Dispatch 32: The Clown at the End of the World | The Brooklyn Rail

Kierkegaard tells this parable in Either/Or: “A fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”¹

The background to Kierkegaard’s parable was that people are so concentrated on the show, on the spectacle, that they don’t realize that the theater is actually on fire. The clown is funny, and isn’t taken seriously, even when he is actually warning the crowd about the fire to come.

I choose to believe that in Kierkegaard’s parable today, Trump is the clown, and the fire in the theater is autocracy. Trump came out in his rallies, over and over again, and warned the crowd that he was planning to bring fascism to America. But they didn’t really believe it, because it was a clown saying it. They laughed and applauded, believing it was just a joke and part of the act.

It turns out it’s not a joke or an act. The theater is actually on fire.

After Trump won in 2016, I wrote this (“Dispatch 35: Year Zero,” November 21, 2016):

It’s the way democracy works, sometimes. If you can get enough people worked up enough at the right time, and make enough noise to drown out all signal, you can take power, and kill something. And it happened that this year, it was enough. The center did not hold. Only a little over half of all eligible voters exercised their principal right in a representative democracy, and a little less than half of that group voted—in the right proportions in the right states, according to the rules—to shake things up.

The electorate that Tuesday in November was in a foul and unstable state, and they decided, just barely, to roll the dice and risk the fate of the free world on the brittle promises of a narcissistic huckster from Queens. Some of them had legitimate grievances, but all of them were angry enough to lash out blindly, consequences be damned. You’ll listen to us now.²

This time is different. Yes, Trump is still doing the clown schtick. But this time, people knew exactly who and what Trump is, and they still voted decisively to put this fascist in power, with complete control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. And they chose a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, an inveterate liar and cheater, and a committed autocrat, to be their Commander-in-Chief.

The majority of white women voters voted for Trump. Eight in ten Trump voters in this election were White, but for the first time, one out of three people of color also voted for him. Nearly half of all voters under 30 years old voted for Trump this time. He even got 30% of the vote in New York City!

Some pundits are now second-guessing the Democrats’ decision to go with Kamala Harris, and I’ve been having a lot of arguments about that. In the end, with so much at stake, I think it was right to go with the Black/Indian-American woman candidate, because that’s who needed to win this contest, a true representative of this multicultural, ethnically and racially diverse, feminist democracy. Unfortunately, a majority of Americans chose the White Supremacist fascist candidate instead. But now things are clear. The fight for the soul of America isn’t over—it’s just going into a new, even more consequential stage.

It’s difficult at this time not to just be disgusted with electoral politics and turn away, but the stakes are too high for that. Too many women have already suffered and died as a result of Trump’s Supreme Court justices killing Roe and banning reproductive health care. Trans folks have been attacked. LGBTQ+ people are in daily danger. Immigrants are being savagely attacked. When Trump’s “mass deportations” begin, the level of suffering will explode. When he “negotiates” with Putin, more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Trump’s directive to Netanyahu, to “do what you need to do,” is criminally insane and will increase the suffering and death of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank that is already unconscionable and unbearable.

The new global authoritarian Axis is rising and Trump’s infatuation with Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong-un puts the U.S. in a bad position strategically and morally, and will put millions more people at risk. Domestically, the energy for change has shifted to the Right, and the Left is unaccustomed to defending and conserving democratic norms and institutions, but the need to conserve and protect what’s left will rapidly increase in the months ahead.