Vitriolic elections are not a new thing so why do we feel drained tonight?
I read a few of the candidates’ tweets as soon as I woke up today because one has to distract oneself on such an anxiety-ridden morning. They were exactly what you would expect: random statements such as “Biden is a corrupt politician who SOLD OUT Michigan to CHINA.” Biden was of course much more civil, but he did tweet a few too many times about the “battle for the soul of the nation”. I would love to tell my twin sons that there was a time when elections used to be about convincing the electorate while this time it has been mostly about stirring up antipathy against the other candidate. I would love to tell them it is a sign of America’s collapse. But unfortunately, it would not be true. Vitriolic attacks have always been basic features of politics on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2017, in the last debate Marine LePen called Macron a “smirking banker” and Macron called her a “liar” in return. Of course, Trump — who is rough around the edges to say the least — took it to another level. But overall there was nothing really new about how acronymous the Trump and Biden campaigns have been.
So what has changed? Why are we so tired of this negativity? Why does it feel that we could not take another day of this campaign? Why do we feel that we might never recover from it?
It probably is a combination of many forces. The campaign came on the heel of a conflict and scandal-ridden Trump presidency and topped what already felt like a growing cultural divide between conservatives and progressives. We should also not forget the omnipresence of politics in every single medium including social media and a pandemic which 8 months-in is clearly going to change radically our lives on top of the expected toll of global warming.
It raises the question of what entertainment and news are we consuming? because we are mostly served what we demand. It also links to what I wrote about last week (see: a guide to personal recovery from the Trump years): our individual responsibility in shaping a cohesive society by our behavior. Finally, it also asks us to check the toll this pandemic — an unexpected historical development — has taken on our mental health and well-being.
Biden is going to be elected tonight. Trump is going to slowly fade away. The Republicans are going to have to do some soul-searching. The democrats will still have to deal with a raging pandemic. But Biden-Harris are not wizards, they won’t solve the questions of culture, individual responsibility and resilience in facing a radical transformation of our World. Once the inauguration has taken place, we need to make sure we have individual plans to respond to the root of our angst. Mine start with waking up 15 minutes early every day to meditate instead of checking Twitter on my phone.