Don't panic, things were always this bad

The Song of Dark Awakening

Yes, this is again about politics, because what else is there? But this time I do genuinely want to make you feel better. So read on, or skip ahead to Good Things for some great winter board game recommendations and TV and film picks.

As a journalist, I’m ethically barred from contributing to political campaigns or participating in partisan political activism. And though I don’t self-censor on social media or in personal writing like this newsletter, I do genuinely try (and often fail) to focus on facts rather than sentiment, both because I hope it makes my reporting more trustworthy, and because we have more than enough people yelling.

Those constraints have made the past four years challenging in some ways. In my twenties and early thirties, I was active as a protester against the War on Terror and as an organizer with the Tampa branch of Occupy Wall Street. It has been strange to leave that part of my life mostly behind (though the leadership at Fortune was enlightened enough to decide that Black Lives Matter demonstrations aren’t a form of partisan politicking, so I’ve participated in a handful).

Though I think my role now is important, I’ve been continually nagged by the thought that I’m caught trying to stay neutral on a train that isn’t just moving, but careening into a wall with an engineer dead drunk at the switch. I should be rushing the engine room, but instead I’m interviewing the guy who built the boiler.

Whenever I feel this twinge of strange situational guilt, I mollify it with two thoughts. First, I tell myself that some of the momentum I helped build is carrying into this moment, which I’m sure is in some abstract sense true. And, second and related, I remind myself that this place has been an absolute shitshow for … well, forever.

The facts speak for themselves. One dossier for the prosecution was compiled by Jamelle Bouie at the New York Times, who reviews the grisly U.S. record on race from Andrew Jackson to George Wallace to Dubya’s handling of Katrina. Radiolab, meanwhile, recently focused on the regular serious dysfunctions of U.S. democracy, which have included not just Bush v. Gore, but the contested 1876 election contest between eventual winner Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden. And as a chillingly relevant aside, Radiolab also helpfully reminds us of the many times the U.S. military force has been deployed against citizens, instances including the Tulsa Massacre, the use of the Army against Bonus Marchers, et cetera.

In the scheme of things, the argument that Trump is a unique threat to democracy really loses some of its appeal. Democracy in the U.S. has always been fleeting and hunted, and its predators have often been even more dangerous, because they were quiet.

There is no argument for nihilism or complacency here. America survived all of this, but paid terrible tolls each time. The intervention of the Supreme Court to halt vote counting in Bush v. Gore led directly to the fraudulent Iraq War, with its immense human and moral losses. 1876 was even worse: Tilden’s party gave Hayes the victory in exchange for ending Reconstruction in the South, easily the worst thing to ever happen to African-Americans aside from slavery itself. To paraphrase the old saw, elections have consequences – especially when they’re stolen.

So if you’re looking for a positive spin on everything that’s going on right now, there it is, I guess, sort of. Trump was enough to get a lot of people to vocalize their outrage, and it seems likely, to vote with it. It’s a remarkable contrast with the early stage of the Iraq War, for instance, when Really Bad Things were happening and most folks couldn’t be bothered to get up off their asses.

But … why? Why are they suddenly engaged now? Why not, for instance, when the infamous 1994 crime bill was passed with the um, substantial involvement of Joe Biden?

There are a number of theories as to why people who have been happily on the sidelines, particularly fairly well-off suburb-type liberals and ‘good conservatives,’ are now enraged and engaged. You might cynically argue it’s all about being “woke,” a term which has been so effectively appropriated from Black people that it is now a synecdoche for the superficial, cynical politics of white liberals. In short, maybe it’s all just virtue-signaling.

I think a stronger argument is that what Trump really threatens is the illusion that the meritocracy is a fair game. Many of his opponents simply want a playing field that appears rational. Whether that rationality leads to justice or decency is, as history shows, insignificant to many of them. In fact, it doesn’t even mean they actually want fairness – especially for themselves and their privileged children. (On some deep level, this is also a portion of Trump’s perverse appeal – his voters know the game is rigged, and he speaks to that, though he invites them to revel in cynicism rather than actually doing anything about it.)

But the really, truly optimistic possibility is that at least a sizable portion of these folks have actually learned a thing or two. They’ve learned some specifics – we’ve had quite a crash course in racial justice, and in how fragile scientific consensus is.

But more importantly, they’ve learned the one big truth that fifty-odd years of quietly rapacious consensus has obscured. Bouie puts that big truth this way: “To the extent that Americans feel a sense of loss about the Trump era, they should be grateful, because it means they’ve given up their illusions about what this country is, and what it is (and has been) capable of.”

So if you need to prepare yourself for election night, remember this: Even if Trump wins again (I don’t think that’s going to happen), he may actually wind up transforming American politics for the better rather than for the worse, in the long term.

Trump himself is too stupid to obscure the truth about things like voter suppression, and the rolling crises he’s created have essentially been one long exercise in saying the quiet part loud. By making the injustice and hatred and cronyism that have been endemic in America for centuries explicit, he has forced a taking of sides, instead of allowing those who benefit from empire and oppression to get away with just vocalizing mild displeasure of the machine that feeds them. That reversal will not be permanent for most – assuming Joe Biden takes office, for instance, I expect discussions of police brutality to mysteriously fade into the background.

But at least some people will realize that this was never just about Trump. The quiet part has been said loud so many times that some people will realize there were other quiet parts, in the before times, that were never said loud at all. Yes, the costs are real and huge, but they always have been. And this time, in exchange, an illusion has been shattered, at least for some.

Good Things

Keith Raniere, founder and leader of NXVIM, has been sentenced to 120 years in prison on sex trafficking and other charges.

How To With John Wilson – We checked this out because it’s executive produced by Nathan Fielder, creator of the endlessly genius Nathan For You. How To With John Wilson, though, is something different, and more profound. I might describe it as a more poetic, slow version of the Eric Andre Show, one that slides effortlessly between being funny and genuinely moving.

Ultraorthodox Jews and the Coronavirus: This New York Times piece by Shmuel Rosner is a great explainer of why certain parts of New York City have remained hot spots while the rest of the city has its act together more than most of the U.S. “Haredi Jews are well practiced in defying the larger society in which they live, and defiance is the tool they pulled out when new pandemic rules were dictated.” Sounds familiar.

Putrescence Regnant by Exalted Funeral – I’ve recently discovered the existence of a thriving underground of artsy, indie/punk … role playing games. I’m overjoyed. This one goes above and beyond, combining an old-school hack n’ slash in a creepy monster swamp with an actual vinyl LP that includes both atmospheric music and gameplay elements. I can’t wait to find out what it’s like. The Kickstarter just wrapped, but if you keep an eye out they’re going to allow new buyers to get on board once the pledge manager launches, likely in the next week or so.

Escape the Dark Castle/ Escape the Dark Sector: If you’re curious about the intersection of doom metal and games you play at a table with friends, but would rather not actually sully your life with the ownership of roleplaying materials per se, these card-based dungeon crawlers are the absolute sweet spot. They’re very rules-light, but they have huge atmosphere and fun, as you and a pandemic-bubble friend or three hack your way through a series of encounters, rolling dice to kill grotesque monsters and collecting loot. Each game lasts about 45 minutes, which is about the perfect length to provide a good excuse to get together, without locking you in to a slog of looking through rulebooks.

Escape the Dark Castle is the original, but as far as I can tell it’s sold out unless you order it from the U.K. Escape the Dark Sector is a sci-fi variation that’s widely available. Personally, I still haven’t exhausted Castle, so I’m considering jumping on a new Kickstarter that’ll deliver Sector and a bunch of expansions in August of next year.

Halloween (2018) – Yes, you’ll be getting this email a couple of days after Halloween. But still. I didn’t jump on this sequel when it first came out, but it’s really good. I wish we got more of Jamie Lee Curtis – her character is remarkably sketchy, all things considered – but damn, this machine kills.