Why I didn't know this was coming
On purpose, throughout the election, I made the choice to insulate myself and disengage with any media suggesting that Trump might win. I just remember the horrible careening emotions from 2016, and couldn’t put myself through it again. I wanted to be reassured. Plenty of hopeful narratives made themselves available to me. I told myself his felony convictions would break through and mean something. I noted that he’d gutted the dedicated political machinery at the GOP national level and replaced it with incompetent, bitterly backstabbing cronies. I saw how he was diverting at least half the political funds towards fighting legal battles. I read stories about previously disengaged Puerto Ricans who’d seen the racist “island of trash” remarks at the Madison Square Garden rally, and decided to vote Harris at the last minute. I read about the inaccuracy of the polls, their inability to capture what was happening on the ground, the nervousness of pollsters since their failure to predict Hilary’s loss. I watched clips of the man himself, rambling, dissolving, incoherent, clearly traumatized after the attempt on his life, an old man in decline.
All of this was true. What surprises me though, writing this all out now in postmortem, is that it was all true in 2016 as well, different only in detail. The racism, the gaffes, the bizarre and fragmentary comments, the crime and corruption. Why would I think any of that could affect his chances?
As soon as I read the news and checked Twitter the morning after, I saw the shock and despair reeling past on my feed, and felt like I’d been electrocuted. I turned my phone screen off. Then back on, and deleted Twitter. And then all my social media apps. This is very unlike me. Like many other journalists, I have a late-stage and terminal phone addiction. It used to be a part of the basic toolkit — Twitter allowed you to find tips and sources, expert commentary, take the temperature of the conversation, and crutically, network. But Twitter is now X, and belongs to Elon Musk, a venal, adolescent-brained oligarch who is also the largest security contractor to the US government, a man who had bought the news app where all the journalists hang out so he could control the conversation. I wanted to believe that unlike everyone else, I was merely following the journalists and commentators I trusted — I was using Twitter in a thoughtful way that lead to me being better-informed, and I was too smart to be propagandized. This is of course the point of propaganda. Literally everyone thinks they are immune to it. Nobody is.
Moments in the campaign did make me doubt myself. It made me completely insane, after the initial burst of enthusiasm when Harris entered the race, to see them trumpet an endorsement from Liz Cheney. Bush-era neocons! And then also Harris worked hard to alienate Arab-American voters in a crucial swing state by refusing to break with Biden on the worst moral and diplomatic failure of his tenure. Gotta say, when your tax funds weapons, it feels awful to hear the platitude about the right to defend oneself when the Israeli army is apparently shooting kids in the head for sport. And then in terms of policy…can anyone remember anything she said about it? Were there any radical ideas to meet the moment? “We’ll protect abortion” feels pretty hollow considering the Dobbs decision dropped during Biden’s administration. Harris even told the press that she wouldn’t have done anything differently than Biden if she’d been in charge the last four years. This isn’t to undermine the underlying radioactivity of racism and sexism, but I just have to point out that to an undecided voter, the democrats offered absolutely nothing.
Kamala played to the center and lost. They took the bet that there were more moderates than people further to the partisan left or right. It was a fatal miscalculation brought on by the fact that democratic elites and the media were talking to themselves. Nearly everyone without an NYTimes subscription now gets their info and commentary from a few influencers or podcasters or YouTubers that you’ve never heard of, and most of the news is very poor quality because local newsgathering barely exists. Instead of good information, there is a lacuna. In the absences I was content with the unevidenced feeling that things would be alright. On my news feed, I saw nearly every journalist I followed say they had felt the same way, and had made the same mistake.
It’s not at all complicated why Trump won. Daily life sucks for most people. Stuff is more expensive. Jobs are undignified, exploitative, unstable. Big countries seem primed to do more war. The democrats were in charge; they got the blame. In loads of other places in the world, strongman authoritarianism wins majorities in elections. Turkey, India, Hungary. The US has chosen to follow them. The result will be a series of catastrophes.
I make no predictions because nothing is written in stone. If there’s going to be a solution to the Trump era it will come from civil society, unions, proper organization. Churches too. Solidarity at your workplace and neighborhood. Social media produces no coalitions because a hashtag cannot have material demands. That was the idea back in the Obama days — remember Arab Spring? — but Twitter is no more public square than a strip mall is. It is not a tool for democracy.
People keep asking me how school is and I will write more about it soon — I felt I just needed to say something about the election. Overall, doing an entire law degree in a single year is a bit like standing in front of a firehose every day. It is really, really intense, but I am really enjoying learning stuff again. I feel my brain engaging in a way I haven’t felt in a very long time.
The thing that’s very fun is that every single principle of law is based on a specific dispute between two wackos that happened anywhere between the present day and eight centuries ago. A crusader who gave away his castle to his friends for safekeeping while in the holy land, but the friend evicted his family. A lady who discovered a dead snail in her bottle of ginger beer. A hobo who passed out with a lit cigarette, accidentally setting his squat house on fire, and then drunkenly wandering off to sleep in another room when it got too hot. A retired banker who bought a lordship title online from the Knights Templar for £1 and then successfully claimed a pasture as his ancestral land, even though the Knights didn’t own it. I have been wandering through the house in a haze and encountering Rachel and then saying “let me tell you about the case I just read” and rambling for between five and ten minutes.
Because this is a food blog, I will mention that this morning I made breakfast burritos from scratch. I’ve been looking at how to make good flour tortillas and it’s pretty easy. 2:1 flour to boiling water, a tablespoon of oil or melted butter, pinch of salt. Knead a lot, let sit 20 minutes. Divide into equal balls and roll out, cook for 30 seconds per side on a hot pan. Way, way better than store bought.
Nobody really knows how the people in northern Mexico started making flour tortillas. Wheat obviously wasn't around before europeans showed up, but people have theorized it was pancake making technique brought by chinese immigrants, or perhaps moorish refugees and sephardic jews recreating middle eastern flatbreads.
To fill the burritos I cooked some onions and garlic and peppers, added PORK and BEANS, cheddar, and some salsa verde. I forgot to take photos because I was too hungry. Supremo.
My good friend Jess repaired the elbow of my blue chore jacket with a stitching technique called sashiko as a birthday present, and it is extremely cool:
We also got a cat. His name is Levi. He is our beautiful fluffy creature.
