The Point is Cruelty

Molly K. Mitchell
7 min readOct 31, 2020

In which I blow up my own neutrality

I have tried, very hard, to keep this page non-political, at least in the capital-P US electoral politics sense. I know it’s a cliche by now, but I really do still have friends (and family!) on both sides, and I don’t ever want anyone to not be able to read my work.

This morning, I read the news, and then the Heather Cox Richardson recap of the news, again, one more time before the election, and I can’t do that anymore.

So thank you, Aunt Wanda, for the grits, and the hugs, and the insight. I hope you’ll talk to me again after the election, one way or the other.

Don’t tell Gramma.

I want to start by saying that I get it, I really do.

I grew up in rural Ohio, one of the flyoverest of the flyover states. I was poor, and the eldest daughter of a liberal family whose mother’s pride and freedom and intense brokenness led to my siblings and I growing up on foodstamps with a pedophile stepfather. I resented her for years.

And I’ve worked hard, and in a lot of industries, to get where I am today. I’m lucky. I’ve been lucky, but it’s easy not to see that, to just see the ways that I worked hard and other people didn’t and so why can’t they just work harder, do what I did?

It’s easy to look at people who aren’t doing as well and say “they’re lazy.” It’s easy to look at people who are doing better and say “they worked hard.”

But the truth isn’t easy.

The truth is: right now the United States is run by a lot of rich people and people who want to be rich, and they mostly don't care what happens to you or me or anyone so they can get there.

And I know a lot, a LOT of people who’ve worked hard all their lives wanted Donald Trump for president because they felt like the country was heading in the wrong direction, an immoral, fiscally irresponsible, unreasonable direction, and they wanted someone who would make life hard for the people (federal politicians) who put us there. President Trump was a weapon for people who felt marginalized and left out of culture and politics to hit the government with a stick.

Hell, I didn’t vote for him last time, and part of me still kinda hoped that was true. Tariffs? Economic protections? Clean out the halls of Congress?

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Molly K. Mitchell

I still write sometimes, and I have a buttload of already-written stuff. So there you go.