Hi,
There are some news and political moments indelibly marked in our memories. For me, other than the sudden deaths of high-profile figures, the Brexit vote result and the election of Donald Trump are two moments I will never forget. For someone living in the UK and working in news, life since then seems divided into before, and after these events. It’s only been three and a bit years, but things before 2016 seem like ancient history.
Apart from the very real ramifications on people’s lives that these two events had, from the Muslim ban to the impending end to freedom of movement for British citizens, there is a sense that something has been eroded that can never be rebuilt or recaptured. I am not sure what that something is, and I am aware I am writing as someone who is politically very much on the losing end of these two votes. I also know that this sense of the world changing doesn’t mean things were going well before (indeed, the fact that these two disruptions came to pass is proof that all was not well). But I find myself still hoping, still somehow invested in an abstract (and lately very hard to locate) sense of inevitable reversal.
With the US election gearing up, I am braced again for disappointment. It doesn’t look like there is a strong candidate who will crush Trump in 2020, and it seems like the Democrats are about to repeat all the same mistakes of 2016. But still, somewhere deep down, I cannot help but think of Trump as an aberration, rather than a culmination. It’s becoming clear to me that writing on Better Politics is a struggle between these two impulses; belief that the good will prevail, and a clear-eyed realism that life, often, is just more complicated than that.
As I walk that fine line I invite you to take a look at my callout on the US election. Let me know if there’s anything you would like me to focus on as I try to modulate between the Better Politics mood swings of jaded cynicism, and confident, swaggering optimism.
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