Sleepy Joe Wakes Up

Last night, Joe Biden gave the first good speech of his presidency. He did it in front of two marines at the ready, a large American flag, and ominous red light. It was as though, much as 4Chan believes they raised Trump with memes, Twitter somehow managed to manifest Dark Brandon.

To hear conservatives tell it, America was united before last night and is divided forever now. “For hundreds of years, the U.S. has had a political system comprised of two competing parties,” Tucker Carlson lamented. “If you were to declare one of those parties criminal and illegitimate, what would you be left with?  

I don’t know, Tucker. Ask your friends. Ask yourself or the guests on your show.

“The leaders of today’s Democratic Party ... despise this country,” Tucker Carlson told us in 2020. “We cannot let them run this nation, because they hate it. Imagine what they would do to it.”

“We are at war,” Stephen K Bannon recently roared to a room full of wealthy Republican donors. “We are in a political and ideological war.” 

“You that wish to do evil upon the world--we stand against you,” Glenn Beck told a cheering audience at the same event. “We stand for the Constitution. We do not stand for fascism.”

"The world now is Gettysburg and America is Little Round Top. And you are the soldiers standing on the hill!" ever-popular LTG Mark Robinson roared like a baptist preacher, or a general. "Those people coming up that hill, they're called socialists. They're called communists. I prefer to call them idiots" 

It is, of course, very funny to watch conservatives act as though Biden invented accusing his political opponents of attempting to destroy the country. They are not, however, entirely wrong about Biden’s speech. For the first time in a long time, the mainstream liberal establishment drew up battle lines. Laid claim to America’s beating heart. To patriotism. To the future and the past. 

For years now Republicans have laid claim to American patriotism. Last night, Biden challenged that hegemony. And the conservatives are losing their minds.

You may, at some point over the last few years, have experienced an unsettling moment where you not only disagreed with someone politically but felt like they could not hear you. As though your words meant nothing. And their words seemed just as incomprehensible to you.

The schism is not personal. It’s not even political. It’s cultural, right down to the foundations of society itself.

Any interaction between two people requires some kind of shared understanding. If we do not agree on which sounds mean what concepts, we cannot speak with each other. If we do not agree that murder or rape is bad, we cannot live with each other. And if we do not agree on what freedom means, we cannot govern with each other.

Earlier this year I read The City & the City by China Miéville. I hated every second of it and have not been able to stop thinking about it since. Miéville tells a tale of two separate cities in the same geographical location. This is not a fantasy realm or a parallel universe; the two cities are literally intertwined. Some streets are part of Besźel, others Ul Qoma, and some are are a mixture of both. You live and work next to denizens of that foreign city, and you are legally required not to notice them. Denizens of Besźel must “unsee” the brightly-colored buildings of Ul Qoma and its citizens who pass them on the street, and vice versa. Those who violate this rule receive a visit from the enforcers – the Breach – and are never seen again. 

You might expect the plot to involve efforts to do away with Breach and merge the two cities. You would be wrong. The hero eventually becomes an agent of Breach, an enforcer of the separation. I was furious and disgusted. I felt betrayed. 

And yet, how else can two completely different cultures coexist in the same geographical space?

As America is currently discovering, you can’t.

Republican and Democratic visions of America are incompatible. Two different definitions of freedom and democracy, two election results, two January 6ths. Trans people in one universe are pedophiles in another. The nation was founded on secularism in one, God in the other. Different headlines, different culture, different entertainment. Alternate facts. Fake news. 

On September 1st, Biden declared that MAGA Republicans are anti-American. MAGA has said the same of anyone to the left of Mitch McConnell for years. The truth is, America is whatever we decide it is, and we need to decide quickly. 

We do not live in Miéville’s world. Two different universes cannot occupy the same place for long. One must win and the other must lose, and if both insist on remaining stationary the only way to settle this is war. Active revolution. The kind where a lot of people die.

I am almost certain that it is too late to avoid violence of some kind. Things have gone too far, the fear runs too deep. The lines of communication are down and we lack the necessary materials to repair them. Politicians and pundits on the far right are actively working to break them further.

If conflict is inevitable, our only choice is whether to lay down and let the other America win or to put up a fight. 

Because I have trans friends, and queer friends, and friends who are not white, and friends who are not Christian, I would prefer that we fight.

I am therefore gratified that Biden has, at last, taken a stand. His America is a far cry from the one I would like to inhabit but it is infinitely closer than the one Trump will bring us. At last, Biden has drawn battle lines. He has laid claim to the beating heart of this nation.

I am also filled with grief.

As someone who commits Breach every day, I regularly meet and speak to people who live in each America. I find myself liking most of them, and I care very much about a few. With notable and important exceptions, the vast majority of people in both nations are human beings who want a decent and fulfilling life. They do not feel fulfilled. They are desperately unhappy. They are terrified that the other America will take what little joy they’ve found away from them. 

One of these Americas is correct to be afraid. The other is no less scared for being wrong.

If you are reading this and you do not want war, I am asking you to talk. To anyone you might know in the other city. About anything at all. Commit Breach. 

Do not surrender your values. Do not surrender your vision of America. Do not put yourself or others in danger, do not exhaust yourself. But remind the other side that we are human. We are not agents of the Chinese Communist Party, we are not eagerly grooming their children for pedophelia. We are human. We see that they are human. We do not wish them harm.

And if that last sentence does not sound like you, consider what it means to wish 74 million people – or 81 million if you are conservative – harm. Consider what you are doing to yourself, to feel that way. That’s the abyss talking, baby. It’s crawled its way up into you. If we have to fight, we fight. but it will be a terrible thing. A terrible tragedy.

These fragile strands of communication aren’t much. It’s a Hail Mary pass in the final fractured seconds.

We ran out of good options a long time ago.