I went to bed at 11:30PM PST last night, long after the election result was certain. From 8PM on, I texted and messaged back and forth with friends and family, consoling and celebrating in turn. “Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn” said St. Paul, and while I am not sure the Apostle meant it in regard to elections, I did my best to do as suggested. A gentleman casts a wide net; if everyone he loves has the same reaction, he does not love enough people.
There was a lot of rejoicing, and a lot of heartbreak last night. For the former, I counseled against schadenfreude; for the latter, against despair. Mostly, I just validated and affirmed, and, as everyone else probably stopped saying around 2015, I did my best to “hold space” for loved ones to process. I’ll probably do that quite a bit more in the days and weeks to come.
I’ll have more to say in those days and weeks to come as well, and I will try to find interesting things to share with my readers. Though both victory and defeat have many parents, I’ll name just one this morning: the result reflects the very high price of contempt.
Anecdote is not evidence, but my personal experience is hardly unique. In general, my loved ones on the right think that those who voted for Harris are uninformed or deluded. My loved ones on the left think that those who voted for Trump are wicked. If you think that’s an oversell, take a quick glance at social media this morning. The right thinks their Democratic family and friends are foolish and gullible. The left thinks their Republican family and friends are evil Nazi bigots. It is the left that has valorized cutting ties with “fascists” and “racists;” it is the left that has argued that it’s pointless, even dangerous, to give a platform to malign voices.
But they are malign, Hugo! You can’t expect me to be friendly with people who want me dead! They are moral zombies who must be defeated, not fellow human beings who must be heard!
To which the youth leader replies, as gently as he can, “How’s that working out for you?”
If the gap continues to widen between your expectations and reality, you have a couple of choices. One is to recalibrate your expectations. The other is to attempt to change your reality. If the reality in this case involves other people doing things you find distasteful, you can try to change them. Perhaps you impose consequences on them for doing what you dislike. Perhaps, when they resist, you decide that the best way to change your personal reality is to attempt to live as if those unpleasant and intransigent people simply don’t exist.
In just over three weeks, it will be Thanksgiving. It’s probably not foremost on your mind, but it will come soon (a little later than usual this year). Many people I know, almost all on the left, have changed their holiday habits in recent years. They have delivered stern ultimatums to their parents: “If you invite racist Uncle Jeff, I’m not coming. You have to choose.” Where an earlier generation counseled forbearance, the new spirit of the age says that to tolerate error is to allow it to flourish. Perhaps Uncle Jeff will re-register as a Democrat when he learns that his views have cost him a meal invitation! You already know how human nature works, I suspect. If Uncle Jeff loses that invitation to supper, he is certain to double-down on the very qualities you find so unpleasant. Your mother will probably still invite her brother, so it is your place that will be empty at the table. Uncle Jeff will eat your slice of pecan pie, and his views will not have changed. Will it be worth it? If you say yes, why are you surprised at last night?
You cannot shame or cancel people into transforming for the better. It is true with children, and it is true with adults. For the sake of your own “peace,” you can, if you like, cultivate a new, chosen family. You can surround yourself with people who share your assumptions not only about how the world is, but about it ought to be. You can create a community of the likeminded; a faithful, self-congratulating remnant of the decent and the empathetic. You can process out loud the grief that comes with cutting off so many, and you can — you generous soul! — pray for their redemption. Perhaps, if they just tasted a few more consequences of their wickedness…
As I wrote the day after the election in 2020, “we cannot decide that we will only live together in peace after the other side adopts our most basic and treasured values; we cannot make reconciliation dependent on a repentance that is never going to come.” If you want to transform the world you must love people as they are right now, not as you imagine they could be. You must fall in love with reality, not merely with potential. You must resist the temptation to declare that this result testifies to the scope and sale of human ignorance and depravity. And if you say that’s too high a price because the reality is too ugly and people really are that stupid and cruel, then I cannot talk you out of it. You get “to feel what you feel,” as the youth leaders always say.
Just understand that you will continue to lose elections.
This is fucking gaslighting, Hugo. You place all the burden on the people who will be most hurt/affected by this and imply that they are out of line for not accepting it and moving on. In a world where the hateful are allowed to flourish without consequence and use their power to hurt others, it should not fall to the hated to accept their lot and embrace the people who hate them. That will not bring peace. That will not make things better. That will only allow the awful to be as awful as they want to be. It is true that we live in different worlds, but that does not make them equal. The trajectory of the world the right is pursuing in one in which only a tiny minority will be happy. That is not okay. That is not something good people should just accept. The right believes they should be able to behave like assholes without being treated like an asshole, which is great if you want to live in a world where everyone is an asshole. Yet, you’d argue that the people who advocate for consideration, empathy and kindness are the real enemy because they can no longer tolerate the hateful thoughtlessness and selfishness of those who believe they should be the only ones with any power to control the world.
Hugo, I generally like your writing, truly. But you do see the irony of talking about those on the left being contemptuous of Trump voters in a piece that is dripping with contempt toward the left, yes? "Self-congratulatory," a sarcastic "you righteous soul," etc, etc. I doubt that welcoming racist Uncle Bob to a holiday dinner is going to do anything besides ruin Thanksgiving. Far too many in this country buy into the fear-mongering rhetoric that illegal aliens are going to take their jobs, commit rape and murder, eat their pets (!) and so on. That, plus while voting for a black man was seen as maybe kind of ok in 2008 and 2012, after the debacle of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other failures,voting for a black woman who served in the administration that is being blamed for the recent inflation is seen as a bridge too far. I don't know what the answer is when someone with 34 felony convictions who spews hatred for anyone different from himself is seen as fit for the highest office in the land. I suspect there will be another pendulum swing when the public is reminded why they had had enough of Trump in 2020. Until then, I suspect the best we can hope for is damage control.