(I'm posting this as a separate topic from the U.S. Politics one because it includes elements of Canadian politics.)
The U.S. Republicans may not deserve to regain power, but the Democrats definitely deserve to lose it. They've lost my vote.
I mean let's take this sudden wave of blue states deciding to lift masking requirements. In just the last three days, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Delaware (yep, President Biden's home state!), New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island have all suddenly announced at least some lifting of masking requirements, with even more likely on the way. Is it just a coincidence that this has happened all at once in the same week -- have blue state governors just discovered polling shifts or something -- or could it be that that bridge to Detroit from Canada is now being blocked by the Freedom Convoy and there's a certain desire on the part of the party currently governing our country (apparently save for the Biden Administration itself!) to, you know, do what's possible to end that situation as quickly as possible and avoid the phenom being fully replicated Stateside?
According to the Washington Post and every other mainstream media outlet out there, I'm supposed to be furious about this. I'm supposed to be terrified of the Canadian working class peacefully striking and honking horns for my right to FINALLY go face-naked in public months after getting my third shot for same virus well within the same year. They're terrorists! They're Nazis! They're disrupting normal life! *sighs* That's...just no. No they're not. This is why Biden is fucking 15 points underwater now in the average of national polls and still dropping. Or it's the latest reason anyway; the administration keeps supplying more. The fucking Freedom Convoy is the happiest news I've heard in years! I haven't been this happy with any one North American (or at this point North American-originated) social movement since the Women's March of 2017 and the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011. Thank God, man. Something had to give for this considerable Covid overreach to finally start winding down and coming to an end and I couldn't be happier with the results so far. I hope it continues and expands and fuck anyone who's against it! I'm absolutely miserable these days and the primary reasons are corona fatigue in general and the prohibition on going face-naked indoors months after getting my third shot for the same virus well within the same year and a full month after the relatively mild omicron surge (omicron now being the only relevant strain of the virus in the U.S.) peaked in particular. Nothing will get my previous conditions back -- nothing will make me an "essential worker" who deserves higher pay, tips, and words of respect and appreciation rather than an "unskilled" one again who who can suck it in people's minds. But maybe I can at least get to breathe normally while I'm otherwise miserable for a change in the foreseeable future!
The press can preach until they're blue in the face that only Republicans are dangerously authoritarian, but the public clearly feels otherwise and maybe the fact that they just...won't...let...go of their visceral need to control my everyday lifestyle decisions as a perfectly healthy and responsible 39-year-old working person under even the best of virus conditions unless and until faced with extreme financial prodding from my social class and an upcoming election season wherein the same will hold them accountable more directly sums up the essence of why.
Enough with Covid restrictions! Enough with this crackpot open borders experiment! Enough defunding the police and ending bail! Enough selling out our friends and allies abroad! Enough calling yourselves feminists while aggressively seeking new legal restrictions on the rights of women and calling those of us who protest misogynist slurs! Enough -- for God sakes, enough -- capitalizing the B in black, the B in brown, the W in white, reflecting the fact that the color of people's skin is the now the most important thing about them in your mind! And enough of the "respectable" press only ever quoting one side of any argument and constantly denigrating the unwashed masses for disagreeing with them on just about everything at this point! The return of Republicans might be a far from ideal answer, but it's the one that's available and Democrats, I'm sorry, have to be penalized for the living nightmare that has been the last year. I voted for someone as boring as Biden to get rid of Trump and all the thrilling "excitement" that came along with his presidency, get life back to normal, and then forget he was there for four years, forget about politics. More than a year later, I find that I have been unable to forget about politics or go back to leading a halfway normal life and that my cost of living this rather abnormal life is starting to exceed its value to me. I call that a failure.
I hate the whole modern world right now practically. I hate everything from Covid restrictions to social media in general to bitcoin and practically all news media but Fox News and just...want...life...to go back...to normal!! That's what people are going to vote for this November. Democrats can either be a part of that or they can lose their jobs like the rest of us. That's the reality of the matter. Sanity is chasing the Democratic Party. The question is how long they're willing to evade it and at what cost.
EDIT: There was a cheerier version of this post I started with that was pretty much just "YaY Freedom Convoy!", but this is how it wound up. Sorry. I'm basically just trying to say that I'm happy about the movement and its results already and angry about the way its been treated in most of the media.
