If Kamala Harris Were President, They'd All Be at Brunch
Yeah, we know.
More than 40 million people in this country are about to go hungry. Not because we're out of money. Not because they're lazy.
Because a tyrant deemed it so.
I've voted in every election since turning 18. I've attended anti-Trump protests. I've devoted countless nights and weekends to my community. I've given cash to single moms in the middle of the night. I've put in the effort.
Many of us voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. I did, for all the reasons you can imagine. To keep children from going hungry. To protect what's left of public health. To keep fascist lunatics out of office. To keep things from getting even worse. You don't have to rehearse those arguments on me. I've heard them all.
Still, I've got to be honest.
If Kamala Harris had won, I would not be at brunch.
Not literally. Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Not ironically. Not even on a Saturday. I would never put that on a sign. I would never hold that up and smile. I would never post that on the internet. Those signs don't represent me. They don't make me feel good. They don't even make me smirk.
They're cringe.
These signs represent a certain way of engaging in politics, and it's exactly what has motivated many of us to spend more time learning how to grow food or harvest rain than trying to get anyone to vote one way or another. In fact, I was reluctant to even post this, because I'm not sure the ones who need it most will listen or focus on its larger points, but I guess we'll see. Maybe you've just seen those signs, and something about them has bothered you as well, and you just want to know if it's valid. Well, it's valid. You're not the only one who sees them and decides you're better off learning how to clean a car battery than you are stepping back into this noise.
And that's really getting to the heart of the problem. Many of us wouldn't characterize the Biden years as brunchy. They weren't great years. They didn't instill a whole lot of trust in institutions. They were frustrating, even downright demoralizing. They weren't the break we were promised, not to anyone who was paying attention and trying to do the right thing. Even more than the Trump years, it was the Biden years that finally convinced me that nobody was coming to save us, that I'd better start preparing for collapse the best I could, and share what I learned with others.
Many of us spent those years working hard to educate people about important issues, often pushing back against misinformation from Biden's own public health agencies. We tried to keep kids healthy. We tried to inform people about the depth and scope of the climate crisis and what it would really take to protect the future. We tried to explain where it would lead if we tacitly condoned genocide funded by either party.
We could've had productive conversations about what we could be doing better, but those conversations always turned into the same tired assertion that Democrats were better than MAGA. That was the end of the discussion for them.
They were at brunch.
Most of our supposedly kind, educated, liberal friends wouldn't listen to us. They couldn't be bothered. So, it annoys me a little to see so many people so proudly declaring on their protest signs that if we'd all managed to elect Kamala, they would go right back to brunch. They couldn't be bothered to listen to us, again.
Already, I know some readers will feel an impulse to respond with, "But Trump is worse!" Yes, he's worse. Much worse. That's a dead end. Why should someone use Trump as an excuse to actively reject the notion they could be doing better? Why should that be the end of the conversation about every crisis we face? That's not a productive argument. It leads nowhere, except back to fascism.
Why are we talking about this now?
Well...
Recently, California Governor Gavin Newsom has confirmed he's thinking about running for president in 2028. Let's face it, he probably will. By name recognition alone, he stands a good chance of clinching the nomination.
The prospect of Newsom's campaign has re-ignited that ancient debate over whether it's valid to withhold your vote from a candidate and boycott an election. With Newsom, there's quite a lot of problems. He supports restrictions on transgender athletes. He wants to deny healthcare to undocumented immigrants.
He vetoed a reparations bill.
I'll be honest, Newsom hasn't impressed me. He's not going to be the public health champion we need, not the climate champion either. He'll maintain the status quo. At least he won't starve 42 million people to win a budget fight. At least, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't. Again, you don't have to sell me. I get it.
Who do we have to win over?
We have to appeal to someone like Parker Molloy, a writer with 200K followers on Blueskey, someone who has very adamantly warned us she won't vote for someone like Gavin Newsom. On brand, Blue MAGA trolls have assailed her over this decision. Rather than try to earn her vote, or put pressure on Newsom, they spend their energy calling her names and threatening her. It's exactly what they did on Gaza, on Covid, on the climate, on any other issue that didn't suit the establishment agenda.
This is not the way:
That's Kevin Kruse, an historian and Princeton professor. I called him out for this aggressive post, and he responded. He proudly told me it wasn't his job to win elections for Democrats. Then he muted me. What is his job, exactly?
I guess you're looking at it...
All other issues aside, Kruse is doing something we've seen hundreds of times now. He feels entitled to aggressively belittle and insult people like Parker Molloy, who are exercising the only political leverage they have.
Does withholding your vote work? Is it the right thing to do? We can't have that discussion if we're going to lead with insults.
That's exactly the kind of attitude you encounter from the ones who write stuff like, "I'd rather be at brunch" on their protest signs. They're constantly telling their critics how to engage in politics. The minute they win an election, it's off to brunch. That was the last four years, and people got fed up with it.
Hence our current situation.
The internet is filled with liberals and leftists who talk about "community" and "outreach," and then they call you names. They take a problem that's life or death for you, and they describe it as a "pet issue." They consider Long Covid a pet issue. They consider a habitable planet a pet issue. They consider genocide a pet issue. Over the last 48 hours, this is what they've told me when I tried, once again, to engage with them. From airborne transmission and vaccine efficacy to Jevons Paradox and aerosol masking, they don't understand it. They don't want to understand it. They've spent more time telling me how unimportant all this is than trying to listen. In many cases, their behavior has been worse than any MAGA troll I've ever encountered.
And they wonder why so many people won't vote. They wonder why some of us feel it's pointless to engage with them, that our time is better spent preparing for the collapse, or just finally having some brunch at home, by ourselves.
Even when you're like me, even if you voted for Harris, and you're just trying to explain why so many people didn't, they call you an idiot too. They accuse you of coddling crybabies. That was a thing said to me, several times. Then they go off to their "No Kings" protests. They share strategies.
My strategy involves not yelling at other progressives like Parker Molloy and going out of my way to insult them, refusing to support any of their critical issues, and commanding them to vote the way I think they should while telling them their concerns don't matter.
And I've gotta say...
Regardless of how innocuous their intentions seem, regardless of how funny they're trying to be, it's not exactly reassuring to see all those signs reminding us they'll rush off to brunch the first chance they get, especially to those of us who remember the last five years. If Kamala Harris had won, they'd all be at brunch?
Yeah, we know.
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