No matter how many times I attempt to bend my brain around it, I cannot for the life of me comprehend why those of us on the left feel compelled to vehemently attack each other over which candidate is the most perfect ever when what we’re fighting is a steaming pile of kleptocratic dog shit hellbent on deconstructing democracy.

Can dog shit deconstruct democracy?

Clearly, yes.

We are fighting against the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States but sure, let’s definitely bring up that one thing Dem candidate #267 (that’s how many there are, correct?) did in 1974 that was super un-woke and really pissed you off.

I don’t mean balanced analysis. I love that shit. I’m talking about the diehard shit-slinging based on…what? Something. Personal preference. Every one of our candidates is flawed, and every one is better than Trump.

Every single fucking one of them is better than that guy, so yay us we don’t have to hate anybody for liking a candidate we don’t like. We don’t have to freak out and attack each other.

This should be the most chill primary season ever.

We should just hang out and vote for whichever live body presents itself as the Dem candidate in the general. In the primaries, VOTE FOR WHOEVER THE FUCK YOU FUCKING WANT.

There is nowhere to go but up.

We are at the bottom. So, what are we fighting about again?

Here are my questions for a Dem candidate:

• Do they refer to NBC, CNN, The New York Times and all other media that dares critique the GOP as “the enemy of the people?”
• How do they feel about random pussy-grabbing?
• Speaking of which, do they believe it’s a “very dangerous time to be a man?”
• If they want to critique a political adversary, do they deconstruct that person’s ideas or make up catchy, often racist nicknames like “Crazy Bernie,” “Pocahontas,” “Lyin’ James?”
• Do they view people with opposing views as “adversaries,” or do they see conflict and debate as a cornerstone of a healthy democracy?
• If somebody suggested the government rip babies from their families, cage them, then traffic them into evangelical orphanages somehow connected to Betsy Devos, would they agree or disagree with this plan?
• Do they believe bears wandering onto campuses is a critical problem among schoolchildren or are they more concerned about, say, kids getting murdered in their classrooms?
• By “tax break for the middle class,” do they mean corporations will continue to pay zero taxes, the 1% will pay less, and the middle class will pay more?
• Who does this candidate rely on for intelligence: Rush Limbaugh or, um, United States intelligence agencies?
• In general are they cool with the rule of law?
• On the ever-pressing issue of healthcare, does this candidate believe people should have it or like nah just the rich people?
• Should students spend their entire lives paying off student loans at 7% interest because America can’t afford to provide free education but also Amazon can make $11 billion in profit and pay no taxes?
• HOW DO THEY FEEL ABOUT ALL CAPS TWEETS and the use of stunningly Random Capitalization?
• Authoritarian leaders around the world – e.g. Putin, Jong-Un, Orban – tyrants or mentors?
• Does this candidate refer to Mexican immigrants as “vermin?”
• How about inventing fake national crises?
• If pressed, can the candidate speak in full, coherent sentences?

Do I really need to go on? I feel like I don’t.

Why the fuck are we sitting here shredding people into oblivion for supporting Harris or Sanders or Booker or the goddamn fucking fire hydrant across the street?

The fire hydrant doesn’t grab pussies. It can’t even attempt to sell nuclear arms to Saudis.

Is it cool that my main question for a candidate is: “Are you an entirely trash human?”

Is it cool that the bar has been lowered so far that I’d settle for partially trash human?

No, of course it isn’t cool. Of course we should be enjoying some bullshit rhetoric from multiple candidates on both sides, weighing their arguments and forming decisions while watching staged inflammatory debates of nonsense.

But no, we’ve been robbed of that circus. Instead we are staring down the barrel of four more years with Racist Trash Clown and his Band of Criminals.

So again, I ask you: Who fucking cares.

Let’s be friends. And get the hell outta here together.

NOWHERE. TO. GO. BUT. UP.

****

In my book I am less political but probably equally “offensive.” High five.

I distinctly remember being a teenager and thinking my mother was the most ridiculous human in the world with her constant “worrying.”

“Call me when you get there,” she’d say. And then I would nearly fall over in shock at how “dramatic” she was.

Or when she would ask me to be home by midnight and I’d roll in at 1:30am and she’d tell me that she had stayed up, wondering if I was alive, and I would fly into just a touch of rage at her desire to “control me.”

I remember my eye roll. As if she didn’t trust me to live in the world. I have it handled, Mom.

That’s what my eye roll said. That’s what my yelling said.

Also it said: “I am an asshole.”

(I was terrible. My parents were saints. The end.)

It was the morning I stood in the doorway and told my daughter, Ava, who’s seventeen, to “be careful in the fog” that I knew I had become my mother.

It’s really poor visibility. Leave early so you don’t have to drive fast. Don’t tailgate. Don’t speed.

I wanted to tell her all these things. I wanted to low-key beg her to listen to me. I willed myself silent on the barrage of guidance I wanted to pummel her with. I allowed myself just one “It’s dangerous to drive in the fog. Please drive slowly.”

Oh, and: “Text me when you get there.” I did it. I went there. I went “text me when you get to school” because of a heavy blanket of fog.

I never understood my Mom because I didn’t know that the fog dropping onto the world drops on your baby, too, who got her driver’s license only six months ago. I didn’t know the fog is a blanket over her eyes, too, and you think about all the times you’ve driven in the fog, and how it’s her first time, and you think maybe let’s just wait until it clears, while also knowing this is ridiculous and you should really pull it together. 

I didn’t know that every New Year’s Eve is a million drunks waiting to plow into my baby while she cruises home listening to her favorite Beatles song.

I didn’t know that every screaming ambulance within earshot brings with it an instantaneous mental calculation of each child’s coordinates, that even though you know your daughter is nowhere near that ambulance, you wonder. Just for a second, you wonder. You calculate.

I didn’t know that the world becomes, against your will, against your intellect and better judgment, a landmine of threat, and even if you’re reasonable, a stone-hearted analytical type, the type of person who rarely cries, you get a little fucking weird.

You hold it inside to not freak your kid out. You allow yourself one “Drive safely,” and a kiss and “I love you,” followed with a “Have fun” because the last thing you’re going to fucking do is teach your kid that the world is a thing to be feared, to be tiptoed around, to be cautiously and barely lived.

But I’m a mother and you’re my baby and you’re new at this.

I watch you drive away. I watch you head out the door at 10pm to come back at midnight. You always respect your curfew. How did my parents survive me ignoring it, and before cell phones? 

I always wait for the sound of the front door – opened, shut, locked – the dog hopping off his bed to greet you, your face in my doorway with a smile, or a “Goodnight, Mama” from the hallway.

The sound I could never understand until I became my mother.

A rite of passage, I suppose, this learning to live in the in-between, a part of me running around loose and wild for the first time, in a world that terrifies and delights me.

I watch you drive away in the fog. I smile when you remember to text. I smile at the roll of our eyes.

We were babies.

*****

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