At Least Someone Has the Right Idea

Fuck 'em

I have seen a lot of pieces recently about how the "resistance" has faded this time around, about how people on the left have mostly resigned themselves to the inevitable. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. I think people on the left fought and fought and fought — for eight exhausting years — and now they’re tired. Beat. Regrouping. Maybe they’ve realized that this time, it’s crucial to pick our battles instead of wasting so much energy tilting at tweets.

But there’s something deeper happening, and I know a lot of people feel it on the left, even if they’re not saying it outright: the sense that the other side won. They took the White House and both chambers of Congress. We spent years warning about the dangers ahead. We tried to protect them as much as ourselves. Now, it’s time for them to deal with the consequences. It’s time for them to realize how serious he is, how unhinged he is, and how little he cares about anyone but himself. Presidents who care about the people don’t launch scammy meme coins and grift billions of dollars out of their followers. They don’t appoint dangerously unqualified people to look after our best interests.

The sentiment is, maybe they need to lose their noses to the leopards before they understand the leopards really will eat. I’ve seen it repeated over and over in our comments: “Fuck ’em. They get what they deserve.”

There are a million reasons why that’s not the right response, and I could list them all. I could quote Martin Luther King, Jr., or reflect on the legacy of the late Anne Richards’ daughter, Cecile Richards, the inspiring former head of Planned Parenthood, who passed away today.

But I’m not going to do that. We can draw from MLK Jr.'s lessons tomorrow. We can fight like Cecile Richards did every single day of her life, even as she lost her battle with brain cancer. But we can do all that tomorrow, too.

Today, I think it’s OK to take a page from Michelle Obama, who’s skipping the inauguration because she has no interest in preserving norms while that man is being sworn in. Here’s what I imagine Michelle Obama might be saying today: “When they go low, we say, ‘Fuck ’em.’”

Let them have their day. Let them choke on the toxic mix of stupidity and fascism they chose. In two years, we’ll do everything we can to fence in the leopards. Until then, we will do what we can to throw sand in the gears and protect the communities facing the most danger. But for the folks who voted for him? Your faces are on their own.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Rest in peace, Cecile Richards. And to everyone else? Fuck ’em.