bad

There's not much of value to say today. The worst people won this election, and all the "what country do I live in" sentiments people had in 2016 have been reactivated, somehow both more disheartening and less surprisingly than last time. The below is a ramble, more because I need to write words somewhere than because I think I have anything original or productive to say. Feel free to ignore; do what you need to get through this awful time!

I'm already sick of the postmortems that haven't come in yet. It would have been great to have an election run in a competent media cycle, where the American press hadn't shrunk to a ghost of its previous self. (In brief, six papers in the whole country have circulation over 100,000, half of them in New York City; massive consolidation of news organizations into the pocket of private equity firms that gut local news desks has left many major metro areas with literally no local reporting, allowing explosions in corruption and abuse, much to their owners' benefit.) 

In this emaciated state, the majority of the folk who can hack into careers in media seem to fit a common mold: from wealth, intellectually lazy, easily led, intuitively affiliated with the monied and reactionary classes. It's an open question whether the media decided age was no longer an issue once Biden left the race (or prioritized a stammering non-candidate's clumsy phrasing as a "scandal" over dozens of Trump's cabinet members and military leadership sounding the alarm about his fascism) because their owners want a bribe-happy regulatory environment, or because their editors are addicted to the insanely-false idea that "balance" is the same thing as "objectivity," or because their editorial leadership is just, well, stupid... but the fact is that the media in America is fundamentally incapable of doing what its job purports to be (informing the public) and is instead returning to its rich 19th century roots (whipping public opinion in the direction preferred by their billionaire owners). I was among those who subscribed to numerous news organizations in 2016. I don't recommend it now; cancel Prime, WaPo and NYT as much as you like, although nonprofits like ProPublica fully deserve all the money you can give them.

In this media environment, I genuinely don't think Harris could have won by articulating clearer progressive policies nor by demonstrating a frankly excessive willingness to collaborate with conservatives. I'm aware that as much as I'm convinced that Joe Manchin killing the child tax credit bears a healthy percentage of responsibility for this result, some obnoxious person in a sweater-vest is going to claim that Kamala would have won if she'd only denounced, I don't know, the idea of improving infant health outcomes. The reality is, when the NYT is running focus group interviews where the subjects have a factually deranged understanding of the world and the paper does nothing to correct that understanding in its own pages, policy doesn't matter as an electoral matter. Which is to say, media conditions need to change before there's any chance of letting policy advance.

Though to be clear, my core take is: fight for the policy choices that are right and do not sacrifice them to gain political power. Governing decisions matter, and elections matter. You can sacrifice humans and humanity on the altar of taking power [I am looking at a photograph of Keir Starmer pointedly while typing this] but try to remember that the whole point is what you do with it.

Last summer, here in Spain, the coalition of PP (center-right) and Vox (right wing, noxious, vile) made a pact to govern in Valencia, and quickly decided to abolish the Valencian Emergency Unit, deemed a "boondoggle." They went on to react with hostility and indifference to any and all climate-related warnings about imminent flooding. Cut to last week's horrible flooding, with hundreds dead and massive destruction being dealt with extremely slowly... Decisions about how you acquire and utilize power have consequences and people live or die as a result. This is a common story structure for fascists and right-wingers, as they tend to know how to destroy, but not how to build or govern. America had its own rendition in 2020, but has chosen to forget. I can only assume it's going to be reminded once more.

Two final thoughts and then I need to go be in the world and away from the abstractions of what's to come. First: Dorothy Thompson's "Who Goes Nazi" is, once more, essential reading, all the more so given the popular-majority vote Trump's hate and promises of violence earned him this go round. The one upside of the moment is that it's a good opportunity to take stock of the people in your life, and note who's chosen this path, particularly the nominal "Christians" whose previous commitment to a politics of hate suggested the label had become purely aesthetic, but who are now yoked to a campaign where the candidate led a megachurch in a chant of "bullshit," strongly suggesting there is in fact no core at all.

Finally, seeing exit polling suggesting 50% opposition to trans rights, and seeing this result in the wake of the repugnant Elon Musk flooding the commercial space with anti-trans ads, it seems to me worth noting that over 50% of Americans who voted were willing to restore to office an insurrectionist/rapist/convicted felon rather than consider the humanity of people who have been unwillingly made the target of this campaign of hate, sacrificed to serve the advancement of a brutal oligarchic agenda. These are human beings that I know and care about, and I want to suggest that if you sat idly by rather than speaking up at their dehumanization, you owe yourself a reckoning, them an apology, and active resistance in the years to come. (And while I think this blog is pretty much solely read by friends and family who are on the right side of history, worth saying here as well that if you voted for these people, you can trust that our relationship is over.)

There will be fighting to do in the not-too-distant. For now, I just needed to vent my spleen in the quietest corner I know how, and to articulate where my anger is sitting these days. I hope y'all are finding the support and wisdom you need this grim day, and that we have better days still to hope for.

Til then.