There is No October Surprise

This is why nothing will stop Trump and nobody cares, and why people (including me) need to do something different if they want to defeat the weird forces of the new far-right.

October has been and gone and endless leaks and stories about various heinous/ridiculous deeds have come out into the open. None of it matters. There is no October Surprise. There is no story that would make any impact on Trump’s supporters. Here’s why.

David Roberts is a guy who runs a newsletter called Volts about clean energy & politics. Remarkably (or not) it has about 227k followers (join them here). Roberts writes:

“I’m glad I don’t have to write an endorsement piece, because I really wouldn’t know how to go about it. Ever since 2015, when Trump descended the escalator, I have had the same feeling, which I’ve never quite seen articulated, so I will briefly try:

It’s basically this: Trump is so obviously, manifestly repugnant — his words, his gestures, his behavior, his history – that it strikes me like a tsunami. It’s a kind of total, perfect, seamless repugnance that I’ve never witnessed before in my life. Which means …

… pointing out some particular piece of the repugnance & arguing against it feels … surreal, I guess. “He has regularly sexually assaulted women, almost certainly raped a few, and … I think that’s bad.” Yeah. I mean, I think rape is bad. But here’s the thing …

.. if you think rape is bad, you will already oppose Trump. If you don’t, what could I possibly say to reach you? I don’t understand your moral universe, your basic precepts. We are different in a way so fundamental that I literally don’t know how to speak to you.

It’s the same with all of it. I could point to some obvious bit of repugnance – “I think it’s bad to cheat every small business you interact with.” – but … it’s obvious. You’ve surely see it yourself. And it doesn’t matter to you. So how is me pointing it out going to help?

You see what I’m getting at? I feel like there’s nothing I can say about Trump that isn’t obvious, that isn’t well-understood public knowledge. If you still support him at this point, you clearly don’t *care* about all that stuff. And if you don’t care about all that stuff …

… then … what do you care about? How does your brain operate? What does morality mean to you? What language could possibly reach you? What could cause you to care? I genuinely don’t know. It’s like when you’re trying to speak w/ someone who doesn’t speak your language …

… and you respond by just repeating yourself, louder. “HE’S A CAREER CRIMINAL WITH 34 FELONY CONVICTIONS.” It’s pointless. They *heard* you. They just don’t understand, don’t care. You’re assuming they share the premise “criminal rapists are bad,” but they don’t.

And so, if you’re that far apart – if you do not share basic, fundamental moral precepts, if you live in different moral universes – how can you communicate? Literally, what do you say?

So I could write the 5000th piece once again listing Trump’s sins – “He’s explicitly said he loves dictators & wants to be one!” – but they’ve all been listed a million times. His supporters don’t care. And I wouldn’t know what to write to make someone care or be decent.

That’s where I’ve been ever since 2015: feeling like language is pointless. Like the reality I inhabit is so far from the reality Trump supporters inhabit that discourse between us is impossible, or at least futile. The divide is unbridgeable.”

You doubt him?

This week Tucker Carlson has gone public with the news that he was physically attacked by a demon. Trump has told audiences that an incoming Harris presidency would ‘ban windows’ and Trump says RFK Jr is going to work on “women’s health”. Check here. 

But also … depressingly David Roberts is 100% right.

There is no discourse. There is no conversation to be had.

But also, three other things:

1. He’s a white man, she’s a black women. As you look at polling, this is the thing that stands out. In an election when the candidate is as absolutely repugnant as Donald Trump, this single factor still stands out amongst ‘white men’. He’s a white man, she’s a black women. For large sections of America, this is all that matters. It doesn’t matter who he is, it’s just ‘He’s a white man, she’s a black women.’ I know. It’s 2024.
2. The other thing is the Liberal, rational, educated America has no idea how plain awful the ‘liberal establishment’ appears to whole swathes of rural America, and it seems as if Harris is re-playing the Clinton playbook of a contentless campaign based on vibes, denouncing Trump supporters and endless celebrity endorsements.
3. Third, and last, Trump is a meme. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous or disgusting he is. In a memetic society in which everything is reduced, trivialised, in which the dark and hyper-cynical is mainstream, in which everything is cauterized and everything is much darker than liberals think, nothing matters. He might win just cos he’s a meme.

Who knows, maybe the Harris-Walz advisors are right. Maybe the strategy of peeling off remnant Republicans to form some weird centrist coalition will ‘work’ in defeating Trump? I honestly doubt it, and I very much doubt that, even if it were achieved it would be a real victory, but I know very little.

Finally, there’s another catch. It’s not entirely true to say that Harris has run a ‘contentless campaign’. She has focused on women’s rights and abortion law. This campaign has been, if nothing else, conducted on and about gender wars. It is fair enough for critics of the Harris-Walz campaign to deride and denounce them for their inherited stance on Palestine. But it is not as if this campaign is inconsequential. If you are a women in America you are facing new waves of unimaginable threats to your basic human rights. It’s in this context that the sheer moral degeneracy of the “He’s a white man, she’s a black women” attitude comes into sharp focus.

But here’s the catch. If Trump-Vance were to win they would have the momentum to use that vote as permission to deliver their horrific new Gilead real.