With Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee, what does a re-energized Democratic base look like to someone who lost hope years ago?
I stopped writing seriously or academically about politics when I realized I no longer had any hope for The United States or the human race in general.
Yikes! Big sentence there — let it sink in for a minute.
To me, it’s irresponsible to put those kinds of sentiments out into the wild because the energy of youth and the optimism of real activists shouldn’t be dampened by the opinions of people like myself who have hit the wall and have nothing more to give. Plus, if I believe the US will crumble and humanity is on a crash course toward extinction, I don’t want to be around when either of those things happens, and it’s the work that optimists do, pushing against all of the varying forces of destruction, that ultimately delays the inevitable. I want y’all to keep working so I will be dead before it all falls down, and I appreciate your service.
What does this mean for my politics as someone who was so vocally and radically Left? Honestly, nothing changed at all other than being able to get through the day without being heavily medicated. I took my last anti-depressant in February 2022 and it’s been pretty smooth sailing since. I started reducing the dosage once I stopped paying so much attention to the news after I had a personal revelation that I had lost all my hope for the future. It was the dissonance of hope versus the daily news cycle that kept my brain in a constant state of warfare that I needed a prescription to quiet. Once hope went away, I didn’t have to fight so hard to keep two disparate visions of the world in my psyche at the same time, but I also had to adjust the lenses through which I see life in general.
I’ve been an atheist for over twenty years, so “what is the meaning of life?” has always been a harder question for me to answer than for someone who can say “live for the glory of God” or “to get to Heaven.” My answer has always been pretty boring, but I believe(d) the meaning of life is to leave the world a better place than it was when you got here. This means using whatever gifts you have to make a positive impact so the next generation has even fewer struggles. By extension, this means you have to get the right people in office whose politics align with ideals that will lead to lasting positive change. Free healthcare, free childcare, free education, improved infrastructure, better food safety oversights, environmental protections, more robust mental health services, criminal justice reform, etc.
When Trump was elected in 2016, I lost a little bit of hope for people. Clearly the hatred, bigotry, and tribalism in general were more important to a lot of people than compassion and good sense. This does not speak well of the human condition.
In 2017, the mass shooting in Las Vegas happened and I didn’t write anything about it. There were a few people in my inbox asking if I had any comments and I realized, for the first time, that I didn’t have anything to say because I honestly stopped believing anything would push the needle on gun control. I should have realized after Sandy Hook, but I had an ah-ha moment where I thought “oh wait — we will never have effective gun control in this country because the science and the facts don’t matter anymore. Gun ownership is tribal, and it’s more important for those people to be loyal to their tribe than it is to make a safer country for children.” A little more hope was lost.
And then COVID happened and the remaining hope was extinguished, because I could no longer pretend that one tribe was the root of all evil. People, regardless of their tribe, their politics, or their beliefs, are an inherently selfish species. People in my own tribe couldn’t be bothered to simply stay at home during the height of the pandemic. Their need to party outweighed their social contract with society to protect our most vulnerable. And you know what? That’s not a shock! The history of humanity is littered with selfish acts and wars between tribes. There is no time in the history of our development where people were intrinsically “good” — we’re just animals looking for ways to protect our tribe and/or look out for our own best interests. So many wars, so much suffering, so much torture throughout the millennia over the stupidest arbitrary divisions in Us versus Them. Your god has a different name. The trees on your land are better than mine. You don’t look like me. The weather was bad and the crops failed so it’s that woman’s fault who showed her ankles in public.
I checked out. People suck, power is concentrated in such a way that there is no way to effect real change, and we’re killing the environment anyway so it’s all about to get even worse that much faster. Given all of that, how do you go on? How am I happier now than I was before? Well I’d love to say that ignorance is bliss and that I completely tuned out, don’t know what’s going on, and decided to skip through the rest of my days completely in the dark, but that’s not the case. I just shifted my worldview from the future to now. I don’t believe we can leave the world a better place than we found it, but I do believe I can improve someone’s life right now. I enjoy living because I enjoy art, I enjoy new experiences with people I care about, I love food, I look forward to the peace of a quiet Sunday morning with tea and my little knitting needles, I’m looking forward to some exciting new shows opening on Broadway, I’m getting my hair blown out in November and it’s going to look so good (I’ve been working on my length retention!), I’m excited about showing a new crush around my neighborhood…
Life is meant to be lived and the purpose is to enjoy it, but how can I fully enjoy it if I’m not working toward other people enjoying theirs? I had a tumor removed earlier this year and I could afford it because I have a great job with good healthcare — so you deserve access to healthcare too. I can have a peaceful Sunday morning because I have a comfortable place to live — so you deserve a place to live too. I saw Oh Mary last week and had a cute laugh — so you deserve leisure time and access to the arts too. Nothing about my core beliefs changed at all, because I’m still a person so I still volunteer. I still want to effect positive change in someone’s life however I can. And, by extension, I need to support politicians who want to help the greatest number of people and I need to fight against politicians seeking to do the most harm.
Everything up there is a long-winded way of saying thank you to the people who are still optimists, who are energized, who aren’t afraid to hope for the thing that feels out of reach. When Biden dropped out of the race, it re-confirmed my view that I do need to be quiet and let the believers do their work. I was fully in the camp with the establishment, annoyed at the criticism of Biden and rolling my eyes at those who were pressuring him to drop out of the race.
The election is too close! Kamala could never raise enough money quickly enough for a Presidential campaign! The country is too misogynist and racist to rally behind her! The only way to beat Trump is with a candidate that can draw the moderate Republicans into the fold, the Never Trumpers who couldn’t bear to vote for him, but might vote for another old white man that isn’t too scary for them!
These are all things I felt, said, and knew to be true — but they are not true! They came from a place of fear, a place of protection against the emotional weight and mental strain of carrying hope around. Kamala Harris isn’t the nominee yet, but the mere idea of her as President has energized the base more than they have been in a very long time. She is going to break the record for the most amount of money raised in the shortest amount of time. The rest of the world breathed a little bit.
And that’s the space I want to preserve. I don’t talk about politics with my friends much because I want them to keep that space for hope. I don’t have the mental capacity for it — and that’s okay! We all have different gifts and limitations, and I know that my brain is not set up in a way that will allow me to engage with What Could Be as much as I would like or as much as I used to. But if you can, then you should, because it’s that energy that will keep Trump from winning in November.
Will Kamala win the election? I don’t know. And I won’t be following all that closely. I won’t be watching polls and I won’t be watching a debate where an intelligent, accomplished, substantive woman of color is being platformed with a buffoon who should have been in jail a long time ago but continued to fail upward by dint of whiteness and hatred. If this energy is sustainable, I think Kamala has a better chance than Uncle Joe did, and I thought he had a pretty fair chance even with the age hurdles. I will choose to disengage more often than not, because I don’t need to see the Xenophobic Racist Obama Attacks coupled with the Misogynist Hypocritical Hillary attacks. I don’t need to watch half of America tear down a woman of color, create false narratives, debase her, and hurl vitriol sanctioned by the leader of their political party. My attention or lack of attention will not affect the outcome, so I see no need to put myself through that.
I’m unburdened by the hope of a faraway future where the country or the planet course corrects toward peace. That leaves me space to hope for Kamala as President now, a winning result to prevent changes that will make the lives of people worse now, to pass legislation that will improve the lives of people now, to inspire people to be better in a country where there is so much visible hate now. I can hope for that, so that’s what I’m going to work for. I donated my little piece of money to the cause and now I’m going to find out if I can volunteer for calls in a swing state.
I might not be an optimist anymore, but I can admit when I’m wrong, and I’m very much a realist. I was wrong to believe Joe Biden was the only path to victory and there is definitely a reality where Kamala Harris is President of the United States.
Let’s go!
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