Hasn’t it All Been Said?
Hasn’t it All Been Said?
Despots and the dangers of paralysis
One of Donald Trump’s most indisputable accomplishments has been to instill a feeling of defeat and paralysis among his opponents. There’s no contributing anything new to this tired conversation about our imperiled democracy.
In each article written throughout his years in office, there’s been a feeling embedded within the words that they might finally culminate in the column that shifts paradigms. Of course, every writer hopes that their piece might be the one to make a difference.
But part of covering life’s most important topics is doing so with the understanding that our words may fall flat or amount to little more than drops in overflowing buckets. If we write with the hope of saying what’s never been said, we’ll fall short almost every time. In the fight against climate change or a political foe, we can’t expect to craft the call to action that will ultimately change the world, nation, or even our home district.
More than likely when we cover the 2024 election, we’ll be a voice in the chorus urging people to vote like the future of voting depends on it. We’ll come up with new words to say what’s already been said about how one of the people running in this election doesn’t believe in the very institution he aims to represent. We’ll find new avenues for expressing that same trite and urgent message about how our democracy may not have much longer left.
Our words may not reach the right people. Maybe they’ll only be preached to a converted choir. Maybe the words will be lost in algorithms that deliver messages to only those ready to hear them. But even when words don’t seem to have an immediate impact, they can contribute to subtle shifts in public attitude. And movements can grow from the accumulation of many small contributions. Even if we’re a drop in the bucket, all turning tides have to begin somewhere.
Even if we have no new calls to action and the entirety of our plan can be summed up in the word “vote,” our words are important all the same.
Sometimes, it seems that the best we can do in righteous fights is be reduced to truisms about good and evil and doing what little we can. We recite cliched facts about how “every vote counts!” and “every voice matters” even when we begin losing hope ourselves.
Democracy is real largely because people believe in it. If our trust in it erodes completely, so will the system.
As people, we often have a hard time seeing beyond the day-to-day. It’s no stretch of the imagination to understand the way that attitudes of the past began to shift. We can see the ways that opinions began to change when we compile the periodicals and look for patterns.
But so often, we’re numb to the way the past affects the present and how the current moment fits into the grand fixture of history. We forget that we’re a step along a process rather than a completed picture.
When historians look back at today, they might see a flood of dissent reflected across all media forms. They might see it followed by a stark and totalitarian quiet. Or maybe the story these years will tell is one where dissent mounted to a point where the Trumpian movement was quelled completely. Maybe when we look back at today fifty years from now, we’ll understand the role that each of these articles reciting the same thing played.
But today, it’s hard to continue believing that we’re providing something new with the words we write in this fight for our country. We won’t be the first to remind people that Trump is a felon, nor that he incited an insurrection and tried to stay in office through all means necessary, nor that decent human beings don’t conduct themselves in the way he does. We won’t be the first to point toward his infractions in office or his flagrant abuses of the powers he wielded and aims to wield once more.
But even while much of the news around Trump’s malfeasance may be commonplace — perhaps even inescapable, there remain people within our country so disengaged from the political process they’re unaware who’s even running in this election. Occasionally, there will be readers to whom this recycled information we present will be new. Sometimes, there will be people for whom this old news clicks with a newfound gravity. And other times, there will be people who’ve never felt a need to vote in their entire lives who finally feel called to the polls.
A surprisingly common sentiment among even those planning to vote against Trump and Vance is that it’s an election they’ve already won. Even with 34 felonies stacked against him, their poll numbers remain disconcertingly strong in the face of Harris’.
Part of Trump’s strategy hinges on his opponents’ premature acceptance of defeat. He hopes to discourage faith in the process — to encourage those who doubt him to stay home come election day.
But so much of Trump’s fury and rhetoric is rooted in uncertainty. If his win this November were guaranteed, his speeches wouldn’t appear more erratic by the day. He wouldn’t be fending off “weird” allegations and moving more and more on the defensive.
If Trump’s victory were certain, he could speak with the composure of a tyrant poised to claim power and keep it. But Trump is not Putin, and while he’s remained largely strong in the face of mounting criminal charges, there have been telling signs of weakening support among independents and swing voters.
And even while the polls of the present day show discouraging signs, the Biden victory in 2020 was one of historic proportions, and there are few who voted for him who haven’t found a similar—or heightened—enthusiasm in Kamala Harris.
Trump presents himself as a strongman defender of the nation, but there are no objective measures by which he’s a strong candidate. His candidacy and rule resulted in popular vote losses in four consecutive elections.
And though polls prior to the 2022 midterm elections appeared to show a waning support from the Democrats, when it came time to vote, voters turned out. Come November, I’m confident they will again.
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