“I can’t believe that in the 21st century I have to choose between voting for Biden or Trump.” The sentence falls like a dead rat on the table: we look at each other, we are about to start dinner, but the invisible inert rodent that my husband has just released from his mouth makes our appetite disappear and a disgust reappears in November — “It’s not that long away,” he emphasizes—and an uncertainty that fills the entire space of the room. He sees the dilemma as an anachronism: destructive forces from the past return to knot our bellies and put us against the wall of the potential end of democracy; I, however, conceive it as a result of the present time: fossil capitalism, algorithmic communication that promotes post-truth, although perhaps we are both partially right and history simply can no longer be thought of linearly, rather it would be a game of masks fabric of discontinuities that is scary to face.
In the midst of the hangover of the right-wing of the European Parliament, and hovering over the scene the memory of that assault on the Capitol that we lived a few kilometers away, of the militarized streets and the unbearable climate of institutional and street violence breathed so many times, the ballot for the presidential America burns in your hands like a poisoned gift. Biden’s management may have been the biggest recent disappointment among those of us who consider ourselves progressive, since he has broken promises such as raising the minimum wage, establishing basic guarantees such as paid maternity or sick leave, and a climate plan. under which an energy security strategy is hidden. The president has broken extractive records, maintaining the country as the largest oil producer in the world. If with this he intended to convince the electorate of his goodness in the face of an environmental emergency that, in his public discourse, seems to worry him, he is not succeeding, judging by the criticism from environmental groups. Meanwhile, support for Israel when the Palestinian fatalities exceed 36,000 and the massacre is broadcast in a viral live stream throughout the globe does not help either: several polls affirm considerable losses in the vote of a youth mobilized from their universities against suffering from Gaza.
But—and this is where the rat lying next to the plates and cutlery begins to give off a deep smell of putrefaction—Trump is not forgotten: nor the tax reform approved in favor of the great fortunes; nor the three judges who tilted the composition of the Supreme Court towards the reactionary closure that repealed abortion at the federal level; nor, of course, how he got away with a false trial of impeachment after allegedly instigating an attempted coup d’état, according to a congressional investigative commission. Recently becoming the first former president convicted in a criminal trial, related to the bribery of porn actress Stormy Daniels, he continues to slightly lead the polls despite everything, the national ones and those of at least five pivotal states, those decisive when it comes to determine who lives in the White House. “A president who loses the elections never comes back afterwards.” I hear over the shared tablecloth the confirmation of a situation, in fact, unprecedented: only Grover Cleveland managed to occupy the Oval Office in a second non-consecutive term, and this took place in 1892. Echoes of the past manifestly disturbing the future, since this time it would be different: candidate with a criminal offense behind him, accused in three more cases, declared Putin sympathizer… Perplexity as a symptom of our nightly evening seems to make the dead rat the only possible morsel.
The problem is that we are hungry; someone – it wasn’t me – spent several hours cooking for nothing; In the end, you’ll see if we go to bed fasting. Opting for the lesser evil when both have an openly devastating character is similar to choosing between the eighth and ninth circles of hell: it is rational to prioritize the damage, but we would prefer paradise. Some strands of utopian thought evoke the material possibility that the North American giant would direct its hegemony towards the construction of a new world order characterized by the urgent mitigation of the climate crisis and the closure of war conflicts that spill innocent blood and bring us closer to the third world war, for example; although this clashes head-on with his mere political possibility. The dilemma of suffrage leads us, therefore, to a gradation of failure as a society that, although it could have articulated non-painful horizons, is torn between the great democratic wound and the cancer of dictatorial aspiration. Imagining a NATO partially in the hands of Trump or a resurgence of denialism that repudiated the Paris Agreement does not redeem a weakened Biden from his irresponsibility these last four years. Meanwhile, the living room has been filled with flies; we have abandoned the house in the middle of a pestilence that permeates every corner; “At this time of the morning there are no restaurants open”—I hear.
