There are many depressing things about this particular moment in history and there are many people writing about these depressing things in much more knowledgeable and eloquent ways than I would be able to.
But I feel that as someone who owns a blog it is important to write something now about what is about to happen (tonight? tomorrow? several weeks hence? apparently, it depends…) in the US.
Overall of course this doesn’t really make any difference to me, or to anyone else in my family, or street, or in Cornwall, or the SW, or really in England at all… – and that’s the thing to remember when attempting to retain some kind of sanity here. What’s happening Over There may well feel like a terrible car crash that you just can’t help looking at – (and I guess there may be meta changes to big things around the world like supply chain, Ukraine, etc if The Orange One gets in) – but ultimately life will roll on in the same way it’s rolled on for my last 52 years. And there’s really nothing that I – or you – or anyone else we knock about with – can do about it anyway. The Buddhist idea of The Second Arrow is pertinent here (namely, we can’t stop the pain of the first arrow [the US is a horror show] but we can create ways to be more mindful and manage the second [our – probably unfounded –worry about the horror show]…)
Nonetheless, there is something significant about today’s presidential election. On the one hand of course is the depressing fact that 50% of a country as apparently modern as America would consider this appalling orange parody of a human being to be fit for anything other than putting in a corner and laughing at. Even ignoring anything political (hard to do, I know) and looking at the personality, he is without doubt in my mind a truly damaged entity, someone devoid of any humanity, or meaning, or love. There seems to be no direction or morals, a figure who is actually fairly seriously mentally ill, entirely narcissistic, wholly self interested. In a way I’d probably have a bit more respect for him as a person (even though it’d make him infinitely more dangerous) if he actually had a purpose, a sense of direction, an ideology. But his ideology appears to be simply ME ME ME, which in any other universe would be sad for that individual, while in this one he is apparently being taken seriously as a presidential candidate …again.
But – we have to acknowledge the fact that however much us lefties just don’t get it – there is something appealing about this. Yes, it’s a cult, yes, it’s incredibly easy to say “tear all the things down” and terribly hard to build, slowly and gradually on the long history of progress – but nonetheless it’s clear that Trump has something which appeals, and round about now 170 million people are popping a cross (is that how they do it in the US?) in a little box next to his name, truly believing that he’ll make their lives better (even though all the evidence: financial, social and otherwise points to the opposite being true…).
Trump aside, perhaps the most depressing thing of all is the breakdown in discourse. There is apparently a complete inability of either side to see that nuance, subtlety, forgiveness and compassion are all necessary parts of a modern society. This is of course all about social media, but it’s also about the TV Personality approach to populist politics which has been largely created and built by Trump and his cohort.
A political situation where you find yourself presiding over a country where 50% of people believe you are completely and utterly wrong about absolutely everything you do and 50% of people believe that you are completely and utterly right about everything you do is so obviously a disaster. The fact that Candidate 1 managed to squeeze themself over the line by 0.5 of a percent or whatever means – of course – that the truth about democracy is uncovered: ultimately it runs the risk of having 49.99% of people who are terribly sad about the current situation and 50.01% of people who are absolutely delighted. And in this scenario the truth is starkly highlighted – there is just no way to make any kind of democracy work when there is this deeply combative approach being taken by both sides.
There is something similar going on in this country with our politics – it is blindingly obvious to literally anyone that we need to find more money in order to continue living in the comparative luxury that the lucky among us have become used to. In the UK we can say without doubt that:
- lives are going on much longer than ever before,
- this means more people need more healthcare and support,
- all of this costs money.
How refreshing would it be if the Tory and Labour parties both got together and acknowledged these facts before also acknowledging that in order for this lifestyle to continue, we need much more focus on equality – which pretty much leads itself to acknowledging that tax rises are inevitable?
I digress. But the point is that in a functioning democracy you require a strong party in opposition – but you also have to acknowledge that these people do actually have some good ideas and strengths and that working together is the only way you can get anything done.
There is a whole other thread here that needs unpicking and I’ll do it in a longer post one day. But in brief: as a lifelong liberal lefty (LLL!) I have spent my life not giving a shit whether someone is black, brown, white, male, female, gay, undecided, disabled, whatever – but I’ve also always been able to actually talk about stuff that is to do with these issues, and acknowledge that here too there is nuance. It isn’t always good news to have mixed toilets, for example – and there are reasons for talking about why that is. Ditto, I have some considerable time for JK, because she makes some (note – not all) good points about females and feminism. Similarly, it also isn’t great to have entirely open borders. Call me a racist, TERF, whatever you like – but accepting that there are very real things to be talked about / concerned with here is true, and it’ll always be true, no matter how loud and hard those tiny minorities of X-dwellers might be shouting “QUICK! CANCEL THAT FUCKING FACIST!”.
Science teaches us some things about how this works. Science is predicated on the fact that you only know what you know based on current best knowledge – and that next week a new bit of research might turn your entire thesis upside down and prove you 100% wrong. The acceptance that this is a fact is the first step in a process – you enter into it knowing that you publish your work with the full knowledge that the whole point of publishing that work is that it exists for others to criticise, prove otherwise, maybe strengthen with further evidence or whatever. But you do this with a humble, human, “I am likely to be proved wrong one day” knowledge, rather than this rather breathless shouty “I KNOW I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG” approach that we seem to have fostered in our current dialogue.
Nuance and intelligence is what is required here, not blind sweeping statements that Thing One Is Good and Thing Two Is Bad. Talking about these things and chewing through all the ideas on the table is the only way to find consensus and consensus is the only way to make progress. This goes for both the political right and the political left – somewhere in the middle is where we need to be to truly embrace any kind of acceptable future in this chaotic, crazy-assed world that we find ourselves in.
Good luck out there, Kamala. Bring some sanity back – we need it.