2024 Reflections

2024 is finally over.

It was the worst year in modern memory for those on the right side of history. While we knew early on that Donald Trump would again be the Republican nominee, none of us could have foreseen the unprecedented midyear shakeup at the top of the Democratic ticket. With a hostile media hellbent on his demise, a subpar debate performance by President Joe Biden ignited Democrats' not-so-subtle concerns about his age and forced him to drop out, naming Vice-President Kamala Harris as his chosen successor. While Democrats quickly coalesced around the vice president, bad actors continued to undermine the party, especially the Watermelon Brigade of gullible college students and progressive Democrats who failed to realize their "concern" over Gaza was a perfect PSYOP for Russia, China, and Iran to destabilize the West. Combined with the underreported bird flu's impact on the price of eggs and all of a sudden you had fairweather Democrats begin to question their commitment to the Democratic Party, the only thing standing between the United States and the early stages of fascism. When the election rolled around, 6 million Democrats stayed home, handing the future of our Republic to Donald Trump and President Elon Musk. 

We learned a lot in 2024. But perhaps the most painful lesson is that our country is not as good as we believed it to be. While many of us stay involved because of the audacity of hope, the truth is that 2024 proved that a disappointingly high number of our friends and neighbors either don't understand or don't care about our circumstances. Their self-interest trumps policy that may negatively impact those they love and care about. After all, Trump and his GOP goons made no secret of who they're coming after: immigrants, the transgender community, women's rights. Yet, 2024 saw a massive swing in the Latino vote toward the GOP. It saw White women continue to vote for Donald Trump at the same +7% level as they did in 2020 despite the Dobbs decision. And it saw White men continue to refuse to think for anything beyond their own gender and skin color and vote once again for Donald Trump at the 60% level. Despite everything we saw with Donald Trump, it is telling that 2 million more people saw him qualified to be president in 2024 than they did in 2020. 

We did not see this coming. I did not see this coming. After all, we are Democrats because we believe in the greater good of people. We ascribe to Barack Obama's ideas of wanting to work toward a more perfect union. We understand that the moral arc of the universe bends slowly toward justice. We firmly believed that 2016 was a perfect storm that caused the electorate to bypass an immensely talented woman for a carnival barker. But when it happened again in 2024, when the American people again passed over an immensely talented woman for a man, the same man who failed the country for 4 years and mounted an insurrection against the American people, we could no longer attribute the vote to the naivety of the American people. The 2024 election was a choice and the American people chose hate, fear, and apathy over hope. I was wrong about who we were and I'm sorry if I led you all astray. I honestly believed that we were better than this. I saw an American electorate I hoped for rather than the one that existed.

This realization hurt. As someone who actively volunteered for both the national campaign and with the PA Democrats, I saw the concerted effort being made to make inroads into the swing states. Millions of text messages went out. Hundreds of thousands of phone calls were made. Tens of thousands of out-of-state voters came in, paying with their own dime and dollar to help swing any one of the 7 swing states needed to hold the presidency. Kamala Harris raised over a billion dollars in just over three months, the majority of that coming from committed Democrats like yourselves. While Donald Trump resorted to outsourcing his volunteers to Elon Musk who essentially held hostage those dumb enough to volunteer for money, Democrats were opening dozens of campaign offices and doing the nitty, gritty work that historically would be the difference between victorious and losing campaigns. Every fiber in my being told me that Kamala Harris had done enough to win and with the Trump Madison Square Nazi rally, I believed that his fate had ultimately been sealed. 

I was wrong. And I now must decide how to deal with a country that is vastly different from what I believed. 

This will take time. Like many of you, I'm still evolving in my processing of all of this. But what I have done is cut back on social media. I finally left Elon's Nazi pajama party and migrated to Bluesky but even here, I've intentionally blocked or muted those rabble-rousers on the left who will continue to try and grift these next four years. I've decided not to sweat every single action of the incoming administration. Yes, Donald Trump will institute some horrendous policies. Yes, these will hurt our most vulnerable communities. But Republicans live to cause pain. The cruelty is the point. Trump will undoubtedly undo some of Joe Biden's most important accomplishments. But knowing that his goal is not to govern but to instill a sense of hopelessness is critical. He wants to flood the zone with the worst ideas of Project 2025. While few of them will come to fruition it won't prevent him from continuing to float ideas on social media. With clickbait-driven media, these ideas will get way more coverage than they should. Understanding that not everything Trump says will become law is an essential way of resisting in 2025. 

It's also worth noting that similarly in 2017, Trump had full control of the White House, Senate, and House and the only thing he passed was tax cuts for the wealthy. That's not to say he didn't try; after all, he did institute his Muslim ban less than a month into office and his GOP Senate colleagues were a single vote away from ripping away the ACA from over 20 million Americans. But political and judicial reality set in. Let's not forget that Trump even went so far as to cage over a thousand refugee children, an unspeakable act of cruelty that got so much pushback that Ivanka of all people had to go to her father and tell him that this policy was simply unsustainable. We can't protest everything Trump does this time around, but if we pick our battles like we did last time, we still have an opportunity to lessen the damage that Trump will do to our communities in the long run. 

Take heed, Barflies. This year was hard, and 2025 won't get any easier. I know I'll be in a deep state of mourning on Inauguration Day and will refuse to watch any of the day's events. We'll all need days and likely weeks when we simply unplug or step away for the sake of our own sanity. That's perfectly alright. Self-care is resistance. But sustained apathy is what Republicans are seeking. If we get to the point where we feel we've done everything we can and there's nothing more that can be done, then we've already lost. There's always something we can do, whether it's at the local, state, or national level. We're 3 seats away from flipping the House and there were several key races that Democrats lost by less than half a percentage point. Surviving the next two years and then completely neutering Donald Trump's agenda with Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and House Democrats in control should give all of us hope for what could be possible in 2026. 

It won't be easy. But history has put each and every one of us at this moment in this place. We've found each other on this website when there are billions of pages out there on the world wide web. We don't know each other's real names but we know each other's stories. We're in this together and I for one could not be prouder to stand alongside you all in the fight to come. To quote Hamilton, "History has its eyes on you" and knowing this, we cannot fail. We're living in unprecedented times with no roadmap for what to do. For the first name in our nation's history, the enemy is within. But we recognize the danger. In 2024, we understood the assignment. And moving ahead, we simply have to continue to engage because our enemies are banking on us giving in and giving up. 

We simply cannot let them win.

***

Hi everyone, LL here.

So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun.

I have been saying this ever since I got over the shock of the Calamity: Seize your joy.

Seizing your joy was essential from 2017-2021. It will be even more so for the next four years.

The thing that people like Donald Trump and his lumpen followers don't understand is joy. They are desperately seeking to assert dominance. It's why they are so apoplectic over the exodus from Twitter. They exist solely to engage in rage and animus. When we absent ourselves from their narcissism, they have no way to react. They, in fact, turn on each other, as we've seen over the past few days with the H-1B visa fiasco. The MAGA coalition, binding billionaires who simply want to get as close to trillionaires as they can, and a lumpen-proletariat which leans more towards the Ernst Röhm side of the National Socialist ledger, which took seriously Donald Trump's talk about the American worker and keeping American jobs for Americans. Well, the first skirmish is over, and the Sturmabteilung, although not suffering a Nacht der langen Messer, quite simply lost this battle. Trump is bought and paid for by the oligarchs, the ones who snicker at him behind his back, and of whom he so wants to be a part. This is a coalition which will fracture. It may be in two months. It may be in two years. But these are two diametrically opposed forces which will eventually have to settle who is in charge. (You even have the likes of Steve Bannon saying that the rich need to pay more in taxes. Ernst Röhm indeed.) It will get messy, and it'll get bloody—both metaphorically and literally, as the more radical elements of MAGA seek to wrench power away from the oligarchy.

So. What am I going to do, which I think is the way forward for those of us who did the right thing? For the next four years I'm going to engage in a form of quietism. 

In religious philosophy, quietism is a withdrawal from political life, as political life is inherently corrupting and keeps the believer from communion with God, which is the ultimate goal of a human life. 

Now, no, I'm not going to take this to its extreme conclusion. I've never believed in a complete withdrawal from political life. Such an action surrenders the field to those who do not have my best interests at heart. But the fact of the matter is that a bare plurality of those who voted in this country chose the calamities which will be inflicted upon us over the next four years. Worse, an even bigger plurality completely abdicated their responsibilities as citizens and didn't turn out to turn back fascism. Therefore, a majority of those who had a choice chose this. For myself, I see no reason to save them from themselves. They will simply have to suffer the full effects of their decisions. It is not up to me or you or anyone who voted for Kamala Harris, or who supported Joe Biden, to work towards a soft landing. I take my cue from the Black women whom I follow on social media, and the Black women on this blog: you chose this, you figure out how to fix it. I'm sitting this one out.

I am not going to "resist," at least not in the way hysterically bruited on social media platforms. The time to resist was in November. The majority of this country failed in that simple assignment. I see no reason to bother myself with marching, calling Congress, or laughably wearing a blue bracelet to indicate that I'm "safe." Those who know me know my politics. I don't have any need to engage in silly performative acts. People who should have known better decided upon this. I will just see this play out.

What I'm going to do is take care of me and mine. And when that demands that I re-enter the political field, that's what I'll do. But the thing I won't be doing is posting "If you think Trump is a criminal, repost this!" No. That kind of social media activism is not only pointless, but actively harmful. It makes you feel like you're doing something, when all you're doing is, pardon my French, fapping at your keyboard. And this form of fapping doesn't even have a happy ending.

I'm going to seize my joy. I'm going to do things which bring me pleasure, either physical, emotional, or intellectual. I'm going to figure out who I am when I'm not constantly in political battle mode. I was planning to do this on the expectation of a President Harris, or, before he was so cruelly dispatched, a second Biden term. Now I'm doing it as the ultimate form of self-care. This nation, both by action and inaction, has made its desires clear. Who am I to go against democracy? May that electorate enjoy all for which it has opted. 

Yes, we will engage in battle again. We will not let them win, as Trevor said. But just as it took the Allies two years to lay the groundwork for the Normandy landings, the same kind of time will have to pass for the error which so many have decided upon comes to fruition. And I'm not going to fight to lessen those errors. As Robert Graves has his Emperor Claudius say, all the corruption will have to reach a saturation point before the Republic is ready to be reborn. There is no quick way out of this.

I urge you all to seize that joy. To find happiness in the little things. To not allow the world to destroy who you are. Surviving intact, or nearly so, is a political act. It is the greatest thing you can do: to face the world's tumult, and come out of it with your principles as they were.

A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year. Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear.

From Trevor and I, blessings upon all of you.