13 November 2024
Like a lot of people in the United States over the last week, I’ve been going through some shit. The last thing I wanted to do was post something on the blog. The day after the election was a low point. Living in a swing state, the election has hung over our heads for over a year, and the results were traumatic. I’ve spent a lot of energy over the last week trying to understand what happened, and through doing so, my world view changed.
I’m not going to go into my beliefs other than to say my wife categorizes me as pretty far to the left. It’s probably true, but the big thing for me is that I believe we owe it to ourselves to have a government that serves people and gives everyone the best opportunity for a good life. Right or wrong, I come at these beliefs with a wide scope and define things in terms of standards that apply collectively to our entire society.
The Trump Era has really angered me. I can’t stand the man. I can’t stand the Republican Party who placates to Trump. I don’t see them as sharing the same values that I have. They seem to care only for themselves. When you listen to the things they say and do, it’s reprehensible. They don’t want anyone telling them what to do, but are happy to tell anyone who is not them what to do. My world view on the GOP has not changed and likely will never change based on what they’ve said and done. They are the antithesis of everything I consider American.
The problem with this mindset is that I grouped anyone who voted for Trump and the GOP in the same bucket. In 2016, I took solace that Clinton won the popular vote. In 2020, I was elated that Biden won by such a large margin in both the electoral college and the popular vote. Seeing the returns in 2024 shattered this belief that it was a subset of Americans that hated America. Trump won the popular vote and is going to be the 47th President of the United States. Did I wake up and this country has turned into a country where the majority is full of hatred of anyone who isn’t like themselves? As bummed as I was by the result, this is the question I spent the last week meditating on. To keep my sanity, I needed to reconcile this.
The situation is complicated. My media consumption re-enforced my previous worldview. I stopped doom scrolling and am getting more diverse viewpoints through RSS feeds. When there are no more posts, my consumption stops. In addition to being healthier, it’s helped me look at the situation with fresh eyes.
Some Trump supporters are going to be giant, colossal assholes and abhor everything I find great about America (they’re more likely the ones buying his stupid flags). It’s not possible that every Trump voter falls into this category. The truth is that things are hard right now. Our lives are not meant to go this fast. Productivity is at its highest it has ever been, yet we’re constantly asked to give more and more. The economy is going great, but not for most people. We can’t expect people to ask if they consider themselves better off than they were 4 years ago. People are barely able to eke by. All we can expect from most people is to look at the current situation and ask “are things hard?” If you see it that way, yes, things are really hard. The desire is then to vote for whoever is not currently in office. I suspect this is what happened in 2020, but I read that it was a mandate against Trump. It was just a mandate that people aren’t happy with the current President, and they’ll vote for whoever isn’t the current President.
To me, I can reconcile this with the thought that is going through people’s lives. It’s better than harboring hate and resentment towards half the country. The real question is how do we break from this? I’m seeing that we’re doing this ping-pong change at the Executive Branch, yet people are still voting for the same members of the Legislative Branch election after election. The 50/50 nature of the House and Senate means that no legislation is being passed, and things that can help people just aren’t being voted on. This is a harder question because the Presidency is just one branch of our government. If we really wanted to change, we’d need to overhaul everything.
I’m choosing to focus my attention on local issues. If we can get government to work for us here, then we can hopefully see a larger pool of people that get involved. I take solace that progressive ideas are popular even in the era of a second Trump presidency.
One phrase I keep coming back to came from Elliott Kalan (of the Flop House Podcast fame). In his 99% Invisible Breakdown of The Power Broker, he said that public servants need to Noticeably Improve People’s Lives or NIPL (the acronym doesn’t work well, but it’s why I remember it coined in episode 2 of the series). If we empathize with people and give them allowances that the world is hard, then to get people excited to vote for these policies, they need to make lives better for people. That’s likely it. When good things happen because of your policies, you need to advertise it early and often. We have short memories. Give us something to be excited about, and people will come out and vote. I really hope that we can turn things around because I dread the thought of more election cycles with the status quo.
