Another Democratic Convention - Why?

Sometimes MAGAts claim that normal people will oppose everything their cult leader does just because he's the one doing it. An example I've seen more than once is "if he cured cancer," and that's a spectacularly obtuse example because he literally cut funding for cancer research, you morons. The phrasing I saw most recently was "if he developed a vaccine for cancer," so that was extra stupid coming from one of the people who don't believe in vaccines. Anyway, to prove that this line of thinking isn't true, let me say that Trump did good things by rescheduling marijuana and expediting research into the healing effects of psychedelics. These are probably the second and third best things he'll ever do. The first, of course, is to stop breathing. Maybe if he used marijuana and/or psychedelics himself, he would learn not to be a piece of shit.

The Democratic contenders for the new congressional district in Utah were rocked by scandal last week. First, someone found out that Nate Blouin wrote anti-Mormon comments and joked about sexual assault on the internet over a decade ago when he was in his early twenties. I didn't much care about the anti-Mormon stuff. The other stuff was icky. Frankly, though, I think we need to make allowances, within reason, for people to grow out of being pieces of shit. I'm a completely different person than I was in my early twenties, and I believe the same is true of Nate. He's the only candidate I've ever seen attending or speaking at protests. If he had actually assaulted someone, that would be a dealbreaker for me, but if the left insists on crucifying people for past mistakes after they've become better, they won't have much incentive to become better, will they? One of the other candidates, city council member Eva Lopez Chavez, condemned his remarks, which irritated four women enough to come forward and accuse her of restraining them while she made unwanted sexual advances. Good Lord.

I went to the Democrat convention again yesterday to help choose a candidate because I thought it was my civic duty, not because I felt like spending my Saturday at something that's like Comic-Con minus all the fun parts. I now feel like the whole process was a waste of time. I spiraled into a bit of depression when I saw that I'd missed multiple Signal messages from the lady I came with, asking if I wanted to just go home and vote online, which would have given me up to four hours to do literally anything else, such as make money from my remote job. I had Signal notifications turned off because I used to get two hundred a day. Anyway, through the ranked-choice voting system, Liban Mohammed emerged victorious. Now he's the Democratic nominee, chosen by people whom I have no reason to assume are representative of voters. I know I'm not. I became the vice-chair of my precinct because I was one of the two people who showed up to caucus. And three of the losing candidates will also be on the primary ballot because they got enough signatures, so I don't see the freaking point of what I did.

I like Liban just fine, but I don't think he'll win the primary because he's young and has no direct political experience. I think Ben McAdams, the Republican Lite career politician who came in a close second, will win that. Some people at the convention booed him and yelled "FREE PALESTINE!" - two of them were sitting by me, which was a stressful experience - but ordinary Utah voters don't likely care that much about Palestine, or the minimum wage increase or public land protections or union protections that he voted against. I'd love to be wrong. The people near me also yelled "RESIGN!" and "WE BELIEVE WOMEN!" multiple times when Eva was on stage. It's nice that they don't have a double standard for lesbians of color. Unlike Nate, she didn't address her recent controversy; she just brought her family onstage and asked us to vote for her grandmother's future. We had been asked to treat all candidates with respect even if they weren't our favorite, but only one person in the front was removed for yelling at Ben, so that made the event organizers look pretty impotent.

Is this overly negative? Perhaps. I'm just tired of all this political crap, and I want to take a break, but it won't pause. Ever. Despite my exhaustion after this apparently pointless convention, I went to a protest at the governor's mansion against the proposed ICE concentration camp in our city. At least that had music, and I let off some steam by writing him a postcard. I didn't mean to add the part at the bottom, but someone mentioned Prop 4 while I was writing, I got pissed off, and my fingers moved faster than my brain.

Your support for crimes against humanity will be remembered long after Donald Trump has died and everything he stood for has been dismantled. Future generations of schoolchildren will read about Spencer Cox, the morally bankrupt coward who thought concentration camps were part of "disagreeing better." Also, fuck you in all the ways you can be fucked for trying to overturn Prop 4.

If you're in Utah, please sign this letter, "A Statement of Utah Values," to register your opposition to the concentration camp. If you're not opposed to the concentration camp, please go play in traffic.