Embarrassing admission: I sort of thought it was going to be a landslide win for Kamala. Whoops.
I thought of Trump’s fans as a loud minority. I’m now pretty sure that the loud minority is the legacy news media, the late night comics, pop stars, movie stars, Bruce Springsteen, my East Coast refuge of highly educated affluence and liberalism. We are the loud minority.
I wrote all sorts of ranty takes about it, but deleted it all. Except this: Do we really think Kamala would’ve won if only she’d gone on Joe Rogan?
At least we don’t have to worry about another armed attack on the Capitol on January 6. Silver linings! I guess it’s not so surprising. The people with power want to hang on to power. The richest people are really driven to get richer. Misogyny is working for all the men and a shocking percentage of women. Most of us would rather be entertained than informed. We are basically the same humans who existed during the fall of Rome. We just have wifi.
If you’re like me, you probably are seeking out meaningful distractions. I trust you’ve got a reliable TV show (mine is The Great British Baking Show). Here are a few other suggestions.
Laura Olin
I’ve recommended her before, but this recent post-election post is special if only for the photograph.
George Saunders
He has a Substack about writing I should read more than I do. His recent post about life post-election so echoes how I’m feeling. The best part is toward the end, when he more eloquently says what I’ve been thinking which is something like, “Alright then fuckos, you voted for him. Have at it and don’t come crying to me when things don’t go the way you’d hoped.”
Here’s how he says it:
“Friends, you’re on the hook.
It’s your movement now.
It’s on us too, of course, on those of us who were and are against what he stands for–but you have a special role in whatever happens next. No excuses: he made it very clear what he intended, and you gave him a mandate to do it.”
He also wrote a piece for the New Yorker I really appreciated because it gets at one of the most urgent takeaways of this election for me, what he calls the underlying disease, our media silos.
Blitz
This movie is tough but gorgeous depiction of life in London during the Blitz. The production design is incredible; the performances are too. It’s about a boy who is evacuated to the countryside, as thousands of London’s children were, but jumps off the train to return home on his own.
The movie is a street-level view of WW2, based on the genuine experiences of Londoners in 1940. In terms of the terror, I’m sure it’s similar to what everyone is going through in Gaza or Ukraine today. The movie doesn’t go in for big heroic Greatest Generation stuff. It’s more honest than that, and thus more complicated and devastating. There’s racists, horrible broken ghouls, and the casual apathy of institutions, just like always. Which only makes it more awesome to see the courage and kindness that everyday people exhibit to just get through the day, to find a way to have a laugh and sing a song, to help one another while the powers-that-be drop actual bombs on their homes.
Animal Farm
My dear old friend has a farm and on that farm she has some pigs1. The other day we were talking on the phone while she fed them. Those lucky pigs were getting frozen peaches because her fridge broke and she was cleaning out the freezer. We were “analyzing” the news, which is to say we were taking turns ranting and cursing. Our very important conversation kept getting interrupted by her needing to plead with the pigs to leave her alone. She’d shifted from feeding the pigs to using a shovel to clean up their sty (don’t ask me what this involves), and the pigs kept trying to take the shovel away from her. Finally, they achieved their goal, successfully got control of the shovel, and were all just standing on it. My friend, a very smart and capable woman who was there to help the pigs, could no longer do this because the pigs, who are intelligent animals, sure, but are not nearly as intelligent—or considerate—as my friend, and certainly don’t know their way around a shovel, nevertheless had the shovel and were doing what they wanted with it, which was to stand on it.
eee ay eee ay oh.