Volume 5, Issue 27: Annihilation

"We're fallen angels. I wish we'd never learned to fly."

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President Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974, 14 months and one day before I was born. When I have read about his resignation over the years, the sense of the moment I’ve gathered is one of total shock, a terrifying realization of weightlessness, a perilous sense of no one being in charge—of the world revealing itself not to be ordered and stable but in fact teetering on the edge, relying only on the frailties of flawed and fragile men. The President of the United States, standing in front of the whole world, walking away. What do we do now? Where do we turn?

Nixon’s resignation is now framed as one of those collective experiences, one where every American sat down around the television and hung on his every word, in which citizens, as one, all shuddered and fretted together. But the more you dig into the archives and add context to the story, the more you realize this was not in fact the case. The New York Times ran a piece the next day about how low the television ratings were for the telecast of Nixon’s resignation, and while history and journalists all rank the day as historic, it’s not entirely clear that the majority of people in the moment did—or even interrupted their lives all that much to think about it. Ted Simmons hit a three-run homer that night to help the Cardinals beat the Dodgers 5-3; a ban on smoking in elevators was passed in New York City; Robert Altman’s great California Split was released that weekend. My mother was pregnant with a baby my parents would lose less than two weeks later. Life went on. People were going about their business. They were caught up in the day-to-day stresses and indignities of being alive, doing their best to keep their heads above water, perhaps finding ways to distract themselves from a world that may have been careening out of control but was doing so, quiet deliberately, just outside the average person’s range of vision. There is just always so much else going on.

I suspect, for many people, the President’s resignation was something in the background, something everybody knew about but only true obsessives were all that focused on. I imagine it merely being a passing reference in a crowded, frantic day, something you maybe mention to an acquaintance you might pass in the grocery store in the midst of the rest of the daily chaos, Nixon, huh, yeah that’s crazy, whole world’s going mad, don’t you know it, oh sorry my kid just knocked over the shopping cart gotta go, yeah give Harold my best. To remain sane, or just to get everything done, people surely just focused only on what was in front of them. It is difficult to keep one’s head on straight as is without constantly worrying that the world is on fire. Even if the world is, in fact, on fire.

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This has been one of the most tumultuous weeks in recent memory, or at least since 2020, a year in which when it felt like every week was one of the most tumultuous weeks in recent memory. In the past 10 days, since President Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27 and the terrifying Supreme Court decision the next day, it has felt, to people (like, unfortunately, myself) paying rapt, obsessive attention that the ground has vanished underneath our feet. Will the President be the President tomorrow? Will he drop out of the race? What’s Donald Trump going to do when he wins? Is there any way to stop this? “What happens now?” is a question with an answer that seems to change by the minute. It has been quite a while since we have doomscrolled the way many of us have doomscrolled over the last 10 days.

I think this captured the sensation well.

Original Tweet here.

There are plenty of conversations on how Democrats should proceed in the wake of the Biden debate fiasco and the nightmare of what a Trump administration, with that Court (and, potentially, both houses of Congress), would look like, of what we would lose, probably permanently, if that happened. But these are happening among people like me and other journalists and obsessives—not normal people. What most alarmed me about Biden’s performance was not that I thought he looked terrible and lost, though I did. What alarmed me were the number of people in my life, all people who know I pay a lot more attention to politics than they do, who texted or emailed me during the debate some variation of “uh, WTF is going on with this guy? Jesus, is Trump really going to win again?” These are people who keep politics, and really current events, in the background, who do not engage, who have steadfastly refused to engage, and have just a surface understanding of, or even interest in, the arcania of day-to-day politics. That they saw Biden—correctly, I’d argue; I’m Team David Axelrod on this—as not up for the job of defeating Trump in their one real dip-a-toe-in peek at the race struck me as the fatal blow for a candidacy that I was already worried was wobbling. When people talk about “undecided” voters, they often speak of them like they’re Hamlet, forever waffling back and forth, unable to make up their minds. But in my experience, they’re more like the “double haters” you read about, people who looked at the two men on stage that Thursday and thought, “wait, these can’t possibly be the best two people we can come up with, can we?” I do not think this comparison is fair to Joe Biden—who I believe has been an excellent President but who, even if he hadn’t been or even if you disagree, is still not a dangerously narcissistic, apocalyptically minded, foundationally incurious, violence-driven misogynistic totalitarian lunatic criminal—but speaks to the larger issue at hand: They just want someone else to vote for. They want, when they happen to glance in at the world of politics and national affairs, not to feel like everything has been broken. They don’t want one more goddamned thing to worry about.

That, to me, was why the debate wound was so fatal to Biden: The one time people peeked in, he looked old and muddled and lost. They likely won’t be peeking in at him again, and even if they did, well, age only goes in one direction. (And remember: He was already behind before the debate.) I believe—and again, I claim no specific expertise here—the only real option we have at defeating Trump right now is for Biden to drop out of the race. I think Kamala Harris—the lone feasible alternative at this point, it looks to me—is underrated politically, but at the very least, she would be a different option for people who desperately want one. She’d unquestionably provide more energy than Biden: I’d trust her to be able to stand next to Trump and nail him on abortion, the way he has to be nailed, rather than ramble off some nonsensical jibberish. I personally believe Biden to be in denial about the state of the race and the popular perception of him. Am I certain that Harris—who I believe to be a good person and who I think would be a fine President (longtime newsletter readers will remember she was my original choice in the 2020 campaign)—will beat Trump? I am not. But I’m increasingly certain that Biden—a man I deeply admire, a man whose politics are probably a lot closer to my personal politics than most of the people who ran against him in the primary in 2020, a man who I actually have a bobblehead of just a few feet from my desk—cannot. And all told: Yeah, even I have some concerns about what how effective a President he would be in 2028, when he will be 86 years old, if he wins. And if I have concerns, there’s no question millions of people less predisposed to him than I am do as well. I would vote for Biden over Trump if he had a crowbar sticking out of his head; I would vote for Biden over Trump if he added a “I’m deporting Will Leitch to Siberia if I win” line to his stump speeches; I would vote for Biden over Trump if he ended every interview by having a conversation with an imaginary six-foot-tall broccoli stem just off camera. I’m no double hater. But many, many people are. And those people’s votes count just as much as mine. I don’t think he can win. Not anymore.

But look at me: Talking about this obsessively again, like some sort of insider, like I know anything at all. That’s the trick here, that’s what gets you. This is what I struggle with: Does obsessing over this make any difference? Or am I just wasting time and effort and emotional energy that should be better used focusing on the particulars of my own life? There doesn’t strike me as an easy answer here. After all, pretending that politics isn’t happening, that all matters is what goes on in your own household and your own life, isn’t just just denialism, it’s actively harmful, particularly to people who have no such privilege. And politics have a way of making their way to your doorstep whether you like it or not. Maybe you made the decision in 2015 not to think about the upcoming election, or Trump, or anything outside your home and what you control. How’d that work out for you? That election made its way into every aspect of your life and everyone else’s life anyway. All you did is stick your head in the sand as the world shifted around you. All you did was hide.

But then again: What’s the purpose of living a live in which your focus is more on what’s happening outside your life than what’s in front of it? This week, we took our annual trip to Lake Keowee in South Carolina to see our friends Eason and Lindsay and their sons Miller and Simons. Miller is my son William’s buddy with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, the kid who inspired my book How Lucky, a kid who just had a metal rod fused to his spine a month ago and was back out there kicking William’s ass in FIFA and Madden as always. We had a wonderful time, the sort of trip you’ll remember years later, good people spending good time together while they can, time you’ll always cherish, time you can never get back.

Sure, we talked about politics a bit: How could we not? It was the Fourth of July, and the country was on fire. But it was still in the background. We all got on a boat. We listened to good music. The television was showing tennis. The kids were playing video games and air hockey downstairs; we were drinking cocktails and telling old stories upstairs. Should we have stopped it all to deep dive on the chaos swirling around us? Should we have gnashed our teeth about the future? Or should we have enjoyed and appreciated the moments in front of us?

Or is that irresponsible? Should we have had the news on? Should we have been canvassing or registering voters? Or protesting? Is there something we should have been doing? Is there anything we can do?

One of the promises of a Joe Biden campaign was that, after four years of constant attention on politics, of regular updates on the horse that’s loose in the hospital, when Biden was President, you’d be able to not think about politics for a while, that you’d be able to go about your day, assuming business was getting done, that the trains were running on time, that a bunch of boring stuff was happening that you wouldn’t have to worry about all that much—that you could go about your life with a little peace and quiet. I would argue that he fulfilled that promise, in a way that may have ultimately proven detrimental to him: He did a bunch of great things that he gave us explicit permission not to notice. But four years later, I still don’t know if putting politics in the background, of having it be a low hum rather than a clattering dirge, is healthy for us or not. Does it make it better for you and the people you care about to think about politics all the time, or does it make it worse? What’s the right level of attention to pay? And how much difference can one person make anyway?

I don’t know the answer to these questions any better than I did four years ago, when we were all paying much more attention than we are now. I don’t know if the world in 1974 was better or worse for those who watched Nixon’s resignation than it was for those who didn’t, just like I don’t know if it’s better or worse for me to pay so much attention to what is happening now. But I do sometimes wonder if it’s the central dilemma of our time.

After all, here’s one thing I do know: Whether or not you pay more attention to what’s happening in the world than I do, we do, in fact, both live in that same world. We do share it, and we share in what happens to it. What’s going to happen to it? Well: We’re all about to find out. Together, or not.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Kevin Costner Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Updated with Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter One.

2. This Week’s Five Fascinations, MLB.com. Included this week: Josh Smith and the Rangers, the exciting Nats, schedule strengths, 100-win teams and an ode to Tim Anderson.

3. MLB June, Recapped, MLB.com. Good month for my Cardinals.

4. Paul Skenes Should Start the All-Star Game, MLB.com. Well, he should.

5. This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. 3,000 free words every Monday morning.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, a big show, discussing “A Quiet Place: Day One,'“ “Kinds of Kindness,” “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One” and “Janet Planet.”

Seeing Red, Bernie and I did not do a show this week because of the KFNS mess. But we are back on Monday.

Morning Lineup, I did Friday this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“What’s the state of the USMNT ahead of the 2026 World Cup?” Bill Connelly, ESPN. I’m getting geared up on all my college football writing with the season now just a month-and-a-half away, which is a reminder to read everything Connelly always writes about everything.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! (I’m sorry I’m so behind on these.)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Annihilation,” Wilco. New Wilco EP came out last week! After a week of heavy rotation I’m, perhaps not surprisingly, a big fan. It sounds like the full band playing together again. More Nils, please.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

At the very least … the Cardinals might not be half bad this year after all. So there is at least that.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Best,
Will