So... about the election...

Where do we go from here?

I’m back!

It’s been a busy few weeks. I picked up a demanding morsel of work, which was helpful for my financial health but threw my writing plans far off course.

Balance — it’s a struggle, amirite?

Like everyone else, I’ve also been watching the election and its aftermath unfold, trying to figure out where we go from here. If these times have you feeling grimly tired & anxious, I’m here to remind you that you’re not alone.

I watched the election, sure, but I also binge-watched The Boys because somehow that dark mirror was a welcome escape from the reality it reflects.

After observing my productivity crash as my anxiety increased around the election, I can’t help but think about how our collective wellbeing is interwoven with our individual wellness, and how crises at personal, national, and planetary levels all feed back on each other.

This moment in history requires us to be at our best — but it also pushes us into brain fog, depression, and anxious avoidance while we try to manage the daily necessities of work (if we’re lucky), finances, family, and keeping our health on modestly stable footing.

If we’re going to adequately respond to the collective crises we face, we’re going to have to get a lot better at taking care of ourselves and each other.

And traps abound. Despite knowing better, I found myself doomscrolling too much, binging on leftover Halloween treats, and letting my wellness-sustaining habits slide around the election. As usual, a potent cocktail of stillness, clarity, and action has provided the antidote to my own election malaise.

Recommitting to my meditation and movement practices provided the stillness. Journaling and re-articulating my goals in writing offered the clarity. Recommitting to this project embodies part of the restorative action.

Planning and organization offer stillness as well, through the relieving clarity of a roadmap. I’ve now sketched out a couple months of content, so I should be able to stay on track with more regular musings from here on out.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by the election or the “six-month COVID wall”, try to remember that this too shall pass.

Try as well to carve out a block of time this weekend to give yourself some stillness and clarity around what actions you can take (e.g. meditate, prioritize sleep, journal, phone a friend), and what actions you can replace (e.g. doomscrolling) to give yourself small wins that boost your mood, energy, and sense of positive momentum.

Pick one high-impact thing that can move the needle forward, write it down, and put a note on your fridge or set a phone reminder so you don’t lose track.

And check in a week later to pat yourself lovingly on the back for whatever small wins you’ve accomplished.

Celebrate your wins, analyze your struggles, adjust, and repeat. Embrace this loving incrementalism, and you will feel better.

Election Takeaways — Where Do We Go From Here?

Ok, so now we’ve had a wellness check-in, let’s talk about… the other stuff. Here are some things to think about:

1. Celebrate victories and give credit where it’s due

2. Trump & Trumpism are not going away

3. The disinformation crisis is just getting started

4. We’re far from out of the COVID woods

5. The climate crises can’t wait

1. Celebrate victories and give credit where it’s due

Biden won in no small part due to the heroic efforts of Black communities that have been systematically excluded and disenfranchised. People who’ve suffered from years of racist gerrymandering, voter suppression, environmental injustice, incarceration, and poverty.

There’s a lesson here in the power of collective action. Isolated suffering engenders despair and disempowerment. Collective action is the antidote.

We should also take heart in victories like these. Progress comes from many people working at many levels on many things.

Even when things seem grim, the light shines through.

2. Trump & Trumpism are not going away

Ok, now for the grim part. Trump & Trumpism are not going away.

First, this is true because of Trump himself. His narcissism requires constant attention, and his escalating financial and legal distress requires him to keep the kleptocratic con game going, with ever-higher stakes for the rest of us.

We should be clear by now that Trump is utterly shameless and that there is no bottom to his behaviour, driven as it is by malignant, sociopathic narcissism.

So yes, he’ll continue attacking the election results and undermining their perceived legitimacy, even though this is insane, likely for years to come. He complained about being robbed of the Emmys for over a decade, for goodness sake. He’s not going to let this one go.

Although Trump’s court challenges are ill-founded, they will continue as long as he can keep them going, if only to keep his base energized, donating, and convinced that his cockamamie ravings have some foundation beyond personality disorder, naked self-interest, and the 2024 election.

Second, Trumpism is not going away because the GOP is in his thrall.

With Trump commanding a loyal, fanatical base who live in an alternate non-factual reality, many in the party are quite willing to keep revising the terms of their Faustian bargain to favour Trump’s devilish assault on democracy, as they have been doing since he won the nomination.

Take note of how few Republican politicians have condemned him, even now as he refuses to concede, escalates his lies, and conducts a loyalty purge.

Whether or not Trump or one of his off-putting offspring seek election in 2024 (likely overshadowing other candidates), they will be kingmakers, bestowing or withholding the cursed blessing of their cultish, fanatical following.

(Just so you know, dear reader, I REALLY wanted to put an “off putting” golf pun in that sentence, but it broke up the flow too much).

Part of the problem is that, by conventional wisdom, the Republicans can’t really win elections anymore — not without widespread voter suppression and gerrymandering anyway.

After Obama’s second presidential win, GOP party elders understood they would have to reform the party to remain competitive amid the country’s rapidly changing demographics.

Instead, they went with Trump.

Trump showed that outright, escalating authoritarianism could offer a path to victory, paved by decades of Republican consolidation around religious extremism, cynical obstructionism, anti-democratic electioneering, anti-science rhetoric, negative partisanship, conspiracy theorizing, and white identity politics.

In this sense, Trump simply metastasized the cancerous rot that the GOP had long been feeding.

Trump and his family are now gatekeepers to the volatile, angry voting coalition that offered this path to Republican victory — a coalition that is drunk on grievance, primed for violence, and convinced in large numbers that Trump has been robbed of a landslide.

Finally, read this piece by the ever-brilliant Zeynep Tufekci. In showing that Trumpism can work, Trump has created a new generation of Trumpists.

Some, like newly minted Georgia Q-ongresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, will take the GOP’s penchant for conspiracy theories to new levels of terrifying absurdity. As Jonathan V. Last wrote earlier this week, “It is telling that the next Congress will have more Republicans who have flirted with QAnon than those who opposed Trump.” 

Others, like North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn, will bring new levels of trolling contempt and religious extremism to Congress.

Any ostensibly “moderate” Republicans that remain after four years carrying Trump’s foul water are increasingly vulnerable to primary challenges from this new generation of extremists, whose view of what politics should be have been shaped by Trump’s corrosive example and the poisoned information ecosystem in which he lives.

But as Tufecki points out, the real danger is a competent Trumpist — someone who is more interested in governing than golf. Someone who has the same norm-breaking authoritarian gall but fewer obvious gaffes.

Beware the velvet gloves to come.

3. The disinformation crisis is just getting started

Whatever happens between now and January, expect QAnon to continue to fester in the months beyond, alongside the dangerous delusions of Election 2020 ‘truthers’.

Just over 50% of Republicans, drowning in Koolaid, erroneously believe that Trump “rightfully won”, and 68% are apparently concerned that the election was “rigged.” 16% of Democrats and one third of independents share similar concerns.

This is… nuts, and reflects just how corrosive the right-wing media ecosystem and social media radicalization have been for democratic institutions. It’s also incredibly dangerous, given the escalation of violent rhetoric and actions, and the easy access to small arms in the US.

We shouldn’t hope that facts on the ground will magically dissolve these delusions. Just consider that some COVID patients are reportedly going to their deaths, tragically confident that it “can’t be happening” and “it’s not real”.

The cult of Trump is turning America into Jonestown.

4. We’re far from out of the COVID woods

Although it’s great news that we’ll likely have widespread deployment of vaccines by the end of 2021, in the meantime, the pandemic in the US is still looking very, very bad.

See these graphs of lagging indicators from the New York Times:

Obviously, the disinformation environment and many Americans’ distrust in expertise will work against us here too.

It seems that 58% of Americans are now willing to be vaccinated against COVID, which is an improvement from the 50% reported in September, but is still troublingly low. Compare this to 69% in Canada, for example (better, but still kinda low, eh?).

Critical relief measures in the US are also set to expire by the end of the year, leaving a whole lot of folks in an even more vulnerable position as winter sets in, COVID continues to spread, and even the best hospitals prepare for “an absolutely catastrophic path” ahead.

Coupled with Trump’s predictable determination to smash, stall, and sabotage everything he can on the way out the door — assuming he actually leaves peacefully — and it’s clear that Biden will inherit an even bigger mess than the one we face today.

5. The climate crises can’t wait

From California wildfires, to Arctic wildfires to a plague of locusts, it’s been quite a year for climate-related catastrophes.

Get used to it. As with COVID’s lagging indicators, our self-inflicted planet-wide destabilization will continue to worsen until some time after we get our act together.

Joe Biden’s win is undoubtedly good news for every farm, factory, and firm that’s used to operating in a relatively stable climatic context.

Biden & the Dems will, of course, do some mix of what they can and what they’re courageous enough to — which may be quite a lot, even if the obstructionist Republicans hold the Senate.

However, absent a legislative majority, the boldest, swiftest action may continue to come from investors and regulators, who are rightly escalating demands for better disclosure around climate-change related risks.

With that being said, there are early signs that Biden’s team is treating climate change with a degree of the seriousness it screams for.

An ambitious, “whole government approach” that appropriately embeds climate expertise, analysis, and leadership across every government agency would reflect the all-encompassing nature of the our unfolding planetary crisis, and the urgent need for holistic policy thinking and synergistic policy wins.

At this point, it’s delusional and catastrophically negligent not to incorporate robust climate-related analysis and planning into every agency (so too for corporate leadership, as the next few decades of litigation are certain to show).

As Ernest Moniz notes, re-establishing American leadership will also require re-establishing credibility. For my Canadian readers, expect our good-guy routine to come under further scrutiny as the U.S. becomes less cartoonishly villainous on the climate file and starts setting a better example under Biden.

Expect too the same predictable, tired objections from the usual suspects here and abroad, who seem ready to go to their graves spinning the same old discredited and bad-faith arguments to delay action.

However, the only “right time” for aggressive climate action was decades ago, when fossil fuel companies first realized the implications of unchecked emissions (and then buried the evidence). That ship has sailed, so today will have to do instead. Fortunately, Canada’s financial industry and regulators have been leading as well.

As Elizabeth May has said, a good hockey player skates to where the puck is going.

There is no high-emissions path to prosperity. As the climate crises accelerate, those who cling to the past will be left behind.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Ok, so you may be feeling any number of things. Eyestrain. A tenuous sense of relief. Frustrated exhaustion.

Maybe hangry?

Let me know in the comments!

For my part, I think a few things stand true:

First, we must celebrate every victory and honour those who’ve worked to deliver it.

Second, we must keep the big picture in our sights. This ongoing democratic crisis overlaps with other trends that demand our urgent attention.

From COVID to climate change, the more frail our democratic institutions, the more we’ll struggle to adequately respond.

Third, we’ve got to connect the dots between our individual wellness and our collective wellbeing. This moment in history needs us at our best.

On that last point and in the spirit of personal growth, I’m happy to share a book recommendation!

I’ve been reading High Performance Habits. I wish I’d picked it up before starting my Bay Street job or, frankly, years prior. If you’re looking to ‘level up’ your performance with your energy, health, relationships, career, etc., I highly recommend this book. I’m not getting any affiliate revenue or anything, I’ve just genuinely found it quite helpful and I think you may too. You can get a free hardcover + audiobook here (just pay for shipping).

Other news — YouTube channel coming!

I’m starting a YouTube channel! I love the sound of my own voice at least as much as I enjoy writing, so I figured I’d create a platform for myself to speak publicly and hopefully contribute to these conversations in that corner of the Internet too.

Stay tuned for details, and let me know if you have any video requests!

In the meantime, thanks so much for reading.

Please share this post with anyone who might be interested, and please take good care of yourself.