Revenge of the Regular Joe
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. —Charles Dickens
Above: To some a sunrise, to others a sunset.
Human beings are pattern recognition machines.
Mere milliseconds after we have processed what has happened, we immediately jump to the why and the how, much like a moth to the flame.
Because I am a human, I am no different; my brain also makes that leap.
What follows are some thoughts scrawled far too hastily in an effort to capture and clarify.
Take all of this with a grain of salt—I write it with a pound of humility. I remind you that I am neither pundit nor prognosticator just poet.
Though I call it like I see it, I only have two eyes and nobody knows anything.
I do not pretend to know every single intricacy or input that factored into the election result, however, I do think a big part of it is the revenge of regular men a nd woman against the online echo chamber.
Put more pithily, those who live and work IRL (e.g. in real life) than URL (e.g. on the internet).
Bernie Sanders put it well:
It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right.
Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.
These men and women are tired. It is not just a physical fatigue, but an emotional, spiritual, bone-deep one.
These men and women do not like being looked down on, condescended to, forced to live in a way that doesn’t align with their beliefs or conform to their reality.
These men and women are the “garbage” and the “deplorables.” Those in power treat them as disposable: something to be used once every two to four years before throwing them out.
These men and women are cut from every cloth. They hail from every race and ethnicity and gender and credo and creed. They know that inflation does not discriminate and the mighty greenback sees no color.
These men and women are silent not because they’re apathetic, but because they’re working. They don’t have time to wring their hands, respond to polls, or engage in performative online discourse.
These men and women are overworked and underpaid. They work hard for every dollar and cent because they can’t buy milk or eggs or gas with vibes or joy.
These men and women are hurting. They suffer from a deep, dark, constant pain that neither Advil nor OxyContin can ameliorate.
Their days are full of ennui and listlessness and lethargy. These feelings are like oxygen: invisible, but omnipresent and smothering.
You can hear almost hear them shouting Eminem’s lyrics: “I ain't that mad though, I just don't like being lied to.”
If the election could be captured by a tweet, it would be something like this:
Rob Henderson, a talented writer and astute commentator, highlighted this gaping divide even more scathingly:
We ought to call 2024 the Echo Chamber Election.
Democrats were so confident, so sure, that they were on the capital-R Right side of history, and yet, the people that delivered a landslide victory for Donald Trump not only had no voice, they weren’t even welcome inside the chamber.
It wasn’t that the Democratic Industrial Complex was tone-deaf, but that they couldn’t even hear the music.
American educator and philosopher Joseph Tussman once said:
What the pupil must learn, if he learns anything at all, is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities.
If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson.
The world certainly delivered a lesson on November 5th in the form of the American people speaking loudly and clearly.
The question is: were the Democrats listening and will they learn?
After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Reverend Theodore Hesburgh once said: “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.”
In the estimation of American voters (misplaced or not), Trump had that and Harris did not.
Democrats wanted to have their cake and to eat it too; regular men and women just wanted something to eat.
In this case, they decided that revenge was a dish best served orange.
Despite this post’s title and Martin Amis’ apt observation that “Life is all vendetta, conspiracy, strong feeling, roused pride, self-belief, belief in the justice of its tides and floods,” let us remember what Josh Billings wisely said: “There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”
To that end, I leave you with two excerpts from the inimitable C.S. Lewis:
The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.
…
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am tempted to reply: "Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents." In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors-anaesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things-praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
Wherever you are, be kind.
Time will tell and hindsight is 20/20, however, I am positive, hopeful, grateful because it’s foolish to be anything but.