It’s chilly and rainy and windy and very gray. On a dime, the weather turned, as it does this time of year.
And now I’d like to thank angry, defensive white men, because I started this morning not knowing what I was going to write, and they’ve very ungraciously provided the topic. A group you can count on but not always in the best of ways.
Over on Spoutible, or the Whale App as the cool kids say, speaking directly to white people, I pointed out that without white voters, donald wouldn’t have a hope in the world of being elected.
In 2020, 85% of donald’s voters were white. Now publications try to soften that, try to shift the data around, try to break it down between “college educated” and “not college educated,” but the underlying fact is only 15% of the people who voted for donald are not white.
Fifteen percent of a total electorate are not getting anyone elected. They’re not even making a dent, really, one way or the other.
And yet, as I’ve said before, I see white people of Christian backgrounds all the time commenting on what Black men are going to do, what Latinos are going to do, what Jews and Muslims and people of other religions or no religion are going to do.
But not talking about what white people actually have done and will do.
It’s like how, when a vote is close in Congress, people will focus on the one or two Democrats and ignore the entire republican delegation voting against or for whatever it is. The white people are treated as invisible, as the starting point, as entitled to do whatever they do and other white people with no responsibility to “police their own.”
Hmm.
I’ve had it happen in real life, I’ve had it happen online, the very idea that we should be looking at that 85% itself, telling the truth about them, about who is writing the abortion laws, who has written Project 2025 and is trying to get it into law, that, somehow, is “inflammatory.”
The idea that white people are not the arbiters with their thumbs ready to yea or nay everyone else’s attempts to get out the vote, but also responsible to do the same garnered some serious sputtering.
A friend, Prof. Kyle, pointed out that he said something similar yesterday and got no pushback, sarcastically wondering why.
And that’s where we get our mystogyny (a mystery that isn’t hard to solve because it’s misogyny).
It is because there used to be a pact in this country that there were things we don’t say aloud, things that it was “rude” to contradict. I don’t need to list them, I’m sure you can come up with your own examples. Overall these rules support the white Christian patriarchy.
But as attacks upon us became more and more open, more and more vicious, that “pact,” such as it was, was broken. There was no reason not to say the things aloud we never used to; this is evident in VP Harris’ campaign where she makes no pretense where pretense would have been called “decorum.”
And that’s where my angry babymen come in. I am not supposed to talk to them that way. I am not supposed to lay bare the white patriarchy from which they profit or their tacit support of it when they protect their fellow white men from criticism.
They are not supposed to be made responsible for the consequences of their actions or the consequences of their votes. They are to be comfortable at all times; if we make them uncomfortable, the resulting fascism is our fault.
But numbers are numbers and 85% of donald’s voters being white tells another story altogether.
So to all who would bristle and attack at the very basic truth, let me ask you: why is it our job to get out the votes and not yours?
What are you doing to reach people who look like you?
Have a good Tuesday.
A Bit to Read 
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