On Nov. 3, 2020, I’m turning 20. Which is apparently a milestone, I think mostly because we use a base 10 counting system in this society. Lame.
20 isn’t really a huge marker. I can’t drink alcohol legally or rent a car, and I can already drive, open a bank account, and pick up a prescription. Not much happens when you turn 20.
Unless you turn 20 on Nov. 3, 2020. Because this year, we will decide who the next president will be, presumably by bringing a variety of candidates to a lake and seeing if a moistened bint lobs a scimitar at one of them. Or something like that.
This will likely be the most contentious election since 1860. This election happens to coincide with my literal coming of age, but it also coincides with the coming of age of a generation. There are certainly conservatives amongst my peers at this University, but far fewer than if I were five, 10, or 20 years older. The patience of liberal tolerance feels like it’s beginning to slip away.
Which is a good thing. I have little patience for Republican politicians these days.
Republican lawmakers who continually deceive the public, who fake religious sentiment and foment xenophobia, who partner with Rupert Murdoch to destabilize the country and the world for personal gain, who actively and maliciously encourage white supremacy, deserve nothing better than our very nicest prison cell.
Especially because with them in prison, maybe we can reform incarceration so that it’s something other than slavery with extra steps. Because all the prison cells should be rather nice. People live there.
I don’t want to spend my 20s marching through the streets to solve problems that should be solved in the Capitol Building, but I expect to. I fully expect the white nationalists and the privilege-addled boomers to stick by Trump, and I expect that my generation will have to drag them, kicking and screaming, into counseling so they can learn some basic God damned human decency.
I’ve fucking had it.
At this point, the entire criminal organization that likes to call itself the GOP should be brought up on treason charges and disbanded, with its leaders imprisoned.
I’m filled with rage. And a little bit of hope.
I’m not running for president on Nov. 3, I’m just turning 20. A 20-year-old college student angry at the world isn’t unusual, but it’s a good thing that he doesn’t run the country.
I don’t think I could. But Joe Biden might just be able to.
It’s become a required refrain of my generation to say how unexcited we are about Joe Biden and how we want someone even more left-leaning in the White House.
Frankly, I’m excited and curious.
Biden has demonstrated over the course of his campaign that he understands that Americans are in pain. He understands the pain of the left. He knows he isn’t our first pick, and he’s willing to meet us halfway.
He understands the pain of the right. He knows coal jobs won’t come back, but he’s willing to forgive coal miners for falling for Republican tricks.
He doesn’t think he has a mandate from God to rule this country. He understands that even his candidacy is a tentative compromise.
So let’s compromise with him. Let’s take over the House and the Senate and the White House, and let’s have campaign finance reform and congressional investigations into the leaders and allies of the Trump administration. When they inevitably perjure themselves, let’s put them in prison.
Joe Biden, a man who has spent his entire life working in American politics, might be willing to do these things. Not single-handedly, as the ruler of the Biden party in the way Trump controls his own, but as a leader. He could be a president who doesn’t push his ideas onto the country, be they wonderful ones like loving thy neighbor and Black lives being beautiful, or ugly ones such as Mexicans (meaning Latinx people) being lazy rapists.
Joe Biden is willing to listen to this country and do what it takes to fix it. Not just fix urban poverty or lack of healthcare access, but also fix the process by which we make decisions as a 330-million-person community.
Maybe I’m wrong, and he’ll pardon Trump like Ford pardoned Nixon. But I doubt it. I think if he becomes president, we might see some justice done.
I’m excited at the prospect of a President Joe Biden, regardless of who the alternative is. I think he’ll do a good job.
I hope so. Because otherwise I’ll have to spend my 20s marching through the streets.
