A Brief Interlude: Thoughts on Hope, Kamala Harris, and this New Environment

Everything has changed and nothing has changed. A meditation for those who need it.

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In the most recent episode of The Muckrake Podcast I sat down with researcher Karl Folk to discuss the threat posed by JD Vance, Peter Theil, Elon Musk, and the tech-fascist movement they represent. Of course, I covered this briefly in a recent article and have been trying to sound that alarm. Unfortunately, our media discourse is disturbingly shallow and incapable, or unwilling, to cover anything besides personalities, so the warning has largely been relegated to readers like yourself and others who think it’s important to pay attention to, well, things needing paid attention to.

What I try and do with my work is go deeper than that shallowness, to provide some historic context and detail the actual forces and conditions that drive our politics and culture. With the tech fascist push, it’s necessary to move beyond Donald Trump and Vance in order to expose not only the main players in the scrum (in this case the tech oligarchs and the old guard billionaires funding the decades’ long attack on democracy) but also what exactly it is they’re pursuing. This is necessary because, as figureheads, Trump and Vance and Republicans are responsible for taking authoritarian desires that would, otherwise be disturbing and off-putting, and communicate something more palatable.

Luckily, they are failing. Miserably. Since Vance was bought onto the ticket and put in place as the heir apparent to the MAGA Movement, his repellent nature has stripped away any semblance of normality from the Far Right’s aspirations and exposed just how weird and strange they truly are. Whereas Trump gained power by playing to Middle-America’s anger over Neoliberal Globalism and lacing it with poisonous white supremacist and patriarchal paranoia, this new level of authoritarian posturing is predicated on genuinely alienating ideas. Vance’s “childless cat lady” shit is off-putting and miserable. The Project 2025 debacle laid everything out in stark black and white, creating a huge problem for the Republicans that has left them scurrying to cover it up.

But the Right is far from alone in their elevation of figureheads and mythmaking. Even President Joe Biden, an executive with a mixed track record and career history of straddling the line between conservatism and progressive gestures, enjoyed his own small cult of personality. The “Dark Brandon” trend pointed to this, but following the disastrous debate in June, and calls from people like myself for Biden to step aside, that evolved into an aggressive and full-out attack on anyone who believed Biden wasn’t the sole individual capable of defeating Trump in November. It was halting and, most definitely, instructive.

Now, enter Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee. As many of us predicted, her replacing Biden has invigorated Democrats and delivered a shaking blow to conventional wisdom and a jolt to the political environment. In no time at all, Harris transformed from an under/misused figure to a meme-ified leader who is already being talked about and lauded as a transformational figure.

So, let’s pause.

Let’s talk about Harris and this moment. And let’s talk about what is really going on here.

First, a disclaimer: I don’t know yet what kind of president Harris would be. Her history reveals a rank-and-file Democratic politician who has, to give her full credit, championed reproductive rights better than most and has often, and recently, fallen in line with the mistakes of Biden and the past generation. But winning the presidency can change people. Lyndon B. Johnson’s push for Civil Rights and the Great Society were surprises, to an extent, but we also need to understand they did not happen in a vacuum.

For this reason, and the ones listed previously, we need to talk about Harris without necessarily talking about Harris herself. So far, she has risen to the occasion and given energized stump speeches and shown a capability for prosecuting Trump and Vance and the GOP. These are things to admire and cheer, for sure, but there is so much more to politics than speeches and rhetorical flourishes.

What many are feeling right now is not generated by Harris as a politician, but instead represented by her and her candidacy. To put it another way, this excitement and energy was not created by Harris but, instead, she is currently riding their tides.

We make great mistakes when we obsess over individuals. We want heroes, saviors, messiahs, someone who will do the dirty work for us. Barack Obama’s meteoric rise was built on this in 2008. His cult of personality was substantial, possibly one of the most powerful ones we will see in our lifetimes, and Obama’s skills - rhetoric, mastery of narrative, and instincts for capitalizing - were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the historical moment. The presidency of George W. Bush, the disastrous War on Terror, the ravages of globalism, and the 2008 Financial Crash, all laid the foundation for someone to emerge offering new strategies and, above all, hope that something could fundamentally change.

Obama had his successes, but in this era of Trump and rising authoritarianism, some pressure has built to reexamine his presidency within this context. Obama modernized the War on Terror, creating the conditions for Musk and Theil and the tech fascists to accrue wealth and influence, continued the project of globalism, and oversaw the bailing out and absolution of the oligarchs who plunged us into crisis. We, as a people, were largely left to watch from the sidelines in the hopes that this harbinger of change would use his technocratic skills to create something that was never intended to be created.

That’s on us. The period of the 1990’s, under Bill Clinton, assured us that experts had all the bases covered and so our participation in democracy wasn’t needed. Instead, we should focus on amassing wealth and taking advantage of the beginnings of Neoliberalism. For a period, Bush and his cronies sparked democratic energies with the push for the Iraq War and attacks on civil liberties, but his reelection and the complicity of the Democratic Party snuffed it out.

Already, with Harris, we are seeing a traceable phenomenon take over. What enlivens us, what pushes us, what inspires us, is the wide open possibility of something different. Biden’s leadership, partnered with the old guard of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, communicated a stalled and repressed need for change. It wasn’t anything that Harris did to create this environment, it was our collective relief and realization that maybe change was possible. That the old guard of the Democratic Party, representing its Neoliberal turn in the 1980’s and the duopoly that has guided us down this failed path, might finally give way.

These are tricky things. For Harris to be successful, she must harness these feelings. And, yes, to an extent, come to represent them. But we, as individuals and collections of individuals, must be shrewder and smarter and more strategic. These antiquated notions have gotten us here and allowed the Democrats to carry on business as usual. After all this time, all these frustrations, all these crises, it’s beyond time we see politics for what they actually are.

As savvy observers and aspiring agents of change, we should see politicians as representations and messengers. They are not heroes. They are not messiahs. They are servants of the greater will. Harris, as a person, does not embody all of our hopes and desires. She can communicate them, sure, but projecting all of our hopes onto her is a surefire path to disappointment and disaster. To sit back and allow her and her potential administration to chart our course will only deliver us right back to square one.

That excitement you feel is useful. Harness it. Process it. Understand it. What are you excited for? The potential to beat Trump, sure, to avoid authoritarianism, obviously, but what does that means long term? What could be possible beyond those things? What do you want this country to look like? The world? That hope and enthusiasm is fuel. Do not bargain it off for complacency or comfort.

Johnson didn’t embrace the Great Society or civil rights because it was a notion he carried with him. Democratic energies and organizing and movements pressed the issues. They were vibrant and aggressive and they fought the real game at the heart of politics. Harris is a politician. We can hope that she has our best interests at heart, but simply hoping is not enough. We must act on this feeling, this relief, this vision of unbridled optimism, and refuse to barter it for technocratic surrogacy.

It has been a long, long decade, flooded with visions of authoritarian dystopia and attacks on our souls and our optimism. This surely feels intoxicating. Addictive.

Good.

It should.

Life does not need to be like this. It shouldn’t be. We should approach our futures advocating for what we deserve and what we could have. Authoritarianism, as I have said previously, feeds off broken hopes and broken spirits. It grows where health and vigor and a sense of self has died. Think of this: is it not miraculous, after all this time, after all the assaults, the disappointments, the abuses, that it still flourishes within you?

That is magical. And it is what has delivered humanity from the clutches of total authoritarianism in the past. It is not capable of being extinguished. In a way, you are encountering one of the most powerful forces in all of the world and all of existence. It is so much larger and more important than speeches or ads or memes. Continue the work, build solidarity with your friends, families, communities, and coworkers. One election will not solve this problem, one politician will not take care of this for us, but if we can take this and build on it, if we can continue to ride these waves, if this feeling can bolster us against future disappointments and losses and people and parties who tell us no, there is nothing more than this, we will win.

We can find that thing we have been looking for all along, even if we didn’t fully know it.

A better, realer, more human future that you and me and everyone we know deserves.