A Concert, An Interview, and Chocolate Milk

I don’t even know where to begin.

Every single time I write a paragraph about political news, another wave of political news crashes and the old post seems pointless. I have a feeling this will be the case for the next three months. I feel as if we’ve had an October Surprise per month, every single month since at least March of 2023. I do not like this. I think I’ll just copy this little paragraph to my clipboard so I can save time saying it every single time I write about politics until January.

Now, there is something I want to say about politics in general, before I dive into the past 24 hours or so of political news. No one is making me say this. I can say just about anything I want on Patheos as long as it isn’t x-rated. I’m saying it because I want to have some integrity.

I would feel like a hypocrite if I didn’t make this absolutely clear: you’re not committing a sin if you don’t agree with me politically.

I was spiritually abused for many years of my life into thinking there’s some kind of rule that you’re in mortal sin if you don’t vote Republican because of the abortion issue. In fact, I remember a thousand years ago when Rudy Giuliani was having about five minutes of success as a primary candidate for the Republican nomination, and someone in my social circle said that now we would have to leave the top of our ballot blank, because Rudy was pro-choice and you couldn’t vote for a pro-choice politician even if there were two pro-choicers going head to head. This isn’t true, but I thought it was. I was guilted into voting for some very slimy people I regret voting for, because of that false teaching. The truth of the Catholic position is that there are many intrinsic evils, and you’re never allowed to vote for a politician who holds some good and some evil positions BECAUSE OF the intrinsic evils he or she supports. You’re allowed to vote for them IN SPITE OF some of the things they support, because you think they’ll do the most good or mitigate the most evil overall. That goes for any intrinsic evil, and there are lots. Remember, “intrinsic evil” doesn’t mean “especially evil,” it means “evil in itself instead of evil  because of the context.” Lying is an intrinsic evil. If a politician has told some really bad whoopers but you think their voting record is solid, it’s not a sin to vote for them. It’s different if you were to vote for him because you think it’s COOL that he’s dishonest. Veritatis Splendor says that deportation is an intrinsic evil. You don’t sin if you vote for a politician who’s in favor of deporting migrants if you’re doing it because you think his or her good ideas outweigh that bad one. But you would be participating in their sin if you voted for them BECAUSE you wanted to help them deport people. Same for abortion. That’s how it works. And that goes for every candidate.

Ironically enough, one of the reasons that I usually vote Democrat is that abortion rates tend to fall faster under Democratic presidencies and they sometimes rise under Republicans, probably because Republicans yank at the social safety net and make things so unstable people don’t want to start families. Abortion rates reached their nadir under Obama because of the economic recovery and Obamacare. Voting the way I do is not a sin. But if you vote differently than I do because you’re trying to do good, you’re not in sin either. I insist on that.

If you’re going to leave the ticket blank and just vote for your local town council, I think you’re making a mistake, but you’re not committing a sin. If you just can’t stomach Trump or Harris and you’ vote for Kennedy or whoever the American Solidarity Party’s got running this year, I think that’s the wrong choice, but you’re not in sin. If you’re a libertarian because you honestly think that’s the best way to order society so that people can be virtuous and help each other, I’m frustrated with you, but you haven’t done anything sinful. If you’re a libertarian because you want to hurt the poor and keep all your resources for yourself– well, that is a sin, and you need to go to confession. If you’re going to vote for Harris it’s not a sin unless you’re doing it in the hopes she’ll hurt the unborn babies or any other human being. If you’re going to vote for Trump, even at this point, because you hope he’ll do some good, I think you’re very dumb, but you haven’t sinned. If you are voting for Trump because of the cruel and dangerous things he’s promised, like mass deportations of millions and the death penalty for drug dealers, then you’re a bad person. That’s the Church’s position and I agree. And as I’ve observed, the remaining Trump supporters seem to be doing it for sadistic reasons, and that would be sin. But it’s not a sin to make a mistaken choice. That’s the Church’s position, and mine. Got it? Good.

Now that we’ve got that boilerplate out of the way: the last few days have been, dare I say it, very weird. Yesterday we had a really excited and noisy Kamala Harris rally in which Megan Thee Stallion gave a performance wearing a cropped business suit and tie. I am a nerd who doesn’t follow pop music at all, so I don’t know who Megan Thee Stallion is. I actually thought her name was Megan Three Stallion. Personally I hate pop concerts because I am autistic and hate noise. Having to stand in a room where a giant throng of excited people shout and sing along with thumpy music while waving their “Harris” signs in tandem sounds like a fate worse than death, to me. But I’m the last one to say that everyone has to have fun the same way I do. Having fun at a concert is fine. It’s refreshing to see somebody having fun with an American political candidate for the first time in far too long. Hillary wasn’t a very fun candidate. Trump is anything but fun. I have come to be fond of Biden, but he’s not exciting. I don’t agree with Harris on everything, but she seems like a fun person and her rallies are fun. That’s a good thing,  a human thing. We need more of that in our politics.

Meanwhile, we’ve got J. D. Vance being J. D. Vance. I am so tired of seeing that man’s face I don’t even know where to begin.

We’ve got yet more unearthed audio of him deriding and insulting childless women, whom he openly despises. He claims this is “pro-family” but he never wants to do anything to help or encourage actual families, he just wants to say nasty things about women who don’t produce biological offspring. Indeed, he doesn’t seem to care about actual families as a unit at all, since every childless cat lady is part of a family in some way. He just cares about the number of biological offspring. He’s been  baselessly deriding Harris for being against the child tax credit, which she is not.  Incidentally, the Senate is going to hold a vote on expanding the child tax credit on Thursday morning, but Senator Vance is going to be in Cochise County, Arizona that day and will miss the vote.

The only other thing I’ve seen Vance doing today is being nasty to his own  family by snatching a glass of chocolate milk from his daughter and complaining that she sipped it while at a filmed campaign appearance in a diner. At that point, Donald Trump mercifully stole the attention away from Vance.

Today, in Chicago, at the National Association of Black Journalists’ Conference, Donald Trump sat down for an interview with three Black journalists who had the audacity to ask him questions about the things he’s said and done. Trump made an even greater boor of himself than on just about any previous occasion besides the covert Billy Bush confession. I can’t count how many commentators have called this the worst interview of his career. He attacked them again and again for being mean to him. He spoke over them. He belittled them. When asked if Kamala Harris was a DEI hire, he replied that she wasn’t really a Black person but had somehow become Black when it was convenient. The scandalized audience whooped and laughed and gasped in shocked  disbelief. Trump’s own team cut the interview short after only thirty minutes, after which Trump got on his social media, denounced the women as “nasty,” and claimed the victory.

I’m exhausted.

On one side, we had a concert and some noisy fun.

On the other, we have a grouchy young weirdo who deeply loathes women and steals chocolate milk from his own daughter, and a grouchy old weirdo who is as overtly racist as the summer day is long.

It’s not a sin to vote for the grouchy weirdos.

But I can’t think of a reason why you’d want to.