don’t be governed by the power-hungry. vote!

It’s difficult to articulate the specific type of fatigue attached to the realization that your government actively does not care about you. It’s a helplessness that can cripple the spirit, but it can also serve as a valuable teacher. It teaches you to look past the noise and faux righteous indignation. It allows you to focus on action.

What action tells us is that GOP does not care. This is not a new revelation. Yet, it still manages to astound the Liberal base anytime the Red side of the aisle manages to steep to a new low. We see it as a low, because that is the game we think is being played—but now, that is far from the case. The GOP does not answer to anyone, not even their own broader voter base, and this made them dangerous long before 45 entered the White House. They will never hold themselves to moral standards, because that’s not the driving force behind their governing “principles”: they’re in the game to secure power and wealth. Period.

What do we do with that?

What do we when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford comes forward, knowing full well that she might be “jumping in front of a train that was headed to where it was headed anyway”? What do we do for the survivors of sexual assault who watched her become the prime suspect in a crime that was committed against her? What do we do when the hot-takes, opinion pieces, marches and coalitions of resistance have to go up against a group of white men with a “any means necessary” attitude towards securing Brett Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court Justice.

President Trump said that the FBI would have free reign in their investigation into the allegations made by Dr. Christine Ford and Deborah Ramirez (who alleges that the Judge exposed himself to her at a party when they both attended Yale), but a source in the White House told CNN that the scope is much more limited; so much so, that “Kavanaugh’s drinking history, which has come up in the allegations, is not part of the probe, which is being managed by the FBI’s security division at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.” In fact, “White House counsel Don McGahn, who is the administration’s leading advocate for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, is overseeing the probe for the President and working closely with Senate Republican leaders.”

At the heart of this dumpster fire is the fact that Kavanaugh might very well be rushed into the Supreme Court seat after Republicans blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination under Obama, maintaining a trend where “No Democratic president had made an appointment while Republicans held the Senate since 1895,” according to NPR. Senate Republicans refused to even vote on Garland on the grounds of Joe Biden’s assertion during the Clarence Thomas hearings, that a high court nomination should be held until the end of a “political season”.

Why completely overlook the “Biden rule” in the case of Brett Kavanaugh, a judge whose testimony showed partisan attacks on Democrats that opened up a Pandora’s box of perjury allegations? Simple: Republicans do not care because, much like keeping Garland out was a power play, installing Kavanaugh, a character who’s repeatedly displayed behavior unbecoming a Supreme Court Justice, is one too. It’s a reminder that Senate Republicans are an extension of a power structure that pledges fealty to no one but itself.

It’s a f*** you to women and all those set to suffer at Kavanaugh’s hands. His nomination is a manifestation of a white supremacist agenda centuries in the making and in progress. They’re not letting that power go.

So what to do?

We protect our weary spirits from apathy and actively remember who we are dealing with. We speak up and remind them that the people are not pawns, that life and death is not a game. We physically bend the arc of history towards justice, with the sheer force of the frustration that overtakes us every time a media update arrives or a feed refreshed.

After we’ve done all that, we register, we show up at the polls, and we vote.

This country and this planet is big enough for all who call it home. Remind them.

Vote.