Volume 5, Issue 45: Everybody Hurts

"Sorry, we aren't taking any more reservations, the kitchen is closing."

Here is a button where you can subscribe to this newsletter now, if you have not previously done so. I do hope that you enjoy it.

Note: I know many people—myself very much included—have taken great pains to avoid any commentary or analysis of the election results this week. So here is your warning that today’s piece is my attempt to process my own thoughts and emotions in the wake of it. If you still do not have the stomach for that—and I am not sure I do myself—here is a head’s up for you to duck out right now. After this, I think I’m gonna take a break from writing about this for a while, for my sake and for yours. But gotta get it out this week. So, yeah, heads up. Look: It’s my first trigger warning!

It hits you in waves. I’d spent months, really years, fearing the ramifications of another Trump presidency, but it wasn’t until it became real that its implications truly set in. Like, you knew it could happen, but you didn’t think it would really happen, not really. And now here we are. It hasn’t sunken in, and I suspect it won’t until he’s physically inaugurated—something I didn’t watch last time and am even less likely to this time—that it will. Even then it’ll feel surreal and wrong.

The day after Trump was elected in 2016, I was in New York City to film my old Sports Illustrated football show with Nate Burleson, and that afternoon, I went to a screening in Union Square of the Jeff Nichols’ film Loving. When I came out of the movie, I was surrounded by a massive protest, with tens of thousands of people marching through the streets, carrying signs, chanting, making it clear that they’d be fighting this new administration tooth-and-nail for the next four years. Needless to say, that is not what has happened this time. People are no less appalled by Trump—they’re more so, with good reason—but they are also exhausted, demoralized and somehow even more shocked. I’ve found this week oddly quiet, less collective, more personal; if 2016 was a call to action, this was a week to mourn and tend to yourself … a week in which you concentrated on just making certain you made it through. I tried to read as little as possible this week, and the only writing I did was about nerdy baseball things that were mercifully cleaved and isolated from the outside world. I organized my closet, paid some bills, played some video games, watched a lot of college basketball and tried (and mostly failed) to sleep as much as possible. I checked in on friends, who seemed to be doing their versions of the same things.

Eventually, one must emerge. So, if you’ll forgive me today, I’m just going to cycle through a few emotions and thoughts that have bubbled up in the wake of Tuesday, and what they might augur moving forward. I work hard, even when I am writing about my own life, to make this newsletter as universal as possible; it is for you, not me. But this one, I’m afraid, might just be for me. I just need to get some of this out.

Here’s how I’ve been feeling this week.

Wrong. I should start with this. From the minute Trump was elected in 2016, I have been convinced—in the face of much available evidence, it should be said—that it was an aberration, that his rise was the result of a select set of unfortunate circumstances, that at some point he would receive the full rejection that this country, and everything it stood for, would rightly give him. This illusion has now been destroyed. There are no more caveats, no more “well, the electoral college” or “Clinton was a uniquely flawed candidate” excuses. Trump beat an excellent, smart, disciplined opponent, straight-up, in an election that was closer than it’s being portrayed but still not all that close. There are few stories to tell to make one feel better about this. He won. This is what people voted for. This is what people wanted. I did not think Americans would ultimately vindicate Trump, I did not think that there was a hard cap on his support, I did not think that he could only continue to win by exploiting the gaps in our system. I was wrong. This is an important fact to reckon with. There were many assumptions I made that provided to be completely incorrect. I thought America would never truly embrace Trump. It turns out that was a story I was telling to comfort myself. This is what we wanted, who we are. This is worth remembering moving forward. It is also a reason to be as humble as possible about believing that I should be certain of much of anything at all.

Still bargaining. I find myself rationalizing nevertheless, already. Do I think that every person who voted for Trump shares, and wholly endorses, every one of his bigotries and pathologies? I do not. I suspect some of them don’t fully believe everything he says, or have not paid close attention to it, or don’t like it but also don’t think it matters, or think he can’t help but be tempered by the office itself (which strikes me as silly considering it wasn’t the last time he was in the office, and he has fewer guardrails this time). Is every vote for Trump a true believer cultist vote for Trump? I don’t think so. But I also don’t think it ultimately makes that much difference. Their votes for him counted just as much as the Nazis’ did.

Vengeful. Jonathan V. Last, one of the smartest analysts of this era and one of the few people I’ve been able to read this week, wrote a piece called “A Modest Proposal: Let Trump Be Trump” that I’ve been wrestling with since I read it.

The gist of it is that it’s time to let the voters who returned Trump to office fully marinate in the ramifications of their actions. You wanted Trump? OK: Trump you shall get. This means not fighting him, not stopping him from implementing all that he wants to implement. It means announcing to the American public that you stand against these things but also that because you are not in power, because voters put in Trump, there is nothing you can do but suffer, like the rest of us, from the terrible, unpopular things he wants to do that voters overlooked because of the price of eggs. You’ve got to make them see what they’ve done.

Last runs down the implications of Trump’s policies, such as they are, on Ukraine, on tariffs, on mass deportation, on removing fluoride from the drinking water, and what will result of them—you know, what the American people just voted for. And concludes:

Democrats can no longer afford to spend political capital protecting anyone who can’t support them electorally, just because it’s nice or the right thing to do. At the end of the day, that should be the precept that guides Democrats’ decisions about when and how to spend capital trying to obstruct Trump during the next two years.

If Trump is trying to break the rule of law, then yes, Democrats should attempt to stop him. If Trump is taking an action that would hurt a Democratic voting group or a Democratic state, then yes, they should attempt to stop him.

But for everything else? Democrats should stand back and stand by. And then, when the fit hits the shan, they should demagogue the ever-living-crap out of Trump for any bad outcome that occurs, anywhere. Make him own it. All of it. The American people have chosen. They should not be insulated from the consequences of their choice.

In the end: I do not think I agree with this. When push comes to shove, I really do believe in “we are all Americans” and all the Harris rhetoric I found so stirring during the campaign. I believe it’s the job of politicians to make their constituents’ lives better, not to use those lives as a cudgel for talking points to win elections. Fighting for the good is important—it’s the whole point.

But in my darker moments this week, there is a logic to what Last writes. This is what you wanted? OK: You can have it. See if you like it.

Anger. Like any Midwestern male, I am uncomfortable with open displays of emotion, particularly anger, that most unbridled of emotions. It is my instinct to fight anger any time it bubbles up. I am not always successful in this, particularly while driving or watching a sporting event in which I am invested in the outcome, but those are safe times for anger: When they don’t really matter and can’t cause any lasting damage. I’m angry that Trump is going to remain the centerpiece of American life, and for all he will do, and what is now endorsed, acceptable and out in the open, and all that will result from that. I thus find myself angry at those who chose to return him to office. This is a different anger than last time, though, and one that I suspect is unsustainable. Walking around the country angry at more than half of its citizens is no way to live life—at a certain point, the anger becomes more about you than them. Most of my anger has already faded, to be honest. I just can’t carry that around with me all day. Maybe I should. But I can’t. Deep down, I like people. I want to like people. I couldn’t change that any more than I could change my height. We are who we are.

Impotence. At a certain level, the job of any writer is to persuade. I’m not just writing for my mental health here; I’m trying to put words together in a clear fashion, in a way that’s hopefully pleasant to read, that will theoretically make you understand my viewpoint and perhaps even be more amenable to adapting aspects of it. What is the point otherwise? I have been writing, for nearly a decade now, about how Trump represents the opposite of my worldview, how putting him at the center of American life is toxic and destructive to what we should all love about our country and to the sort of world we’ll be leaving to our children. And at the end of that near-decade, he is more powerful and popular than he was when I started. That does not lead one to believe their life’s work is particularly potent.

I can take solace here, I suppose, in the fact that this is true of just about every single other person, many with much larger platforms than me, whom I’ve read over the last decade and who has been doing the exact same thing. I’m far from the only one people aren’t listening to. But it will make you reflect on what, exactly, the point of all this is supposed to be.

Scared. This one is self-evident. Many people I know who voted for Trump think that my, and many others’, fear of Trump is based solely in his personality or sexism or racism or, you know, all the other horrible things about him. But what I’m most scared about is the world my children are going to inherit. The casual cruelty—and misogyny of alarmingly increasing commonality—that has already seeped into so many aspects of society. The global chaos. The crony capitalism. The fact that this planet may become unlivable in my kids’ lifetime. Look: I’m almost 50 years old—I’ve had a good run here, and what happens with the rest of my life is far less important than what happens in theirs. I find the world scary right now. But I’m far, far more scared about what awaits them. How could you not be?

Uninformed. Boy was this a good week to unsubscribe to political news alerts. I’m sure I’ll get back on board, I believe it my civic duty to do so, but right now, I’m blissfully unaware of just about anything that has happened since the election that doesn’t involve college basketball and movie release schedules. I need a break. I am far from alone in this, I am sure.

Sore. Still. Marathons really do a number on you.

Privileged. Every complaint I’ve made here should be filtered through this: I’m still a white dude in his late ‘40s—the very demographic, it should be said, that just returned Trump to office. I think we will all suffer from a Trump presidency, but there are others, most immediately and obviously women, who will suffer much more. There are many voices far more urgent than mine, on the front lines, that I encourage you to seek out. I am just a guy who types a lot.

Lucky. I’ve been able to spend this week with my family, and my friends, and my work—to have people and places to burrow down with, to escape to. Being able to concentrate on that, and occasionally hide in it, in the weeks and months and years ahead is my great fortune. Through it all, they’re the point of all this, and what will last.

Patriotic. I still believe in this country, perhaps in the face of all available evidence. I believe we are capable of incredible things. We produced Prince, and Lucille Ball, and Bob Dylan, and Meryl Streep, and James Baldwin, and Flannery O’Connor, and basketball, and the airplane, and rap music, and the hot dog, and the light bulb. We consistently fail to live up to our ideals. I still believe those ideals are worth striving for, and learning toward, regardless. This place still means something. I truly believe that.

Tired. I think I’m going to try to sleep until Thanksgiving.

I don’t know if this meant anything to you, or was helpful in any way. I’m not even sure it was helpful for me. But hey, this newsletter is free, and sometimes it’s just going to be used as a way for me to process the world—which, after all, is the reason I started writing things down in the first place. It has been a hard week. Thank you for allowing me the space to, however awkwardly, stumble my way through it. I hope you are able to find your own way to do the same.

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

1. What I Learned From Destroying Myself at the NYC Marathon, New York. Here’s the long piece I wrote about running the marathon, which I’ve already sent you once. Can I also say how honored I was by how many of you told me you were tracking me? And how worried you got when I suddenly stopped? (That’s when the cramp happened.) Apparently the tracker works better than I thought!

2. Illinois Basketball Power Rankings, IlliniBoard. I’m writing about Illinois basketball all year for Illiniboard.com. If you don’t care about Illinois basketball, you won’t care about these, but if you’re as obsessed as I am, it will hopefully feel tuned precisely for your brain.

3. Each Division’s Most Compelling Offseason Team, MLB.com. As I said, this was a good week to get to write about the Cardinals a little bit.

4. Tom Hanks Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Updated with Here.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, no show this week. Back taping tomorrow.

Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, we (well, they) reviewed the Florida game and previewed the Ole Miss game.

Morning Lineup, I did Friday morning’s show.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

I hope this isn’t a bad thing for a professional writer to say, but: I tried not to read very much this week.

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. But I am starting to catch up!)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Not Dark Yet,” Bob Dylan. Time Out of Mind and Love & Theft are my break-glass albums. This was a break-glass week.

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

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

Again: I was very honored by the number of people who told me they were tracking me on my marathon run last week—particularly by how many who said they thought the tracker was broken when I suddenly stopped. It was an incredible experience that I promise I will stop talking about soon, if just so everyone in my life will stop walking away from me whenever I start.

Be safe out there, all.

Best,
Will