DISCLAIMER: Honestly this is kind of just a vibes based analysis. God I need to read State and Revolution. I guess i shouldn’t share it? But maybe someone can take the idea and add on to it with more theory, I don’t know.

People don’t understand ratchet theory properly. The point of the Democratic Party is to be a highly popular, slightly better alternative to the Republican Party, which constantly moves rightward. This is to say that it’s basically a national-level form of blackmail which forces everyone left of center to vote for Dems or risk the ratchet turning to the right.

The dismissive, demeaning tone given towards concerns of another Republican presidency is really unsettling because of this. While we shouldn’t stoop to actively voting Democrat, openly pretending that the party that ratchets things to the right wouldn’t ratchet things to the right is only behavior we have been able to justify because it’s easier than explaining how we genuinely need to reject the Democratic Party in it’s entirety precisely because they’re part of the two halves that are keeping any sort of left mass movement from existing in the US in any electoral capacity.

This is to say that a Republican presidency (not specifically Trump, Trump is just some Republican, no worse or better than any other disgusting ratcheting ghoul, or, morally speaking, any Democrat ghoul either) IS something we should be afraid of, but we shouldn’t react to it by being vote shamed. I mean, you can vote however you want for harm reduction or whatever, but that isn’t going to do nearly as much good as building actual physical power.

We should be preparing our meagre organizations and resources to both take advantage of the mass dissatisfaction among disenfranchised people that will surely come into light in this inevitable surge of Republican confidence, and to support and provide mutual aid to those hurt directly by it. There are things we can do, however small, to ease the coming suffering of our comrades (the suffering we’ve already seen coming with various horrific laws and bills!). And we should be preparing to do those things, too.