Doom Report (Week 42: Politics Is Something We Do)

This week, the MAGA crowd all seemed utterly shocked that people were upset with them.  I mean, all they did was take away food from hungry children—globally, let’s not forget—steal money for research into children’s cancer, cause millions of Americans’ health insurance premiums to more than double, make everyone’s grocery bills higher, and used that money to create a combined $60 billion tax break for the top 0.1%.  Why would people be pissed off at them?  They seem to have forgotten the attitude of “we don’t care whether we’re popular or not” and now are scrambling to justify, ignore, or doomcry (depending on the individual) the fact that Democrats beat the pants off them in this week’s elections.  I mean, they whupped their hides real good, to quote John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda: the NYC mayoral and VA and NJ gubernatorial elections have gotten all the press, but there were gains all over the country.  In Georgia, Dems broke up the Republican monopoly of the Public Service Commission (if you need more info on why that’s important, Hank Green did a great video on it before the election), which is the first time Dems have won a state government seat in nearly a decade; Colorado voted to fund free meals in public schools; Maine voted down proposed voter suppression measures; and, in the New York county that’s home to Syracuse, a 12-5 Repub legislature just became a 10-7 Dem one (including one winner from the Working Families Party), an event which a headline on syracuse.com described thusly: “Onondaga County GOP seeks answers after stunning losses. The consensus: Trump is a problem”.  Hell, the Dems even won in Mississippi, where they broke a 13-year Republican supermajority in the state Senate (hey: progress, not perfection).  Even more telling, the margins by which some of these candidates won is pretty amazing: 13 points for Spanberger in VA, nearly 14 points for Sherrill in NJ, and, despite what some Cuomo supporters seem to think, Mamdani beat Cuomo so badly that even getting all of Sliwa’s votes wouldn’t have made any difference.  Now, for sure, I’m worried that Dems only came out ahead because the MAGA crowd didn’t think they needed to bother cheating, and I absolutely don’t think next year’s elections will go that smoothly, but I’m willing to just stop a bit and bask in the MAGA tears for a bit.

Although possibly the most interesting interview this week had nothing to do with the elections: Jordan Klepper interviewed Scott Galloway on The Daily Show on Wednesday.  Galloway is an author, professor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, but, most importantly for his new book Notes on Being a Man, a father to two boys.  With how much ink has been spilled—and YouTube commentary has been spewed—on how young men voted, and how they’re being radicalized by assholes like Andrew Tate, and how they’re avoiding intimacy and living with their parents and etc ad nauseum, I think Galloway’s book could not come at a better time.  It’s been challenging for us to admit that young men—they of the class who have traditionally had all the adantages in our society—are today struggling.  Some seem to think we’re negating or disavowing discrimination against women by admitting that young men have problems.  But, as Scott puts it:

We can absolutely acknowledge the huge challenges that women still face while acknowledging that. if you go into a morgue right now and there’s five people who’ve died by suicide, four are men.  And I would offer up, Jordan, that if any group was killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group, we would move in with programs.  But because my generation registered so much unfair prosperity, we are holding young men accountable.  And it’s resulting in a country that’s not going to continue to flourish.

You really should listen to the whole thing.  But, if you only listen to one part, make it this one:

People under the age of 40 are 24% less wealthy.  People my age are 72% wealthier.  Because we figured out—old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money.  And when Congress is a cross between the Land of the Dead and the Golden Girls, you have a $40-billion child tax credit gets stripped out of the infrastructure bill, but the $120-billion cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security flies right through.  We need a more progressive tax structure.  You know what would be the biggest help to men, to young men—would be universal child care.  Because when men are most vulnerable, in terms of self-harm, is the year after they get divorced.  And why do young people get divorced?  It’s not a lack of shared values.  It’s not infidelity.  The most common reason for divorce is economic strain.  And we keep transferring money from young people to old people.

But really do watch the whole thing.  Galloway is spitting fire in this one.

This weirdly ties into another interview, if a much longer one: British YouTuber Jimmy the Giant interviews Gary Stevenson, who I’ve mentioned a few times.  Jimmy I’ve never mentioned before; I’ve only ever even seen him on YouTube once before, and that was back in January on Pod Save the UK, when he told the story of how he got sucked into the alt-right scene, and then, as Nish Kumar put it, “de-radicalized” himself.  While I was mainly watching for Gary, whose opinions I always find informative, Jimmy dropped this bomb:

Sometimes people will look at these lot, like the far right lot, and they won’t give them the same grace that they might give, say, gang members.  And I do sometimes notice that on the left, where I would say it’s quite easy for, I don’t know, a lot of us to look at someone who is in a gang or something and be like, the reason they’re in a gang is because of various scenarios, they’re not evil in their heart, they’re just a person that has fallen into this kind of lifestyle, blah blah blah.  But then you’ll look at, maybe the far-right rally, and there will be comments like “these are disgusting gammons, these are like gross blah blah blah.”  And I’m like sort of thinking, you know, we understand the reasons why people do bad.  The same for like al-Qaeda.  Like, I can understand how that movement formed.  I can say it’s evil, awful, but I can understand how it formed, how it took power, and how it controls people’s lives and forces people to do awful stuff.  But some people don’t extend—I don’t know if this is widely held, but I do notice it sometimes—they don’t extend that same generosity and compassion to the far right.  Because, again: it’s always the same thing.  These people have fallen into these movements because of a lack of something in their life, usually material, or their culture feels like it’s been eroded because, I don’t know, their fucking high street has two shops left and they’re a vape shop and a betting shop.  And, it’s like, you understand, you gotta remember, these are people that are not perhaps deeply into politics, or deeply well-read, or deeply understand these movements, they just feel fucked, they feel like their life sucks, and some guy’s coming along giving them some smooth talk.  And you don’t, I guess, judge the person who gets swindled for a car for a smooth talking salesman.  You don’t judge them.  You’re like “the salesman was a dickhead.”

And I will admit that I’m sometimes guilty of this myself, despite the fact that I used this exact analogy in my pre-election post about what Kamala should have said in her Bret Baier interview.  But, upon reflection, I think Jimmy is really onto something here.  When these young men get red-pilled, we probably shouldn’t be blaming them or assuming they’re just racist and/or misogynist shitheads.  As Nish once said on a different Pod Save the UK episode (and I quoted back in week 10), “We have no scope in our hearts to have a conversation that white men could also be radicalized.”  Yep, I think he might be onto something.

Other things you need to know this week:

• Another pretty good week in review from Adam Kinzinger.  I disagree with his take on the air traffic controllers, but I’m not going out of my way to defend Sean Duffy, so I’ll let it slide.

• Hank Green talks about the government shutdown and people losing SNAP benefits.

• SNL’s take on the press conference where a man fainted was, typically, amusing.

• Cristian Farias is back on Legal Eagle, this time covering the contrast between circuit court judges and the Supreme Court.  There’s some inspiring stories in there.

• The Weekly Show explores how the Dems will fuck up their gains, with Chris Hayes and David Plouffe.

If you need even more hope than I’ve already given you, just go listen to Mamdani’s victory speech.  I honestly don’t know if he’s going to be able to do all this shit he’s claiming to be able to do, but, damn: it sure sounds good. 

I’ll give you some highlights, but you really should listen to him say it.  He’s a brilliant speaker.

Years from now, may our only regret be that this day took so long to come.

And yet, if tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back.  We have bowed at the altar of caution, and we have paid a mighty price.  Too many working people cannot recognize themselves in our party.  And too many among us have turned to the right for answers to why they’ve been left behind.

As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour.  They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long broken system.  We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game any more.  They can play by the same rules as the rest of us.

In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another.  In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light.  Here, we believe in standing up for those we love.  Whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall.  Your struggle is ours, too.  And we will build a city hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of anti-semitism where the more than 1 million Muslims know that they belong.  Not just in the five boroughs of this city, but in the halls of power.  No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election.

And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us.  Now it is something that
we do.

Hell.  Yes.