During the last ‘election summer’ things went haywire but ultimately nothing meaningful really happened, and not a whole lot really changed as a result of that unrest. This time things are going haywire again, and it seems like something big will happen but people thought that the last time… Would it just be better to ignore everything and go work on yourself, your skills, etc. or consume whatever thing is going on? The constant fear that’s being pushed is so emotionally exhausting… I’m finding it harder to care about these things without anything major happening, as shitty as that sounds
Friends of mine who are not news watchers asked me about this when Trump was first elected – their question was more or less: People seem like they’re freaking out about this. Is this actually a big deal? Is this actually going to impact my life in any way?
I thought about it a little bit, and said that I thought there was about a 30% chance that Trump was going to fuck something up in such a dramatic fashion that it would actually impact their lives in an unavoidable way. I mean, the 70% doesn’t mean he has no impact (someone getting a job or not, or the pay for the job, or the rent they pay, can be impacted very substantially by this indirect process that actually does root back to “the government” – but it takes a while, and there are a lot of local and personal factors too, and “the government” is a lot bigger and more complex than just who is president, etc). But you can kind of ignore all of that and continue with your life, and the amount of time and energy it would take to get involved (as opposed to just taking what comes) is maybe pretty significant.
In retrospect I think the 30% was a pretty good prediction. For all the impact he may have had on people somewhere else in the world, he made it about 70% of the way through his term before Covid hit, and then the way he fucked up the response definitely impacted our lives on an individual level. I know people whose family members died. It’s hard to say that they wouldn’t have if Trump hadn’t been in office, but his “let’s all keep going to work, it’ll probably blow over, feel free to punch anyone who wants you to wear a mask” response definitely increased the death toll significantly.
I think the chance this time around that Trump would have no individual-level impact is close to 0%. I know someone who’s deep in the conservative rabbit hole, get all his news and picture of the world from TikTok, who’s deeply confused about what’s going on in the country and real angry about the picture that all the little video reels have created in his mind. He’s bought himself a handgun now.