The Long 2020 isn't over.
Congratulations, America.
We did it. Our institutions held. Our military has not taken to the streets to support a would-be tin-pot dictator. We just managed to hold one of the freest and fairest elections in the history of the United States, with record-breaking voter turnout, despite voter suppression, roll-purging, ratfuckery, Russian psyops, and a massive disinformation campaign run by our own administration.
I can't begin to describe the feeling of relief that swept over me when I heard Joe Biden say, "My fellow Americans--" but I probably don't have to, as it seems everybody who is likely to be reading this newsletter felt it, too.
And already the calls for reconciliation start. Some of them from the top--and that's fine. Joe Biden has been a political operator his entire career, a career that started when I was a little more than one year old. I don't think he harbors a single delusion about Mitch McConnell and how Mitch operates and who Mitch owes fealty to.
Biden had already been a senator for 13 years when McConnell was first elected. I'm pretty sure he has that sadistic little fucker's number. I'm not saying it's likely to be easy or that there won't be losses as well as wins, but one of my chief reservations about Obama's presidential candidacy was that I didn't think he had the political experience to drive the machine.
Biden manifestly does. And I'm fully in support of transactional politics in the service of human rights--including LGBTQ rights and healthcare.
Biden's walking into the White House with a resounding mandate, whatever the right wing talking points are. He's going to have 306 electorial votes and the affirmation of more than fifty percent of the voters. His party holds the House and no matter what happens in Georgia, has gained seats in the Senate.
And Biden's going to do whatever he can to help Stacey Abrams drive her machine to win Georgia, which included those nods to reaching across the aisle. It's a hard push, but I'm here to throw my small-dollar donations.
But it ain't over.
Brace yourself, because I'm going to sound like a nutbar conspiracy theorist for a minute here.
The executive branch is largely disassembled. The Census is a shambles. The courts are packed with unqualified reactionaries. A global pandemic rages unchecked (to say nothing of the cyber-war we're barely aware we're fighting). Trump and McConnell still have two and a half months left to vandalize the hell out of the Federal Government, a rapidly warming planet threatens human life and property globally, and Joe Biden is walking into a more volatile situation than any US President since, probably, Harry S Truman.
The enemies of freedom still exist. World War Cyber isn't over, though if I'm right, we just won a significant battle and we now have an administration in place that is aware of the problem and willing to take steps to fight it, rather than being its willing puppet and patsy.
But the covert propaganda battle for American hearts and minds is still being waged, both by our own crop of reactionary billionaires and their flunkies and by the psyops branch of an international kleptocracy. (It's all a kleptocracy; we just use politer terms for the Koch brothers et al.)
What we as individuals need to realize is that we are front-line conscripts in the Information War. We have no choice about whether we fight; we do have a choice about which side we fight on, and whether we even notice that there's a war.
It's a war funded by fossil fuel oligarchs defending a dying industry, as if they were trying to wring every last penny out of their buggy whip factory by setting everybody's diesel tractors on fire--except in this case the tractors are the planet. A planet we all happen to live on.
They're going to lose; it's inevitable. But dying empires wreak a lot of destruction on their way down.
You don't have to forgive your enemies. Just make damn sure you know who your enemies are.
It's not your Trumpist uncle. (You still don't have to invite him to Thanksgiving or send him a birthday card. Though a donation to RAICES or the Reverend Raphael Warnock is always an appropriate gift.)
It's not Donald Trump, such a shambolic parody of an authoritarian that laughing at him is bringing Mussolini and Franco a little joy in Hell. Trump is what the KGB once termed a "useful idiot." He's a tool.
It's not Trumpism, though Trumpism is one hell of a weapon.
It's not even Mitch McConnell, who is just a handmaiden to the real evil behind the scenes.
The real enemy is the people driving the culture war. It's extremely cynical, and it's extremely intentional.
It's Rupert Murdoch using his media empire to undermine faith in government oversight and to reinforce the racism and bigotry and white supremacy inherent in the American psyche. It's Russian disinformation bots telling leftists that Kamala Harris is virulently anti-trans (she's not) and trolling for Bernie and telling BLM activists not to vote as much as it's the pro-Trump disinformation bots.
It's the Koch brothers and their ilk funding Americans for Prosperity in order to oppose human rights advances and government oversight and decent wages and basically anything that might make the average human life less desperate and miserable and rein in the abuses of billionaire Libertarians.
It's undermining the regulatory and economic power of the E.U. by any means possible.
It's the classic psyops playbook of Vladimir Putin, pretty much an actual Bond villain.
(ETA, I forgot to add:) It's the intentional radicalization of the Facebook propaganda echo chamber.
None of them actually care about Donald Trump or abortion rights or anything except protecting their financial interests and global power. It's all just "Let's you and him fight!" while they loot the silverware.
Let's not. Let's keep our eyes on the real problem here, and not worry too much about the foot soldiers.
Further reading:
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, by Jane Mayer
Ratf**ked, by David Daley, and a Planet Money Podcast episode on Project REDMAP.