Suck it up Buttercup

There is no difference between Republicans and Democrats?

Burn it down, you said?
There was a time, not long ago when a certain contingent of the American electorate shrugged off the weight of governance. Politics was a joke, a scam, a game rigged by faceless elites, they said, uttering “We all know that.” The other refrain was familiar: "Burn it down." They would say the establishment was corrupt beyond reform, the parties are indistinguishable, and democracy, to them, was a hollow ritual performed by the duped. The cure, they insisted, was destruction.

That "burn it down" and "voting doesn’t matter" rhetoric has deep roots, but it really took off in the last couple of decades. It’s a mix of disillusionment, manipulation, and good old-fashioned apathy—some of it organic, most of it pushed by Republicans as a from of voter suppression and the Christian John Birch Society both knowing that keeping people from voting was essential for a power grab.

Then you’ve got disillusioned citizens who’ve seen politicians make big promises and then backtrack or sell out. That part’s understandable. But then you also have bad actors—foreign and domestic—who want people to check out of the system. Russia, for instance, has actively spread "both sides are corrupt" propaganda in the U.S. since at least 2016 to suppress voter turnout. Domestically, some politicians and wealthy elites benefit when regular people disengage—fewer voters means fewer people holding them accountable.

The removal of civics education from high school curriculums also weighs in.

This long-game strategy was played by several with agendas outside of the greater American good, with greed being the primary motive. Payday has finally arrived with a 249-year-old democracy and its the rule of law by the people in the oldest citizen government in human history being swept away into the dustbin and replaced by a well-conceived kleptocracy run by oligarchs in the name of god, above man’s best-made law.

That destruction has now arrived. With Republicans and their oligarchic funders commanding the executive branch, both chambers of Congress, and, by extension, the judiciary, they have set about the business of governance in a manner best described as subtraction. The safety nets that once cushioned the working class and poor are being systematically shredded—food assistance slashed, housing programs gutted, and healthcare protections dismantled. And so, to those who cheered on the collapse, the question is simple: How does that fire feel now?

Consider the millions who stayed home on election days past, convinced that the difference between a Democrat and a Republican was little more than branding, variations on a single plutocratic theme. Or those who cast their lot with protest votes, seeking purity over pragmatism. And yes, the vocal contingent who demanded the wholesale destruction of the system, imagining that from the ruins, something better might rise. The rubble now surrounds them. What rises, however, is not some phoenix of justice but the specter of austerity and cruelty, clad in the language of fiscal responsibility.

The logic of the cuts is brutal and familiar. Public education budgets are slashed in the name of efficiency, while tax cuts for corporations flourish. Medicaid recipients find their benefits revoked, and their access to essential medicine or emergency procedures suddenly in limbo. Food assistance programs are restructured—"streamlined," in the preferred parlance—resulting in fewer families qualifying, fewer children receiving meals. The airwaves are thick with lectures on personal responsibility as if the working poor could bootstrap themselves past the elimination of rent assistance and affordable childcare.

The justifications follow a well-worn script: Government is too big. Dependency is a weakness. Americans must fend for themselves. But the reality, of course, is that the very people who once believed that politics did not touch their lives are now experiencing its consequences in real-time. The working class, already battered by decades of economic turbulence, finds itself in free fall. The sick are sicker, the poor are poorer, the desperate more so. All because you said it didn’t matter or didn’t vote.

How we got here cannot be undone, but the present is a stark rebuke to apathy. There is no opting out of politics; governance happens with or without the consent of the governed. And those who once scoffed at the idea of meaningful differences between parties now find themselves in the wreckage of their own indifference. "Burn it down," they said. Well, the fire has come. Now what? I say to all those who didn’t vote or voted with their religious beliefs or fell for the no-difference propaganda of those anti-democracy clowns, It’s time to suck it up buttercup you got all your conspiratorial and intellectually lazy dreams to come true. It’s your problem now.

Thanks for reading and remember to Vote and know that there is a notable difference between Republicans and Democrats. Your vote matters don’t squander it.