Nowhere Girl
I think a lot of my political analysis is just having paid attention and learning the pain points and observing why people in power lie the way they do.
It's an abuse victim learning how to avoid or at least manage their abuser by figuring out how they think. Not much more than that.
Nowhere Girl
Anyway, I find that people who think in terms of elections and messaging and "wins" end up missing the forest for the trees. Politics is not a rational enterprise because people are not rational.
And sometimes you can see the wind-up, like that gleam in the eyes as your abuser rears back to hit you. And you know it's going to hurt. And you know crying won't help. And you know no one is going to stop them.
So what do you do?
You get hit.
You try to survive it.
Until they die or you do.
Nowhere Girl
Obama, to me, seemed mostly harmless, like that teacher who's "nice" but won't risk his job to stick up for you either.
Biden? I knew his record. Anita Hill, abortion, mass incarceration.
Folksy but duplicitous. He would say high-minded things and then go back to drinking and making fun of you with his buddies in the back room.
Nowhere Girl
Harris? I'll be honest. "I will follow the law" is when I knew I couldn't trust her, and her campaign gave many reasons not to. But she's a lawyer. And I've known lots of lawyers. And that was the most lawyerly way of saying: "I resent this question and I want it to go away."
Not exactly a principled defense of trans rights.
Remember all those Republican SCOTUS nominees who talked about abortion as "settled law?"
Yeah.
Nowhere Girl
Even when Democrats mean well, governance by executive order is fragile, lasts only as long as they're in charge, and depends heavily on how much the president is willing to push the issue with their subordinates.
So I didn't trust anything they did, like Title IX interpretations or making it easier to change passport gender markers, unless those rights were explicitly codified in law by Congress and approved by the SCOTUS.
Because the next Republican would just claw them back anyway.
Nowhere Girl
Because that's what abusers do.
Sometimes they're "nice," they offer a little treat, a way of buying you off or making good in front of other people, only to go back to doing violence again when nobody is looking.
It's not that I distrusted Obama specifically, for example. (I never trusted Biden at all.)
The entire system is abusive towards people like me.
Nowhere Girl
I grew up during HIV / AIDS and hearing politicians say people like me deserved to suffer and die.
I've watched people egging trans kids into committing suicide and then bragging about it.
So it's nice when Democrats say, "Maybe we shouldn't do that."
But I don't expect it to last. Eventually, Democrats decide I'm not worth defending after all.
"They cost us the election!"
My parents used to say everything was my fault, too.
Nowhere Girl
This is why I've never been credulous about Democratic administrations because their rhetoric is different, or at least it used to be, but their behavior is often the same.
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