This was originally written on November 19, 2024.

The 2024 US presidential election has been a reckoning in a great many ways.  It is a very easy thing to say that the people of the United States are fundamentally not a decent people, or a caring people, or an intelligent people, and that instead we are short-sighted, selfish, and bitter.  Maybe there is a plague in our culture that eliminates decency and community and makes it feel like we’re in an era of rugged individualism again, like the Wild West, or the homesteading days.  Except we’re obviously not.  People like me, who find things in the country to absolutely love are asking: Are we no longer greater than the sum of our parts? Has American Exceptionalism turned into American Vengeance? What is it for a people to get vengeance on themselves?  

When the results of this election were known, I felt as if I was being trolled.  How could so many people vote for Trump? How could so many other people stay home? I asked because we’re supposed to vote for the person who will actually make things better.  Because they need to be better.  That’s one thing virtually all Americans can agree on.  So, to me, it seemed if people were voting, not out of altruism, but out of spite.  Sure, we all feel shitty.  But I want the other side to feel more shitty than me.  

Maybe the result of this election has less to do with Trump specifically and more with a long, slow, yet deliberate process that allows Trump to win in the first place.  People will disagree, but the way smartphones have permeated every single aspect of society seems to have irrefutably changed community, family, and friendship.  That rugged individualism is now coupled with a deep-laden insecurity, mixed with an angry defiance.  And that is a truly terrible combination. What else could make people believe that they know more than those with expertise and credentials? Nobody can know any more than anyone else in our world anymore.

Parents take the side of their kids against their teachers, because teachers can’t really know what’s going on with their kid, despite their training and dealing with a multitude of kids all the time.  People go against the advice of their doctors with vaccines, treatments, and a host of other things because how dare someone else know more than me.  People can vote away their rights and freedoms to spite those who want to improve things for all groups, and not just some.  The times in which we live make it impossible for anyone to tell someone virtually anything.  People disagree out of spite.  How else can you explain the flat-earthers?  

Many people also just want to play the fed-up victim, when they are clearly not.  And that’s such a shame because there are actual victims in this country.  These victims are many things, but they are not relatively well-off white people.  

So, in this election, the people want to be both the victim and the oppressor.  Two ideas that cannot exist in tandem.  

The victims seem to be many people. The male podcaster in his 20s asking “Where have all the ‘real’ men gone these days?” while having done nothing with his life other than his podcast.  The victim can be the outrageous number of people who voted for Trump and then immediately Googled “what are tariffs?” and “can I change my vote?”

The real victims are the friends who get together and hang out, but only look at their phones.  They are the ones who have replaced friends and family with technology and algorithms.  In that horrible and misinformation-filled environment, can these supposed victims decide it’s best to throw away our institutions, or values, our expertise, and The Enlightenment altogether because it makes them feel just a little bit better for a fleeting moment?  That’s exactly what happened.

This election was not about the price of eggs, or houses, or anything like that.  This election was and is about the price we have paid for disengaging with one another, viewing anyone we don’t know as an NPC, just to have that intermittent dopamine reinforcement we get from staring at a small glowing rectangle.  

How do a people known for their sense of community and their sense of humor elect someone like Trump? Create a system that negates our positive qualities and emphasizes all our negative qualities and have that be reinforced constantly with every single screen we look at.  Because in that paradigm, everyone who is not you is against you.