I keep thinking its all over! Certainly this blog is now over - as Ceri is now following Nate Silver (but you know he got the primary wrong?) who is more interesting than me. Most of my local friends have been treating it as over for quite some time, and in part that’s because the World Series was way more exciting. There are a lot of Cubs fans here, so the Cubs-Dodger’s Playoffs were big, followed by the World series itself. Not many locals cheering for the Indians to win - except for the ones in Dakota. Everyone here seems to be on their side, sadly except the authorities.
It really ought to be over. There is something called ‘an October surprise’ as part of a Presidential campaign but we had weekly surprises every Friday in October and now going into November, surprises daily it seems. And everywhere people express a wish that it were over - but its like a nasty scab that you can’t stop picking. Which makes you wonder if it will ever heal? I think it will definitely leave a scar. Others are talking about it possibly getting worse even after Tuesday. So many Republican’s joking about taking up arms, if they lose that one feels certain that some kook will take it seriously. There is a strong sense of apprehension as everyone prepares for the craziness of the past months to turn up the heat on voting day, almost certainly resulting in tragedy of some form.
The sense of disgust at this election is the one thing that everyone here agrees on. Perhaps the rest of the world also but perhaps they are still laughing at us - who knows. What makes it so disgusting is that the political has become so personal that we can no longer distinguish one from another. This is happening in both Presidential campaigns, and without, in general national, state and local politics. I have said before in the campaign that the racism, xenophobia and misogyny that the campaign has brought to a fore is not characteristic of my life here in suburban Los Angeles county. Quite the contrast - my neighbors all get along amazingly, including an incredible scale of diversity. In my community we have many Muslim and atheist families, many Christians, LDS and Jewish families, and many same sex couples, people with disabilities, people of color, and immigrants from Russia, Japan, China, Korea and Latin America who are all accepted as respected members of our community. Even from the UK! It is still hard for me to believe that the same people who are so friendly and accepting of each other in the community could be voting in support of candidates and policies that would make life so uncomfortable for their friends. But politics is happening instead online - in Facebook groups and twitter where you live in a bubble with people who you agree with and when you disagree, apparently do not have to remain civil.
In my city we are represented by a Republican in our State Assembly, who actually has been a good assemblyman, whose seat is being contested by his predecessor, a Democrat. Our mailbox is filled with endless flyers, as the two campaigns sling mud at each other. The Democrat says that the Republican supports Trump, which he says is a lie, and the Republican says that the Democrat supports keeping paedophile teachers in the classroom, and all of us are wondering why there are these flyers on our doormat about paedophile teachers, like that’s a problem we have to deal with every day. But it works - I find it hard to think of the Democrat now without thinking about that issue. None of us know or care any longer about this race - they both seem disgusting. And none of it seems to pertain to me or my local issues.
The biggest local issue in our city is the harbor redevelopment plan. But again most people find it impossible to understand the plan or the issues because the two sides have two separate online conversations. The pro development people post wonderful plans and glossy videos and the anti-development people post dire warnings. If you challenge either the whole post is often removed. What happened? I asked a friend in the know when a FB discussion vanished. There were too many personal attacks, I was told. I didn’t see the whole thread but I think the personal attacks were bringing up issues such as whether people posting in favor of the plan failed to disclose that they worked for the developer which is not a personal attack as much as a matter of good faith in internet etiquette. On the other side there are also ‘personal attacks’ based on where someone is from, feeding into a narrative that only people who have lived her all their life deserve a say in its future. (On this the natives are mistaken, plenty of people who chose this as their home want to keep it just as they found it.) But the flaws in the process have themselves become a big part of what people are opposed to - the sense that people are not listened to, that the decisionmakers have already made up their minds, and that any question puts you in one camp or another. You can’t be in favor of a little bit of development with some tweaks to iron out the problems, you have to be all in whatever the consequence or utterly opposed to any development at all. And this creates an atmosphere that people want to exclude ‘politics’ from local discussion - as though we can talk about coyotes and book clubs without it being political at all.
In Easter Europe in the 1990’s we talked about the need to rebuild civil society - Putman’s book ‘Bowling Alone’ was a big hit because it talked about the erosion of civil society in the US. We talked about the need for social capital. Social media creates its own community but it sucks all the social capital out of the offline community, creating an uncivil society. But it also personalises politics in numerous ways. The Facebook algorithm is designed to focus your attention on things that you are going to like or at least interact with. The news it shows you is provided by channels you have previously liked or clicked on. It also allows you to say things in a group or a filter that aren’t going to be read by all your friends. You end up with a personalised opinion magazine that will always confirm your preconceived notions.
Many people have noted the lack in this election of a fountain of truth for lack of a better term. There is not a single institution that can check facts, that would be accepted as reliable by either side, The FBI is now under doubt as both a Hillary apologist and an anti-hillary mixer. Government stats and figures are regularly regarded with cynicism. The police account can no longer be trusted. People even believe a spoof report that Snopes was arrested for corruption. Stolen personal emails provided by Wikileaks are the seemingly the only reliable source of truth on many matters. So here it is - our personalised news feeds allow us the luxury of personalised truth.
This is even more acute in local politics, where really the internet could be a force for openness and information. But rather than provide local citizens with as much information as possible, putting everything on the web for citizens to discuss, the information is tightly controlled and discussion managed often in the name of ‘privacy’ or to avoid ‘it getting too personal’.
The personal is political was a slogan from the 70’s wave of Feminism - encouraging women to see issues that seem very personal, such as reproductive rights, marriage, and work-life balance within the family as being a part of the subject matter of politics. As Hillary Clinton said in Bejing - women’s rights are human rights. The phrase puts the treatment of women at the centre instead of in the margin of the political realm. But the counter to this politicisation of the personal is to personalise the political. Each of the candidates is now presented as personally liable, for their criminal behavior, Clinton for misplacing publicly owned classified emails on a privately owned server, and Trump for rape and financial corruption including the public censure of his private university so that if they fail not only will they not be President, but perhaps also because of such scrutiny, go to jail.
This is really what this election is all about - as the election of a woman to President turns out to be such as significant challenge to patriarchy that they have to throw everything they have into the cannons. At the root of the patriarchal system is a public-private dichotomy that enforces male power over the public realm - which has been eroded by feminism to the point where we can no longer make sense of what is properly public or private, but not yet fully redefined in a way that we can make sense of a world with ever changing demands on privacy and publicity . All our scandals are focused on this problem - what is private and should be secret and what is personal but should be public? And if a former President's wife can be president, and you see your wife as personal property then hasn’t he usurped the public power into his own personal realm?
Their solution is literally to make politics personal, from talking about Megyn Kelly’s period, to the GOP candidates comparing the size of their genitals in a national debate (sic). That is why 'bus gate' is the most important story - and one the doesn't go away - and is kept in view even by those for whom it triggers the worst memories of their own personal torture. And this is what it comes down to as this Republican governor probably didn’t realise the significance of his vulgarity - but he said it - indeed this is Trump against vagina. And that is what this election has become - an epic battle over whether women are equal players in the public realm, citizens in the republic - or useful objects to be admired and sometimes grabbed for personal gratification.
And so whatever happens on Tuesday - some healing is desperately needed. And that will have to include a public discussion of a new and inclusive division between public and private, personal and political.
Wish us luck.
