People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.
The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.
But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.
The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.
This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.
Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.
So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-
And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—
And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!
If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.
The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.
It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)
I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.
I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.
The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win
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10 Worst Things About The Trump Presidency
Donald Trump left office with the lowest approval rating of any president ever. But some people now seem to be suffering from amnesia.
Let me jog your memory. Here are 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency — in no particular order.
#1. Trump fueled division and sparked a record uptick in hate crimes.
#2. Murder went way up under Trump. He presided over the largest ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020. A number of factors might have contributed to that, but a big one is…
#3. Gun sales broke records under Trump, who has bragged about how he “did nothing” to restrict guns as president in spite of…
#4. Under Trump, America suffered more than 1,700 mass shootings.
#5. Trump said there were "very fine people" among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.
I’m halfway to ten. If you think I’m missing something big, leave it in the comments.
#6. Trump allied himself with the Proud Boys, a violent hate group who helped orchestrate the Jan 6 Capitol attack.
#7. Trump’s not wrong when he says…
TRUMP: I got rid of Roe v. Wade.
It is entirely because of Trump’s judicial appointments that 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age now lives in states with abortion bans.
#8. One of Trump’s Supreme Court justices was Brett Kavanaugh, a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women.
#9. Trump’s White House interfered in the FBI’s investigation of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults.
And now: #10. Trump has been convicted of committing 34 felonies while in office. The criminally false business filings he got convicted for in New York? All of them were committed while he was president.
I’m sorry, did I say the 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency? I meant 15.
#11. Trump’s failed pandemic response is estimated to have led to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. By the time Trump left office, roughly 3,000 Americans were dying of covid every day. That’s a 9/11-scale mass casualty event every single day. How did Trump screw up so badly?
#12. Trump’s White House discarded the pandemic response playbook that had been assembled by the Obama administration.
#13. Trump disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response team.
#14. Trump repeatedly lied about the danger of covid, saying it was no worse than the flu or that it would go away on its own.
But behind closed doors, Trump admitted he knew covid was deadly.
#15. Trump promoted fake covid cures like hydroxychloroquine and even injecting people with disinfectants.
After Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks, poison control centers received a spike in emergency calls.
That’s fifteen things. Should I keep going? Ok, I’ll keep going. The 20 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.
#16. Trump presided over a net loss of 2.9 million American jobs — the worst recorded jobs numbers of any U.S. president in history.
#17. Trump profited off the presidency, making an estimated $160 million from foreign countries while he was president.
#18. Trump also billed the Secret Service over $1 million for the privilege of staying at his golf clubs and other properties while they protected him. That’s your money!
#19. Trump caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history when he didn’t get funding for his border wall, which he said Mexico was going to pay for.
#20. Under Trump, the national debt increased by about 40% — more than in any other four-year presidential term — largely because of his tax cuts for the rich and big corporations.
You didn’t really think I was stopping at 20, did you? We’re going to 25 —
#21. Trump separated more than 5,000 children from their parents at the border, with no plan to ever reunite them, putting babies in cages.
#22. The Muslim Ban. Yes, Trump really did try to ban Muslims from entering the country.
#23. Trump sparked international outrage by moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem while closing the U.S. mission to Palestine.
#24. Trump tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner with drafting a potential Middle East “peace plan” with zero Palestinian input.
#25. And finally, Trump recognized Israel’s occupation of the Goh-lahn Heights, which is considered illegal under international law.
So there you have it, folks: The 25 Worst — Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did I mention the impeachments? We’ve got to do the impeachments. Let’s go to 30.
#26. Trump broke the law by trying to withhold nearly $400 million of U.S. aid for Ukraine in an effort to extort a personal political favor from Ukraine’s Pres. Zelensky. Trump wanted Zelensky to interfere in the 2020 election by announcing an investigation into the Bidens. Delaying this aid to Ukraine weakened Ukraine and strengthened Russia.
#27. Trump personally attacked and ruined the careers of everyone who stood in the way of his illegal Ukraine scheme, including Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
#28. To cover up the scheme, Trump ordered the White House and State Department to defy congressional subpoenas.
#29. For these reasons, on December 18, 2019, Trump became the third U.S. president to be impeached. He was charged with Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.
#30. Even while he was being investigated for trying to get Ukraine to interfere in the U.S. election, Trump publicly called for China to interfere in the election.
So those are the 30 Worst Things —
I’ll go to 35.
#31. Long before Election Day, Trump started making false claims that the election would be rigged.
#32. After losing, Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen, even though his own inner circle, including his campaign manager, White House lawyers, and his own Justice Department and attorney general told him it was not.
#33. Trump kept telling his Big Lie even after more than 60 legal challenges to the election were struck down in court, many by Trump-appointed judges.
#34. Trump ordered the Department of Justice to falsely claim that the election “was corrupt.”
#35. Trump and his allies used threats to pressure state leaders in Arizona and Georgia to falsify the election results.
We may go to 40.
#36. When none of the previous schemes worked, Trump and his allies produced fake electoral votes cast by fake electors in multiple swing states. His former White House chief of staff and Rudy Giuliani are among the many members of his inner circle who have been criminally indicted for this scheme.
#37. Trump tried to bully Vice President Pence into obstructing the certification of the election.
#38. Trump invited a mob to the Capitol on Jan 6 with his “be there, will be wild” tweet.
#39. Sworn testimony alleges that when Trump was warned that members of the crowd were carrying deadly weapons, he ordered security metal detectors to be taken down.
#40. Knowing the crowd had deadly weapons, he ordered them to go to the Capitol and…
TRUMP: …fight like hell.
#41 — Yes, yes, I know, bear with me.
Trump betrayed his oath to defend the nation by doing nothing to stop the Jan 6 violence. Instead, according to witness testimony, he sat and watched TV for hours.
#42. On January 13, 2021, Trump became the only president ever to be impeached twice. This time he was charged with incitement of insurrection. It was a bipartisan vote.
#43. The majority of senators — 57 out of 100 — voted to convict Trump, including 7 Republican senators.
So that’s the two impeachments and the Big Lie, but wait, we haven’t dealt with Russia, right? So we’re going to 50.
#44. In a likely obstruction of justice, Trump pressured then FBI Director James Comey to stop the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. This was documented in the Mueller report.
#45. When Comey didn’t bend to Trump’s will, Trump fired him.
#46. Trump tried to shut down the Mueller investigation by ordering White House Counsel Don McGann to fire Mueller. McGann refused because that would be criminal obstruction of justice.
#47. When news got out that Trump tried to fire Mueller, Trump repeatedly told McGann to lie — to Mueller, to press, to public — and even create a false document to conceal Trump’s attempt to fire Mueller.
#48. Trump ordered his staff not to turn over emails showing Don Jr. had set up a meeting at Trump Tower before the 2016 election with representatives of the Russian government.
#49. Trump convinced Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump’s plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and Cohen served prison time for lying to Congress.
#50. Trump was not charged for criminal obstruction of justice because it’s the Justice Department’s policy not to indict a sitting president, but more than a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under both Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter declaring there was more than enough evidence to prosecute Trump.
So those are the 50 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency. Now I could go on…
And I will! The 75 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.
#51. Trump said he’d hire only the best people, but…
His campaign chair was convicted of multiple crimes.
So was one of his closest associates.
His deputy campaign chair pleaded guilty to crimes.
So did his personal lawyer
His National Security Adviser
The Chief Financial Officer of his business
A campaign foreign policy adviser
And one of his campaign fundraisers.
They all committed crimes, and Trump pardoned most of them.
#52. Trump said he’d drain the Washington swamp. But he appointed more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls to his administration than any administration in history
#53. Trump intervened to get his son-in-law, Jared Kushner top-secret clearance after he was denied over concerns about foreign influence.
#54. Trump hosted a Russian Foreign Minister to the Oval Office, where Trump revealed top-secret intelligence.
Oh, and Trump’s economic policies!
#55 Trump promised that the average American family would see a $4,000 pay raise because of his tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. How’d that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise? Of course not! Nobody did!
#56. Trump vowed to protect American jobs, but offshoring increased and manufacturing fell.
#57. Trump said he would fix America’s infrastructure, but it never happened. He announced so many failed “infrastructure weeks” they became a running joke.
#58. Trump said he would be “the voice” of American workers, but he filled the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union flacks who made it harder for workers to unionize.
#59. Trump’s Labor Department made it easier for bosses to get out of paying workers overtime, which cheated 8 million workers of extra pay.
#60. Trump repeatedly suggested he might serve more than two terms in violation of the Constitution — and continues to do so.
#61. Trump called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries.
#62. Trump tried to terminate DACA, which protects immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Luckily this was struck down by the courts.
#63. Trump called climate change a “hoax.”
#64. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
#65. Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protections.
#66. Every budget Trump proposed included cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
#67. Trump tried (and failed) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would have resulted in 20 million Americans losing insurance. And striking down the ACA’s protections for the roughly 130 million people with pre-existing conditions could have driven up their insurance premiums or led to a loss of coverage.
#68. Trump made it easier for employers to remove birth control coverage from insurance plans.
#69. By the end of Trump’s term, the number of people lacking health insurance had risen by 3 million.
#70. Trump lied. Constantly. He made 30,573 false or misleading claims while president — an average of 21 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checkers.
#71. Trump allegedly took hundreds of classified documents on his way out of the White House, reportedly including nuclear secrets, which he then left unsecured in various parts of Mar-a-Lago, including a bathroom. He was even caught on tape showing them off to people.
#72. Trump seriously discussed the idea of nuking a hurricane.
#73. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump delayed $20 billion of aid and allowed Puerto Rico to be without power for 181 days.
#74. Trump suggested withholding federal aid for California wildfire recovery and said the solution was to “clean” the “floors” of the forest.
#75. Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, placing Iran on a path to developing nuclear weapons.
Honestly, there’s so much more, from exchanging “love letters” with North Korea’s brutal dictator to publicly denigrating a Gold Star military widow and making her cry, to the way he attacked journalists, to late night tweet binges.
Look, I can understand why a lot of people want to block all of this out of their memories. But we cannot afford to forget just how terrible Trump’s time in the White House was for this nation.
And we sure as hell can’t afford to put him back there.
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You understand that in the event of the Western proletariat actually organizing and pushing for a better world, the government would just kill us, right? They did it to MOVE, they did it to Blair Mountain. Any legitimate threat to the hegemony will be met with tons and tons of ordinance. How can we convince people to join a workers’ movement with this knowledge?
During the Vietnam war, the united states dropped 7.5 million tons of bombs. That's 22 tons per square kilometer of landmass. 1 ton of bombs for every Vietnamese person. But who won the war? Who kicked out the french, the americans, and their compradors?
In the course of the Chinese civil war, which lasted long, violent, war-torn decades, where workers and students were met with machine gun fire and ruthless crackdowns, who came out the victor in the end? Who, in 1945, had a 1:4 disadvantage while their opposition was backed by unending foreign support and by 1949 turned into a 4:1 overwhelming advantage?
In the Russian empire, where if you were even suspected of being against the state, you were tailed and/or killed. Where any organization not beholden to the tsar was banned. Where the right to assembly was nothing but a dream. Yet the Bolsheviks still waged a successful revolution and civil war.
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, who ultimately gave up and left? Insurgents, armed with nothing but rifles and whatever ordinance was looted beat the most lethal fighting force on the planet, without ever touching their logistics and production lines.
Today, for the most exploited people in this country, the undocumented, the unhoused, the prison slaves, the logistics and warehouse workers, and everyone in between, are being faced with nothing but sheer destruction. For most of us, it has been a choice between death or organization for a long time.
The entire world has a rich history of resisting the most vile of usmaerican aggression which every revolutionary can learn from. Why is it that usamericans don't think they can do that themselves? Logistics, stockpiles, production lines, economic backbones and all assortments of different aspects of the usamerican state can be directly sabotaged and affected by conflict at home. The usamerican state is strong, yes, but it is not invincible. It has been defeated before and it will be defeated again.
Stop making excuses for your own inaction. If the Russians can overthrow the fucking tsar, usamericans can overthrow their shitty bourgeois democracy.
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SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher's strike announcement speech
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Thank you. Thank you everyone for coming to this press conference today. It's really important that this negotiation be covered because the eyes of the world and particularly the eyes of labor are upon us. What happens here is important, because what's happening to us is happening across all fields of labor. By means of when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run. We have a problem. And we are experiencing that right at this moment. This is a very seminal hour for us.
I went in, in earnest, thinking that we would be able to avert a strike. The gravity of this move is not lost on me, or our negotiating committee, or our board members, who have voted unanimously to proceed with a strike.
It's a very serious thing that impacts thousands if not millions of people, all across this country and around the world. Not only members of this union, but people who work in other industries that service the people that work in this industry. And so it came with great sadness that we came to this crossroads, but we had no choice. We are the victims here; we are being victimized by a very greedy entity.
I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with, are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly. How far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they are losing money left and right while giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.
We stand in solidarity, in unprecedented unity. Our union and our sister unions and the unions around the world are standing by us, as well as other labor unions. Because at some point the jig is up. You cannot keep being dwindled and marginalized and disrespected and dishonored. The entire business model has been changed. By streaming, digital, AI. This is a moment of history that is a moment of truth. If we don't stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family.
Most of Americans don't have more than $500 in an emergency. This is a very big deal, and it weighed heavy on us. But at some point, you have to say no. We’re not going to take this anymore. You people are crazy. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Privately they all say we’re the center of the wheel. Everybody else tinkers around our artistry, but actions speak louder than words. And there was nothing there. It was insulting.
So we came together in strength and solidarity and unity with the largest strike authorization vote in our union's history. And we made the hard decision that we tell you, as we stand before you today. This is major. It's really serious and it is going to impact every single person that is in labor. We are fortunate enough to be in a country right now that happens to be labor friendly. And yet, we are facing opposition that was so labor unfriendly. So tone deaf to what we are saying. You cannot change the business model as much as it has changed and not expect the contract to change too.
We are not going to keep doing incremental changes on a contract that no longer honors what is happening right now with this business model that was foisted upon us. What are we doing? Moving around furniture on the titanic? It's crazy.
So the jig is up, AMPTP. We stand tall. You have to wake up and smell the coffee. We are labor and we stand tall and we demand respect. And to be honored for our contribution. You share the wealth because you cannot exist without us. Thank you.
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