Election / GioCities

Harris, 68.0 million popular, 226 electoral. 43%.
Trump, 72.6 million popular, 295 electoral. 57%.

I am haunted by what these numbers represent.

I am not writing you a proof. I am upset, and this is a reflection.

My basic worldview has been that things, on average, will continually get worse. Even before the election, I didn’t think society was going to “progress.” The political spectrum represents a sliding scale from temporary relief to utter depravity.

But it shouldn’t have had to.

There is a deep truth to the world, infinitely complex yet in perfect harmony with itself. Truth not just of science and mathematics, but philosophy and politics and art. Not constructed but discovered and recorded.

We’ve designed ethical systems based on principles of reducing suffering and maximizing the dignity and agency of the individual. We’ve proven that naive views of sexual or racial biological superiority are scientific false and ethically disastrous. We’ve learned that the way to discover technologies and medicines that improve the human condition is to collaborate with people with diverse backgrounds and different ways of thinking.

Every development highlights the truth that the person has dignity, and that a plurality of demographics is both an ethical and political mandate. Not only is it ethically, spiritually, and morally wrong to attack and ostracism outgroups, it is a fallacy; the world is improved by inclusion and the rights of the individual, not exclusion and dehumanization.

It is all a truth to be discovered, to be researched, to be built on. It is written into everything: the wheels and gears that drive the mechanics world, but also the very soul of man. Systems of science and philosophy that validate themselves against the truth draw out that truth and encapsulate it in forms humans can use, to astonishing benefit. We find it, we build on it, and when we build on those principles, we improve the world.

This is difficult, not only because it takes work to discover, but because at the same time humanity is burying it under noise. Noise that comes from greed, and hubris, and hate, and animal instinct. It takes on forms like exploitation, and violence, and inflicted suffering.

With active work, we can create bubbles of healthy society in so far as we base ourselves on truth, and do what we can to filter out what strays from that. This is the basis of intellectualism.

The platform of the 2024 Republican Party is a wholesale rejection of this. Not just a regression in the progress we have, not just an injection of more noise, but a rejection of the very project. And not an idle, philosophical rejection; a rejection at the heart of an activist political project that has already proven itself extreme, violent, and effective.

As a political party, the Republicans had collapsed. Choosing to base the entire party on uniting behind a strongman personality who was old, incoherent, criminal, and very obviously wicked. They had filtered out the moderates who deviated from a fascist dogma and so lost all meaningful political collation. The “alt” became the right, and they did it as loudly as they possibly could. The party had one draw left, only one, and it was that it was hateful and violent towards outgroups. It was not a secret, it was in the very campaigns they ran. Hate as policy.

It was a mask-off comically evil policy platform lead by a mask-off comically evil man. The other option was a moderate. I could not have asked for a better narrative setup: there is a clear choice between two directions for the world, and this is the moment the people choose one. And they chose the one that rejected everything I consider foundationally good.

When I’m am thinking about something I like to start with the words. To “elect” is to decide, to select. And this was elected. The executive, the judiciary, and the legislature, all dedicated to evil.

The biggest danger facing the voters was that we wouldn’t be able to undo enough of the damage, and they elected to do much, much more. They didn’t just tolorate it, they choose to back it. The majority went out of their way to choose this, for seemingly no reason.

There is an enormous amount of power poised to destroy everything I care about. From my personal interests (tech policy, the FTC…) to everyone’s interests (jobs, health, safety…) to the actual lives of most outgroups (immigrants, refugees, anyone queer…). It’s all going to take substantial damage. There will be one-or-more state-sponsored genocides against American people in the next four years. That’s the platform they ran on.

And what I really can’t get over is the number. Not Trump, not orange man bad, not the various political strategies. The fact that most of the people around me wanted this to happen. There’s no escaping it; the closer you get to people in my social demographics, the higher the proportion of republican voters. It’s not a family meal when 80% of the people there want my life ruled by violence. All that does is comfort the bloodthirst.

I have never felt so alienated from humanity.

I am not a social person. I am a happy introvert. I barely noticed the lockdown. But right now I feel like I can’t even try. If I’m in a room at work with six people, four of them voted for a platform of torturing people I love to death. Most of the people I see in public will literally be out to get me. I can’t… I can’t “do society” under these conditions. Not in the way I hoped to, not in the way you’re supposed to.

There is not going to be any progress toward the truth, not for a long time. There will be no relief from the noise. If you actually care about bettering society, or bettering ourselves, or ensuring there’s space left to be human, we are in the minority. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. We are facing down the end of it. This is not a postmodern artistic and philosophical rejection, it is a violent, extremist faction actively going to war against it.

Christians are described in the Bible as being “in the world, but not of it”. Rejected by society, despised by power, “hated without reason.” This is the shift I’m feeling now. The illusion is shattered. It’s not a matter of working through the right political machinations. The world rejects the truth thoroughly.

2000 years later, and the people went out of their way to make Nero emperor.

And so I am suddenly on the outside looking in. This is not a society that will have me. This is not a people I am part of. This is the place I live while I weather the storm. Obviously we should still do whatever we can to carve out pockets of relief, to create environments where we can thrive, but I don’t expect them to last.

It would be nice if I were overreacting. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe that 57% will intensely reject the platform they voted for once they see it. Maybe this post will be a time capsule of a moment in my life where I was just a widdle gloomy gus. But if we do somehow manage a stable peace, with a population of people who respect each other and ultimately want to improve life, it will be a surprise. Because I’m in the minority for even wanting that.

GioCities

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Election

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