Hope Is A Radical Act of Defiance
An end to my short-lived stint in political commentary and a look ahead to the upcoming year.
Well, shit. A lot has happened since the election, hasn’t it?
The last time you heard from me I was begging you to vote (and losing a not small number of subscribers in the process).
I was certain the excitement surrounding Kamala Harris would result in a narrow victory if only enough voters turned out.
I was cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
I could even picture the look on my young daughter’s face as we stood amid a sea of people gathered in Washington, D.C. to witness the swearing in of the first female president of the United States.
I was dead wrong.
Sure, the first few days after the election were rough. I may or may not have turned to the Stone Temple Pilots’ iconic performance at the 2001 Rolling Rock Town Fair for comfort on multiple occasions. (There will never be another frontman like Scott Weiland!).
Climate change as ‘a hoax’
I felt — and still feel — that climate change is MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE facing our country and the world. This is an existential threat that trumps (lowercase “t” here) all other threats we face moving forward. If we can’t get a handle on the rapidly accelerating climate crisis, well, that’s ballgame.
As more places around the globe become uninhabitable due to extreme weather and rising temperatures, people will be forced to fight for limited resources, wars will spontaneously break out everywhere like acne on an unsuspecting teen’s face and society as we know it will collapse. It won’t happen overnight, of course, but once this thing gains momentum it will accelerate quickly, and it will be unimaginably ugly.
I know that sounds like kind of bummer, but it’s what we’re up against, and it’s why I believe we need leaders who place climate change at the top of their priority lists.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say Donald Trump feels a tad bit differently about the whole global warming problem than me. He’s publicly called climate change a hoax and joked about how rising sea levels would create more beachfront property (and look, the way some pundits and celebrities treated this typical Trump remark was ridiculous and even a little funny). And let’s not forget how climate change was handled during the previous Trump presidency. Removing mentions of climate change from government websites sends a strong message about your stance on the subject.
The 2024 cabinet picks vow to continue with the climate change denialism, roll back Biden-era protections and increase the usage of fossil fuels. Take Trump’s secretary of energy pick, Chris Wright, an oil executive who had the following to say about climate change in a LinkedIn video that has since been removed from the site:
"There is no climate crisis, and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either. We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods despite endless fear mongering of the media, politicians and activists … The only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive, opportunity-squelching policies justified in the name of climate change."
Kinda hard not to worry about leadership that doesn’t even believe the single greatest threat to our species is a threat at all.
Leading up to the 2024 election, I bought into the whole end-of-Democracy-as-we-know-it hysteria a bit. But it’s not like a Kamala Harris victory was akin to a knight vanquishing the dragon that single-handedly held the village hostage. Sure, I would’ve loved to see what a very capable, very talented politician could do in her historically significant role as the first female president of this country.
But there was only so much Harris and her team could do with a largely traditional approach to the code red issues facing our country right now. A Harris presidency wouldn’t make all the major issues — the real issues, not the bullshit we’re being fed to distract and divide us — disappear. At best, the administration would quiet some of the noise temporarily and maintain a status quo that desperately needs to change.
The clarity of history
See, Trump isn’t the problem — at least he’s not the main problem.
Deep down I always knew that, but it took being so spectacularly wrong and embarrassingly naive about the 2024 election for me to see beyond all the breathless media coverage of Trump’s campaign and all the hypocrisy inherent in these pundit hot takes, high stakes celebrity endorsements and manufactured narratives about what it all means.
I mostly have author Jared Yates Sexton to thank for the clarity.
In my search for meaning following what I thought was a shocking election, I stumbled upon Mr. Yates Sexton’s “The Midnight Kingdom Lecture Series,” based on his book The Midnight Kingdom.* He wasn’t shocked at all by the outcome of the election. In fact, he basically saw it as the inevitable result of where we’d been heading for a LONG time.
It’s hard to overstate the impact Mr. Sexton’s videos on me. His ability to out clearly explain the key events in our country’s troubled history that led to this current moment, as well as where we’re headed next was both shocking and upsetting to me. It’s what those asshole tech bros would call “paradigm-shifting” or “disruptive.” But it’s also vital information that I really think every American deserves to have.
Without historical context, it’s impossible to fully understand what’s going on here. It feels like everything is just happening, and there’s no explanation for the insanity.
That’s intentional.
We’re being inundated with emotionally charged information 24/7, and 99.999999% of that info is strategically designed to distract us from what’s happening right in front of our eyes, to pit us against one another, shift focus away from the inequality in our current system and encourage us to consume a ton of shit we don’t need to fill the void created by such a fucked up system.
As the way smarter Jared points out — not to be confused with the way more talented and better-looking Jared or the creepier criminal Jared — this isn’t about politics.
This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans.
It’s not about Red versus Blue.
This is now and has always been about the Haves and the Have-Nots — a class war that, as Mr. Sexton points out, that can be traced all the way back to the Roman Empire — if not even earlier.
We’re at a critical stage in a class war that is about to get very, very ugly. The select few — the billionaire class — who have built unimaginable wealth on the backs of the working class have positioned themselves to control every facet of society moving forward, including the information we receive. As Mr. Sexton warns, we’re rushing headfirst toward authoritarianism.
If we really want change, if we really want to make this country and this planet better and fairer for future generations, we need to give up the childish #hasttag activism and stop thinking that antiquated and ineffective institutions will keep us safe or that some hero (ahem, Jack Smith stans) is going to swoop in and save us.
We need to look at the way things actually are and address the root problems that have grown unnoticed and metastasized while the real villains have sat back quietly pulling the strings, blinding us from what matters and stoking hatred, paranoia and fear of the other (the lead image by Dennis Lushch is an excellent example of what’s happening).
Look, I know how dramatic this reads. If you’re thinking all this ranting and raving is a bit too off-brand for some dude who’s running a sporadically updated newsletter about “the personal side of natural disasters,” well, you’re absolutely right.
I promise I’m not going to turn this into a weird political Substack; that’s not my thing. I’m going to come back in 2025 with renewed energy and refocused strategy for this newsletter.
Today, however, I felt compelled to write about the headspace I’ve been in and what got me out of it. Post-election, I felt like throwing up my hands and just admitting, “Well, we’re fucked, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
That’s how those in power want us to feel — defeated, demoralized and way too overwhelmed to look beyond the crisis of the day.
Stepping away from breathless mainstream media fearmongering and focusing on Mr. Sexton’s historical breakdown gave me much-needed perspective on the current moment. It also gave me something I haven’t felt for some time: Hope that tomorrow could maybe be better today, that change isn’t impossible and the ending hasn’t been written just yet.
That’s more important than ever.
As we had into a turbulent period for our country, our planet and our collective psyche, hope is a radical act of defiance.
Thank you so much for your continued support! I can’t wait to bring much, much more to this space next year.
I highly recommend checking out Jared Yates Sexton’s lecture series and/or his Substack. I started on the fourth video in the series, watched number and then went back and watched one through three — but I think your supposed to view the series in order. You can do that right here.
Losing credibility over these Scott Weiland comments.
Good post. Glad I caught it.