No Balm, Just Gilead
That's that, then.
I was going to write about Trap and Blink Twice and Frankie Freako today, but right now movies about toxic masculinity seem even less appealing. I’m sure you understand.
Twenty years ago this week, my grandmother died. Her funeral was held the day after the US election. We came back from the cemetery to watch John Kerry conceding to George W. Bush, and it was like it unlocked a new, hidden level of miserable for my family. That was a shitty day. This one’s worse.
We were all bracing for Trump to try to steal the election, or to claim victory before the results were in, flooding the zone with bullshit in order to stay ahead of whatever comeuppance was headed his way. And it turned out none of that was necessary. He just … won. A majority of Americans voted for their own extinction. And not just theirs, but everyone’s.
Above all else, Kamala Harris offered an extension of the stability she and Joe Biden had restored to the US government over the last four years, laying out plans for a younger, more able and more engaged Democratic administration. She talked about Trump’s corruption and rank unfitness, reminded people that she and Biden were still busy cleaning up the mess of the guy’s last term, and I really believed that would be enough. The prosecutor vs the felon. The capable woman vs the lying rapist. The choice was obvious, right?
Trump ran on “fixing” the country, but all he offered was nihilism – a bespoke version of the strongman argument that the world is already broken so why not make things even worse for the people you don’t like. Your own situation won’t get any better, but at least you can enjoy their suffering.
Well, here we are. In three months Donald Trump will be president again, and this time America isn’t going to recover. I don’t think that’s hyperbole; we’re about to see just how bad things can get for anyone who isn’t a white guy with a red cap.
Because what this election really means is sooner or later JD Vance will be president of the United States, and given Trump’s deterioration on the campaign trail these last few weeks I’m thinking it’ll be sooner. And that means the people behind Vance – the tech oligarchs, the crypto bros, the he-man woman-haters, the people who see him as an even better front man than Trump, because Vance will say exactly what they tell him to say – are going to go absolutely wild.
Those fuckers will fundamentally alter America, wrecking whatever they don’t sell outright. They might not even wait for Trump to die; the 25th amendment is right there, after all, though I think trying to remove Trump from office will require more bravery than the current GOP can muster.
But really, what do I know. I’ve been wrong about almost everything. I thought America was better than Trump, twice. I thought he’d killed enough of his base last time that Harris would win in a walk. I thought people would understand what they were getting themselves into with a second Trump term. And it turns out they do, and that they want this.
I don’t want this, but that doesn’t matter. I voted against the fucker, and that doesn’t matter either. He won, apparently irrefutably, and now we all have to suffer through what’s coming. And yes, I am fully aware that my existential dread is nothing compared to the very real pain he’s going to gleefully inflict on people who aren’t straight, white middle-aged men. But as a human being capable of empathy, yeah. This is awful.
Normal newslettering will resume this weekend, because I will need to keep my brain from eating itself. But right now I’m just despairing. America was supposed to be better than this – we were supposed to be better than this. And it turns out we’re just not. What the hell does one do with that knowledge.