It's not your fault. I'll be there.

Election thoughts. The newsletter version of a shoulder squeeze.

If you’re waking up this morning angry, scared, and/or hungover like me, I really have one central thing to say: it’s not your fault. This is not a sappy saccharine sentiment: this election is genuinely not your fault. Of 50 states, really only a few ultimately mattered. And of those states, a minuscule amount of voters were the margin between victory and defeat. It’s a ridiculous system, but that’s not even the point of this letter. The point is that this result is not your fault. Small consolation, but it matters.

I say this because there’s going to be a concerted effort to blame all kinds of voters for this result in the American election. A certain kind of pundit will blame Muslim Americans in states like Michigan. Another will blame the ‘white working class’ in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Some will blame Black men in Georgia. Others will blame Latino voters in Nevada. At a certain point people need to step back from these talking points and ask ‘wait, what is this doing?’ With any kind of scrutiny, the answer should be: ‘nothing’. This kind of analysis that bundles masses of people together into groups without context is frankly pointless, and we need to move past it. It’s also partially why we are here. ‘Black men’ are not a monolith, ‘Latinos’ are not a monolith, and the ‘white working class’ is not a monolith – I am a white working class man who is, essentially, an Anarchist. We all contain multitudes! Enough! Shut up! Do not put people into a box! Is there any imagination left?

Individual voters are largely not really responsible for this election, but the Democrats and the Republicans are. In the United States of America we are supposedly represented by only two major political parties. 300+ million people represented by only two parties. This is ridiculous! Everyone knows this is ridiculous! But we are essentially trapped by these two parties, and so we’re forced to play by their rules. I am, essentially, this: an American, a Lefty, a Socialist, someone who considers themselves an Anarcho-Syndicalist¹, a person who cries at any beautiful cover of The Internationale. But I guess I’m a Democrat! But it also doesn’t really matter who I voted for: in this election I voted in Illinois. In the past I was voting in New York. And before then I was in Washington. Again: it doesn’t matter. This is maddening, because it should matter, but it doesn’t. Do you relate?

This is all, again, to say: it’s not your fault. If you voted for a third party, it likely didn’t matter, and if you voted for Democrats in any of the reliably ‘blue’ states, it didn’t matter. Even if you voted for a third party candidate in the swing states, it didn’t matter. This pisses people off but I need to repeat: the issue of the election is exclusively the Democrats and the Republicans. The third parties are currently inconsequential. So are the protest votes. So it’s the Democrats and the Republicans in the narrow window of swing states that really matter. Well, who won? Well, we know.

I want people to stop blaming themselves and their neighbors. Blame the powerful. Blame the leadership of the Democrats. Blame Harris, blame Biden, blame whoever you need to blame. But do not blame the people who are struggling, who are suffering, who are confused and lost. If you need to release that energy, then do it privately. Email those thoughts to me, just scream at me, I will scream with you, please just treat me like a crash dummy for your angry thoughts, I am not joking. But why are you screaming at someone you vaguely know who was unexcited about voting in this election²? Why are you screeching at someone who was wary of supporting Kamala because of her support of American policy in Gaza? What does this accomplish? Who is this for? Again: blame the powerful. Don’t blame the people.

But, additionally.

Anyways it is 4:38 am and I am frustrated, and sad, and frankly scared, and also drunk. The tone is changing, because it’s hitting me. I am thinking about the people I love who have just blossomed into their genders and now don’t know where to go. I am thinking of the people in Gaza who will somehow now get an even worse genocide. I am thinking of working people who will be thrown out of work. I am thinking of the beds that my friends are preparing for people who will flee the orders for deportations. I am thinking of the people who will continue to stream up north for abortion access. Beautiful lives ruined for no reason. It makes me angry. It should make all of us angry, and sad.

It’s so silly but I keep thinking of The Grapes of Wrath right now, because I’m dragged towards the art that actually matters to me when stuff gets bad. In the movie Tom Joad is talking to his Ma’ after migrating across the country. She is dazed and scared, but he is impassioned. He’s seen the way the way that things actually are; his family has been dragged across the country, and lost their home, but he has found himself in communal struggle. He sees that America is ugly, and beautiful. He admits to Ma’: “Maybe it’s like Casey says, a fella’ ain’t got a soul of his own, it’s just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody…”, and when Ma’ asks him what he’ll do he says, “…then I’ll be all around in the dark, I’ll be everywhere… wherever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be there in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be there in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and supper’s ready. And when the people are eating the stuff they raise and living in the houses they build, I’ll be there too.”

I’m writing on a newsletter, which is such a silly thing, and there is endless anguish over what the point of a newsletter is. I expect that those questions will only expand from here to: what is the point of writing, what is the point of art, should I keep going, what is the point in being? I have my thoughts: I will go to the barricades for writing, and art, and I am less bullish on the merits of my glorified blog. I am frankly depressed, sitting here now. Sitting alone on the couch, a very stiff drink, my face hurts. I am feeling like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, when he is praying at the bar just before walking over to the bridge. I haven’t felt this way in a very long time. It is either a feeling you know, or don’t. I hope you don’t.

My plea is: please keep going. There is a tendency to invoke ‘parasocial’ in these dynamics, but this is strictly ‘social’. If you are feeling any of that despair, any of that emptiness, I will be there with you, I really promise that. Even if you don’t feel the emptiness, I will be there too. Please, I mean it: comment to me, email me, DM me, whatever, I will be there with you, I will message you back, I will write you a letter, if you are in my geographic part of the world I will buy you a coffee or drink or go to a march with you, I really mean that. What is it that Tom Joad said, ‘I’ll be there’. All we have is each other. That’s all we ever had. I’ll be there.

Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate), Vincent Van Gogh, 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum

1. A term that essentially no longer means anything, unless you’re very cool in a specific way.

2. I voted for her, but it doesn’t even matter anymore, it frankly never mattered.