Marcus Alden Meredith

November 24, 2024

Seven Days Off-Line

What happened when I came back

I made a conscious decision not to listen to the news for the week after the election. I just couldn’t take the mental/emotional stress that was going to come with it. But you can’t hide from reality forever and the world it inhabits because it’s your world too. So, at some point you have to remove the fingers from your ears and stop repeating “La La La!” What I had to deal with on my return, well now, that required some deep analysis  not only of myself but of my country, my race (human race, that is), and the future that could come to pass if we do not initiate some new Age of Enlightenment and soon. And like Zarathustra come down from the mountain, I have some things to say….

To give some perspective to anyone reading me for the first time let me me give you some basics of where I’m coming from. I am and avowed atheist, Stoic, and Zen Buddhist… but the first thoughts that have come to me are Old and New Testament (probably the result of being raised by the only child of a Methodist preacher from Nebraska). The first is Galatians 6:8 - Quae enim semiavent homo haec et metet quoniam qui seminent: “For what things a man shall sow, therefore also shall he reap.” The second is from Hosea 8:7 - Quia entum semiabut et turbines metunt: “For they sow wind, and reap a whirlwind.” I am confident in the applicability of these quotes to the present and the reason is simple - I believe Donald Trump and take what he says at face value.  I think if he says, “I will do ‘A’.” then “A” is what he will do. It really is that simple. There are far to many examples from history where other authoritarians have done the same thing and people simple chose to ignore it. “Oh, that’s just the way he talks. He doesn’t really mean that.” are words that should be chiseled on the grave stones of every person who voted for Trump. It’s a symptom of a mass psychosis, an inability to see that you’ve projected your grievances a man, a criminal, utterly uninterested in your well being, only his own. I can’t begin to express the exasperation I had while seeing news flashes about how many people were googling, “Can I take back my vote?” The disappointment in my fellows citizens is almost too much to adequately communicate. 

The electoral experience has left me to re-examine the capacities of my fellow Americans. I keep coming back to a type of mental bias termed the Dunning-Kruger Effect (and I implore you to look it up). Briefly, the bias goes like this: People who aren’t smart, familiar, or knowledgable about a certain subject almost always overestimate their abilities and expertise, while truly knowledgable people will tend to underestimate and downplay their abilities and expertise because they actually are more aware of their own limitations about the subject. Let’s recap: Stupid or Ignorant people think they’re smarter than they are, smart people don’t think they’re as smart as they actually are. If you think this means I don’t think my fellow Americans are very smart, you’d be right - and emotionally the evaluation of them is even worse. I think that there is a large swath of America(-ns) that hate smart people, simply stated. Period. Their reaction to expertise is to be like a petulant child who throws a tantrum when they’re told that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist. And as far as American men, more of whom voted for the Orange Man, I think your machismo infused world view and neophobic infected brains have made you far less trustworthy than the women that surround you because your starting ( just starting!) to have to deal with women on a playing field that hopefully gets more level every year. Yes, men, I think the women are starting to out-perform you and you can’t handle it!

Now here I insert a paragraph in some defense of the “Working Class Joe” only because his view that the game is rigged is not without some merit and it’s only recently that this information has come to me. When the populist-fascistic tropes say that “the game is rigged” it turns out that’s not a complete fabrication. Part of the reason for the “nostalgia virus” that so many working class people have is due to how we’ve redone the emphasis on what education is supposed to accomplish and how it has miserably failed. If I had not been so interested in the sciences and had parents who were both teachers, I think I would have become a welder… but I am of the age when shop classes and vocational skills were still valued in public education. We’ve abandoned this valuable education and now we’re reaping the rewards of our short-sighted stupidity. I got to play outside, explore, be a kid not have every bloody moment of my waking life structured so that I could pass some gate-keeping exams to get into a select college or university. And this is where you should direct your gaze of understanding if you want to start to know why Trump won. I refer you to the article How the Ivy League Broke America by David Brooks in December 2024 issue of The Atlantic. Here you begin to see where the divide began to occur to make so many American men feel that they had to vote for a 34 times convicted felon as President of the United States.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocazio-Cortez expressed some more on the mental disconnect from the American electorate. She had gone back to her district to talk to her constituents and she related that, “From many people I’ve talked to, people who have to work 3 shifts to make ends meet, say, ‘He won’t really do that, will he?’ and it’s heartbreaking.” And there we seem to have the election in a nutshell. Not that the social institutions like colleges and don’t share some of the blame either. They do! We are in such a huge, liminal, transitional moment in history I’m concerned that the race (and by race, I mean the human race) may not be able to rise to the occasion. for further proof of my assertions just look at the cabinet choices from Trump that greeted me after my news respite. First I heard was Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. She’s a Russian “useful idiot” who abandoned the Democratic Party and blames NATO for the Ukraine War. She never got beyond the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserve and is woefully under qualified in the area of international relations - in short, she’s one of Putin’s puppets. Second, we have Matt Gaetz as Attorney General - a man accused of sex trafficking and using illicit drugs while having sex with a minor. [As of the posting of this blog, not it’s initial construction, Gaetz has dropped out of the running and another Trumpist has taken his place… at least she’s qualified having been an attorney general before] Lastly, I heard that RFK jr. was picked to head the Department of Health and Human Services. This is the Lunatics being picked to run the Asylum! An avowed anti-vaxxer in charge of public health, nutrition, and disease control. Effie far the door! What we have here is the makings of a Kakistocracy  - rule by the worst and least qualified. The origin of this phrase goes back to the time of the English Civil War but it fits. If these people are allowed by the Senate to take up these positions of power, you will have to hope with some serious trepidation that another new pandemic virus doesn’t materialize, that our food remains relatively safe, that civil rights are allowed to remain strong, and that Russia and China don’t end up with all our secrets. How many books will be banned in the name religious over-toned idiocy? Will the Department of Education even endure? I think I personally need to plan with my advisor about what to expect to happen in the Stock Markets. The Stoics call it Premeditatio Malorum - planning ahead to be able to handle the bad things that may come. Batten down the hatches! It’s gonna be a bumpy ride…