Aftermath

Any election is a mixed bag.  I'm reminded of the thought that unrealistic expectations are the major cause of unhappiness.  Analyses consider the roles of low voter turnout, bungled Democratic strategy, Republican manipulation, the record-breaking use of "dark money". Progress appears more likely at the local level.  Nationally, we are stuck in a cycle for who's in and who's out.  Andrew O'Hehir considers ways of breaking the cycle, but doesn't like what he sees.

How we might possibly get out of this mess has been the subject of considerable magical thinking on all sides. I’ll take these propositions one at a time, but here are the four big ones I see. First, there’s the idea that we’ll elect some president so charismatic and large-spirited and post-partisan that he or she will heal our wounds, reach from one fortified bunker to another and forge a new way of consensus or compromise. Yes, it’s the “transformational figure” fantasy, and you can stop laughing now. Or is that crying? Then there’s the alluring notion, extensively indulged in online comments forums, that one party will conclusively win the ideological debate and banish the other to near-permanent secondary status. (This sounds comical now, but remember that when Republicans won the House in 1994 they ended 40 uninterrupted years of Democratic majorities.) Next comes the allied but distinct notion that demographic change will doom one party to irrelevance, or force it to change into something unrecognizably different. (You get only one guess.) Finally, if we conclude that none of those things is likely to happen any time soon, we introduce a fourth possibility, the big unforeseen event that leads to implosion, collapse, transformation or revolution. That one sounds the most far-fetched, but it’s a little like Nietzsche’s proverb about the abyss: The longer you look at it, the more irresistible it becomes.

All those far-fetched possibilities, taken together, add up to a not-impossible medium-term future in which the United States either ceases to exist – an event, sad to say, that would be widely celebrated around the world – or becomes something very different from what it is now. If such a thing happened, it could go in all sorts of dreadful directions. But I’m honestly not sure it would be worse than the more plausible disaster scenario, the world-historical transformation that is already well underway.

That’s the one in which the United States is slowly bankrupted into permanent dependency by endless, secret foreign wars while tiny cadres of the ultra-rich squabble over control of the economy. Electoral politics is angrily contested over a narrow but contentious range of lifestyle issues, and drives away all but the most committed culture warriors on either side. Nothing is done about the warming climate, the poisoning of the air, water and soil, the elimination of biodiversity or the mass extinction of other species. Lost in our 14-hour workdays and our consumer bubbles of pretend affluence, we don’t really pay attention, although we’re sad about the pandas and the polar bears and we hope somebody will do something about it eventually. In due course the political stalemate between Republicans and Democrats stops mattering, stops existing and is gone with the wind.

Update (November 12):  It must be nice to get elected by running against all the problems you helped to create.

Update (November 23):  The prospects for future elections looks rather dismal.  One imagines that the lowest turnout in 72 years must be considered a great success by the party who benefits. Lynn Stuart Parramore considers how so many people are traumatized by modern life in America.

Trauma is not just about experiencing wars and sexual violence, though there is plenty of that. Psychology researchers have discussed trauma as something intense that happens in your life that you can’t adequately respond to, and which causes you long-lasting negative effects. It’s something that leaves you fixated and stuck, acting out your unresolved feelings over and over.

Trauma occupies a space much bigger than our individual neurons: it’s political. If your parents lost their jobs, their home or their sense of security in the wake of the financial crisis, you will carry those wounds with you, even if conditions improve. Budget cuts to education and the social safety net produce trauma. Falling income produces trauma. Job insecurity produces trauma.

What then, are we supposed to do with our anguish? Part of our despair comes from participating in a system that is so damaging to so many, so brutal to our natures, both the physical environment and our internal selves. I eat a tomato knowing that the person who picked it may well have been an abused undocumented immigrant. I use products like Google knowing that my personal information is being used for purposes of profit and control. I vote for a candidate knowing that inaction and betrayal are the likely outcomes of putting this person in power. I can’t get away from it.

I think we all have many selves, and I know that I have a self that is so angry and disgusted it simply wants to numb out, to immerse itself in the distractions of shallow consumer culture and look away from things it feels helpless to change.

In the act of writing to myself and to you, I am reminded that we are bound, and that even if a dark age is looming, we can still pass the light between us. I can't fool myself into thinking that the ogre is not coming — but walking to meet him together is much better than standing alone.

Update (December 6):  Anat Shenker-Osorio and Jeffery Parcher urge what might be called evidence-based activism.

We have a choice. We can continue to lament election results and the seeming lack of active constituency to make America less plutocratic or we can learn from hard data and reorient our efforts along lines we know will activate our base, persuade Americans in the middle, and call out those who profited from plunging us into recession and fight to keep clutching the spoils.

Update (January 4, 2015):  Sean McElwee says that a liberal resurgence requires the mass mobilization of voters, a stable of progressive leaders, and getting money out of politics.

Update (January 16, 2015):  People outside the United States are inclined to ask, "Is this country crazy?"  Yes.

Update (February 8, 2015):  Bill Curry says a progressive movement is more important than winning elections.