Troop Deployment: Kamala Harris is The Mask That Smiles

This is an opinion piece for the politics podcast I’m on, and so is more overtly political than my usual posts.

Masks come in Brat now

When They’re Dead They’re Just Hookers

Back in March of 2018 I posted an open letter to my congressmen regarding H.R. 1865, which was later packaged with another bill and came to be known as FOSTA/SESTA. I did send physical signed copies to my legislators as well. It merely repeated things they already knew, so I didn’t expect it to have any effect, and indeed it didn’t. To restate the key points:

It conflates sex trafficking with legitimate sex work. Groups that advocate for sex workers, organizations for victims of sex trafficking, women’s rights organizations, and even law enforcement officials all came out in opposition to this bill. They all stated that not only does this bill not help combat sex trafficking, it makes current efforts to fight sex trafficking significantly harder by taking away key tools in the fight. In addition, it exposes sex workers to greater risk and harms by taking away the tools they have to protect themselves.

I’ll add it also furthers the persecution of consenting adults engaging in voluntary transactions, it shoves the government further into our sex lives, and it serves as another vector of mass surveillance of citizens by the state and political censorship. It led to materially worse conditions for many sex workers, and led to the suicide death of Backpage Founder James Larkin in the midst of years of government persecution. In short, it created a lot of human misery and in exchange we further empowered authoritarian rule.

The people who sponsored this bill knew these would be the effects. They did not care because the people they were hurting are beneath their notice. Those politicians did this because the polls told them that beating up on dirty whores was popular and it would net them additional votes.

I Will Not Vote For Those Who View Me As Disposable

In my original post I vowed

Until this bill is repealed or overturned by the courts, I will be voting for the candidate most likely to defeat you in every election, no matter how odious.

Kamala Harris co-sponsored FOSTA/SESTA.

It infuriates me to no end that I am again forced to go back on my word. I’m already disgusted with myself for going back on this vow to the extent I have, because I did not vote for Trump before, and I still won't vote for him now. His unfitness for any position of power is ridiculously over-determined. But just like the last election, I will at the very least not go back on my vow so far as to actually vote for one of the vile fuckers that co-sponsored this bill.

A lot of people seem to think I’m making a major error here, including my illustrious cohost. But I refuse to give anyone strong incentives to assume I’ll vote for them no matter how awful they are as long as they can paint their opponent as even worse. I will not choose between two lizards, thanks anyway.

The problem is that both candidates are dangerously misaligned. I cannot trust either of them to pause for even a microsecond before crushing everyone I love if it would advance their own interests. They are not safe. Much like the unaligned AI, the candidates do not love you nor hate you, but you are made of resources they can use for other ends. There is no advantage to me to vote for someone I am sure will turn on me if it benefits them in even the slightest way.

On a personal note, it only takes one time of seeing the apparatus of the state coming after the person you most love simply because it'll get them a few votes to destroy her to make you realize how much maybe just a little bit of integrity actually matters a whole lot to your personal life.

My Soul Has Non-Zero Importance, Self-Mutilation Is Not A Free Action

I’m told that I am centering my own moral purity over the practical effects of my actions - those practical effects being the possibility of Harris losing. However the mutilation of my character is also one of the practical effects of my actions. The destruction of what is good inside of me will have significant long-term effects on my life. It is not to be done lightly.

The difference in effects between a Trump presidency and a Harris presidency on the people that I love are less than the effects of destroying my own personal integrity. To be clear — I don’t think holding my nose and voting for Harris would make a very big difference in who I am. It would only kill me a little bit. It’s a 0.1% Murder-Ghandi pill. And yet I think it would have more effect than the difference between a Harris and a Trump presidency in expectation. Not because they won’t both have big effects, but because their effects will be large combinations of good and bad things along many different fronts that will change things in some unknown way that I expect [[[the effects of either presidency on me and those I love]]] to net to “roughly equally bad but in different ways.” Adding “plus Eneasz kills a little bit of himself on top of that” only makes it worse. I don’t have to do that to myself and to the people I love. So I will not.

Everyone Knows What My Vote Is Worth

I live in a solidly blue state. My vote doesn’t matter. Everyone knows it doesn’t matter. No one in either candidate’s campaign team knows my name, nor should they.

If my public saltiness on the most influential news podcast is enough to make Harris publicly state she'll work to repeal FOSTA/SESTA during her term, that'll get me to begrudgingly vote for her, as a compromise, even though I still won't trust her.

I don’t expect that to happen, though. I’m surprised so many people in my personal life think it’s important that I stay silent about my refusal to vote for either major party this year. If I don't matter enough to Kamala to get her to make such a public statement then (to paraphrase Jared Polis) I trust she has a better grasp of the polling data than we do.

If it ever becomes apparent that I actually do matter, I will be very happy to have not capitulated for literally zero concessions to my loved ones' safety. Any power I have to protect them I won’t simply throw away.

If you think my actions have enough influence to actually make any difference right now, give me some assurance that I’m not just throwing my loved ones upon the mercy of the shoggoth if I use that influence the way you want me to use it. Otherwise I’m voting for a third party, because I think not mutilating myself is more valuable than the marginal difference of one of them winning over the other.