Day 56 of 1456

Day 56 of 1456 in trump's America.

Happy New Year.

We have to start noticing when we're leaving people behind.

There's a reason it's called The Safety Net. It's not really about coddling people to make them lazy. It's about avoiding the social consequences of what happens when we let them hit rock bottom. Desperation is not a manageable resource.

If society is a machine, trust is the lubrication that lets it run. I wish there was a less whimsical metaphor to use, but I'm a shitty writer and you're not paying for this stuff anyway.

Do you know what the FDIC is? Yeah, me either. I have no idea what the letters stand for, but I know one of the things it does. Every bank account in America is guaranteed up to $100,000 dollars in the event of theft or destruction of the bank that your funds are actually held in. Now think of the weight behind that: we can promise that up to that amount of funds are safe in our vault, even if the vault itself is not actually safe. Now that's money of yours that's safe for you to use, and safe for the bank to use.

Panic isn't actually good for markets. If you knew your risk was safe, you'd be willing to risk a lot more, wouldn't you? Excusing the fact that I haven't taken an economics class since high school, I'm well aware that a fair amount of capitalist gains depends on risk. Risking on crazy fucking ideas, and huge insane plans. If people know they're not actually risking "everything", they'll be much more likely to risk more often. Even be able to bounce back and risk again after their first one goes tits up. How many American stories came true after 7 or 8 tries? It's one of those Dreams we all like to jerk ourselves and immigrants off about all the time. And they've happened. I'm not pretending they haven't.

Excusing the fact that I can't remember the last history class I took, I remember hearing a story about welfare. That the Romans invented it. Not because they particularly liked poor people, but because if you gave them a little bread, they wouldn't have to stab senators walking on sidewalks. Most likely I false-remembered some of those facts, but even if most of it's not true, it's enough to use to make my point. Being a rich person who helps poor people isn't just the Right Thing To Do, it can even literally be selfish if you want. It's literally a very stupid thing – in the scale of your own self-preservation – to not do at least a little bit to stop people more poor than you from losing their goddamn minds. You can't wait until Wall Street's been burned to the ground; then no one gets any money. It makes good business sense to help people. We don't even have to bring Right & Wrong into this.

Do you know the heroin addiction fatality rates in the Appalachian range? I don't. Do you know how many cities have worse lead in their pipes than Flint, MI? I don't. I just heard about both of those things this week. What can we do about those things besides just mention them and add the statistics to the mnemonic vault of misery we're all carrying in our heads every second of every day now? I don't know. I do know a lot of people voted because they felt left behind. They made irrefutably the worst presidential vote in the 240 year history of this country – I'm not disputing that – but I want to repeat here something I've mentioned in conversation and give it some more detail: Other than Hillary voters, EVERY vote this year was a protest vote. That's how you got people doing things like switching their support from Bernie Sanders to Gary Johnson, even though they had nothing in common with each other politically. I've already mentioned a couple weeks ago that American voters have never been that great voting with facts anyway, but this year definitely wasn't going to do it.

No one has ever cared what trump has had to say, they've only ever cared that he was saying what they wanted to hear. You wouldn't have been able to bring a supporter in and make him look at two different trump speeches and expect him to be shocked or dismayed at any inconsistencies or dishonesty. These were abandoned people.

It doesn't matter that statistically they'd be more likely to hold a CEO position, or that statistically they'd be more likely to be treated fairly by the cops, or any other of the myriad other aspects of white privilege that they have access to – I'm not disputing that white privilege exists – what matters is what's in their face and how they feel. Their selfishness has damned us all. Their stupidity is entirely their fault. But the first thing that happened was that they were shafted by people with more money than them. Which is always the first step. Then the people on top find someone for the people on the bottom to blame. Then everything burns.

I feel like the only hope we might have is how unbearably bad he's going to be at this job. He's not actually going to fix any of these problems. He wouldn't know how to, and no one he's hiring has any interest in doing that either. Things are going to get bad, in a hundred hundred ways that I can't predict, and a couple dozen that I can, depending on how rotten my mood is. But I still feel like if we sign on for Division, we're playing their game. I feel like that's definitely true. They're banking on us still hating each other, 56 days after the fact. That's the only opening we've got. An angry orange man lied to them and got what he wanted and left them in the dust. These stupid, sad, angry, selfish people. People who still aren't going to be helped if we kick them to the curb. I'll remind you they can all still vote. We still have to keep this at only 1,456 days.

And I have gay friends that I'd never ask to bridge the divide. They're too scared, and angry, and have too much to lose. And I have minority friends that I'd never ask to bridge the divide. They're too scared, and angry, and have too much to lose. I'm a White Guy. I've got about the only chance to out of anyone to be a Secret Agent.

This isn't White Savior shit. This is functional responsibility. Each of us has something we're good at, something we can use to fight The Plague. It just so happens that apparently Skin Tone is a tool in the tool box, now. I'm the only person that most of the people of the Other Side would even tolerate an opening for even 5 seconds. We can't imagine a lot of patience happening for someone else on Our Team, could we? Imagine if a minority came into a lion's den and tried to bridge the divide. They'd probably be ignored, best case scenario. We can't ask that. They've already had so much taken from them. We can't expect them to give anymore.

I'm white and straight. I haven't lost anything yet. I've got shit to spare. That's who goes on the front lines now.