“I woke up this morning, I could barely breathe.”
The words are from “Empty Sky,” the saddest of the many songs Bruce Springsteen wrote about 9/11. They came to mind eight years ago, right after Trump’s shocking triumph over Hillary Clinton. Along with Trump, they’re back.
“Empty Sky” is about the loss of the planes that September day. It’s about the loss of so many lives. It’s about the loss of a loved one.
Most of all, it’s about the loss of faith.
“I woke up this morning to an empty sky.”
Back in 2016, I wasn’t sure what I’d lost faith in. My fellow Americans who’d picked Trump for president? Our democracy? Our future? America itself? I’m still not certain today. But I know it’s a lot.
In an early 2017 interview in New Delhi for Indian TV, I consoled myself and viewers with the notion that the people surrounding Trump might constrain him, that our governmental institutions might do the same and that the ever-increasing ethnic diversity of American society might make his nativist presidency a one-shot aberration.
This past Tuesday pulverized any such assumptions.
Rather than his first term’s array of at least somewhat responsible officials, the people around him this time around will be cronies and aides hand-picked to enable him.
Our institutions have failed, the Supreme Court proving particularly corrupt and complicit. Its remarkably shameful Trump v. United States decision this year granted immunity for criminal presidential actions, forestalled his trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election and gutted the fundamental principle that no one is above the law.
Our increasing diversity has proven no match for his increasing appeal, which now stretches well beyond his white nationalist core. Indeed, his inroads across numerous broad demographic categories are stunning.
How did this happen? If it makes us feel less alone, one unheralded factor is the post-pandemic, inflation-fueled, worldwide electoral tide against incumbent parties in affluent democracies, regardless of where such parties stand on the political spectrum. Couple this with America’s strong, 21st Century tendency toward anti-incumbency and you have a double political whammy helping to do in the Harris campaign.
Of course, there’s far more to the election’s outcome than that, and likely far more fundamental factors at play. I’d rank sexism at the top of the list, with racism close behind. Economic dissatisfaction was huge. But no one factor fully accounts for this disaster.
In weeks and months to come there will be endless dissections of the election, recriminations about what went wrong, recommendations about where we go from here and perhaps even inspiration for moving forward.
For me right now, though, I’ll live with my loss of faith in so much I’d believed in and sort through what might revive. I’ll indulge a bit more in diversions from that painful reality, ranging from rooting for my Golden State Warriors to simply smelling the roses. I’ll try to treasure how fortunate I am compared to so many others, without abandoning their plights.
Perhaps something similar applies to you; perhaps not.
Regardless, we can hold on to faith in whatever still sustains each of us – not least our friends, our families, our pets, our communities.
Regarding our communities: The single greatest thing I took away from my years working in international development was the notion that you do what you can where you can. Sometimes it’s better to focus on the smaller challenges and opportunities, as opposed to the grander dilemmas. Until the darkness passes on the national scene or while we find ways to fight it, there is still so much we can do on the local level, or for particular causes, or to move ahead on whatever moves each of us.
The alternative is to wake up each morning to an empty sky.
[Hat tip: BB, DL.]
Beautiful and well said .
We do what we can, where we can .
Thanks, Steve. Beautifully said and much needed 💙
Thanks, Steve. I’ve had very few worse days than yesterday. I’m going to take a break from news and see if that helps. I don’t understand anything starting with how the women in Florida rejected the right to control their own bodies. I wonder if the MAGA hat folks will make the connection when they lose their affordable health care that the money will be going to Trump cronies to build huge detention centres to snag the underpaid dishwashers of LA, thus fulfilling an election promise.
We will probably be okay, my family will probably be okay, but something definitely died yesterday and wish I could mourn the loss and move on. I just don’t see how that will be possible. Last Sunday John Oliver said that this is our chance to be rid of him forever. At 80 I realize that instead he will be around for the rest of my life. OMG.
Thanks for the feedback, folks. And I unfortunately agree, Barbara: Something died on Election Day.
Steve,
Thank you for turning to Bruce’s empty sky metaphor to describe what many of us are feeling. It’s pretty grim, isn’t it?
I don’t think Tuesday’s results are due to an anti-incumbency tide, however. In the main, it’s about other things. The reasons for my thinking are too long to discuss now, but I hope we will have the chance to do that soon, perhaps in a long Zoom with friends.
For some time, Tim and I both thought she would lose. Though we were not surprised by the results, the magnitude of the loss–the fact that he won the popular vote and lost an array of voters such aswhite women, GenZers, Latinos, black men who voted solidly Democratic in 2020–came as a shock.
I have received notes, even poems about the piteous state of our country. Each one recommended how those of us who supported Kamala Harris should, as you suggested, turn inward to tend to our loved ones, friends, and local communities. It’s a good idea. But I’m not sure time is on our side in terms of indulging that impulse for very long. We should stay “in our lane,” and “go local,” in a hurry because the unbelievably cruel, bordering on bloodthirsty, desire for revenge is underway already. The grotesque threatening language (see what Trump’s lawyer said about New York AG Letitia James today) and planned lawsuits are here.
My other, not so original observation is that the oligarchs flexed their muscles blatantly in this election. They aren’t hiding behind dark money contributions any longer. They are out in the open asserting their power, and there won’t ever be a retreat from that position. Even if they detest Trump, they retreat preventively (witness Jeff Bezos’ craven decision not to allow the WaPo to endorse Kamala) to keep their businesses thriving, shareholders happy and yachts sailing. I don’t think I fully understood Silicon Valley’s powerful hold on Trump until recently. The views of the conservative billionaires from that neck of the woods are truly alarming. See David Sacks’ thinking about criminalizing homelessness.
Americans have thrown their lot in with Trump and the oligarchs because their world has been upended profoundly in the last 60 years economically, culturally, and structurally. When they realize the Maralago crowd is not on their side, that they’ve been played for chumps with false promises of turning back the clock and making America great again, the level of rage will, to use DT’s ridiculous phrase, “be like nothing we have ever seen before.” That, of course, assumes the next four years won’t see them cowering first in fear because of the intimidation tactics that will be used to silence dissent (suspending broadcast licenses, suing and/or arresting everyone from Jack Smith to Liz Cheney to Mark Millie). Silencing dissent is too polite; make that cutting out our tongues.
What I’m trying to figure out now is how I will respond to “the carnage” ahead so that I can live with myself. It’s a test, and we must decide who we are and what we stand for morally and ethically when tyranny robs people of their fundamental rights. The “banality of evil” is catching. Let’s hope there is a vaccine against that sickness. Not likely, though, is it? Anthony Fauci won’t be around to develop one.
Kelly
Thx very much but these powerful and deeply felt thoughts, Kelly
*for these