Volume 5, Issue 55: University

"It's like you have this underlying cynicism about everything."

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The first real public event I attended after Election Day was a Georgia football game, on November 16, an important home game against Tennessee. Like a lot of people who were stunned and staggered (if not entirely surprised) by the results of Election Day, I’d mostly gone inward for the fortnight afterward: Staying home, watching a lot of sports and movies, hanging out with my family, avoiding political news entirely. But I was excited about the game. It was an important game, and I was ready to get back out into the world. It is, after all, where we live.

I expected a few stray remnants of the election to still by laying about. Just three weeks earlier, after the most recent home game, I’d written a piece for The Washington Post about how the tailgate scene had grown more explicitly Trumpian over the previous decade, in a piece that no one read because it was posted within seconds of the Post announcing that it would not be endorsing a candidate for President, which didn’t exactly put the reading populace in the mood for a rumination on bourbon and Southern politics. But the game was still just a game, and I was, and still am, very much in need of some games. I didn’t expect it to be a particularly triggering event for someone trying to forget the election, and it wasn’t. I texted my friend Michael, who worked for the Harris campaign and is a diehard Georgia football fan, a picture of me and my son at the game, and we both agreed that a football game was just about the only thing that felt normal right then. And it did feel normal. We gathered with friends before we went in the stadium, we bundled up for an unusual November Athens cold, and William even played catch with a Tennessee staffer over the Hedges before kickoff. It was a nice night. We all needed it.

I did notice something, though, something I’ve been thinking about ever since, and probably something I’ll be thinking about for a long time. I’ve written about the national anthem before, how the act of singing it before public events has changed over the last decade, so I’m always very attuned to the environment, and context, in which it is sung. And I noticed, on this night, the first big event I’d attended after Election Day, something different. The crowd was really into it.

They sang louder, and in a more spirited fashion, in a way I hadn’t heard, perhaps fittingly, since attending a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden not long after Barack Obama was elected. It was not a triumphant, snide, we won you lost performance, not the taunting sneer we have come to associate with the incoming President’s most devoted supporters. It wasn’t like that at all. It was … it was hopeful? It was the sound of people who loved their country, who were exhausted from a bruising election season, who were grateful it was over and who believed that, moving forward, maybe things might just be better. After the anthem ended, there were more hoots and cheers than I had heard before, and, again, these were not own-the-libs war chants: They were real, I-love-this-country expressions of optimism—of a sense that we just went through something awful and perhaps we can now turn the page on it. I could recognize this sensation because, I realized, it was exactly how I would have felt had Harris won the election: That the worst times were behind us, that perhaps this was a chance to move forward. That’s the feeling I was hoping to have after the election, had she won.

But she didn’t. He did. And yet I recognized the sound—the feeling.

Now, obviously, the crowd at a college football game in Georgia surely swings more to the right than your average Brooklyn PTA meeting, or even a public library or school anywhere in the country. I’m not trying to say that this was inherently indicative of the larger national mood. This was a close election, and one of the most frustrating ways people have spoken about it since it happened is to treat it like some sort of landslide, or mandate, or This Is Just What We Are. This country is as polarized as it was before the election—probably more so. The takeaway from the anthem and the crowd’s reaction was not that Trumpism Now Reigns Forever. The takeaway was, in fact, the opposite. Trumpism is, at its core, about destruction and divisiveness—you are not getting what you want because of them, so we, who speak for you not them, will burn the whole thing down. But that’s not what I heard in the stands that night, and that’s not what I’ve heard from (the reasonable ones, anyway) people in my life who either voted for Trump or did not vote for Harris. They believe things will be better. They have hope.

I think these people are extremely wrong. The vast majority of people in my life, and I’d argue the vast majority of people who have paid close enough attention to what Trump actually plans to do, to what Trump has said, to what Trump is, feel like the sword of Damocles is hanging over their necks. These people, myself very much included, are absolutely terrified what’s going to happen when he takes office, something that is going to happen roughly 48 hours from now.

I believe it’s going to be a complete and total disaster, in ways that will be much, much worse than last time. I believe our country will never be the same again. I believe it makes this country that I love—this country my family has fought for for generations, this country that my children are going to inherit, this country I want them to thrive in—a much more frighteningly unstable place to live. I believe this country’s cherished ideals, the ideals that made me love this country in the first place, are now in extreme peril. I believe we are—all of us—about to be in considerable danger, from threats inward and outward. I believe the world, because of this, is going to be worse for my children, and your children, and everybody’s children. I believe we should be scared. I know I sure am.

But I do still live here. And so do my kids. And so does almost everybody I care about. So I want to have hope. Or, more to the point: I want us to make it through this. I want all the things I am worried about happening not to happen. I want to believe those people who voted for Trump, who think this will somehow will make things better, know something I don’t.

I want, more than anything else, to be wrong.

The good news here: There is almost nothing since Trump came down that escalator in 2015 that I haven’t been wrong about.

The bad news is everything else.

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In an extremely smart piece last week, New York Times columnist (and my good friend, former editor and Michigan State basketball fan, which means he’s going to get all sorts of angry texts from me around this time tomorrow) David Wallace-Wells pointed out just how long the national mood has been so dour.

The basic mood of the country is so pervasively gloomy, it’s not clear any news, really, could shake the vibes loose — when only 19 percent of the country is happy with the direction of things, you’re a long way from “morning in America.” The last time at least half the country reported feeling satisfied, according to Gallup, was January 2004, a month before Facebook was created. If you’d been born right then, you might be graduating from college this spring having experienced not a single year in which this once famously upbeat country seemed to feel the sun was shining on it.

The overarching point of DWW’s piece, though, is one of optimism, albeit optimism of the somewhat curdled variety. DWW argues that all the positive indicators in matters economic—as well as the three core issues of “drugs, poor health and crime” that tend to lead to what DWW calls “the concrete basis for pervasive American narratives of social decline”—that the Harris (and, previously, Biden) campaigns unsuccessfully attempted to get voters to notice appear … they all appear poised to rebound to Trump’s benefit.

If you are the kind of person who might be inclined to stitch together a “morning in America” story right now, there are other encouraging signs, too — disability claims have been steadily falling, the country is in the midst of booms in both new business formation and manufacturing investment, traffic fatalities are in decline, and to the extent you attribute recent turmoil and distress to problems metabolizing spikes in immigration, border crossings are now already lower than they were when Trump left office. Wall Street analysts are predicting big gains for the S&P 500, gas prices are down, and, as my newsroom colleague Peter Baker noted in a good-news survey over the weekend, even though it isn’t exactly a time of global peace and stability, Trump will be the first to assume the presidency since 2001 without American troops engaged in fighting active wars abroad.

But the real question, as DWW notes: Will we even want good news if we get it?

Some of this is a direct credit to Biden and his administration, however poorly he’s managed to claim credit for it, and some of it is more indirect. Much is the result of deeper social developments unfolding below partisan politics, however difficult it is for Americans to see any such stories in a nonpartisan light. But it is all just in time for the country’s 250th birthday — to be presided over by a president whose appetite for finding fault with the country is exceeded only by his eagerness to take credit for anything and everything. Will we give it to him? Perhaps the more interesting question is: Putting the partisan dynamics aside, will we even allow ourselves to see good news if it comes?

To be as clear as possible: Not only am I not entirely convinced all this good news is going to happen, I am pretty sure that the damage Trump will do, particularly to the most vulnerable populations among us, not to mention the rampant grift and the now-almost-entirely-complete erosion of any sort of national dignity or community, will more than offset any positivity that may result. (Positivity that, as DWW notes, would have been greeting any President coming into office this Monday.) And even if these positive indicators do lead to stability, well, if we’ve learned anything about Trump over the last decade, it’s that there is nothing he abhors more than stability. That positive economic and societal macro-indicators can offset his inherent malice and chaos strikes me as a fundamental misunderstanding of who he is and what he wants. Trump, inherently, is destabilization. It’s his signature skill. It is the source of his power.

But the point is not to debate How This Is All Going to Go. The point is to figure out how we are going to handle it—no matter our personal politics and sensibilities. We have spent the last 10 years fighting with each other, and demonizing our neighbors and fellow citizens, and seeing the worst in strangers, all the time—to see everyone who isn’t part of our individual tribe as a threat. This is what Trump has done. I don’t want to see other Americans, even ones I deeply disagree with, displaying hope for the future and to have my response to be to sneer at them for it. Even if I think they’re wrong—very wrong. I mean, we do all have to live here. This is the only place we’ve got. If I believe Trump is a terrible person and is going to be a terrible President—and I do—to allow him to make me walk around disgusted by my fellow citizens, people I watch sporting events with, people my children share schools with, people I sit next to in a hospital waiting room, people in my community whom I may rely on someday and who may rely on me, is to let him win. It’s to turn all of us into him. I can’t let that happen. Not to me, and not to the people I care about.

And yet I do believe he is going to do some truly horrible things, and we’re going to all be suffering, some of us worse than others but all of us in some way, because of them. So what do we do? How do we move forward? How do we make things better? How do the rest of us have hope?

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This week, I attended the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement (AADM) Social Justice Awards and Black Gala 2025 event here in Athens. The AADM is a group that was founded in 2016 “to address repeated allegations of discrimination by bars and businesses in downtown Athens” and progressed to work to “advance racial and social equity, breaking down racial barriers in Athens and beyond.” The event was a hotel in downtown Athens and honored various community members who had worked to advance social justice, or, as it would probably just be simpler to say, had worked to make the world a better place.

There was the woman who makes sure to drive middle school kids in underprivileged areas to and from school, doctor’s appointments and extracurricular activities. There was the woman who mentored high schoolers all the way through college and the start of their careers. There was the man who provides pro bono defenses for non-violent offenders. There was the professor who has spoken all across the world about the school-to-prison pipeline and how to break that cycle. There were the teenagers who get up every Saturday with their families and make food for people who need it, who run clothing giveaways, who organize blood drives. There were the people who get up, every day, and just try to help.

The height of the AADM movement, when I first became aware of the organization (which features prominently in The Time Has Come), was during the 2020 protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd, when they filled the streets of downtown Athens and were accompanied by thousands of their fellow citizens. During the dinner this week, they showed a video about that time, called “The Movement.”

It was a moving video, you should watch it. And it was a reminder of that period, that time when you felt like maybe, if we all got together and rowed in the same direction, we might just be able to make a difference. But I couldn’t help but think, at that dinner, that it was a problem that the video, which is after all two years old, was a reminder of that time rather than a reflection of our current one. It was a time when the juice very much seemed to be behind that sort of structural change, that sense of community … a time that, post Election Day 2024, we very clearly appear to have moved on from. All this work AADM, and all the groups around the country like it, had done seemed like a distant memory and, more to the point, insufficient to counter the countervailing winds. They’ve all spent years trying to make the world a better place. But it sure does seem worse.

How do you reconstruct that? How do you inspire people to have hope that has been dashed? How do make them think the work is worth it when every piece of evidence says it hasn’t helped? How do you get energized when everyone is demoralized? How can you feel like, no matter how hard you work and how passionately you believe, any of it is adequate to the task at hand? How do you change a world that doesn’t seem to want to change? How do you make a difference?

The answer, I think, isn’t in the macro. It’s in the micro. The work that AADM and organizations like it have done hasn’t stopped Trumpism. It hasn’t made a dent in a broken corporate system that seems only to benefit the ultra wealthy. It hasn’t opened the eyes of enough people to make a massive electoral difference, or enough of one. It has not changed the world.

Except every day it does. It changes the world for that kid who needed a way to get to school, or home, or to an after-school program that might just alight them in a whole new direction. It changes the world for a family who needs just enough help to get them back on track to the future they always imagined. It changes the world for someone who might not have had their eyes opened to certain injustice before but now knows in their heart they must do something about it. It changes the world in small ways that might just someday become big ways. These movements might seem insufficient to snap the world better, just like that, for everyone. But they can do their part, person by person. It’s not barking out loud proclamations on social media. It’s just trying to make the world around us better. That’s where the work is. That’s the garden we can tend.

It’s the work that organizations like AADM and others do, but it’s also the work that we can do in our daily lives. Of seeing people who need help and trying to do something about it. Of focusing on the goodness in the world, goodness we see every day, goodness that can get crowded out by the ugliness. Of trying to make sure we are good to the people in our lives, so that they might be good to others. Of speaking out when we see injustice. Of being humble enough to understand that we don’t know everything, that everyone’s lived experiences are different, that our neighbor is not our enemy. Of just doing our part, every day, in the best way we can. Of not quitting. Of not giving up.

I don’t know if it’s enough. I don’t know if it will make a difference in the long term. I don’t know if it’s already too late. But I know that, for now, and maybe for a while, it’s all we can do. I’m scared about Monday, and about what comes after. But I will still live here. And so will you. And so will everyone around you. It is hard to have hope. But people—people who I agree with, people who I don’t—still do. That’s enough for me to keep trying. I hope it’s enough for you too. I hope it’s enough for all of us.

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

1. R.E.M., Smart Enough to Fade Away Than to Burn Out, The Washington Post. Very, very happy with how this one turned out.

2. NFL Playoff Teams Rootability Ranking, New York. Go Lions, go Bills.

3. Division Winners Ranked in Order of Likelihood They’ll Repeat, MLB.com. The start of a weekly series that will take us into the start of the season.

4. Do Not Assume That Just Because the Dodgers Keep Getting Everyone, They’re Definitely Going to Win the World Series, MLB.com. They’re probably not going to! That’s how this works!

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we returned! We previewed 2025’s top movies (including a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie), and made Oscar predictions.

Morning Lineup, I did Friday’s show.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“How Roki Sasaki’s life, career and outlook were shaped by disaster,” Stephen J. Nesbitt, The Athletic. An outstanding piece about the newest Los Angeles Dodger, and how, in the third grade, he lost his father and grandparents in a tsunami. Sad, moving and illustrative of a fascinating player’s worldview.

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! (Got some more of these out this week, stand by.)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song),” The Pixies. There were so many great tributes to David Lynch this week—Adam Nayman’s was my favorite; “however you remember it is fine”—and it made me go back and listen to the Pixies’ cover of this song from “Eraserhead.” You can hear the original version here.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section. Let this drive your listening, not the algorithm!

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

Hey, “Severance” is back. Good show, that!

Hang in there, everyone.

Best,
Will