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garote
In a 2021 post mostly about social media I wrote this:
"Half the voting public voted for Trump in 2020. Just like they did in 2016. Even after four years of absolute existential panic in the media and minds of the left, they gave him the largest turnout of any sitting president. If the people around me would actually pause and think about that, maybe they would wonder whether they're seeing their opposition clearly."
That still applies. People on the left have now had something like nine years to think about that. But the temptation to double-down on our own mindset is strong. It's much easier to believe that everyone who voted for Trump sees him the same way we do and somehow doesn't care, perhaps because of their own moral failings. It's also easy to believe that everyone who casts a vote for president has a relationship with politics the same way we do, and if they don't, that too is a moral failing.
Look at that quote again. "Half the voting public." What's left?
2020 was the biggest percentage turnout in history, with about 66% of eligible voters participating. Even with that record turnout, that's about a hundred million people who could have voted, but didn't. They stayed home and kept riding out the pandemic. Deciding who should be president was not important to them. This year we kept that turnout high, right around 64%, but looking at the early numbers, the people who turned out this time were not the same people who turned out last time. Different groups with different motivations came out this year, and other groups stayed planted on the couch. Maybe they were too busy working. Maybe they just didn't care. Maybe they didn't think it mattered. Or all three.
And that's where the assumptions from the left come in: "They don't care? How can they not care? This is an existential election!"
No, it's not. It wasn't the last time either, or the time before that. That's giving Trump way too much credit. (Do you remember what a stumbling mess his first entire year was? And how it didn't get much better?)
The first time I voted in an election, I was 29 years old. For all of my earlier life I was disengaged with the democratic process. I had strong moral and ethical ideas and I was fairly outspoken with them, but I didn't want to join the ranks of a political party and I didn't put much faith in anything politicians said. That's about two thirds of my life, so far. I think back on that interval of time and I realize, there are millions - literally millions - of people in this country who are just like I was. They really don't think it matters that much to pay such close attention.
By contrast, over the last ten years I've become a pretty strong political news junkie. Every day I listen to about 20 minutes of news in podcast form, and read for another 20. I keep up with court cases in Georgia, ballot measures in Texas, riots in Germany, surveillance in China, warfare in Ukraine. I vote in every election like clockwork, digging into the down-ballot races and local measures. In a gradual but consistent way, year by year, I've bought into the political system, in a way I never did before. And that's given me ideas about what kind of people should populate the system: Generally, people I look up to. People who try to have empathy for everyone and think deeply about things.
Along comes someone like Trump, and of course, I instantly loathe him. Incoherent, easily baited, trash-talking, zero nuance, not particularly educated. Instantly not someone I would vote into office; in fact someone I would vote against just to keep from office. Which I did, three times in a row. You could have put a turkey sandwich up on the podium with a D symbol stamped on it, and I would have checked the box for "turkey sandwich", just to prop up the barrier against him a little bit more. And yes, it's not existential - I declared that earlier - but I do still honestly believe that even a desiccated slab of deli meat would provide a better axis point for the world to orbit, than Trump.
But still, and especially with this recent electoral shellacking, I am keenly aware of the millions, and millions of people who really just don't participate in politics the way I do. Democracy for its own sake seems a bit silly to them. They'll vote to express themselves when something really gets their goat - like a recession, or a pandemic, or some scary idea about gender nonconformity like "boys peeing in girls' bathrooms" or whatever - but when that's not waving at them like a red cape, they don't see a need to charge in. They'll vote in one election, then ignore the next, then vote in another. It would be exhausting to follow politics all the time, so they mostly duck out. Millions and millions of people engage with politics like this. I could judge them, but what would be the point?
Intersecting with this group are millions of people who believe - in a cart-before-the-horse way - that the political party they or their family has embraced should inform and extend their worldview, providing them with a convenient consistency, and a lot less social friction since every single opinion on Earth has been pre-divided neatly into two buckets: A red one and a blue one. If you believe in government vouchers for religious schools, then you must believe in tightly restricting abortion, and you must also believe in unfettered oil and gas drilling on public lands, and that the 2020 election was rife with fraud. Or, if you believe in permissive abortion law, you must also believe in a high corporate tax rate, environmental regulations that make zero allowance for the economy, and de-funding police departments. If you don't have an opinion on these things, one will be assumed for you, which is convenient since you can then stay silent on the matter and attend to daily life.
And then there are other people: The millions who see national politics as a system that they won't buy into, or even legitimize by paying close attention to it. Either for lack of time, or lack of faith that anything happening at the national level will really affect their lives except indirectly, by fouling up the economy or their particular way of making a living. Politicians should be ignored, or better yet shunned, or even better yet, have their power dissolved out from under them so their ability to meddle in people's lives, or tax and spend their money against their will, is minimized.
And you know, they collectively have a point: The government that is the least well-funded and the least obeyed, is the one that can oppress you the least. The one that can police you the least, redirect your money the least, interfere with your religion the least. The one that can be hijacked by other people to disenfranchise you the least. The shorthand we often use to collect most of these people is "libertarians." And frankly their point is a bit muddled, because ignoring the machinations of government - while still dutifully paying taxes - is not a very good way to control its reach, but not paying taxes will get the feds after you, so for the most part the attitude here is "left hand doesn't pay attention to what the right hand is doing."
Nevertheless, there are millions of people living their lives in this country who relate to the government just this way. And if a candidate comes along who really does look like he's too rich, too self-satisfied, and too above the law to have any need for government and would rather tear it all apart and shut it down, then hey, they will come out of the freaking woodwork to vote for that guy. And they did, three times. It's just that for the middle one, other people drowned them out: People relying on the government to see them through a pandemic, who thought maybe a big functional state with deep pockets was just the ticket. Enter Joe Biden, about as stable and establishment a candidate as history could possibly offer.
In 2020, the election saw a massive increase in participation. We had a conjunction where multiple groups of occasional voters all emerged together, like different groups of cicadas becoming a super-swarm. And then four years later, to my surprise and extreme disappointment, they went back to ground. The diversity of political (dis)engagement was preserved. I honestly thought the excitement of electing the first woman president, combined with the opportunity to shut Trump out of office for good, would keep that turnout high. Meanwhile, Trump pounded furiously at just two buttons: Immigration and economy. It was a numbers game, pulling at the less-engaged groups who would turn out to vote on those issues if they were agitated enough. I wrongly believed that once people had got a taste of democracy in 2020, they would be inclined to make it a regular thing. But they remain as they were.
I should have seen that coming, since even people in my own well-educated extended family voted for Trump, and did so without actually paying close attention to what he was saying or even what he did in office the last time. I listened to his rallies, I followed the legislation he killed and called for, I dug into the meetings with world leaders and the lawsuits filed against him ... did they? In the end they didn't want to even hear about it. I got the hint and didn't bring it up. It was, apparently, too disharmonious to talk about ... and yet not anything that would turn away their vote.
So, four more years of this guy, and his ideas. His legislative record and his general steering of world affairs and the economy in his first term was lackluster to put it kindly. His baseless claims of fraud at the end were absolutely unforgivable. And they frightened enough of the half-engaged to turn them into a violent mob. Then, over the last three years that's all been made into political hay, by politicians in both parties. A huge mess, and it can be laid squarely at his feet. Simply conceding the election like every single president before him would have avoided an incalculable amount of damage done and time wasted.
But I'm getting off track here. My point is, I got complacent. I got too comfortable with the idea that my level and method of political engagement was the one that everyone trends towards. It ain't so. And was this the result I expected? Definitely not. I didn't see Joe Biden getting so aged by the job and dropping out. I did see his replacement, summoned in 2024 instead of 2028: "A tastefully progressive female nominee who will vocally reject 'identity politics.'" But at this point, nobody is going to field a female nominee for a good while. In four years I suppose we'll get Gavin Newsom, and Republicans will probably try to run J.D. Vance. If Trump makes as much of a mess this time as he did last time, Newsom will clean up.
There is a very meager silver lining to this, at least: The country ran the largest, most scrutinized, secure, by-the-numbers election procedure in the whole damn world. Russian assholes called in some bomb threats, but in the end, everyone stood in line peacefully, even late into the night, and nary a fist was raised as 140 million ballots were counted.
That, at the least, is something all of us, everywhere, can and should be proud of: America is still not defined by who walks the corridors of power, but how we put them there. We are outspoken, argumentative, loud, nasty, and bitter, and then we all go stand shoulder-to-shoulder and vote.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 08:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 07:13 pm (UTC)So it's, you know, reality. But by giving it a new name, young people think they have invented it.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-09 03:41 am (UTC)But the point there, why intersectionality is important, is that by analyzing a sole identity we conflate differences within that identity; none identity is uniform; there are lots of differences within it, often opposing each other. What we should pay attention to when looking at an identity is the intersection with other identities. That’s where real interesting stuff is. Smoking pot gay is okay, but smoking pot gay conservative is even more interesting subject.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-09 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-09 09:42 am (UTC)Sure, if you can find a few. It is subject to error.
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no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-12 09:24 pm (UTC)What are your post-election thoughts?