many decide to let their fate be determined by someone else?

• 
  In both elections, 2016 and 2024, a woman was the Democratic candidate.  There has already been a lot of discussion about misogyny, the culture of testosterone, et al.  We've come a long way since the 1950's when a girl knew she could only be a wife, a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary, but we haven't come far enough as the "your body, my choice" crowd proves.  Why did young men in particular vote for Trump?   Anti-female, bitter incels, or shortsidely trying to score big on Bitcoin betting?    
  

• Was it Kamala's or Joe's fault?  No I don't buy that.  She ran a great campaign and clearly delineated the issues, outlining how she would address them.  He was supportive all the way, and has done a great job in the past four years - most of us are indeed better off than we were four years ago even with things costing more.  Bidenomics worked, and gave us a soft landing from the post-pandemic recession that gripped the rest of the world, but he never got the credit he deserves for that.  Which leads me to the next point....

• The media has a lot to answer for - for years the main stream media have sane-washed Donnie and enabled him to sound far more credible than he is.  At least they did publish Project 2025 and at the end, showed him in his doddering, demented state [I notice, however, that as soon as he won, all the pictures make him look much better] but it was too little too late.   The right-wing media never faltered in offering their base an alternate reality where [for example] kids could be dropped off for school as a boy and come home as a girl, building an impregnable wall of propaganda that reality never breached.

• Then there are the oligarchs.  Since the Reagan years, bolstered by the SCOTUS 2010 Citizens United ruling, the rich have poured money into politics to fund those who will support their unfettered capitalism.  

• Which brings me to the economy.  Yes eggs and butter cost more than they did in 2019.  Hello, we went through a pandemic and supply changes ruptured?  AND notice that the corporations jerked up their prices and raked in record profits, all the while blaming the price increases on inflation.  Greedflation was definitely under reported - but then again, the oligarchy controls the mainstream news, in case you haven't noticed.  

• Foreign interference.  Yes there were legions of bots on social media complete with fake videos and all creating fear about "Tampon Walz" , gun control, and immigrants eating pets, as well as taking jobs, etc.  And yes, there are conspiracy theories abounding already about claims that Donnie had the votes BEFORE the election which involves software tampering by someone.  I wouldn't put it past Putin or Elon, quite frankly, but Biden is right - we need to restore faith in the integrity of elections, even if the GOP only acknowledges an election as "fair" if they win.

We may never know why people chose to support fascists on Tuesday either by voting for them or by doing nothing.  

I hope that historians across the world are recording carefully what is happening in my country because the revisionist history, substituting propaganda for facts, is already beginning and will start accelerating now.

The choice was clear, and the United States chose poorly. Now we will all suffer the consequences.