Eradicating the Pandemic of Hate: My 2024 Election Thesis
For the record, I quit writing a few months ago.
But here I am again because I’m trying to save the country from utter disaster. I’d like to believe my clutter of words back in 2020 helped, so I’m back for the 2024 election to talk my shit---and I’m also trying to prevent rash decisions like moving to the deepest regions of Mexico if Trump does win and I refuse to accept the prospect of battling his racist rhetoric and behavior for another four years.
By the way, Mexico voted their first female president while also sporting an economy that grew so much that it’s outperforming its colonizing sister nation Spain. Baja California, do you know who is hiring?
For those who are voting for Kalama Harris, you don’t need to read any further. You’re good to go.
But for those who haven’t voted yet or don’t plan on voting for Kamala, and also don’t want to read thousands of words as to why you should vote the way you should vote, let me just start this entire thing with a quick synopsis:
Donald Trump cannot be the next president of the United States, and his cult of white supremacist political edgelords needs to be defeated in every single race imaginable from the White House all the way down to local dogcatcher in the Virgin Islands. His administration full of anti-immigrant bigots is fully prepared to have the United States shove itself towards becoming a white Christian nationalist nation complete with a massive effort to not only deport every illegal immigrant, but even destroy select avenues towards seeking legal status, leading to potential deportations of LEGAL immigrants and migrants seeking a better life.
I do not care if you think he’s better for the economy, I do not care if you think he’s better for foreign relations because of his *checks paperwork* relationship with hostile dictators *tosses paper aside*, this man is a danger to over 25 million migrants AND legal Latin American immigrants who don’t look or sound like what he wants Americans to look and sound like. The man has delivered a Nazi-esque rhetoric related to his campaign and his promises, and this is most definitely not an exaggeration. He wants the military battling his political enemies, he wants the police to be allowed to behave with violent hostility to ensure full obedience from all Americans. That feeble old man with far too many attachments to white supremacists and project 2025 doesn’t deserve a second presidency, he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison, period.
Now, if you’re still not convinced, then let’s move on.
wait….
Chapter One: MAGA Don’t Trust You
Picture a situation where everything around you can be dangerous. The roads you’re driving on, the bridges you are crossing, the food you eat, the people who enter the same venue as you, the building you’re in, the house or apartment you sleep at every night, the media you consume, the planes that fly above you, the trains that transport the items you need for survival, the technology that requires approval from the government to be allowed to make its way to markets for purchase, everything. How daunting would living be? How difficult would it be to wake up every single morning, dreading what might happen, fearing everything around you, questioning every facet of information that you are given and that you find? Not a fun life, right?
Welcome to the United States ever since Donald Trump opened his jealous mouth to claim Obama wasn’t actually born in the country and is therefore not allowed to be president.
There’s a slight irony because technically Donald Trump should not have been president as he didn’t have any political experience, but its water under the bridge now, pandora’s box is open.
But this has been the United States for over a decade, all aspects of life within these borders being questioned because Trump vomits misinformation, his gullible and frustrated fans buy into it, and now the item in question falls under scrutiny and ends up being a debate. You think this started in 2015 but no, this definitely started way earlier than that as Trump tried pushing people towards the Republican (Tea) Party. It started with Obama conspiracy theories, and it continues today, and during this campaign it feels like every few days there’s a new stupid thing to question. Six months ago, it was the “New York judge is biased and wants me to not run for president,” a few months ago it was the “Biden is trying to kill me,” weeks ago it was the “Haitians eating dogs and cats,” and as of today’s writing now he’s bringing back the case about the Algerian female boxer who won the gold medal.
Its annoying, its frustrating, its stupid, its time-consuming, its dumbing down people, its validating the most fucked up thoughts of the worst of people, it makes victims out of innocent people caught in the political crosshairs, and it leaves the most-vulnerable susceptible to questioning everything and ending up in the dredges of the wild algorithms from twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and especially TikTok. I now have former friends still believing that Dr. Fauci is a war criminal, I have family questioning the origins of the coronavirus and the importance of mask-wearing, and I have recently seen family fall into the Agenda 2030 conspiracy theory.
Then, with everything being questioned, even liberals and centrists end up questioning things, remember the conspiracy theories surrounding the Hawaii fires and Trump assassination attempts? And don’t get me started on what we’ve seen online since October 7th, 2023……
Side-Note: Ceasefire Now.
Yes we’ve always had conspiracy theories, and yes it is good to sometimes question certain happenings within the United States. But under the MAGA cult movement it has become a virus of misinformation spreading all across the planet, some of the most basic knowledge being questioned. Remember Trump feuding with NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER with his own version of Hurricane Dorian’s path? We have had multiple incidents of meteorologists being threatened by MAGAs, the most non-political people suddenly being threatened with death during a political spat. FEMA now can’t even help people in North Carolina because they are being hunted by already-stressed rural folks who have taken arms over fears they are being eliminated by the federal government.
The weekly battles against misinformation leads to unnecessary threats, but in the worst cases some extreme violence. It feels like the news moves so fast, but remember the El Paso shooting, please I beg of you to never forget what led to that violence.
Inspired by far-right extreme conspiracy theories that often gets repeated by Trump and his MAGA allies, Patrick Wood Crusius drove hundreds of miles to El Paso with the sole purpose of killing as many Latinos as possible. He murdered 23 people (all Latinos) in the span of five minutes before surrendering to authorities. Argue everything you want, but the policies by the Biden Administration doesn’t create such violence and terror.
Donald Trump is a misinformation machine, a virus of conspiracy theories that spreads far and wide, and this technique of questioning everything has led to extreme right-wing policies in other countries, with Brazil being the biggest example in the Western Hemisphere. Donald Trump has created an alternate reality for well over a decade, and it has resulted in millions of people being far removed from the realities of the world. There are thousands of lives we likely lost due to misinformation during the pandemic era, as very quickly into the pandemic we saw Trump already crafting a different picture as to what was actually happening.
Just imagine a scenario where MAGA is gone, its gone silent, imagine a United States that doesn’t have to challenge every single damn thought delivered by an old orange parrot.
As the Beach Boys once said, wouldn’t it be nice?
A second loss, and this time to a successful Black woman, would be the death blow to the MAGA movement, and the millions of conspiracy theories that follow. Yes we will still have the post-MAGA period, we’ll still have those folks questioning everything, but their false validity will become impossible to duplicate with their leader legally and mentally incapable of making another effort towards the presidency.
By the way please donate to Wikipedia, Snopes, and other places that fact-check and try their best to bring out the truth.
Chapter Two: MAGA Doesn’t Accept Your God
White Christian Nationalism is the biggest domestic terror threat in the United States; yes even bigger than “migrant gangs,” the cartel, “Antifa,” ISIS, Al-Qaeda, domestic mafias, and any other random group you can think of. White Christian Nationalism can be linked to many White Supremacist groups and ideologies, their presence in every facet of government has made them a threat to what America was founded on, and what the nation’s values currently are. These folks threaten, demean, bully, cheat, and buy their way into elections and political processes while eating away at all the guardrails that maintains the religious and cultural diversity of this country.
They don’t believe in you being allowed to practice your personal religion; they believe in you being forced to cater to theirs. What makes it worse is that similar to the extreme Zionists that have helped spread the genocide over in their homeland and on Palestinian territory, not everyone is equal in the eyes of the Christian Nationalists.
Guess who they want as president---beyond a second term by the way.
Guess what group is behind the extremist document Project 2025.
Guess who they believe is essentially the second coming of Christ.
Guess what kinds of flags these “Christians” tend to wave. Hint: the colors are black and red.
Their God doesn’t believe in equality in terms of gender and race, their God doesn’t believe in helping the poor, their God doesn’t believe that everyone even deserves a decent life. Their God doesn’t believe in helping migrants if it means accepting someone that might be practicing another religion, even one that’s very similar to theirs. So yes, expect those Muslim bans to pop up under another Trump presidency, expect those poor Palestinians to have to seek elsewhere for refuge as Israel continues their war crimes.
Guess what, if you’re not a white male that believes in God and Jesus, then you are entitled to fewer rights under Christian Nationalism. Despite their religious ways, their kindness shuts off if you’re not visually a part of their overall agenda. They worship power, money, and making sure they are socially above everyone else.
The people and politicians they court and support constantly vote against abortion rights---but then they’ll also vote against maternal leave, paternal leave, child tax credits, tax credits for daycare, free lunches for children in schools, affordable health care for kids, affordable health care for parents, stronger school safety measures, taxing richer people that can afford to help the needy, taxing the larger churches who can ALSO do more to help the needy, and of course stronger gun control----which by the way has become the leading cause of death among children and teenagers.
Their America is very much My Way or the Highway, and We Don’t Want You Picking the Next Leader. This appeals to a Donald Trump that enjoys the perks of being a dictator, enjoys the concept of full obedience regardless of how wrong he is or how horrendous he is behaving. This appeals to a Donald Trump who wants cronies wrecking protests, pride parades, anything with hints of diversity. This isn’t a man who wants to represent all Americans, only -certain- Americans.
The historic link between Christian Nationalism and dictatorships is stronger than what you may think, you can look at the kinds of people that allowed dictatorships in Argentina and Brazil, and look at the lot of Brazilians who still believe in the military-laden Bolsonaroism movement that’s also harming the South American country.
These extremist Christians and their churches cater, finance, and being close company with your Proud Boys, KKK, and other groups rising in numbers in the last decade as their ideology is being repeated in a major political scale for the first time since the Civil Rights Movement. And please, if you think they would get upset with a Donald Trump that wants to complicate the process of replacing him, then I have a mansion to tell you in Islamorada.
The United States was founded on religious freedom, was founded as a beacon for pilgrims and ultimately immigrants to enter to seek a better life for themselves and for their family lines. This wild rise of the Christian Nationalist movement is threatening the concept of said religious freedom on a massive scale, with Donald Trump and Project 2025 behind the wheel. We can’t have violent God-fearing zealots controlling any kind of government, the results will always be disastrous. If you want to live in a Christian nation, then go elsewhere, but this is the U.S., where all religions should be respected and embraced for as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of other people.
Chapter Three: Side-Note
For the record, this isn’t just an anti-Trump thesis, this is also a pro-Kamala Harris article, even if admittingly my dislike and disdain for MAGA is significantly stronger than my approval of Kamala Harris. But if you’ll indulge me, we have to remember one major thing about her:
She’s not Joe Biden.
The attempts to directly connect her policies with Joe Biden is definitely inaccurate as she was relatively hidden for the four years Joe Biden was president. This isn’t her decision, as she is essentially a powerful lackey for the Biden Administration, someone who has to clean up messes, do some uncomfortable foreign policy things (her first major appearance in Central America was a yikes moment, even if her reception was better than what the newsmedia proclaimed) and nothing more.
Let’s be honest, do we really blame Mike Pence for the shoddy response to the coronavirus pandemic?
Do we blame Joe Biden for the drone strikes in Syria back in the early 2010s?
Do we blame Dick Chan-----wait, wait, scratch that last one….
Kamala Harris’ background is wildly different from Joe Biden, politically AND culturally---and this was actually brought up during her failed presidential run back in 2020 when discussing the issue of segregation. Harris can be seen and heard throughout the 2000s discuss some very progressive topics, especially concerning the prison-industrial complex. Harris has more political California vibes when compared to the Mid-Atlantic-style of liberal politics we see with Joe Biden.
Now, we can discuss the subject of how the DNC/RNC and the Electoral College forces politicians to try to turn down their progressive beliefs another time (and how constantly challenging the political and donor elites will make your political career significantly more difficult, with Bernie’s 2016 and 2020 runs as examples), but Kamala Harris is indeed further to the left when compared to Biden----even as she runs significantly more like a centrist (which I feel won’t be an ongoing trend if she does win it all).
Odds are she has differing opinions on a wide variety of topics, including Israel/Palestinian relations (Kamala has discussed the two-state solution as well as a ceasefire, while Trump has been allowed to completely avoid that touchy topic 99% of the time), but had been held in check by Biden during most of 2024, who had been attempting a second run. But once it was clear Biden couldn’t properly continue his campaign, Kamala Harris had a condensed period of time to establish herself as the person to best lead the nation moving forward instead of someone that already has presidential experience.
The narrative that we don’t know enough about her does have merit months ago, but nowadays I feel like there’s enough information put out there for you to know who she is, who she isn’t, and what she represents. I’m not saying she’s Bernie Sanders---but she has Bernie Sanders’ support. Honestly, that’s all I need. I’ll follow that man to the ends of the earth, his political compass is the one that closest matches with mine in all the United States---even if his compass scares the hell out of the elites within BOTH major parties.
I strongly recommend you go to her website to see her platforms, see her ideas and desires for if she becomes the next president. This article isn’t about her, but I wanted to point out that this is not just an anti-Trump tirade, Kamala Harris plans on expanding on good ideas and maintain the vision of what the United States should be. She is not a member of the Bernie Bus, but she’s also not just a mere extension of Bidenomics; and it will be interesting to see what happens in 2028 as other Democrats might be hungry for a presidential run (especially Gavin Newsom), but I definitely don’t fear a Harris Administration like I might a Trump or Vance Administration.
Chapter Four: Operation Wetback II
We can recap. Trump is too old, senile, angry, stupid, bigoted, sexist, selfish, ignorant, dishonest, and combative to be a good president.
He was a terrible president the first time around, and surrounded himself with equally-terrible people. It literally would have been more beneficial for him to do absolutely nothing and let the good economic policies from the previous administration feed him a growing economy. But he spent four years trying to dismantle the achievements and ideals of a Black president just because. He even ended up dismantling a pandemic task force that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives had it still been around when coronavirus started killing indiscriminately in China. Oops, literally the biggest oops in the history of the United States.
But the biggest issue of all concerning that vile disgusting bigot, the one that hurts me the most personally, is the one about immigration.
Without exaggeration, Donald Trump’s stances on immigration has done nearly irreversible harm on the image of the United States on a global scale. His words against migrants escaping violence and poverty, against Latinos (especially Mexicans, Haitians, and Venezuelans), and against Middle Eastern migrants of war-shredded nations have directly challenged the idea, the imagery of the United States of America. We are nowhere near as appealing a nation as we used to be, we are nowhere near as good an example of good policies and ideas under Donald Trump’s generational influence on right-wing politics and the concept of Americana. Go on YouTube and listen to how Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan used to talk about immigrants and compare that with the disgusting speeches and tweets made by politicians that support Trump and MAGA. Hate crimes have exponentially increased since 2015, mostly against the very groups that Trump verbally goes after, this is no coincidence at all.
For the record, BOTH parties on the highest levels have failed the Latin American community throughout this century, and the Biden Administration became a huge letdown by caving in to the sensationalized and wildly misleading narratives related to the so-called border crisis and influx of migrants. The Biden Administration also should have been much more wrathful towards the states at the border shipping migrants without warning to other regions with the sole purpose of stirring up trouble and making everyone’s lives more difficult.
That being said, only one is talking about wanting to recreate one of the darkest and most bigoted policies in the history of the United States while also (inaccurately) blaming them for all of America’s problems.
“Operation Wetback” occurred during the Cold War era, as illegal AND legal Mexicans were basically threatened, hunted down, arrested, and shipped south of the border en masse. This bears repeating, LEGAL Mexican-Americans were removed from their homes and sent to different regions of Mexico, sometimes to parts of the country unknown to them and with no money, food, or resources to try to properly restart their lives. Lost Mexicans died under brutal conditions, many were humiliated and beaten in jails, many more were just tossed back to Mexico and with some examples with shaved heads so the U.S. border patrol can better-recognize people trying to re-enter the U.S.. The entire Mexican diaspora was treated as sub-human for decades, even as the number of deportations were reducing in the 1960s, and some of those sentiments have carried over to what we see from select ugly corners of America today.
Operation Wetback was inhumane, disgusting, and sadly legalized military behavior from the United States, and in a sort of cruel irony a vast majority of these arrests happened in regions that initially belonged to Mexico before the United States’ greed and landlust led to warfare and annexation of these crucial territories. Mexico of today is 52% desert, as they lost most of their fertile land, which includes today’s states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado. Meanwhile, over 95% of all counties in the United States have at least one Mexican restaurant, despite the mere existence of Mexicans in a region sometimes sending Americans into a racist tizzy.
Despite all the awful consequences, here is Trump lauding that shoddy program and wanting to re-create it, while claiming that migrants are “poisoning the country.” Tell me when AMLO ever said that Americans moving south (or even the Central and South American migrants walking through their country in search of asylum/work) were “Poisoning Mexico.” If anything, the Mexican government has more of a case to complain about crossings since over 80% of the guns the cartels have in their possession are from the United States, and the drug war continues existing solely because of the United States being their biggest customer.
The hateful rhetoric related to migrants and even legal immigrants has led to innocent people being terrorized online as well as on the streets, whether it be the Mexicans being hunted down by white supremacists in El Paso, or Haitians being confronted in Ohio and being asked if they are kidnapping pets. This is so far away from the solution to better-improve the immigration functionality within the U.S. that it can easily be disputed that this is sheer racist vengeance from a presidential candidate that never received the popularity or success overseas that he believes he deserved. There’s a reason why Trump’s anger towards Latinos happened after failed attempts to expand to Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Never forget how Donald Trump left Puerto Rico to fall apart and die after hurricane Maria. Never forget about Trump considering literally selling Puerto Rico entirely.
Even worse than the planned (and racist, xenophobic, and economically stupid) 20 million deportations, the threatening of stripping and removing programs that allowed migrants/immigrants to become legal in the United States is also a very worrying revelation. The Haitians that were in the middle of a culture war actually came under programs that existed during the Trump administration, and its those very same programs that Trump wants to get rid of. And if he’s willing to remove the rights of Haitians, who knows how deep the bigoted well will go, who knows what other groups will be under threat of seeing their programs suddenly going up in smoke.
Venezuelans, Salvadorians, Nicaraguans, and Mexicans escaping violence (and the ramifications related to what the U.S. did to almost ALL of Latin America in the 20th century) might also see their avenues of access hitting road blocks, especially under a MAGA-laden Supreme Court unwilling to go against a Project 2025 Donald Trump administration hellbent on reducing the number of Latin Americans living on U.S. soil.
Donald Trump’s entire damn platform towards immigration is a giant wad of ignorant bigotry of the highest degree, and its unacceptable that we have people seeing his behavior, hearing his words, and being fine with it. We should be better than this, I don’t care what your economic condition is. Immigration is a net-positive no matter what, economically and culturally, and migrants are nowhere near responsible for most of the problems actually plaguing this country. Immigrants pay more taxes than the 1%, immigrants statistically commit fewer crimes than actual Americans. But even if immigration is good politics that yield good results, more importantly supporting immigrants is the right moral thing to do, period.
This hate has to be defeated in a grandiose scale. These folks deserve to live a proper life, they deserve an opportunity to become American citizens. We live on stolen land, and the actions of this country within the last century can be directly linked to all the migrations within the Americas. The U.S. has an obligation, a responsibility, to offer hospitality to those in need. This is the richest country in the history of the entire world, and we have immigrants to thank for that.
Conclusion
Donald Trump cannot be president. MAGA is on the laundry list of things that must be destroyed beyond recognition before the United States can improve as a country.
Yes our politics are supremely broken, and the political representation of each of us is wildly flawed and ridiculous. But Trump and MAGA is most-definitely not the solution.
Guess what, some of the ideas that can actually expand proper political representation has been floated by the Kamala Harris political team. Kamala Harris is willing to finally kill the filibuster in the always-useless senate, Tim Walz wants the electoral college eradicated, Bernie Sanders wants to overturn citizens united, and this is the side that wants to finally give Washington D.C. statehood and eliminate gerrymandering. Voting for Kamala Harris isn’t just an anti-Trump vote, but above everything else Trump and the MAGA cult must be politically destroyed.
The hate has to stop, the disinformation campaigns that we see time and time and time and time again has to stop, United States politics has to stop being such a damn circus where people’s livelihoods are constantly on a razor’s edge with important policies depending on the votes of ridiculous personalities that belong on reality shows, not inside the White House or Congress.
Both political parties are a mess and there’s some damage that may never be fixed within our lifetimes. But the solution isn’t to continue rolling the dice on unhinged cults and basement dweller-appealing behavior. That 2016-2020 period was an absolute mess, let’s never forget that the disorganization and refusal to take the job seriously led to a preventable global pandemic. Let’s never forget all the massive hate crimes that you can directly attach to the words of a bigoted cult. Let’s not forget all the lives lost due to the awful lies and awful words of Donald Trump. We can avoid repeating such an awful era by making sure Kamala Harris wins.
And guess what, this doesn’t mean you always have to vote Democrat, but until the Republican Party can finally rid itself of the MAGA virus, the entire party doesn’t deserve to win a single seat.
Here’s the kicker, and its something I try to tell myself despite the rather selfishness of it all: regardless of who will become president, it won’t directly affect me that much to personally. Under Trump, leading up to the pandemic all his words, actions, and ridiculousness didn’t directly impact my life. But I’m voting not just for myself, but because I am choosing to select what I believe is best for the general population. I am acknowledging how lucky I am to live a life whose vitality isn’t so attached to who is in the White House. Voting just for yourself is selfish, period; voting against the obviously better choice just because he or she may not be in your political party is selfish. Choosing to not participate just because your prospects may not alter much regardless of who wins is also selfish, and yes, I understand that politics and all the drama and corruption surrounding it is a migraine.
People have died to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to have their voice heard, even if the voices remain politically uneven. Latinos have fought alongside Americans in literally every single war in the history of the United States, part of the Union’s victory over the Confederates has to do with Mexico’s role in the internal conflict. Can you imagine the shock and horror of the fallen forefathers who died in war only to see their descendants being threatened to get shipped out of the very country they saved, and half the country being fine with that just because they have uncorroborated economic and xenophobic fears? Can you imagine the ghosts of Pearl Harbor witnessing a candidate that is constantly supported by people sporting Nazi flags having an actual shot at becoming president---AGAIN??!?
Millions of Americans and people around the world have been affected by decisions made in 2016, and even before the pandemic lives were lost, families were torn apart (at the border and at the dinner table), and the social atmosphere of the country entirely has dipped in quality. There is a rage that has permeated the United States, when it felt like just for a second we were getting over that hump and we were really making some societal progress. You don’t have the privilege to sit this one out, we have a man surrounded by white supremacists and Christian nationalists trying to win again.
We deserve better, we can do better, and it starts with defeating Donald Trump by a wide, wide margin. It might be foolish to be so optimistic, but I really do believe that with a true convincing victory, the beginning of the end of a hurtful, devastating, dark time in politics can begin to wind down.
Vote for Kamala, have a pina colada, get fully coconut-pilled, and let’s look towards a brighter future that will constantly distance itself from the MAGA nonsense.
But please, vote as if your neighbor’s future and life depends on it.