Casino America
I will start right off by saying I do not have any answers regarding what Americans who reject President Trump, his movement, and everything they stand for should do moving forward. As I sat in my living room on November 5th, wondering how the imaginable is happening again, I realized that I know very little about about my country, my fellow citizens, and the way forward.
I learned some humility.
I will go a step further and say that almost anyone making a proclamation that issue X or message Y or campaign tactic Z (usually their own personal favorite policy or tactic) would have won the election is just making stuff up. Before we reach for solutions, we must figure out how we got here. Solutions take time, require listening, and the inclusion of many - not the thoughts of one. The solutions will take some humility.
I do think I have some idea of how we got here. I am just one person with some experience in communications, government, and organizing, and writing down these thoughts is helping me organize myself for action over the next four years. I am sharing these thoughts because, as I said, I think solutions will require the contributions of many - not just one guy with one easy fix to fascism.
This Election Was Not Vice President Harris’ Fault (nor Gov. Walz, the Uncommitted Movement, President Obama, libs, leftists, centrists, Latinos, trans people, or any other person you don’t care for politically)
President Trump, his allies, and compliant media want you to believe this was a dominant win for him and a devastating loss for anyone who opposes him - without having completed counting all the votes.1 In reality, his margin of victory will be smaller than President Biden’s in 2020, with fewer voters participating, and Republicans may even lose the House - unlike Biden’s trifecta.2 Fascists win because they portray their movement as inevitable, and convince others to believe in their view of reality, until they suddenly become very much not inevitable.
Vice President Harris pivoted a failing campaign, raised a billion dollars, and significantly narrowed the gap in who voters trust on their number one issue - the economy. It wasn’t enough, but I cannot really fathom that someone else put in her position with a little over three months to go would perform any better.
Further - Vice President Harris’ campaign outperformed ruling parties in other large democracies. Every country is unique, but it does seem like anger is maybe our one globally unifying emotion in 2024.
Underneath this all, and at its core, is the fact that Kamala Harris is a Black and South Asian woman. Renee, my ever prescient, beautiful, and wicked smart love of my life, was ripshit angry when the Biden/Harris switch happened. A reaction that confused me. She said then that this country would not elect a Black woman. Not at this moment and not against that opponent. She was right. Her identity was not 100% why she lost, nor is it 0%, and to claim either of those ignores what a lot of people are saying quite clearly.
There will be debates and autopsies of the Harris campaign - its tactics, messages, and the candidate herself. Sure, go forth, it might help next time. I doubt much of it would have mattered this year.
Donald Trump is the Reason Donald Trump Won
I do not think it is more complicated than this: President Trump is a singular entity in American politics.4 He built an empire of scams, laundered it through a reality TV show, and exists as an incoherent ball of rage, and he’s exactly what works in America in its current state.
Unlike every other major successful politician, Democrat and Republican, he has no coherent platform. He does not have a set of beliefs beyond the desire to dominate. He will both serve fast food to college teams and appoint RFK Jr. as health czar to do something about fast food. The only thing that matters is whether the crowd in front of him will cheer and make his enemies weaker.
He is a wish granting mirror that reflects the desires, hopes, and dreams of voters back on them, and that is what he did this year.
A non-exhaustive list of issues President Trump ran on: lower taxes, banning abortion, protecting reproductive rights,5 creating jobs, ending job-creating programs, destruction of elites, appointing billionaires to key positions, lower prices, higher prices, deporting all immigrants, only deporting certain immigrants… the incoherence goes on and on.
He has a con artist’s intelligence for reading a room, identifying what the people want, and selling them on that dream. Voters see their rage in him.
We know he’s unique because his schtick does not work for anyone else. Ron DeSantis tried to imitate him, but he has a coherent set of unpopular beliefs and people smelled a fraud. J.D. Vance rode his coattails, but people do not like him nor his beliefs. Further, in races where the word “Trump” is not involved, Democrats have a tendency to win.
Look at my dear, beloved Michigan. Why did Elissa Slotkin win her senate seat while the Vice President lost the state? Slotkin ran a good campaign on the same issues Harris did. She isn’t a Bernie-style populist or wildly outside-the-box politician. She’s squarely in the middle. She attended Michigan’s famously elite $56,000 a year Cranbrook boarding school. I propose she won because she was not running against President Trump.
Americans see in this man a person who knows their rage and will do something about - despite his own biography, previously failing to solve any of their problems, and his open association and embrace of America’s richest elite.6 In 2020, it literally took the active catastrophe and failure to manage a pandemic to unseat him. That is what the left was up against on November 5th. Well, that and…
President Joe Biden Lost this Election (it brings me no pleasure to say this)
I will be up front about my priors; I was a Biden dead-ender in July until I wasn’t. I believed in his fundamental decency. I admire what he did domestically. I also had a speech impediment as a child. I thought it was impossible to spin up a winning campaign in 100 days.7
On the economy, the one issue Americans repeatedly said they cared most about, he was expansive and has a legitimate claim as the most progressive president since LBJ (maybe even FDR): he built a strong coalition with the left wing of the party, enacted an unprecedented fiscal stimulus lifting millions out of poverty in the face of elites who said he shouldn’t, saw significant wage growth, passed three bills (infrastructure, climate, chips) that sparked an industrial resurgence and finally took our climate crisis seriously. Despite the pain of inflation, our economy is significantly better off than others post-pandemic. What he did for Americans was good.8
He was also too old - too proud. He had the opportunity to be a bridge to a new generation and failed. For too long, we’ve been ruled by an geriatric generation that is each day grinding closer to death. I don’t doubt the party’s leaders’ commitment to fighting climate change, but it just hits different when you are certain you will be alive to see our planet at its worst. Of all the infrastructure projects he funded, he forgot to build this one bridge.
He robbed his vice president, the party, and the American people the opportunity to pressure test candidates, organize nationally, and do the listening work that finds a winning message. He thought his legitimately good achievements would speak for themselves. He also did not learn a key lesson of Trump v.1 - put your name on things. Do propaganda. Do the politics thats shows people how you, Joe Biden, helped them. In 2020, Democrats (including a relevant California senator) pushed to include direct pandemic-relief checks, and President Trump put his name on it.
Flash forward to 2024, and voters repeatedly pointed to President Trump’s checks (even the ones delivered under President Biden) as a reason to go backwards, not forwards.
In the end, voters were mad about increased prices and saw a story that explained their pain was caused by immigrants as a very plausible explanation. While they saw an aging President Biden, they did not see his achievements, and they assumed he was ignorant of their pain.9
I hope President Biden is remembered for his domestic achievements in office. They are worth fighting for. I don’t think he will be.
Welcome to Casino America
I’ve referenced the “rage” Americans feel, and how President Trump used that energy to fuel his campaign. Where did this “rage” come from? Here is where I am going to stray slightly away from making an argument I am reasonably certain is based on recorded facts, and is more just some commentary I have. Take it or leave it - we are not lacking of commentary right now.
Some Americans are mad about their perceived loss of status, that the country’s values have changed, and the wrong types of people are getting by too easily. This dark, angry side of America has always been here - it was why this country was founded.10 Further, every time progress is made in America there is a resulting backlash, generated by people who were able to harness American rage.
We cannot ignore what America is. We live under a dizzying gap between the incomprehensibly rich and working Americans who have experienced years of stagnant or slowly increasing wages, while essentials skyrocket, especially housing. The American dream, our social compact between the rulers and the ruled, was for decades a 30 year mortgage and a 30 year job.11 That compact is broken. People cannot even afford to live in the same communities they grew up in anymore. Institution after institution that brought communities together and allowed people to experience others who might think differently has eroded: unions,12 churches,13 the decimation of local media, and, shit, even the Boy Scouts are trying to consume the Girl Scouts in an attempt to bolster enrollment after coming in second to the Catholic Church in the sexual abuse of minors. The institutions that made us proud of our homes and grounded our civic life have withered and left behind only alienation and isolation.
Parallel to our civic life, our economic life is trapped in an ever expanding funhouse of mirrors. The jobs we have do not pay enough to build a future, and too many of those who had the family wealth or luck to get a college degree exist in essentially fake jobs. Our most educated Americans are getting sucked up into the machinery of selling online ads or working at nonprofits that have little impact beyond what is reported quarterly to their funders.14 The pandemic only served to tear away the curtain, the illusion, between which jobs are fake and which are real (excuse me, “essential”).
In place of a functioning social contract, we’ve created a national casino. Casinos do not have windows. They pump fragrances into the air, because data shows they increase returns 45 percent.15 The games are all grounded in the science of addiction. A casino is designed to keep you ignorant of the state of the world outside, addicted to the world inside, while any flaws are masked by a branded scent. When you are in a casino you are within a reality created by people who do not have your interests at heart, but, for a while, it will feel pretty nice.
America in 2024 has a windowless information environment that largely makes it impossible for busy, overworked citizens to both receive information and discern fact from fiction. We legalized immediately accessible gambling, and flooded the airwaves with ads promoting the fun and riches of betting on what used to be our escape from thinking about money.16 We are flooded with constant crypto pump-and-dump scams promising great riches, while the majority of the calls we get are not from friends or family, but scammers. Our jobs are fake, living is too expensive, and the only solution available comes from the mouths of con artists. Name a slice of America and they have been targeted by grifters devoted to sucking money out of them.17
Much of the building of Casino America was done gradually and subliminally. People know that they are boiling, but they do not know who turned up the heat. I am trying to have grace for the people who are reacting to the breaking of our social contract by turning against fellow citizens (or those who want to be citizens) and give their rage to, once again, another scam artist to seek retribution. While I reject the decision to vote for a more brutal, ugly, violent country, I find myself understanding where they are coming from more than ever. I get a little angrier each time I read about one of our so-called leaders with gold bars hidden in suit jackets, non-profit executives getting paid massive salaries and attending over the top galas, public money going to VIPs with multiple jobs and little work, CEOs who bankrupt a company and move right along to the next, or incredibly rich political consultants who are always right - never wrong. They built this casino, we are trapped in it.
It’s All You Can Eat Night at Casino America
On October 1, 2017 Stephen Paddock opened fire on a country music festival from his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino18 and killed 60 people, injuring hundreds. To this day, authorities have no idea why he committed mass murder. They concluded that there is “no clear motive” to why he turned his guns against fellow citizens enjoying themselves at a concert. The only thing we really know is that he was an obsessive, high-roller gambler and he was mad that casinos were no longer being as generous with the gifts and perks they give to keep the people who win and lose tens of thousands at their tables to keep them coming back.^19
Maybe “no clear motive” is a correct assessment. There is nothing that justifies or sufficiently explains why this man rained death down on defenseless people. Part of we wonders if the answer is in the one thing we know about his life - he seemed trapped in casinos. He had a relationship with institutions that appeared to appreciate and respect him for his accomplishments at their tables. A relationship that began to go sour. A relationship that betrayed him, and left behind only misery.
I do not know where we go from here, but I think we should see clearly how we got here and ignore the branded scent being injected into the air.20 Personally, I find hope in this analysis. Identifying the common enemy, the casino, that we’ve built over the majority of Americans is the first step to tearing it down.
I am ending this by urging people to read this piece by Ken White and quoting from it:
Resist. Do not go gently. Do not be cowed by the result. Resist. Agitate, agitate, agitate. The values you believe in, the ones that led you to despise Trumpism, are worth fighting for whether or not we are currently winning. Ignore the people who will, from indifference or complicity or cowardice, sneer at you for holding to those values. Speak out. Every time you act to defend your fellow people, even in small ways, you defy Trumpism. In the age of Trumpism, simple decency is revolutionary. Be revolutionaries.
1. Seriously, California, do better at counting.
2. California…. Come on…..
3. And it really defeats the idea that, say, running on Medicare for All would’ve won.
4. And our country’s worst human.
5. He repeatedly said he was the “father” of IVF
6. How can one be anti-elite while campaigning alongside and outsourcing the mechanics of your campaign to literally the world’s richest human? The elite of the elite.
7. I might have been somewhat right on that point.
8. I am leaving off his incoherent foreign policy because Americans routinely say it is not what factors into their vote choice. https://news.gallup.com/poll/651719/economy-important-issue-2024-presidential-vote.aspx I am not saying it had 0% impact on things, but it was also not 100% and when it did matter it might’ve mattered more because “why are you spending money over there and not here” than any moral case.
9. Here I will note that comparisons are being made to the Weimar Republic post-WW1 and the inflation that generated the conditions for Hitler’s rise. The scene looks vaguely the same, but no where in the United States were people carrying cash in wheelbarrows to pay for bread. “A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 or 2×1011 Marks by late 1923.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic
10. George Washington and other founders were partially just pissed that they weren’t seen as an equal to officers from England. Please lets compare the American fight for “freedom” against the “tyranny” of British tax policy to the Haitian fight against literal, not metaphorical, slavery.
11. *** not all Americans included, although many of those excluded are told over and over again that they’ll make it if they just try a little bit harder…
12. under attack by Republicans the rich over over a century
13. suffering due to a significant amount of self-inflicted wounds…
14. Me, I did those nonprofit jobs.
15. The websites of these scent sellers are very direct that these perfumes make people do more gambling https://www.airscent.com/how-casino-brands-use-scent-marketing-to-attract-retain-gamblers/
16. During the Mets/Phillies series I had the pleasure of getting a view into what battleground airwaves were like. Yeah I saw a lot of Trump ads about trans people, but I saw even more ads about gambling.
17. Young men targeted by sports gambling, women targeted by MLMs…
18. Southeast Asian scented
20. One particular foul scent is named “If we’d only been more anti-trans!”