In Wisconsin, Dan McNeil, 71, a Democratic school board member in the farming town of Barron, called the situation “scary.” “You walk into a place in town, and it is, like, ‘Whose side are you on? Are you a liberal Democrat or a Trumper?”
An hour away in St. Croix County, Scott Miller, 42, who said he is a member of the local Republican Party, wondered if it was already too late: “These corporations are putting out millions and trillions in profits, donating unlimited amounts to politicians,” he said. “How can the average person compete?”
“Americans in the middle have been acting like spectators at a train wreck, but we’re all on the same train,” he said. “And if the train goes over a cliff, we’ll all go with it.”
That’s why liberals are so fascinated and horrified by Trump: to avoid the class topic. Hegel’s motto “evil resides in the gaze which sees evil everywhere” fully applies here: the very liberal gaze which demonizes Trump is also evil because it ignores how its own failures opened up the space for Trump’s type of patriotic populism.
Slavoj with the clearest distillation of our current politic.
The Left’s obsession with Trump — something I’ve only recently recognized as such — is a strange phenomenon. I should first say (because I feel obligated to do so, lest I be cast out of polite society) that Trump is a grave threat to democracy. I’m in no way diminishing that opinion.
But the Left does indeed fetishize him. I’m guilty of this as well. During his first term, I was a ball of nerves much of the time. I hated Trump, and that hate began to spill over onto his supporters. I excised Trumpets from my life and felt no shame in doing so.
At least not for a while. In the first year of Biden’s presidency, something in me changed. Perhaps it was living in a small, rural, conservative town that helped me to realize most Trump supporters are not monsters. They’re not fascists, nor do they hate me or people like me. Many people support Trump for purely economic reasons, regardless if I think those reasons are sound. (Do I think many of those people are ignorant of the implications of his re-election on democracy? Yes, but you can't hate someone for their ignorance. Or so I'm told.)
But I have so many friends that hate Trump, yet refuse to reckon with why he's so popular. They insist that his supporters must be racist, stupid, or Christian Nationalists. And while some are, they're not the majority. The Left has to reckon with the underlying causes of his popularity, and those causes are clear as day from where I sit: class issues. This is all about class.
I'm astonished by how Liberals are so unwilling or unable to acknowledge this. It's been nearly a decade and they keep insisting that if we could just get rid of Trump, things'll get better. There is zero reckoning with their role in neoliberalism or with just how profoundly the Democratic Party is controlled by corporations and their money, just as the Republican Party is.
To add insult to injury, the populist Right is largely correct when they say "coastal elites" are calling the shots, looking down on the common people, etc. Highly educated people, myself part of this crowd, do judge the hell out of conservatives and of rural people. I see this all the time. The Left's hatred of Trump and their treatment of his “basket of deplorables” is proof.
That we feel repulsed by the alternative to our constitutional democracy, having seen it up close, is a very good sign. In this sense, hypocrisy plays an important part in the moral formation of us fallen creatures. Pretending to be a better person than you are is a pretty good way to become a better person than you are. So let’s allow each other the space to do that. Let’s take one another’s embrace of the boundaries of our politics seriously, even if the people you oppose aren’t about to confess all their past sins.
…I was about to start writing my second novel. It was about a wealthy family on Long Island who lose their money, the leakage of my frustrations at watching the middle class disappear and at the moneylessness of my own youth. (Let’s all agree, for the sake of this story, that relative moneylessness isn’t a dollar amount but a state of mind and stomach born of your own particular circumstance.) I was grappling with a question I had, which was this: Who was better off, people who were born with money and never had to worry about their survival, or people (like me) who didn’t feel they had the financial stability and who had to learn to be survivors on their own? Did having money doom you in a way?
I wanted to see the Teiches because I was embarrassed to report that, though the fictional family in my unfinished novel bore only rudimentary biographical resemblance to them, a kidnapping kept finding its way into the plot. There was something I couldn’t resist thematically about it, because it elucidated one of the many paradoxes of money: that money can put you in a kind of danger even as it brings you safety, too.
People (especially those who don’t read) so often assume that a writer is in control of a story, when it’s always the other way around.
I’ve long struggled with talking about my own writing, about the craft of it. I rarely-if-ever talk about it with non-writers, as they simply can’t understand. But I try at times to elucidate the process both here and elsewhere on the internet in hopes of discovering, well, what exactly?
As the adage goes, writers write what we know, and thus writing is extraordinarily revealing. We cannot hide who we are, not convincingly. And while something inside compels me to write “my truth” (groan), I’ve read enough Greek and Roman mythology to know a relentless pursuit of truth tends to become a lonely endeavor. Honesty tends not to win you friends or lovers.
So then how do I balance vulnerability and honesty? Where do I find the courage to reveal the ugly, anxious, embarrassing parts of my self in my work? How do I trust that I’ll be met with some measure of grace when I struggle mightily to give it to others?
As of late, understanding that a story writes itself is table stakes for any meaningful connection. Ideas come to us, they are not of us, and this is the foundation of every relationship, every personal interaction, every bit of writing in my life.
Perhaps because of this, I often feel alone and a bit adrift, looking out on the world with earnest curiosity.
If I had to choose between these two tendencies I would obviously have to choose the blue MAGA over the red. Doing so would protect abortion and environmental regulations and the NLRB, among many other things. It’s not a contest, for me. But of course I’d prefer to choose neither. Blue MAGA is very, very real; the paranoid style has spread like a coronavirus from Republicans to Democrats. Put “The New York Times” into the Twitter search bar on any given day and you’ll find relentless, enraged invective coming from Democratic loyalists who insist that the paper of record is on a mission to reelect Donald Trump. They used to laugh at Republicans when they groused about “skewed polls,” but now they do the exact same thing - any poll that emerges that suggests Biden is losing is a conservative op, run by a firm with a well-known Republican bias.
This, it seems, is where we are: two warring political tribes who share the foundational principle that anything that goes wrong for them is the product of a rigged system. Two angry players, too busy working the refs to concentrate on the game, looking for some higher authority to declare that the other side broke the rules. This isn’t fair. They’re breaking the rules. I’m telling the teacher. They’re denying us what we’re owed. Today the parties are united only in their belief that, on a neutral field and playing a clean game, they cannot lose. If a single voter endorses the opposition, their opponents must be cheating. How could it be otherwise? Surely only conspiracy could defeat us. Surely only The Man could pull the wool over the eyes of millions. This was much more of a Republican thing, and I know that people hate any argument that sounds like “both sides.” But both sides, in fact, are now operating this way. The notion that Democrats cannot fail in a clean election, cannot stumble but through illegitimate outside force, is now fully enculturated into the party. They hate Trump so much they’ve adopted his signature contribution to American politics. And I don’t know how you get out of this without violence, at this point. I really don’t.
The speed with which the paranoid insanity — the same that took hold on the Right a generation or two ago — has consumed the Left is alarming. I can’t quite make sense of how many people refuse to acknowledge Biden’s disaster of a debate performance simply because they’re terrified of Trump.
Trump or no, Biden is unfit for the office.
As a friend put it, “how is it possible we have a choice between two emperors, both of whom insist they’re wearing clothes?”
Sometimes I think my lifetime was front-loaded with goodness; that so much of life until now has been good, and at some point, this can’t possibly hold. The excess and craven want of my culture will finally crest and begin to devour itself. In doing so, we find a truth we’ve worked for so long to avoid.
We’re out of balance, and imbalance doesn’t last.
Honestly, what makes me more depressed: that a course correction sure feels as though it’s on the horizon? Or that it might not be?
…watching him barely capable of finishing a sentence, staring vacantly into the middle distance, unable to deliver a single coherent message even when handed an ideal question, incapable of any serious rebuttals to Trump’s increasingly deranged lies … well, the first thing I felt was intense sadness. This was elder abuse — inflicted, in part, by his wife.
The second thing I felt was rage. His own people chose to do this. That alone reveals a campaign so divorced from reality, so devoid of a rationale or a message, so strategically incompetent, it too has no chance of winning. It is an insult to all of us that a mature political party would offer someone in this physical and mental state as president for the next four years. And it has always been an insult. That the Democrats would offer him as the only alternative to what they regard as the end of liberal democracy under Trump is proof that they are either lying about what they claim are the stakes or are utterly delusional. If Trump is that dangerous, why on earth are you putting forward a man clearly in the early stages of dementia against him? Have you decided to let Trump win by default because you’re too scared to tell an elderly man the truth?
I think it's time I say publicly what I've been thinking privately for months: unless something drastic changes in the next few months, I'm voting for RFK.
I've told a few select people, each time as something of a 'coming out.' Predictably, this inspires the derision and mockery you'd expect, and far more from liberals than conservatives.
My followup question is always this: have you actually heard RFK speak for a full interview, unedited? Or have you made up your mind simply based on what you've heard other people say about him?
A few weeks ago, I listened to an episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour titled 'Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Could Swing the Election. Who should Be More Worried—Biden or Trump?' I challenge you to listen to the first ten minutes. Listen to the tone of the hosts, the condescension with which they talk about him. He was once a drug addict! He owns up to cheating on his wives! He'll steal votes from Biden!
Once you listen, do you still trust his coverage in the media? Can you hear the fear in their voices? Fear that he will somehow pull enough votes away from Biden to guarantee Trump a win?
As far as I'm concerned, my vote comes down to this issue: corporate rule. RFK is the only candidate consistently speaking out about the role of corporations in our politics. It is the issue that undergirds all others in our politics. Corporations do not give a shit about democracy, they are designed only to maximize profit for their shareholders. (I am one of those shareholders, so I know how this game works. I have money invested in the market, and I make more money simply by having money invested — it's that simple. Do I labor for that money? Nope.)
Whether its Biden or Trump, corporations are donating millions to each campaign, hoping for favorable laws and regulations, tax breaks, etc. All in service of making more money…and making people like me, their shareholders, wealthier. This is the engine of inequality.
Again: corporations do not care about democracy. They only care about electing the candidate most likely to increase their profits.
This cycle must be broken.
I don't care about RFK's thoughts on vaccines, just as I don't think it's wise to vote based solely on a small-scope issue like abortion. Does it seems strange to me that we give infants ever-increasing numbers of vaccines shortly after birth, even for diseases that are sexually-transmitted (and thus presumably won't need for at least 15 years)? Yes. Do I think the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, passed in 1986 and which eliminates financial liability of vaccine manufacturers, is suspiciously in favor of large pharmeceutical corporations? Yes. Not that I don't understand why the law was passed — to incentivize said corporations and companies to research life-saving vaccines, many of which have been a tremendous net-positive for our culture! But both things can be true. Good intentions can also increase corporate profit.
Am I onboard with everything RFK thinks or says? No. But I've listened to hours of his interviews and I think he's mostly cogent, clear-headed, and equanimious.
I encourage you to listen, in full, to some RFK interviews:
After Biden's performance at the debate last night, I cannot fathom how anyone can in good conscience vote for him. And let's be honest: they can't. They're merely voting against Trump.
We live in a time when our political opinions cost us relationships. I won't pretend I'm not angry or bitter about having lost several myself, but I will not let the fear of losing even more due to my political opinions keep me from speaking my mind.
Do I agree with everything RFK says? One more time: no, I do not.
But at this point, do I think he's the best candidate in the race? I do.
Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally — including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems — and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops.
At issue is the way that Apple collects and publicly shares information about the precise location of all Wi-Fi access points seen by its devices. Apple collects this location data to give Apple devices a crowdsourced, low-power alternative to constantly requesting global positioning system (GPS) coordinates.
