Fellas I feel like I let you guys down and my mom (RIP) down. I truly believe that this wonderful community represents the world that I want to see and the world I thought we had.
Methodical Management
thank you for everything that you’ve done for me and this community. When I say I’d rather be us than them, I mean that you guys make life worth living. I thought if we did the work we would win and I really tried but it might not be enough. I think this will be my last post on NT for awhile so I thank you guys and want to tell you to never give up. We survived before and we will do so again.
Everyone who voted in this election was alive in 2016. Out of all the caricaturizations of Trump voters, the idea that they’re so ignorant that they fell for magical thinking
twice is arguably the most insulting.
At bottom, Trumpism is the politics of resentment. Trump supporters do not share a common cause so much as a common set of enemies. The rally at Madison Square Garden was not an aberration: it was Trump’s closing argument - a distillation of everything his campaign has been about since he began his political career launching racist, xenophobic attacks against Black men (the Exonerated Five, Barack Obama), China, and non-White immigrants.
To his supporters, Trump is a weapon. He is a troll. The stronger and more negative the reaction he’s able to provoke from his enemies, the more he delights those who share his enmity.
We’ve lived through this before, and we remember who took a victory lap in 2016. We haven’t forgotten how they behaved. They reveled in the misery of their fellow Americans. Trump failed to deliver a border wall, unless you count a few disconnected miles of brittle fencing that’s aging as well as a Cybertruck. He didn’t end crime. His mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice protests plunged the country into chaos and recession, not order and prosperity. He didn’t deliver a 1950’s TV housewife to every incel or win the “war on Christmas.” Even so, they got what they really wanted: to have their hierarchical status as men, as White, as straight, as cisgender, as Christian, as citizens reinforced, and to heap scorn on those they felt deserving of “punishment.”
Succeeding as a coalition and as a democracy requires us to be unselfish, accept compromise, and influence through persuasion and not coercion. America once again failed the prisoner’s dilemma. Too many voters chose the perpetuation of relative privilege over the possibility of progress towards equality. Too many nonvoters chose selfish pride and nihilistic apathy over the better and more qualified candidate - to place the most vulnerable among us in harm’s way to appear “hardcore” and “principled” for their inaction in the face of a crisis for the approval of a social media hall of mirrors.
You didn’t.
There’s going to be a lot of finger pointing over the coming days and months, and people will invariably seize the opportunity to claim that if only everyone had done exactly what
they wanted, and centered
their desires, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Some will unfairly scapegoat those on the margins, with relatively little individual or collective power, rather than issuing proportionate culpability to the majority of Trump supporters and enablers.
You didn’t.
You looked inwards when others placed blame. You looked outwards when deciding how to use your power, your resources, and your influence.
I am ashamed of the United Sates today, but
I’m proud of you - and all those like you who truly put the wellbeing of the country and its most vulnerable residents ahead of your own convenience or self-interest.
You volunteered to help get out the vote. You spent time here to extend to others the camaraderie, support, and encouragement that you’ve so appreciated.
If, in this moment of exasperation, we choose to pull apart to our own insular, homogenized echo chambers instead of pulling together, if those who hold us in such deep contempt as to choose chaos over community see us driven to despair and hopelessness, then we will have truly lost.
Your health and wellbeing are important. Take whatever time you need to recover.
All of the decent regulars here know how much you’ve sacrificed. You’ve given far more than most to honor your values and your mother’s memory.
It may not be my place to make this request, after you’ve pushed yourself to the limit, but if I could ask you for one more sacrifice, it would be this:
Stay.
Your community is here for you. Your community is here
because of you.
Prior generations sheltered our fragile lineages from the threat of extermination, delivered us, survivors, on their lacerated backs and unbowed shoulders. We owe it to them, and each other, to carry on - to deliver their values,
our values, to all those who will follow.
In the immortal words of the great James Baldwin,
“if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.”