Ramblings of a Privileged Woke White Boy

Does Your Vote Really Matter? – Blog for 31 March 2026

A week from today my home state of Wisconsin has our Spring election. In addition to regional races, there will be one statewide race for a Supreme Court Justice. Turnout is key.

My question for today is…does your vote really matter?

Before the trump era (I refuse to capitalize his name), some of my friends would talk about how the difference between Republicans and Democrats wasn’t significant. Things like, “Republicans are evil but Democrats are cowards, so the result is pretty much the same.” Or “As long as the Democrats remain corporatists they’re little better than the Republicans.” So on and so forth. They were not always wrong.

I would argue these recent times have opened up vital differences between the parties. Moreover, leaders have begun to emerge among the left who can articulate those stark differences (think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Zohran Mamdani). Stark differences like:

Democrats	vs.	Republicans
We believe in democracy .	vs.	We support candidates who behave like fascists (even though none of us can define the word).
We believe every citizen, regardless of race, creed, gender or sexual orientation has a right to vote (as well as equal treatment everywhere in society).	vs.	No more fucking DEI!
We think pedophiles should be prosecuted.	vs.	It’s okay to rape children if Jesus forgives you!
The Constitution’s First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.	vs.	Under Commandant of War Hegseth, U.S. military commanders have been telling troops that trump’s [Iran] war fulfills biblical prophecies around Armageddon and the return of Christ.

In this new American reality, there are a now indeed key differences between Democrat and Republican. And there’s something even more important than these; beyond any differences that have emerged, the number one most compelling reason to now vote is because the orange shit gibbon inhabiting the white house—along with his enablers—are destroying our country, destroying other countries, ruining lives, and ruining our Earth.

Ok, you say, you’ll go vote. But you do with a sense of futility. Can my one vote really matter?

History is full of examples of how very few votes—or even one—tipped the scales. I’ve listed just a few. Note, what I’m citing here are instances from the voting populace, folks like you and me, and not votes from legislative or governing bodies:

1971: Virginia House of Delegates, William Moss and Jim Burch tied. The winner was decided by blinded toss up (!).
2008: Alaska State Representative Mike Kelley won re-election by just one vote.
2010: Massachusetts House of Representatives, Peter J. Durant and Geraldo Alicea tied.
2013: New York State Legislator Richard P. Kline won election by just one vote.
2024: Kamala Harris lost Wisconsin in the Presidential election by 29,397 votes (assuming there was no election malfeasance on the part of Elon or whomever). Yeah, this seems like a lot, but at the local level…it was razor thin: There were about 7086 voting wards in Wisconsin for that election. Divide that into Harris’ statewide loss, and you’ll see that if just FIVE more people in each Ward had made the effort to vote for Kamala Harris, she would’ve won Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes.

One more thing: Look how hard the Republicans are trying to restrict your access to the ballot box. This is most especially true if you’re female or a person of color. They are terrified of your vote.

Congress is not going to rein in the hideous orange Julius. The judicial branch isn’t going to stop little Hitler because he simply ignores their rulings. If we are able to have our midterm elections, only you and I, individual voters, have a chance to stop or at least hobble this catastrophe.

PLEASE do your part and vote. Make sure you are registered to vote. Every state should have an online resource for this. In Wisconsin it’s https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/My-Voter-Info

Some additional online sources for this are linked below.

–Rich Novotney, Editor & Publisher of The Four Jacks Annotated, Uncensored by Robert Pavchick

https://people.howstuffworks.com/can-single-vote-change-election-outcome.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_close_election_results

https://gis-ltsb.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/LTSB::2024-election-data-with-2025-wards/explore?location=44.770002%2C-89.815216%2C7

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/pete-hegseths-christian-rhetoric-reignites-scrutiny-after-the-u-s-goes-to-war-with-iran

**How Sinners just couldn’t beat the White Scapegoat – Blog for 25 March 2026**

**Pictured: Michael B. Jordan as twins Stack & Smoke. And Sean Penn as Colonel Lockjaw.**

Everyone everywhere on social media has been ranting and foaming at the mouth about Oscar night a few weeks ago, and how Ryan Coogler and Sinners undeservedly got swamped by Paul Thomas Anderson and One Battle After Another for Best Director and Best Picture.

Well, I’m gonna rant too, but this won’t be typical of most of the stuff out there. I think Oscar night revealed something about ourselves (and when I write “ourselves,” I mean us white folk).

All this anger over who lost Best Picture goes beyond the simple appreciation of film—it’s cultural and is a barometer of the current state of affairs in our disintegrating country.

So, did Sinners and Ryan Coogler get robbed? Hell yes, they did.

First, I’d like to acknowledge what a great filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is. Anderson should’ve won Best Director and Best Picture long ago (for example, There Will Be Blood or Boogie Nights). Let’s also acknowledge the Academy Awards have a long aggravating history of not only getting it wrong, but then swinging around years, or even decades later, to try and correct their oversights, thereby slighting yet another project deserving an award. If you want examples, here are a few:

Dances with Wolves (1990) won because it was a fucking glorious White Savior Polemic, which beat out Scorsese’s Goodfellas, which was just another mob movie that is now studied today in film classes. The star of Dances now acts in TV crap vomited out by Taylor Sheridan.
Unforgiven (1992) isn’t a bad film, but it is far from Eastwood’s best. Alas, the Academy decided it was time for The Man With No Name to get his Oscar. A Few Good Men paid the price. The injuries heaped upon Rob Reiner seem infinite.
Shakespeare in Love (1999) sanitized history’s bisexual Bard (and one of his best sonnets) into plain vanilla hetero love. Yawn. But if we’re being honest here, Shakespeare won because serial rapist Harvey Weinstein still owned half of Hollywood, beating out Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. But seriously, bloody war films that teach us history are such downers.
Crash (2004), a wreck of a film, won when Brokeback Mountain should’ve won. Brokeback lost because it didn’t fetishize homosexual love into farce or spectacle; instead it treated its subjects seriously. It’d be Schitt’s Creek before gay love was done again in film in a way that got the widespread recognition it deserved.

Enough of my ranting bullet points. Critics of Sinners will say “both Sinners and One Battle After Another are about white supremacy.” Yes, true. But there are crucial differences, which in my opinion separate Art from craft—and expose the ugly secret that’s the central point of my whole hissy fit here.

With the caveat that this is a white boy’s opinion, here are some major points that set these two movies miles apart:

Sinners elevates Black Culture, and does so without the need for a fucking white savior.
Sinners utilizes the power of metaphor to its full potential. Most pointedly, the vampire Remmick’s seductive speech about white religion and colonization. I mean, whenever has a vampire used the truthas part of its seduction?
Sinners roots its setting, its characters and the circumstances of its story in the Jim Crow south, so there’s no mistaking what it’s talking about. It’s talking about what American really was, and what our empire was built on: slavery.
Here’s my BIG POINT: In Sinners, the real villains are the Klansman. These individuals are portrayed with absolute historical accuracy (unlike, of course, the vampires, who are metaphors for religious propaganda and colonialism, see above). In One Battle After Another, the villain Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (brilliantly portrayed by Sean Penn) is an overwrought caricature of the ultimate white supremacist. He’s so awful, in fact, that every white person watching this movie can unconsciously feel: “See! I’ve never been that bad!” I submit Lockjaw’s over-the-top villainy is a white privilege scapegoat. And that’s why so many members of the academy voted it Best Picture over Sinners.

Sinners is a captivating and artistic rumination on the nature of our country and our people, and One Battle After Another is a meandering, poorly focused action movie that just happens to have its heart in the right place. Sorry, that’s a vast difference. The true villainy here isn’t Sean Penn’s Lockjaw, it’s the deep rooted scourge of racism that covers the entire spectrum of our country, from the unapologetic white supremacist defiling our White House, to the unconscious biases of our everyday white privileged lives.

–Rich Novotney, Editor & Publisher of The Four Jacks Annotated, Uncensored by Robert Pavchick

Gender Equality – Blog for 19 March 2026

As I write out this draft of my very first blog entry, the US Senate is debating the SAVE Act. It’s one of the Shit Gibbon’s pet projects and it (barely) passed the House. The Chief Pedophile has pressured the GOP Majority leader to bring this abominable bill to the floor, because if it passes, the Fuher believes it will ensure the GOP retains majorities in both houses this fall.

Here’s why: As written, the SAVE act requires “proof of citizenship” to vote—either a birth certificate or valid passport. The catch is, millions of Americans don’t have copies of their birth certificates or have passports. To acquire either takes time and money. Translation: the SAVE act is designed to disenfranchise poor people and people of color. Bonus catch: if your birth certificate doesn’t match your married name, it doesn’t qualify as proof of citizenship. Translation: the SAVE act is designed specifically to disenfranchise women. You see, women predominately vote Democratic over Republican, about 51% to 44% according to Pew Research.

Make no mistake, the powers of the Patriarchy in the United States are hard at work trying to destroy women’s rights.

If you doubt this, recall that the Supreme Court (skewed darkly conservative by the Shit Gibbon) destroyed Roe v. Wade back in June of 2022.

Voting legislation and Court stacking aren’t their only tools. The GOP exploits the propaganda of religion. A major chunk of Christian denominations in the United States will not ordain women as religious leaders:

Roman Catholic Church (30% of Christians in the US)
Southern Baptists (these and other conservative Protestants comprise 37% of Christians in the US)
Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

(Lest you think I’m skewering Christians unfairly, let’s not forget that religiously codified misogyny pollutes all three Abrahamic branches of belief, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, when any of them skew more fundamentalist.)

Beyond the moral repugnance of the GOP’s misogyny, in a pure business sense, it’s downright stupid. The Republicans like to say they’re the party of business, but suppressing women’s rights hurts economic growth.

Statistical analyses of the economic successes of many countries illustrates quite clearly that gender equality is directly related to lower poverty rates, higher GDP, better healthcare and lower crime. The Scandinavian countries are the most obvious examples of this, but the facts bear out worldwide. Do your own Google search. I’ve also provided a few links below.

So, my fellow boys: are you an advocate for gender equality?

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/03/gender-equality-smart-economics/