There is no denying it now. He was always going to win Iowa handily. Just like he will win most primaries. The only question was whether those who would oppose him were going to face reality so that they could, well, oppose him. Thus far, they haven’t.
Instead, we’ve seen delusional editorials and commentaries celebrating the idea that Nikki Haley — of all fucking people — might have a chance of giving Donald Trump a run for his money. Some are still writing these editorials, only now shifting their sights to New Hampshire, finding futile hope in the fact that a win from Haley might change the overall trajectory. Others are picking apart the results in Iowa and finding whatever morsel they can that will allow them to actually argue that “this is not good for Donald Trump.”
If what they say is true, and we can now essentially start the general election, then that should be cause for concern on their end, not relief. For sure, fourteen percent is a dismal turnout for the Iowa caucuses, but the Democrats gloating about this are laughing in the mirror. Given Biden’s resolute support for the flattening of Gaza, given the blank check he has written Israel, given his refusal to call for a ceasefire despite a decisive majority of voters supporting one, the incumbent is facing his own imminent enthusiasm gap. It’s sure to grow with US engagement in Yemen, as Israel turns its attention to Lebanon and Syria, not to mention Ukraine, or everyone’s stagnant standards of living.
This is how American politics work now, both at home and abroad. It’s not reliant on drumming up excitement or mobilizing supporters, but simply a contest of who is more demoralized. It’s not necessarily a new development, but it is reaching a culmination of sorts.
Nor is it unique to the political realm. About thirty years ago, Very Smart People started insisting that we were at the end of history, that all the old coherencies and predictabilities no longer applied. But if so, if we were now in an era more defined by what isn’t, then we were naturally compelled to wonder what is. So we all stared hard into the small nothing at the center of the new everything.
Over time, that nothing grew. Over decades, it was like we were staring into the sun. Trump himself got a lot of flak for just that while he was in office, but it’s essentially what all of us have been doing since the end of the Cold War. The difference is that, while it’s left most of us with blinding sunspots, stiff necks, and exhausted spirits, the lumbering meatsack that is Donald Trump can walk away unscathed, just as he does every scandal and lawsuit, just as he likely will every federal charge he is facing. Nobody embodies the durable nothing of late-late disaster capitalism like him.
The rest of us aren’t so lucky. Exhaustion is how most things are accomplished today. Bombard us enough with a New Thing over a long enough time and we’ll eventually relent, no matter how empty or dangerous it might be. It’s how we’ve all been conditioned to accept artificial intelligence as an inevitability, and why we’ve embraced Taylor Swift as a pop genius. It’s why we continue to go to our shitty jobs, and why news of a mass shooting feels less like a shock and more like a dull pang.
It also may be why we aren’t seeing the social media panic from liberals we might have expected to see following Iowa, or at least why that panic isn’t engulfing our feeds the way it has in previous years. For all the pundits clinging to the hope of some kind of miracle that wipes Trump from contention, be it in the form of another Republican nominee or the idea that he might actually go to jail, the response from online liberalism has been comparatively muted.
(You might argue that this is down to general fatigue and fracture in social media, but this only underlines my point. With Facebook and the former Twitter having played a central role in squeezing apart the dominant narratives of traditional media, their own downfalls have left an even greater void, each fact and argument floating aimlessly. Grab onto it, oppose it in any way, you’ll still find yourself adrift.)
But then, malaise and complacency have always been akin; 2016 should have been proof enough. There is still a very real danger waiting in the wings. A big enough gap in support will allow well-organized (and well-armed) minorities of true believers to seize the moment. As global conflict escalates, the presidential candidate most likely to press the big red button is also the one with the most momentum. The horror persists, but so does the horror.
Two notes:
I’m well aware of the Nazis on Substack debacle — the Substackers Against Nazis petition, the weak responses from Substack’s honchos, and the now very real exodus of people from the platform for various reasons of principle and safety. I’m currently weighing my own options. It’s not unlikely that I’ll be migrating this newsletter elsewhere, but what that looks like and when that will happen will take some time. Bear with me…
February 1, 11:30am GMT, I will be speaking as part of an online launch for Cathy Porter’s new book, Larisa Reisner: A Biography, alongside Porter and Sezgin Boynik of Rab-Rab Press. The launch is part of the HM Broadcasts series, hosted by Haymarket Books. More information here.