I am at a loss to explain the outcome of Election 2024. People have their theories, but…I don’t know. 

It is as though a critical segment of the electorate, apparently unable to coherently evaluate the information in front of them (a virtual flood of pertinent information made available to them over an extended period of time), suddenly shrugged their shoulders, and threw their ballots into the abyss: whether by voting for America’s Gaseous Fascist, or simply by refusing to vote at all.

I conclude that, as a people, Americans are not to be taken seriously. Our allies know this—we can’t be trusted anymore. Our enemies know it—we are too ridiculous to be feared any longer, and we are too damaged, too venal, to inspire the world as we once did. In the eyes of the world we have become a bad joke. We don’t seem to have the capacity to defend serious values that we used to hold sacred. We don’t show that we seriously want to solve our problems. We are unable to hold ourselves or each other accountable, even, for what we do or fail to do. Millions of us give the impression of just being along for the ride, intent only on having a good time until something more diverting or titillating or lucrative comes along.

I hope there may still be some great and  hopeful future for the United States of America, but I don’t think I will live to see it—and I’m pretty sure that you won’t either, no matter who or how old you are. 

I advise you instead to summon up the best you have within you, and turn to the defense of those innumerable bastions of decency, those vestiges of integrity and enlightenment, that still remain within our borders. There are still many courageous  Americans prepared to stand with you if you do.

***

Here is a quotation about the spiritual destruction of an individual human being, the loss of a soul, which equates to the destruction of humanism itself. This is taken from Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus (1947). In this scene, the main character, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is mourning the imminent death of his nephew, the child Echo. Adrian’s lifelong friend, Zeitblom, narrates the scene:

I was leaving when he stopped me, calling my name, my last name, Zeitblom, which sounded hard too. And when I turned round:

“I find,” he said, “that it is not to be.”

“What, Adrian, is not to be?”

“The good and noble,” he answered me; “what we call the human, although it is good, and noble.What human beings have fought for, and stormed citadels; what the ecstatics exultantly announced—that is not to be. It will be taken back. I will take it back.”

“I don’t quite understand, dear man. What will you take back?”

“The Ninth Symphony,” he replied. And then no more came, though I waited for it.