So Now What?

This is not a good day

I got it wrong.

I’ve spent the last weeks telling everybody who asked that Kamala was going to win. In all honesty, I was never quite as confident as I made out: there was a degree of cheerleading involved, of active hopefulness, of trying to will something into truth. Nonetheless I did genuinely believe that the vision of a new and optimistic and era-appropriate America presented by Harris/Walz would outshine the dark and vindictive bitterness of a criminal autocrat, raised up on the shoulders of dogma and greed, hawking the same old battered trinkets of misogyny, division, and mistruth.

Oh well. How naive of me.

There are things that could be said about the process, of course — like how archaic and dumb the Electoral College is, a system devised to placate states wary of Federalism a couple of centuries ago, meaning residents of Wyoming (which has a population of only about 15% of that of Los Angeles, and just two sets of escalators in the entire state) have four times as much say in the presidency as I do in California.

But them’s the rules, and we Democrats play by the rules.

Sometimes I wonder bitterly about that. About being a Liberal, stalwartly sticking to the norms and doggedly trying to vote in a way that’ll improve the lives of others, rather than just our own. I have always believed this is the entire point of a responsible democracy. It appears many of my fellow citizens feel otherwise — and while I’m well-aware my take rises from a position of privilege, in which I can afford to think of the needs of others, that saddens me. It saddens me also that the media has colluded in the process, along with billionaires that’d be happy to watch the world burn if it made them a few extra bucks (or just because they think it might be fun), and that cheap and easy lies about short-term gains are enough for some people to burn down others’ essential human rights.

But here we are, in something that feels no longer like a single nation but like an increasingly loose confederation of opposites, like fifty angry squirrels on meth trapped in the same sack. So what next?

These are unformed thoughts, as I’m still caught between livid anger and glum depression. But it strikes me that there are two paths forward.

One is to keep up the fight on a national level. To refuse to take this shit lying down, to push back against the forces of self-interest and greed and retrograde bigotry through grassroots resistance and planning, while there’s still time. (And no, that’s not hyperbole. You’ve all heard about project 2025. This time they’re not screwing around). Part of this must however involve starting and then persisting in a conversation with those whose lives are different, and who disagree with us. Living in bubbles doesn’t work. It leads to days like today. Democrats have to start looking and feeling like the party of the common man and woman, rather than merely legislating that way. If we’re not just the elitist coastal liberals that MAGA so delight in sticking it to, then we need to make sure that’s understood on every possible level.

The alternative is to turn away from all that, and focus on the local. To stop being sucked into a politics which has been turned into a stacked game, a flashy spectator sport drenched in money and grift, in which all that’s required (or tolerated) of we citizens are our cheers and an unthinking loyalty to our “side”. To instead expend more energy on those closer to us, to the touchable community, to our family and friends. Rather than spending a half hour ranting on social media, using the time to call up a friend, or go for a walk with one’s partner, or learn a little French, or work the food bank. Activities that nurture the soul and enrich the lives of the real people we love and value, rather than endlessly channeling all that energy and attention into a click-driven chaos of monetized news, and the egos of people who simply don’t have our best interests at heart — when they even remember we exist.

Two paths, and I suspect the only solution is to make sure we walk both, every day. To live our beliefs nationally, but also with the people we can reach out to and touch.

This is not the time to give up. It never is. Not when a nation’s soul is at stake.

What do you think?