It's OK To Feel Shitty
If I see one more AI image of the Statue of Liberty crying I will barf.
Hi,
For any of you panicking, Webworm is not going to become a newsletter endlessly ranting about the results of this week’s US election.
We’ll get back to Luka Magnotta sending me letters from prison and Hare Krishna’s calling me “c**t face” eventually, but just bare with me as I wrap my brain around this.
I was talking to my friend Hayden about how we’re sick of everyone ending their emails and social media posts with versions of “but we must continue to hope, we must continue to dream, we must continue to work…” at the moment.
Sure… but also can’t we all just feel miserable for a bit?
It feels a bit galling seeing the Democrats learn so little over the last eight years, going on to run a middling campaign (that Brat Girl Summer bit was fun for 20 seconds towards the end, but what good did that do?) that led to a loss so bad it was humiliating, before being told by various people to GET BACK TO WORK.
Everyone is a bit tired.
And that’s OK.
Let’s be sad and tired for a bit.
David.
PS: For your entertainment and my humiliation I have posted a photo at the end of me at one of my lowest points. Seems appropriate.
Do Despair, If You Want
by Hayden Donnell.
Kamala Harris took to the stage at Howard University on November 6 with a key message for her supporters. “Do not despair,” she said. “Sometimes the fight takes a while… That doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is don’t ever give up.”
That message has been repeated in a parade of blogs, analysis, and think pieces, all of which tack some version of “keep fighting” onto the end of the lengthy lists of Democratic failures and post-election terrors.
It’s an admirable sentiment. It would definitely be best for the world if we all kept fighting, whether that’s for a cap on insulin prices and access to abortion, as the Harris campaign proposed, or for an end to the mass extermination of children in Palestine, which it didn’t.
But here’s the thing: 72 million people just voted for Donald Trump. They gave Republicans a majority in the Senate and probably the House. Thanks to that, they’ll be able to replace malevolent Supreme Court justices Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas with younger, more spritely, malevolent Supreme Court justices. Republicans now control about every part of the government and state power structure outside of maybe a single small claims court in Michigan.
Democrats themselves just spent the election telling us that arrangement will endure for, at best, decades. Their central message was that democracy and the future of America was on the ballot.
Thankfully for us, they were probably wrong. Democracy likely wasn’t on the ballot, not because Trump wouldn’t make himself dictator for life, but because his lifespan probably roughly coincides with the length of a presidential term anyway, and those who would replace him are greasy twerps with the charisma of a salamander. It’s hard to build a fascist movement around Elon Musk’s weird X jumps and JD Vance’s off-putting personality, not that it’ll stop them trying.
Even if Peter Thiel doesn’t shoot Trump with a ray gun and install his favourite Silicon Valley replicant as God Emperor, we’re still in for at least four years of Robert F. Kennedy trying to replace vaccines with shots of linseed oil and Musk purposely immiserating millions of people to achieve the goal of making the economy worse. Trump has said he’ll carry out mass deportations, which is horrible on a moral and economic level in that order, while also promising to raise households’ costs roughly $2600 per year by increasing the prices of imported goods.
Meanwhile, the Democratic party that just failed catastrophically is blaming the loss on progressives using pronouns, rather than, say, their disconnection from the economic concerns of working class voters or their ruthless crackdown on the small outbreak of momentum and voter enthusiasm that arose after Harris took over the nomination from Biden.
As Jamelle Bouie posted yesterday, the people griping over who to blame have probably failed to grasp the enormity of this election and how it’ll likely shape our lives for years to come.
It’s not like this is an aberration either. Besides the obvious economic and political reasons for the result, millions of people in the country that brought us human chattel slavery and the Iraq War do just want proto-fascism, and I will barf if I see another picture of the Statue of Liberty crying.
Given all that, can we please have a little despair, as a treat?
Plenty of election autopsies have been written in the last few days. Two of the best come from Sam Kriss and Adam Johnson, both of whom argue Democrats’ moral capitulation on Gaza and toxic, enthusiasm-killing political triangulation prevented them from overcoming the admittedly difficult obstacles of inflation and systemic racism and sexism.
This isn’t to disregard Bouie’s advice about finger pointing so much as to say it’s galling to be asked by the people who not only helped get us into this situation, but failed to get us out of it, to immediately clock on and start cleaning up the godawful mess they’ve just sharted over the body politic.
Of course people, especially privileged ones like me, should try to ease as much suffering as we can. But there are also real, psychological benefits to feeling bad for a bit.
After all, you’re only human, and things are, to use the technical term, a bit fucked. So if you’re looking for permission to not roll up your sleeves and get to work, and instead luxuriate in your misery, here it is. Do despair, if you feel like it. Have a massive sook on me. Then afterward, think of ways you’d like to make the world a better place.
Or don’t. Flights to New Zealand are always on offer.
-Hayden Donnell.
You might disagree with a lot of this. That’s OK. We’re friends here. Feel free to roast Hayden, or roast me.
Obviously we have to pull our shit together and keep fighting, especially for those who are going to be absolutely fucked with Trump in charge (ie not cisgender white men).
But — some despair is OK right now imo.
And as promised, me in the pits of despair. A long time ago, when I didn’t have gray hair, and had just been rejected.
Enjoy.
As a disabled person who literally cannot leave the country, due to both lack of funds and the fact that other countries generally don’t let disabled people move to them, I have literally no choice but to make the best of it—an impossible take, but one on which my life depends. I have been impressed so far by the people who are most in danger as a result of this outcome talking about their resolution to be there for each other. The kindness from the people who are hurting the most is, dare I say it, inspiring (barf, gag).
What I don’t care for is the blame flying around and the constant admonitions to be nice to the people who voted for this because they’re people too, okay? Leftists always get the blame when things go poorly for Democrats despite the fact leftists pretty fucking reliably turn out in spite of the scorn from the right—something that works against us, because it means Dems don’t bother to reach out to us, instead preferring to constantly reach right and shift the Overton window further and further towards, well, where we’re at. As for being so very considerate of the feefees of the people celebrating their victory right now, they’re adults. It’s been eight years. They know what they’re doing. Their fears of imaginary bogeymen who just happen to be trans and brown are valid, apparently, but the anger from the people they constantly dehumanize isn’t. Personally I’m only interested in extending my limited resources to making sure people at risk are okay, and I have nothing left for any who, at best, choose to remain ignorant and self-centered. I’m simply not interested in excuses; if your version of “safety” involves dehumanizing actual people who are different from you, you are doing a bad thing! That’s bad!! I don’t care if someone lied to you to get you there! You’re an adult!!
Anyway. I think anyone who feels despair right now is perfectly valid. It’s scary. People are going to die. It’s going to be a miserable time for a long time. As a millennial, I know we’ve always been dealt a bad hand. As the first generation to grow up under Reaganomics, we’re the ones whose futures were mortgaged for short-term excess. We’re the first generation to end up poorer than our parents. Younger generations aren’t faring any better, especially those who had parts of their childhood stolen by an atrociously-handled global pandemic. And this doesn’t just go for us in the US—as Foreign Man in a Foreign Land said, “when America sneezes, we die.” It’s bad, it’s grim, and even if it’s not as bad as a worst-case scenario, it’s still going to be really really bad. I don’t have a way to conclude this essay! Everything sucks!!! Just keep looking out for each other. If you feel despair, stay connected. If you’re managing for the moment, hold up others who are sinking. That’s all.
Toxic positivity is ruining my well-earned sulk.