AFN #138 Well, crap.

The morning after

Folks, I don’t have a lot in the tank today. I kind of can’t believe I’m even trying to write a newsletter—I’m mostly writing this to try and work through some (any) of my own emotions, so my apologies if this is more personal and less servicey than usual. Everything feels very far away and borderline silly this November 6th, in the aftermath of the reelection of — god, I don’t even want to type his name. Barry Petchesky over at Defector summed up my feelings pretty well in his piece This Place Is All Fucked Up:

We know what he would do as President, and we know all the things he'd promised to do as President a second time, and millions of Americans took all that into consideration and said, Yes, I want that.

What do you do in a place like this, with an electorate like that? You survive it, mostly, unless you don't. You will try to figure out how it got there, got so angry and stupid and cruel, so that you can nudge it somewhere else next time. You do this by seeing what went wrong this time. This seems like an impossible task this morning, because everything went wrong.

I monkeys-pawed myself in the days before the election by saying that I’d hoped for a 2012 Obama-style 11pm call. I didn’t specify what way I wanted it to come down, just foolishly hoped that the universe and the American people would make better choices for our future.

Part of me wants to cling to the rah-rah liberal message of carrying the fight forward. And I’m sure I’ll get to that place eventually, where this anger is a cleansing and motivating fire and not an inchoate howl of helpless rage. But it’s increasingly difficult to hold hope in my heart when so many people in this country choose ugliness, over and over again. It’s not enough that his rhetoric is hateful, that he wants to crumble our social supports and infrastructure into dust. There’s something in him that wants to see others humbled, and his supporters seem to share that same desire to bring their opponents low.

A friend of mine got caught in the Madison Square Garden rally a couple of weeks ago, ironically on their way to join me at church. I don’t think I’ve talked about that in this newsletter before: I am a religious person, a cradle Episcopalian. That the crowd of people who made my friend feel uncomfortable and frightened would probably largely identify as Christians is anathema to me. I can’t even ask if they’ve read the same Bible as me—Lord knows the Bible contains enough contradictions. Increasingly it feels like the crowd that turned out in droves to make America blood-red at the polls read the Revelation of John like it was an advertisement.

I’m angry at them for hungering for the end times like a video game they can win. I’m angry at the New York Times for repeatedly treating Biden like the senile old coot Trump actually is. I’m angry at Biden for waiting so long to drop out, for running at all. I’m angry at the Democrats for so many things. I’m angry at the Republicans for even more. If I ever see Mitch McConnell—I’d better stop there lest I get put on a watch list. I’m angry at myself for hoping for the best and not helping enough.

I don’t have anything comforting or really all that exhortative to say today. Books seem to have failed me—every encouraging phrase I can think of feels woefully short. I could give you the Ursula K. Leguin quote comparing capitalism to the divine right of kings, or the line from the Talmud about not being free to abandon the work. (Side note: if I see that fucking line from the Hobbit one more time, the “so do all who live to see such times” one, I might scream.)

Instead, I’m going to try and do my job today. I’m writing this newsletter. I took a walk earlier in the unseasonably warm weather, a 70 degree day in November that might be the coolest November 6th of the rest of my life. I’m going to try and figure out a way to move forward, because there isn’t really another option. I guess I’ll leave you with the last line of another Defector piece from this morning, After Tuesday by Nicholas Russell:

What is left, except for us to turn toward each other as the means of our collective betterment? What is left after our hopes are dashed? What kind of losers will we be? Hopefully the kind that endure. 

WHAT I’M READING

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaahahhahahahahahah. Also, Bull Moon Rising by Ruby Dixon.

HOUSEKEEPING

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