Um… there’s a bit of language in this post. Just a heads up…
This essay began a while ago now as a short response to what I have seen of a rather nasty and dismissive response to the Harris presidential campaign from certain quarters. So it is a verbal response to a verbal response to a verbal message and probably a little too removed from actual reality to be relevant. I put off finishing it, hoping that it might all go away, but it has not. If anything, it has become more entrenched, the kind of off-hand dismissal that is reserved for obvious things. “We all know this is wrong, but here we are, smiling and nodding.” But if there is anything obviously wrong about Kamala Harris running for POTUS, it is this negative reception from white men across a broad political spectrum. And I feel that if we continue to meekly accept certain truths from certain mouths, if we remain silent as we usually do, then it will never end. Or it will end when biophysical collapse makes it impossible to continue this project, and that is not going to be a pleasant ending. (Disclosure: I believe that is exactly what we face…)
I’ve been in a mood lately and do not feel like remaining silent.
I should say that these are not my exclusive thoughts. Most of us, who are not of the select few beneficiaries of this system, have these thoughts running through their heads all day, every day. Because we have to cope with the kind of thing exemplified by this response to the Harris campaign all day, every day. This is the ground state of being for the majority of people even within this empire of whiteness. Especially within this empire of whiteness.
I should also say that I’m not talking about the rabid idiocy that froths out of places like 4chan, Fox News, and Twix. I don’t watch or read that crap. I do not respond to it. I also don’t believe it merits a response. Those people are yammering at themselves. Let them fling their loathsome stupidity at each other, smearing shit all over their own private bathroom walls… It affects nothing.
No, I am not responding to the petty filth of small-minded people. I am responding to people who I often agree with, who share enough common ground with my life that I deign to pay attention to them. And yes, I am a frightful snob and possess a rather attenuated capacity to spend attention on strangers, and that gets thinner the older I get.
So who and what am I talking about? Well, it began when Biden stepped aside… One of the first headlines I saw — from the Guardian! — was along the lines of “who are the Dems going to get at this 11th hour?” When she was standing right there. When Biden immediately told the country that he was throwing his campaign behind his Vice President. When she’d already managed to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight to help pay for this transition. “Candidate? What candidate?” they were all disingenuously asking with increasing shrillness. Nobody else stepped up despite their best efforts to rouse someone with a penis. So after a few days of this pretense, they silently and sulkily accepted that a woman was running for POTUS on the Democratic ticket and that, if they didn’t want a blithering sociopath in the White House — again — they were going to have to support this woman. So then the question became “Who will she pick for VP?” — to which the commonly accepted reply seemed to be A. White Guy.
Who is A. White Guy? Look at the original list of “smart choices” for Harris’ number two. This is not just a man with light skin. Though all men with light skin are blinded and debilitated by the privilege of their body type, many manage to rise above that. (I can only imagine how exhausting that must be, and I commend you for it!) A. White Guy is that asshole who never tries to be better, to do better. A. White Guy may be conservative or liberal, but he is always blithely ascendent. He is the guy who explains things and who expects someone else to clean up his mess (inasmuch as he notices that there is a mess), whose arrogance is so deeply ingrained that it expresses itself as a sort of affronted confusion when challenged in even the mildest ways. A. White Guy is… the people who have been running this country from the beginning… And they do not understand why that should not continue to be true.
(Harris tricked them by picking someone completely off the grid, though he does, in fact, meet the basic requirements of being a man with pale skin. I kinda fell in love with both of them for that.)
In the last few months, we’ve seen all the usual sneering and smearing that this group normally levels at anyone who dares to rise above their ideas of proper rank. “She’s not experienced enough.” (She was Vice President for the last four years. Among many other qualifications.) “She’s too radical.” (She’s a former district attorney and attorney general.) “She slept her way into her position.” (She had a romantic relationship with an older man who was in politics — and broke up with him almost a decade before being elected to public office.)
This is all very boring… and completely predictable… and mostly not true. They can’t even come up with any original material. (Though “She laughs too much” sort of threw me… I mean, really…) But what I find infuriating is not so much the response to her, nor their response to the fact of a woman running and very likely winning. It’s the subtler sneering, largely directed at people who are quite vocally relieved to finally have someone to support. The people who are saying, if we must have a presidency, then hell yeah, let’s have a woman…
But the privileged caste is daily finding reasons to ridicule those of us who are expressing relief, daily finding new faults in this unsanctioned candidate. And one gets the impression that if A. White Guy were running, he’d get a pass — along with everybody who reluctantly voted him into office — no matter how foul his presidency. Which, now that I think about it, is pretty much the history of this country, at all levels. The pass goes to the white guy. Everyone else has to fight their way into some semblance of being.
Yes, we all know she is still far short of what we need in these times. Truthfully, what we need in these times is probably an end to things like presidents and centralized government, but we clearly can’t have nice things like that. So… what is the best we can expect within this noxious system? Someone who sees things a bit differently. Because she is a different person than A. White Guy. She has different experiences, different perspectives, different priorities. She might make different decisions. So, hell yes, we’re excited because a brown woman is going to be the next president. As empty as that is, as empty as she may be, she still represents another face to the world and, critically, another way of thinking, of being. She is a stepping stone out of this swamp, a path that does not exist under yet another white guy administration.
It was the same for Obama, by the way — and he was half white guy. We weren’t excited by his 3rd Way, New Democrat, NAFTA all the way to hell (and not back…) politics. We were excited specifically because he is not a white guy. Which, granted, is a really pathetic reason to elect leadership, but this is the only way out of A. White Guy land. Incremental steps with people who might be white guys inside but have still had a modicum of non-white-guy embodied experiences that might influence how they think and act.
And yes, we’re well aware that this might is very thin, but that’s just how deeply mired in this damn swamp we are…
But to be happy that we have found a potential path out is to invite calumny from the swamp kings, those who created this mire and who do not intend to let us escape. Because who then would they rule? (That being the perennial weakness of kingship…) So there are essays about identity politics taking precedence over level-headed thinking, and other thinly veiled slurs at those of us who are voting for A. Woman. As if white guy hierarchies are somehow not identity politics. As if they have not been voting for their preferred identity since the founding of this country. As if they would not vote for that preferred identity even if he could no longer recognize the words on the prompt card. (Maybe especially then…)
All this angers me. But it also just makes me tired. Because it’s so… common. Stupid knee jerk reactions from people who should know better — who do know better — but who lazily refuse to check their privilege before opening their mouths. It’s almost not worth responding to them. Maybe they don’t even notice what they are saying, don’t know how appallingly ignorant and arrogant they sound. But, as I said, if we just allow them their platforms without calling them on their offenses, then we are enabling them. By remaining silent, even a silence of turning away in exhausted disgust, we are perpetuating this culture and sanctioning whatever foulness comes from the swamp.
So here is my bit. This is me calling it. We’ve had enough bullshit. And yes, we bloody well are going to enthusiastically elect someone other than A. White Guy in blatant defiance of the accepted identity politics.
And you can just shut the hell up.
I have a confession. A guilty pleasure. When feeling oppressed — emotionally and, yes, physically, like a weight is shoving me down, painfully, into the earth — I make up white guy jokes. Probably gives me an odd expression in the face of adversity, but it keeps my spine straight…
How many white guys does it take to change a lightbulb? None, other people do that.
How did the white guy find the center of the universe? He looked in a mirror.
How did the white guy become rich? He unplugged the ventilator.
I know it’s awful, more or less stooping to their level… But, as I said, it gives me confidence, reminds me of the fallibility in this culture. That the elites are this risible… well… wouldn’t take much to level the pitch… Maybe just one woman…
One more addendum…
Meanwhile… real things that really matter continue to get worse. My cousin in the Atlanta region is homeless now. Millions of people are without basic needs after Helene. Thousands are injured. Dozens have died. And most are without communication. (If the folks at Winged Elm Farm are ok, will someone let me know. I am a bit concerned.)
But, hey, let’s talk about non-real things like interest rates and economic growth and yet another presidential election that will very likely change nothing…
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
Your white guy jokes are amazing!
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