We meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. — JFK, 1962
The presidential election may be considered as a time of national crisis.1 — ‘Democracy in America,’ Tocqueville, 1835
Robert Lowell said history is what we cannot touch.
But history has felt uncomfortably… present, these last eight years.
Experiencing history can be exciting. It can also feel like being digested.
Wild now to remember the premise of Fight Club.
FADE IN
EXT. MAIN STREET - NIGHT
Late 1990s—the American middle class. War stalks the land.No…
Hunger stalks the land?
Pestilence? Stalks the land?
…Political stability and steady employment… STALK THE LAND. ✅
First rule of political stability club: as long as you have it, take it for granted.
They say the Chinese have a curse: “May you live in interesting times.”
Our times lack not for interest, fellas.
Famous to goblins is a 2016 essay which called that year’s presidential contest the “Flight 93 Election.”
The gist was: Hey fellow conservatives—we’re losing. Culturally and politically, we’re losing. After eight years of Obama, things were bleak for the bow-tie set. So bleak that, for the hard-core, 2016 wasn’t just an election. It was win or die.2
Trump won, neutralizing the Flight 93 scenario. But when he lost in 2020, January 6th followed hard upon.
These clowns, it seems, were serious.
Today, to me, is the Flight (2012) Election. Flight is a movie starring Denzel Washington as a talented airline pilot who is also a dire alcoholic. At the beginning of the movie, the engines on Denzel’s plane fail mid-flight, but he pulls off a miraculous landing and brings his passengers safely to the ground. Where he immediately faces prosecution and professional ruin, because you aren’t supposed to be drunk if you’re the captain.
Flight is about taking stock of reality, however uncomfortable. It’s about catastrophic failure—and how failure offers a portal to transformation. Ad astra per aspera, et cetera.
In the city, Trump supporters are few, but they’ve grown louder and prouder. Maga hats are no longer rare. He will lose in New York by less than expected.
On the other hand, polls significantly underestimated national support for Obama in 2012. A similar dynamic may boost Kamala. (Fly, 2012.)
When Biden dropped out, I bet my friend Ben $20 that Trump would lose. I… now wish that number were smaller. But I wouldn’t change my pick.
I am resolved that it is impossible for Americans to appreciate how lucky Americans are. Here’s Tocqueville in 1835:
Until now, a great democratic republic has never existed. It would be insulting to republics to call the oligarchy which ruled in France in 1793 by that name. The United States is the first example of such a phenomenon. Now, in the half century since the formation of the Union, its existence has been challenged only once, during the War of Independence.
Has been challenged only once? In its first fifty years? Surely an American would have written: “Our republic had hardly taken its first wobbling steps when a leviathan of the Old World sought to crush it in the cradle.”
But Tocqueville was French. His world, his Europe, was one fucking war after another—and would remain so, the four decades after World War II excluded.
Three years after Tocqueville published Democracy in America, a young Abraham Lincoln addressed “the perpetuation of our political institutions”:
Why suppose danger to our political institutions? Have we not preserved them for more than fifty years? …We hope all dangers may be overcome: but to conclude that no danger may ever arise, would itself be extremely dangerous.
Lincoln continues:
That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at.
See? American.
It had many props to support it through that period, which are now decayed, and crumbled away.
…Props? Crumbled, props?
Through that period [American democracy] was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one. Then, all that sought celebrity and fame and distinction, expected to find them in the success of that experiment… Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring world, a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition, which had hitherto been considered, at best no better than problematical; namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves.
Celebrity culture!!
They succeeded. The experiment is successful; and thousands have won their deathless names in making it so. But the game is caught; and I believe it is true, that with the catching, end the pleasures of the chase.
Tony Soprano: “It's good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
Abe continues:
The question then, is can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that had been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot.
Abe! Meaning what?
Meaning that future Americans of ambition, perceiving “nothing left to be done in the way of building up,” will “set boldly to the task of pulling down.”
Lincoln foresaw this day.
It is for us, then, to meet it.
Later in ‘Democracy in America’: “It is quite hard to say to what degree of effort a democratic government can sustain in times of national crisis.” 😅
The operative analogy: 2016 isn’t an election, it’s 9/11. And we, the heroic conservatives, are passengers on Flight 93. If we succeed in subduing the terrorists (Democrats) and landing this plane (winning the election), great. If we lose, the only honorable choice is crashing the plane. (????)
Also, having reassessed the vibes and read your blog post, I’d like to retract my bet.
Why, this is just fantastic. I was just telling a friend that I think Nate Silver is bad and Alex Howe is good, and here it is: proof! Proof that Nate Silver is bad, and Alex Howe is good!