About the Election

I’m embarrassed to say that I’m not particularly attuned to German media yet, nor do I talk to a lot of Germans, so I don’t know much of what’s being reported here. But everyone knows the election is coming up, and everyone here quite openly hopes Harris wins—and presumes that I do, too. A Frenchman today told me that every American he knows says that everyone they know in the US is trying to come to Europe, because everyone in America is unhappy and no one can stand it anymore.

I am hearing incredible dread and anxiety from many of you as the onslaught of news churns ever-faster, as Trump goes ever more openly fascist and unhinged, as Harris tacks right to try to appeal to those baffling undecided voters, as the latest poll numbers are cast like bones and read like entrails. Having escaped to the relative peace of Berlin, I can tell you I don’t think you deserve that. You beautiful, good people don’t deserve to have your peace, your ability to function and live your lives, your mental health, so disturbed. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t care, or be engaged, or that this doesn’t matter. But it seems that most of you can think of nothing else, and your moment-to-moment mood is determined by the latest headline. There is no judgment from me—I’ve been there, too. But this distance has given me some perspective. I’m coming around to the opinion that we’re being fed on by the media. They are consuming us, our attention and our good will and our deepest hopes for the wellbeing of our neighbors. And, of course, the political machinery is eating us, too, hoping to extract one last donation against despair before the deadline, over and over ad nauseam, racking up billions in their coffers while more and more of our neighbors move onto the street because they cannot afford rent. But just as we all know, somewhere in our weary bodies, that we, the “consumers,” are actually the consumed in our voracious capitalist culture, I am developing a suspicion that we, the people, may not be giving our consent so much as having a weary groan of resignation pressed out of us. Surely democracy should not be so painful, so extractive, so all-consuming. 

Of the few conversations I’ve had with the 20something Americans in my program, one is not voting (they will not vote for anyone that supports genocide, by which they mean against the Palestinians), one voted third party, and a third whispered to me, with many apologies about their privilege, but wouldn’t it be better to just take the plunge? Wouldn’t falling full tilt into fascism finally wake people up to how bad things are and motivate people to make actual change? These are smart, caring, thoughtful people. All of them are members of marginalized communities that are being targeted by Trump’s GOP. And the choice does not feel to them like much choice at all. Obviously, none of them asked my opinion before making their decisions. But I understand where they’re coming from, even if I’ve made a different choice.

I know it’s different this time. I know it is, and I would never argue otherwise. But it has been different this time for as long as I’ve been voting, and it just keeps getting more different every time. I hope to the God in whom we trust that this election is definitive in a way the last few have not been. I hope to God we can turn away from this cliff we’ve been teetering on for the last almost-decade and turn back towards solid ground. But the solid ground of my very first election, in 2002, was not solid enough, either. Had I been old enough to vote in 2000, I would absolutely have voted for Nader, because his views were much more representative of my own than Al Gore’s. One of you, a decade older and wiser than me, has told me repeatedly that you will never forgive Nader voters for giving us George W. Bush. (I always counter that it was the Supreme Court that gave us George W. Bush.) My vote isn’t so ideologically pure anymore, but I can’t blame my classmates from wanting their vote to be more than a tactical tap of the steering wheel away from the cliff. I can’t blame them for wanting a society that works. I can’t blame them for trying, in their various ways, to snatch their own lives back, to try to slip out of the maw entirely rather than bow to the demand that they declare their support for either the upper or lower teeth.

Berlin knows better than most cities in the world that a peaceful, vibrant, and diverse today is not a guarantee of the same tomorrow. Democracy can be lost. Democracy must be maintained. Freedom isn’t free, as the saying goes. But some costs are too high: the ability to breathe; the ability to spend your energy in ways that bring you joy; the freedom to expect more from your government than its incessant demands that you shore up its foundations with your very lives. I don’t know what the alternative is from where we are right now. I know I’m preaching to the choir. I know we’re voting for Harris maybe because we like her and her policies, maybe while trying to tamp down images of asylum-seekers in detention centers as we fill in our bubble, but definitely because we think we’ll have a better chance of getting our lives back under her than under Trump. And I agree. I think I just want to remind you, from this bright, clear-aired place, that normal can exist, and that you do not deserve the psychological torment of this election any more than immigrants and trans kids deserve to be targeted by the world’s most powerful men. Try, if you can, to take care of yourselves, to guard your peace and your hope and your good hearts. See you on the other side.