May we live in interesting times.
It certainly has been, to be generous, an interesting year. Covid-19 has already changed how almost everyone lives their life (and has given us a moment to step back and reflect) and now we're dealing with the effects of one of the most controversial presidential elections in the past decade.
I don't really blog about politics much (or ever) but I feel like it might be interesting to record my political views here in case things ever change in the future. In general, living in CA has kind of made me dislike the ultra liberal folks who I think are definitely going too hard along principles of diversity, cancel culture etc. I never really thought Trump was as bad as folks made him out to be - never felt he was like the anti-christ or "literally Hitler". I think at the end of the day, just like Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984, it's just easy for people to have a figurehead to hate. It's easy for people to reduce the 200k+ dead from coronavirus at Trump's failings instead of many other failings on the state and local level.
Anyway, I wouldn't call myself a trump supporter by any means but I thought he was probably fine. He's definitely an asshole in some sense, says mean things and makes fun of others. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter how the president makes me feel but rather what he does (by the same token, it doesn't really matter that Obama was a good president because he was "cool" as Eric Weinstein said on Twitter). Ultimately he didn't start any new wars and lowered taxes so all in all it's not too bad from a policy perspective. I've said if we had a candidate who had the same policies/views as Trump but was more well spoken then I think they'd be pretty great.
But the thing that really changed my mind from being "meh" about Trump to being disapproving is constant attempts to undermine democracy by claiming voter fraud and lawsuits. Now, if he has real evidence and the courts side with him then I'll believe it. But the truth is that right now he just seems like a spoiled guy who can't let go of the power he once had.
The last thing I wanted to mention is that the other reason I feel apathetic about whether Trump or Biden wins is merely because I think both of them don't have the foresight/drive to solve the main issues facing the upcoming generation namely climate change and automation. I think we might be on a path to disaster because of these two things and, in some sense, it doesn't matter which candidate we pick because they won't do enough to stop it (though maybe there's better things we can do like try to raise awarenes son our own or do my scientific research).
Anyway, that's my brain dump for now.
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