#724: What I’m reading about the election

Plus our usual assorted nonsense

The next morning, we woke up. Drank our coffee. Did our jobs. Bought our groceries at the same corner store. Walked past the same houses, “Harris” signs in their yards.

Nothing feels the same, but it all looks quite unchanged — a dissonance sure to cause dizziness for some. Your eyes and your heart send conflicting signals; your brain isn’t sure what to make of them. Is this still my home, my block, my country? Do I understand who and where I am? I have the sense of sliding backwards through the world, like standing in the surf as the tide turns back again.

This weekend’s edition is, accordingly, devoted to election-related reads at the top. The bottom is election-free, for those who — for whatever reason — would rather not. There are no additional subscriber recs today, though I hope to publish a special essay for subscribers only at some point next week.

One further note: Many, many sincere thanks to the more than 50 amazing readers who upgraded their subscriptions and/or sent kind messages after last week’s update. Y’all will forever and always be the reason I do this. <3 Take care of yourselves this week.

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What I’m reading to make sense of the election

“This Place Is All Fucked Up,” by Barry Petchesky for Defector. Post-election takes are a loathsome bunch. I find three varietals particularly noxious: the finger-pointy post-mortems, the reconciliatory sermons and the mawkish, privileged round-ups¹ of “comforts” or “distractions.” This short, sharp, percipient post is none of the above. I love it.

Even this morning’s bleary eyes can’t not see it clearly: This was a mandate for a nasty, venal person to keep being his nasty, venal self. You can’t blame third-party voters, or hesitant lefties, or anyone but the many, many people who voted for him. He ran on a platform of punishing his enemies, and his voters’ imagined enemies, and they turned out in droves to give him that power even at the expense of making their own lives worse. One cannot say broadly of Americans We’re better than this, because we’re not. A plurality of Americans hate women or people of color or immigrants or trans people enough for this to be the result …

There will be future opportunities to organize, to vote in local elections, to mitigate some of the harm. But for the moment there’s little to do, and no illusions left, just the struggle of figuring out how to live in this country, with these people.

“How America Made Peace With Cruelty,” by Adam Serwer for The Atlantic. I’m particularly interested in better understanding three narrative threads from this election: the violent animus toward immigrants, the indifference and/or disdain toward women and the dramatic, rightward shift among young men. Serwer, who has spent a lot of time among the Trump faithful at rallies, is especially helpful on that first point:

For some today, just as in the past, the presence of immigrants threatens a “dominance” that, as Gordon wrote of the 1920s, “many white native-born Protestants considered a form of social property.” It is an odd but insufficient sign of progress that such status anxiety is no longer confined to white, Protestant, or native-born people—the irony is that America is such a powerful machine of assimilation that the ascendant reactionary coalition includes millions of people descended from those once deemed unassimilable aliens by their predecessor movements.

“Broken Bones: America’s Violent Indifference Toward Women,” by Kate Manne for More to Hate. I’m not a student of moral philosophy, and would not have known to articulate this particular argument about ~it’s the economy, stupid~ this way … but it’s one that I have thought about many, many times since I read it on Wednesday.

Many moral philosophers hold that moral considerations should be overriding. Which means, roughly, that if you have a moral reason to refrain from doing A, and a prudential (e.g., financial) reason to do A, then you ought to refrain from doing A. You ought to be prepared to make the sacrifice for the sake of morality. Instead, Trump voters were prepared to sacrifice women for the sake of their bank balance.

A lot will be said about whether this decision was about misogyny or about the economy. But this is a false contrast. Whatever the proportion of people who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris simply because she is a woman, this is a narrow and, frankly, antiquated conception of misogyny that I’ve been arguing against for a decade. Misogyny isn’t about hating or discriminating against women because they are women and thus attract suspicion and consternation. Misogyny is about *exposing women to harm* because our gender makes us beneath full consideration.

For more on women and the election, see also: “How America Embraced Gender War,” by Jia Tolentino for The New Yorker, and the various/fascinating “4B movement” explainers.

“The TikTok Electorate,” by

Max Read

for Read Max. What, precisely, is up with young men? On Thursday, I asked a group of college women. They unanimously pinned their male peers’ rightward shift on wealth, privilege … and Joe Rogan. Is “the Gen Z bro media diet” truly to blame? Or are Democrats at fault for not competing in that space? These informational currents obviously matter, but maybe not as much as some observers seem to think:

When you rely too much on the idea that propaganda works homogeneously and omni-directionally, it’s very easy to misdiagnose the problem. Is Andrew Tate really turning innocent, smooth-brained young morons into misogynists all on his own? It seems much more likely that some young men bring a set of misogynist assumptions and masculinist entitlements to TikTok and YouTube, and have those self-flattering ideas reinforced and strengthened into hardened beliefs. (No YouTuber or opinion columnist ever went out of business from telling an audience exactly what they want to hear.) This isn’t to dismiss some portion of young men as unreachable misogynists--just to suggest that the “outreach” probably has to come well before they encounter TikTok, rather than as well-funded competition against the kind of macho-asshole identity politics espoused by the Andrew Tates of the world.

For more on TikTok, propaganda and gender — though not necessarily at once — see the two articles linked above, plus “Ad Man” in Slate and “What’s In Your TikTok Feed? As Elections Near, It May Depend on Gender” from The Washington Post.

“How to Live Under Rising Authoritarianism, According to a Philosopher Who Did It Bravely,” by Sigal Samuel for Vox. Readers have reached for “dystopian books” since Trump declared victory: The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. Not to be too on the nose here, but I might finally read Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl — the Austrian psychologist, philosopher and Holocaust survivor.

What we’re facing in the US today is not comparable to what Frankl faced during World War II. But his philosophy and the way he personally embodied it offers us a helpful reminder: Now is the time to live our thoughts. To ask ourselves what our values are and then get to work enacting them …

Will your actions change everything? Probably not. But they may change some things for some individuals. And even if they do not — as Frankl reminds us, sometimes it’s beyond your control to change a painful situation — you will know that you are living out your responsibility to the world and helping build a foundation for the future you want to see …

Or, to put it another way: Life does not owe you answers, but you still owe answers to life.

Would love to hear what you’re reading and watching on these themes. Leave a comment (paid subs only) or hit “reply” to send me your links.

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In case you missed it

The most-clicked link from last weekend’s edition concerned the terrifying “Gen Alpha Queens” of TikTok.

#723: Social media wars and Redbox ruins

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Postscripts

“Longevity concierge services.” A brief history of the word “fuck.” The reality of buying a cheap old house on Instagram and the long-lost art of remembering stuff. What happens when a sober influencer relapses? Is fiction getting TOO online these days? “A Group That Makes Small Decisions For You” wants to vanquish decision fatigue.

Fire Moo Deng. I don’t know, chat. TikTok’s latest protein craze. For national parks, social media is both a boon and a growing plague. Why some readers have soured on Emily Oster. How four Instagrams destroyed a life. This archaeologist discovered an ancient Mayan city … while browsing maps online. An ode to Martha’s Instagram. A remembrance of the man who voiced “You’ve Got Mail.” The Daily Beast is attempting a far-fetched comeback, and I for one wish it well. Last but not least, in further fun news, Reddit closed out this year’s fourth major internet mystery; it gave you Celeb Number Six, “The Backrooms” and “Everyone Knows That” previously.

BELOW the paywall you’ll also find:

• Unlocked links from the The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic

That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards,

Caitlin