I exploded on one of my cousins on Facebook. She’s one of those idiot Trump supporters who kept posting dumb shits on her timeline. I usually ignored her posts, but yesterday I simply could not. Since she could not think on her own, she “borrowed” this “powerful message” from someone else:

I never thought I’d see a day when so many people were so afraid of dying that they willingly quit living.

I just couldn’t stand this stupidity and ignorance. My mom/her aunt died of COVID-19. Her own brother feared for his life when he got really sick from COVID-19 and she mocked people for being afraid of dying. I responded:

Sure, go out, live your life, and get sick. That is some dumb, ignorant shit.

My original comment was “get COVID-19” instead of “get sick,” but Facebook blocked it. It detected I was posting misinformation and encouraging people to get COVID.

A white man goes by the name Willie Hinz responded to my comment:

You are the living proof of the statement above. And by looking at your face. You are the one that have shitty ass looking face.

WTF? Is this a beauty pageant? I found a dude commenting on another dude appearance to be hilarious and frankly stupid so I played along. I replied to him:

Thank you for taking your time to click on my face, look at my face, and then attack my appearance. From a fellow to a fellow, I am flattered that you go after my look. I wonder why my cousin has become so ignorant. Just look at the people she’s palling around with.

He replied:

Once again you confirm what You Are! She is my cousin too!

What? My cousin has a white cousin? This is something new to me. I responded with sarcasm:

It’s all good, my man. Sorry, I didn’t know you were her cousin as well. I guess she abandoned her blood cousin for a white cousin. You sure are a better-looking cousin than I am.

My cousin chimed in to defend her fake-ass cousin, which I didn’t really care for. She accused me of trying to play colors. She even quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

How ironic is that most of her posts were about hating on Black Lives Matter and she uses Martin Luther King, Jr.’s word to defend her white friend. She bragged that her friend is an immigrant who made a success for himself. I am glad that her friend is successful. Everyone can be successful in America if they are willing to work hard. She definitely needs to go back to study the history of the United States. This is a nation of immigrants. Even white people immigrated here.

I switched back to her ignorant post to point out that she “doesn’t give a fuck about any else but her-goddamn-self,” knowing her aunt died from COVID and her brother feared for his life from COVID. She asked me to “completely remove yourself from this post” because I was using “offensive language.” I complied. I cannot fix stupid. I wish her well. Go on, live her life, enjoy herself, and don’t get COVID. I unfriended her.

Last year when the general election was tearing apart families, I tried my hardest to ignore Trump supporters and COVID deniers, especially from family members, friends, and the Vietnamese community. I didn’t want to get into fights with family members and friends over these issues. After my mom died of COVID, however, I don’t give a fuck anymore even if they are family members. I don’t need those kinds of relationships in my life.

At the most critical moment of our time, the people of this great nation have risen up, shown up, and made our voice heard. America has chosen democracy over demagoguery, unity over divisiveness, decency over insults, facts over lies, and science over fiction.

President-Elect Joe Biden and the first woman Black-Indian-American Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, we are holding you to your promises. We need your strong leadership to restore the integrity of the executive branch, to put the pandemic under control, and to strengthen our commitment to justice for all.

From climate to China, economy to education, healthcare to healing, the Biden administration will face tough challenges ahead. Then again, the job of the president and vice president of the United States are not supposed to be easy. Critical issues cannot be resolved over Twitter. Biden and Harris will need a strong coalition to lead this country out of the damages created in the past four years. They will need people with not only qualifications in their fields but also compassion in their hearts.

This election has demonstrated that our democracy is still strong and resilient. Totalitarian, fascism, and dictatorship have no place in this free nation. The United States is still one of the greatest countries in the world. We need to come together to heal our wounds, revive our souls, and lift up our spirits. There are no red states and blue states. There’s only the United States of America.

Break out the champagne glasses, it’s time to celebrate “America the Beautiful.”

Zeynep Tufekci writes in the Atlantic:

At the moment, the Democratic Party risks celebrating Trump’s loss and moving on—an acute danger, especially because many of its constituencies, the ones that drove Trump’s loss, are understandably tired. A political nap for a few years probably looks appealing to many who opposed Trump, but the real message of this election is not that Trump lost and Democrats triumphed. It’s that a weak and untalented politician lost, while the rest of his party has completely entrenched its power over every other branch of government: the perfect setup for a talented right-wing populist to sweep into office in 2024. And make no mistake: They’re all thinking about it.

Yes, indeed!

Jane Mayer writes in the New Yorker on “Why Trump Can’t Afford to Lose”:

Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. Few people have evaded consequences more cunningly. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if he loses to Joe Biden.

The future of Trump will be dark and devastating.

This is it, America. Let’s hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. In this election, our values, our characters, and our lives are on the ballot.

America has been through so much in the last four years. Our principles, prides, and practices have been desecrated. From caste to class to community, we are further divided than ever. America is losing its soul. Four more years of division, dishonesty, and disillusion will put our nation in danger to the point of no return. The worst has yet to come.

I hope the outcome of this election will heal our country, strengthen our democracy, restore our decency, and save our lives. We need to bring back empathy, integrity, and civility. After this election, I hope America will come together to seal our cracked nation. The scars will never go away, but we will be stronger together. So let’s skip the civil war. Instead of fighting among ourselves, let’s fight against COVID-19. Instead of tearing down each other, let’s rebuild respect. Instead of spilling out the hate, let’s show some love.

After this election, I hope family members will come back together and friends will come around. Politics isn’t worth losing relationships over. I hope I won’t have to rant about politics again, or at least until 2024.

Before I shut the fuck up, I just want to say, go vote if you haven’t. Vote your conscience. Vote like your life depends on it. I am optimist that America will pull through this time.

Peace, love, and unity.

The election is two days away and voters should have made up their mind by now if they haven’t voted already. At this point, it’s a waste of time trying to change people’s mind, but I have to call out the disrespectful, disturbing rhetorics in the Vietnamese-American community from Trump supporters.

Reading the vicious attacks on Kamala Harris from the Vietnamese-American Trump supporters breaks my heart. It’s fine to support someone they believed in and to oppose the other side, but it is wrong and unacceptable to be racist, sexist, and misogynist. Ms. Harris is one of us. She’s half Asian. Even if they aren’t proud of the fact that she is a heartbeat away from being the Vice President of the United States, they should respect her. I am not going to repeat their degrading language because it is a disgrace for the entire community.

Watching the confrontations between Trump vs. Biden supporters in the Vietnamese-American community shake me to the core. Again, I am not going to link to these embarrassing video clips in which Trump supporters demand the opposite camp to kneel down. They even have the audacity to tell Biden supporters to go back to Vietnam. Who the fuck do these Vietnamese-American Trump supporters think they are? The yellow supremacists?

Thấy bài thuyết giáo về việc bầu cử tổng thống, tôi cũng tò mò muốn biết ông cha nói gì. Clip giảng gần 28:52 phút nhưng tôi chỉ xem đến 1:52 phút là phải bỏ cuộc. Ông cha cho rằng với lương tâm và trách nhiệm của một chủ chiên, ông phải hướng dẫn con chiên, nhất là giới trẻ, biết được đâu là thánh ý chúa và “biết được người nào không phải là mình muốn bầu mà chúa muốn mình bầu cho người đó.”

Tôi không biết rõ đây là ý chúa hay ông cha đặt lời vào miệng của chúa. Tôi thì không nghĩ đây là ý nguyện của chúa vì nếu thật sự như thế thì đấng chúa trời quá hẹp hòi và quá độc tài. Việc bỏ phiếu cho ai là quyền cá nhân của người đó không ai có thể xen vào. Chẳng hạn như trong gia đình tôi và vợ luôn bàn luận hoặc thậm chí tranh cãi nhau về chính trị. Nhưng đến lúc đi bầu cử, vợ không có quyền bắt tôi phải bỏ phiếu cho ai và ngược lại tôi cũng không có quyền ép buộc vợ phải bỏ phiếu theo tôi. Chẳng lẽ chuyện nhỏ nhặt như thế mà đấng chúa trời cũng không tin tưởng để con người tự quyết định cho bản thân họ?

Tôi không nghe hết bài thuyết giáo nhưng cũng có thể đoán được ý ông cha và đấng chúa trời muốn như thế nào. Như đã từng tâm sự, tôi có bạn bè và gia đình khuyến khích theo chúa. Tôi vẫn luôn do dự và e ngại một điều gì đó cho nên vẫn chưa đến được với chúa. Giờ tôi mới hiểu rằng đến với chúa tôi sẽ mất đi những tự do rất căn bản như đi bầu không phải theo ý mình mà phải bầu ý chúa muốn. Nếu như phải sống dưới cộng sản thì đành phải chịu. Còn được sống trong chính quyền tự do thì tạo sao phải lệ thuộc vào những gì người khác muốn?

Dĩ nhiên đây chỉ là lối suy nghĩ của cá nhân tôi. Ai tin vào đất chúa trời và những ông cha nhà thờ là sự tự do của họ. Chuyện bầu cử cũng thế. Tự tìm hiểu sự thật cho chính mình đừng để lời lẽ người khác khiến mình mất đi lý trí và lẽ phải. Nhất là chuyện mà mình quan tâm đến.

Chẳng hạn như lúc nào chúa cũng được khen là một đấng nhân từ giàu lòng thương yêu nhân loại. Nhưng với điều kiện là phải nghe và làm theo ý của chúa. Chúa thương yêu tất cả mọi người nhưng chúa không chấp nhận tình yêu con người dành cho một người cùng giới. Một người đàn ông yêu một người đàn ông cũng là tình yêu. Một người đàn bà yêu một người đàn bà cũng là tình yêu. Tại sao phải cấm họ yêu nhau hoặc tước đi hôn nhân của họ? Chúa có thật thương xót và yêu thương loài người hay không nếu như chúa không mở rộng bàn tay để đoán nhận hết tất cả nhân loại?

I don’t pay much attention to Vietnamese celebrities on politics, but I am surprised and impressed with Như Loan’s view on how she voted. She posted on Facebook:

I voted for women to have the right to choose whether or not they should have a baby. Just like everything in life, there will always be exceptionally bad cases where people make poor choices but those should be the choices they get to make. #herbodyherchoice

The entire post personal, honest, and well-reason. I respect that.

Bill McKibben, writing at the New Yorker, makes the case for a remarkable presidency if Biden doesn’t care about his reelection in 2024. McKibben argues what Biden can accomplish in four years without looking ahead at his second term:

If Biden’s not guarding his approval ratings for a second run, he could, for instance, demand that his new majority give him a lot of stimulus money to work with, and simply not worry about the G.O.P. and the pundit class as they start warning about deficits. (The fact that the Republicans ballooned the deficit just to give the rich yet more tax breaks takes the sting out of their arguments, anyhow.) At this point, getting rid of the filibuster seems all but certain, but Biden could push to expand and reform the courts. He could embrace the Green New Deal, moving money from the Pentagon to the national-security task of building out solar and wind power and setting irrevocably in motion an industrial transition that would transform our economy over the next generation. He could take millions of undocumented immigrants out of the shadows. He could make sure that we have a commission to examine and recommend reparations for Black and indigenous Americans. And so on. The key things that need to happen if America is ever going to get past its stalemated and sickly status quo are as obvious as they are politically difficult. But, if Biden decided that the next four years were all that mattered to him, he could get to work.

This paragraph from the Atlantic sums up the Trump presidency:

Donald Trump is the worst president this country has seen since Andrew Johnson, or perhaps James Buchanan, or perhaps ever. Trump has brought our country low; he has divided our people; he has pitted race against race; he has corrupted our democracy; he has shown contempt for American ideals; he has made cruelty a sacrament; he has provided comfort to propagators of hate; he has abandoned America’s allies; he has aligned himself with dictators; he has encouraged terrorism and mob violence; he has undermined the agencies and departments of government; he has despoiled the environment; he has opposed free speech; he has lied frenetically and evangelized for conspiracism; he has stolen children from their parents; he has made himself an advocate of a hostile foreign power; and he has failed to protect America from a ravaging virus. Trump is not responsible for all of the 220,000 COVID-19-related deaths in America. But through his avarice and ignorance and negligence and titanic incompetence, he has allowed tens of thousands of Americans to suffer and die, many alone, all needlessly. With each passing day, his presidency reaps more death.