Mistakes have been made

Well, here we are. I'm sorry for not sending out one of these yesterday—I meant to, but I was busy weeping intermittently and trying to explain to the kids what oligarchy is and why people had voted for a man who "grabbed women by their vaginas," as Cecilia put it, and how the media's reputation for being liberal is really a facade that allows it to serve the base interests of the capitalist ruling class. (I think they got it.)

The main takeaway from the election results seems to be that there wasn't anything Kamala Harris could have done. In democracies around the world, voters have consistently turned against the incumbents who managed their countries' recovery from covid. Injecting covid relief funds into the economy unavoidably led to inflation all over the globe. Inflation raised the prices of both everyday purchases like groceries and big-ticket items like houses, and voters hate it when prices go up. It didn't matter that the U.S. economy is actually stronger right now than any of our peers'—that's not the kind of thing voters generally know or care about. Very few people tell themselves, "It sucks that eggs are $6 now, but that's still not as expensive as they got in Germany, so I guess I can't complain." They just vote for the other guy.

Obviously, the other guy was quite a choice, in our case. It evidently didn't matter that he promised to do terrible things to particular groups of people. It didn't matter that he tried to overthrow the government four years ago. But this actually makes sense: When you look back at Trump's first presidency, I think people remember that he said a lot of crazy things and was accused of a lot of very bad things, but that he never actually, like, held any public executions or rounded up American citizens and put them in camps. (There was the family separation policy at the border, but among Trump voters who care, there is a strong belief that similar policy has also been enforced under both Obama and Biden.) Despite all the jokes, he didn't hang journalists. In a lot of people's minds, even January 6 doesn't seem that bad anymore—a few militia-type crazies, but mostly tourists wandering freely through the Capitol. No one in Congress even got hurt or killed! The Department of Justice waited a long time to go after Trump, too, which reinforced the sense that his crimes couldn't have been that big a deal. Upon reflection, I can see how the libs screeching about fascism (I'd include myself in that category) just seemed like they were suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. It makes sense that a lot of our fellow Americans would tune us out.

To be clear, I don't think we're wrong about the fascism—the idea behind the screeching was to nip it in the bud, before it got more obvious, because ideally, you would stop it before the stuff like public executions started. But it doesn't matter if you're right, if people are tuning you out. This time around, my goal is to be more careful about how I think and talk about Trump, not to give him a pass but to be sure I'm not just harmonizing with the other singers in my choir. It's easy to get caught up in groupthink. In Tuesday's newsletter, I mentioned the video where he has trouble getting into his garbage truck, which was widely shared in my online circles as evidence that he was in serious physical and mental decline. I think he is in decline, but I don't actually think the video is proof of that. I'm 30 years younger than Trump, but I do stuff like that all the time—miss a door handle or a step, slip going down the stairs and nearly fall, nearly give myself a hernia getting out of a tube at the waterslide park. (I need to work on my core strength.) And I knew all this when I linked to the video. I knew I wasn't convinced it showed anything more than a person moving awkwardly. I still linked to it, because I think the person is terrible, and I persuaded myself that it must be evidence of his decline, since so many people whose posts I enjoy agreed that it was.

I don't want to give anyone the impression I am softening on Donald Trump. There are a lot of reasons to worry that his second term will feature the kind of full-on fascism we've been screeching was coming. I just want to exercise a keener sense of proportion and equanimity, so that if I sound really alarmed, people may be more likely to take me seriously.

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Speaking of taking me seriously: Once again, I am so sorry if I got anyone's hopes up about the election. I really thought Harris was going to win in a blowout. I was very wrong, obviously. I wasn't the only one, and there were very reasonable reasons to believe she would win. But I forgot that reality is not always reasonable. Reason is based on what we've learned in the past, but reality constantly changes, and teaches us new things. I also ignored that there were reasonable reasons to believe she would lose. I believed what I wanted to believe, and that's normal, and probably unavoidable to an extent. But there was also always a little voice warning me that I might be wrong, and I should have listened to it.

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Here is a song from a Having a Normal One reader, from whom I was really glad to hear yesterday. (They also recommend this one.) They wrote:

I listened to this a ton after 2016. It seemed to work again today.

My life will likely be largely unchanged. I live in a giant blue bubble clinging to the edge of the country tucked under the bosom of Canada. I could look out from my perch when something goes wrong and say "fuck ’em." You, the Hispanic man who voted for mass deportations; you, the white woman who voted to restrict abortion—you brought this on yourself.

But I grew up with Reagan. And while there was so much wrong with him, the thing that stuck in my head as a little kid was the shining city on the hill. I don't want America to be a place of finger-pointing and retribution. I want it to be a beacon of light and hope. I want it to be a place of joy.

We'll go back to our day-to-day lives and still hold doors for each other and help people change a tire and shake hands, but to the rest of the world we are less welcoming, less joyful, and less light, and that's a country I'm a little less proud to be a part of.

I think this is the saddest thing for me about Trump too. I'm a sap and a romantic, and I really buy into the vision of America as a place of liberty and justice for all, even knowing that of course that is bullshit in so many ways. Regardless of what Trump does, his political success is a sign that we're further from it than I had hoped.

Good to Know

Ken White, an attorney who goes by the name Popehat online, wrote a wonderful piece about his thoughts the day after Election Day. Here's a small bit:

But nobody’s telling you that you have to fix everything. You can fix something. In Schindler’s List, Stern tells Schindler “whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” So save the world that way—one fellow American at a time. You can’t stand up alone against all the Trumpist bullies in America, but maybe you can stand up to a few local ones in defense of a neighbor. You can’t save everyone from mass deportation but maybe you can help one family. You can’t save all trans people from the terrible, cynical jihad against them, but you might be able to support one trans person. Start small. Make a difference for just one person. Use the gifts you have. Use your voice.

And I'd recommend this as well, by Elad Nehorai, titled "It's the End of the World."

And this one by Chris Geidner. The Great Work Begins.

The Fun Part

I posted this on Election Night too, on Facebook, and I have posted it many times before, and for good reason. It's so stupid and perfect. "Uhhh…we usually vote, Mr. Chairman."

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