The Presidential Quiz That America Failed in 2024
America had a simple choice and failed to protect the most vulnerable
I’m still processing the results of the 2024 election, going back and forth between disbelief, devastation, mourning, cyclical sadness, & righteous anger. If we’re being honest, I’m mad at myself too for being so naive and gullible about America. I can’t believe I let myself think this country was going to do the right thing when it had the easiest assignment in the whole world:
Presidential, Civics, & Human Decency Quiz 2024
Please choose one of the following unnamed choices as president of the United States:
[ ] Candidate #1 | Political Experience: VP (4 years), United States Senator of California (4 years), 32nd Attorney General of California (6 years), 27th District Attorney of San Francisco (7 years)
Criminal Record: none.
[ ] Candidate #2 | Political Experience: President (4 years)
Criminal Record:
•34 Felony Counts for Falsifying Business Records
•Indicted on 40 Counts for Mishandling of Classified Documents
•Indicted on 4 Counts for Attempting to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election
•Indicted on 8 Counts for Attempting to Change the Outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election in Georgia
•Guilty for Sexual Assault and Defamation v. E Jean Carroll, 2024
•Total Lawsuits Filed Against: 4,095
Source Citations: Wikipedia, AP, USA Today, AP, Reuters
I don’t care what political party you identify with, this was the easiest assignment in the whole world and America somehow managed to screw it up. I’ve known for a while that American voters are incredibly uniformed, Machiavellian, dataphobic, binary, & emotional (next week’s MIXTAPE will talk more about that). We have a long history of ignoring and self-rationalizing our own racism and misogyny and xenophobia when it comes to our own pocketbooks. We are a rent-first, morality-second kind of nation. Since 2016, we let our political discourse degenerate into pure unadulterated nationalist theater. And now, we let a convicted felon blame all of the nation’s problems on immigrants, some of whom rewarded him with their votes because they didn’t think he was calling them rapists and murderers and trash and scum for poisoning this country, even though he absolutely was. America wasn’t up to the task of saving itself and now those of us that tried so hard to protect our vulnerable liberal democracy from billionaire populism, Republican hyper-masculinity, theocratic flirtation, & white supremacy are going to sit back and watch the world burn for a while.
Not because we wanted that for anyone or because we’re being spiteful, but because America decided to fuck itself instead of help itself, and none of us living in a marginalized category are going to be extras in this horror movie. If America wants to get back together with its abusive ex, so be it, but don’t come back crying to us the next time you need help. We devoted so much energy to protecting this country from itself and this country just wanted to drive drunk without the seatbelts again.
I have given up on white people sticking up for non-white people. I’ve stopped hoping they will support and protect people from marginalized backgrounds, but I expected more from other minorities who’ve been stepped on by Trump and his violent fanboys. Regardless of what reasons PoC and other minorities gave for voting 3rd party, not voting, or voting for Trump—whether it was the economy, stupid, or Palestinian rights or price gauging or the lack of a livable wage or structural unemployment or the misguided notion immigrants had that they were not the ones that Trump was attacking—the reality is that Trump is now going to start a brand new war against the people he hates. And Americans helped him do it. Trump will humiliate, divide, attack, abuse, & degrade Black people, women, PoC, immigrants, queer and trans people, Muslims, democrats, refugees, moderates, & moderate Republicans as he has done his entire political career while sabotaging our economic system with tariffs, the politicization of the Federal Reserve, & tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans that will absolutely snowball the federal deficit and raise inflation again. Something economists of every political stripe have been warning us about the past month. Something the GOP will conveniently forget about now that they’re back in power.
They say that the cost of eggs and rent were the only things that Trump voters cared about. More important, evidently, than Trump’s documented immorality, psychopathological narcissism, sexual assault, business failures and bankruptcies, kowtowing to authoritarian leaders, lack of intellectual curiosity, refusal to read foreign policy briefings, lust for his own daughter, echoing of Nazi and white supremacist talking points, disparaging veterans, appointing false electors and attempting to interfere with the 2020 certification, defying a subpoena to return classified documents, threatening to use the military against his opponents, demonizing the FBI, & withholding both domestic and foreign aid in order to punish his enemies and manipulate other countries. Trump is going to pummel his enemies and his supporters are going to celebrate his cruelty or claim they didn’t know. But they did know. They all knew. And they voted for him anyway.
We all remember the years 2016-2020. That’s why we cannot feign ignorance about what was at stake in the 2024 election or who had the most to lose or who would become his target if Trump was re-elected. Americans knew all of that going in and they still pretended this was an economic vote against the status quo. It was a vote against humanity that a majority of Americans will regret once it’s too late.
Next week, I will write more about the election and attempt to offer both insight and consolation to my readers, but for the time being, I’m reposting an older MIXTAPE I published earlier this year about Trump and authenticity because I think it’s as relevant now as it was then. If not prescient in a way. In the meantime, please take care of your heart and know that you I’m here with you.
—Jackson
Our Crisis of Authenticity
As much as I absolutely despise Trump—and I really fucking hate the dude—there’s one thing about him that I think liberals have never understood about him and his iron-clad supporters: he’s an authentic asshole. I know that sounds crazy because of how much we value authenticity as an important American cultural value, but authenticity is actually a neutral value. You can be an authentic scumbag, you can be an authentic saint. Hell, you can be an authentically boring person. We’ve all been told that we should be ourselves. But what if your true self is the asshole in the room? Then is it better to be yourself or to strive to do better or to become someone else? In a strange and terrible way, I think we have our answer with Trump. He’s a rich, entitled scumbag who acts like a rich, entitled scumbag and surely that’s the root of the problem here. He’s never wavered from his Apprentice script because he doesn’t know how to. And while we all know that he has said and done racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, & ableist shit consistently, his fans just eat it up. How can that be?
The obvious reason is that Trump makes conservatives feel like they’re not crazy for not understanding the world they live in anymore or for being afraid of it or for longing for a past where they were the center of the universe again (Americans, in particular, love being the center of the universe since the cultural narrative of American exceptionalism is predicated on it). Another obvious reason is that Trump doesn’t make white people feel bad about being white and I think progressives continue to underestimate how powerful shame can be in the political landscape and as a psychological force. Just look at the exit polls of Gen Z and Millennial men who joined Trump’s camp, depleting the youth vote advantage that Democrats have enjoyed forever. So much of what we, as humans, do (and avoid doing) psychologically comes down to shame and the fear of shame, which crosses all political, cultural, historical, & identarian lines.
Shame is a deeply powerful motivating force in the human psyche and to ignore, downplay, or misunderstand shame is to ignore, downplay, or misunderstand human beings. Full stop.
Still another reason that so many Americans give Trump a pass is because they too aspire to be billionaires (if only inside their heads) but they also despise billionaires who pretend to be good like Bill Gates. Trump doesn’t have that problem obviously. He admits that he plays the system but he’s also too lazy, smug, arrogant, & narcissistic to be anyone but himself because he thinks he is superior even though he was literally born two inches from home plate with ten million dollars in his trust fund. In other words, Trump acts like the asshole he is and his supporters find that refreshing because he’s not pretending to be a good person and also on a deeper level, they envy his ability to slap our economic system around the way many Americans would love to.
But we should never forget that Trump acts like their asshole and if your worldview involves Manichaean notions of good and evil, light and darkness, strength and weakness, you will always support the asshole fighting in your corner.
Remember, old school conservatives, white supremacists, & bible thumpers are the most likely to believe that humans are evil at their core and that this human-made world, therefore, is also evil. That’s why they’re so forgiving of Trump’s conspicuous shittiness because they already believe that humans are shit. Unlike other politicians, Trump admits he’s a rich asshole. He boasts about it. And it’s that refusal to pretend he’s a decent human being and his refusal to play by the rules in politics, that not only gives Trump a shield from criticism for all the terrible things he does, but that also makes him appear honest about his dishonesty. Just rewatch a video of him boasting about how smart he is for cheating the tax code and you’ll see exactly what I mean even though his accountant did all the work. It’s counterintuitive, I realize, but by showing the world what a dick he is to his fans, Trump comes off as a self-aware dick at worst but either way, he becomes an authentic anti-political actor, which plays into the hands of his anti-establishment supporters. His supporters believe that everything he does he does because of who he is. And they’re right: he’s a dick and he acts like one and everything he does he does for himself. That’s why when Trump didn’t read his own presidential briefs or listen to his advisers or when he got angry when the DOJ didn’t jail his political enemies or when he said that he was smarter than his joint chiefs of staff, his fans didn’t flinch. Trump’s stake on his own authenticity makes his mistakes irrelevant to his base. By his own framing of himself as the rich asshole who is going to blow the political system up, even if he screws up along the way, he pre-empts criticism of his own incompetence, which is extensive and well documented.
At the end of the day, if you think this world is evil, then you welcome the person who launches a cultural nuke on it. Just as the journalistic aphorism goes, Trump’s admirers take him seriously but not literally whereas his critics take him literally but not seriously. So, the nuke is metaphorical. But deep down inside, his followers wouldn’t be upset if the nuke was literal either because they think we’re living in a literal hell on earth. And of course that’s terrifying.
So why do I spend so much time analyzing the orange baby balloon anyway? Because I think that Americans have difficulty navigating (and certainly actualizing) their true authentic selves even though they believe in the doctrine of authenticity without being conscious of it. While we love and crave authenticity as Americans, most of us also don’t wanna offend people, hurt their feelings, get ratioed (in Twitter parlance), make a tragic mistake that endangers our life or our livelihood, and/or get canceled by the torch bearers of our community. And while sure, all of those points of reference are important to keep in mind as we evaluate our own behavior, they can and do also force us to act in ways that are more evolved and refined and less authentic unless we just happen to be perfect or we were born in the woke/evangelical petri dish. That’s why it must be incredibly liberating to just say, “fuck it” and not even try anymore like every senior citizen I’ve talked to. The taste of freedom must be so sweet. I think back to old Chinese people at Badaling who would literally just shove me out of the way like OGs while I looked back in astonishment. It must feel like that to not give two fucks. But this isn’t an endorsement, it’s a critique.
I want people to try and be kind to others even if they aren’t kind people, which, you could argue, means, I’m asking some people to be inauthentic. I don’t disagree with that. OTOH, every one of us has a shadow self. We all have traits that come from primordial hard drive and our dysfunctional upbringing and our trauma that we want to hide from others. We all have our shame and self-disfiguration that we repress from ourselves. Whether it’s anger or shame or greed or selfishness or inappropriate thoughts/desires or violence or cruelty or stubbornness or pettiness or vindictiveness or callousness to the suffering of others or something else we do that hurts others, we all have traits that we don’t know how to accept about ourselves (and others). Our shadow self is an intrinsic part of our humanity, take it or leave it.
So what’s the answer here?
Well, the answer is complicated.
I’m not arguing that in order to be authentic we need to be assholes because let’s be honest, there are many ways to be authentic and authenticity is a neutral quality even if it’s treated as a positive cultural value.
What I am arguing is that people should strive to become more patient, kinder, more empathetic, more supportive, less judgmental, more considerate, harder working, more collaborative, calmer, more thoughtful, more open-minded, less entitled, more active, more disciplined, more self-reliant, & more grateful to others even if those aren’t authentic qualities of theirs because those things are worth fighting for and striving for. Even if they’re not authentic expressions of our own selfhood.
But this leaves me in a very strange predicament. From a strictly utilitarian perspective, authenticity is a cultural value worth striving towards in our pluralistic society (and in every liberal democracy) but it has to be weighed against the common good even when goodness feels neither common nor good. And this is where I’d argue that being yourself might not always be the best option, especially if you only care too much about yourself and/or you like to be a dick to others because you’ll damage society more than you’ll heal it. At the same time, we can’t all be nice and we can’t all have the same cultural values or aspirations either. I recognize that as well. And this is where I think as a culture we can incentivize altruism and disincentivize selfishness and cruelty in the public space regardless of what people do in their private space.
As I get older and as I understand the Asian part of my mixed-race identity more and more, one thing I’ve grown to understand is that Americans don’t give a fuck about group harmony at all and this is to our detriment. We are possibly the least considerate people on earth. We will do whatever we want without considering how our behavior affects others: we’ll throw a tantrum at a family outing, destroy a multi-faith wedding, poison a holiday, ruin a friendship, talk shit about friends, send back an order that was properly prepared, take selfies at a funeral, travel to Cabo and not speak a word of Spanish, blast music at 2 am, drive down a wet repaved road, use three weight machines at a gym at once, use the parking lane as a passing lane, steel copper from a bridge, race down a residential street with kids playing nearby, drag our children to an adults-only party, take up multiple parking spots, buy all the toilet paper during a pandemic, bomb and occupy countries forever, pollute our own lakes, destroy our children’s forests, force pregnant teenagers to become moms, & commodify free natural resources. We still look down at the rest of the world despite records levels of obesity, heart disease, & the lowest quality of life in most of the industrialized world.
Americans are the perfect case study in the limitations of rugged individualism and the problematic of authenticity for a country with such incredibly low levels of media and informational literacy. While the global south can’t even imagine a society based on the notion of personal freedom at all costs, America can’t imagine a world where the self doesn’t come first in every scenario, even if that means the complete destruction of families, communities, or even democratic institutions. We are drunk on the idea of doing whatever the hell we want because hell yes, freedom!
As a country and as a cultural idea, we need to think a lot more about the common good, group harmony, pluralism, secularism, empathy, volunteerism, mutual respect, a thriving market place of ideas, the Hippocratic oath, & resource collaboration. We need to vote for policies that help the most people (both domestically and internationally) and that simultaneously hurt the least amount of people. We need to call people in not out when they screw up and stop using shame as a weapon to keep people in line. Above all else, we need to stop glorifying the bully and the billionaire and the authentic asshole and return to our love of fair play and our undying support of the underdog. These are quintessential American qualities.
Sometimes, this won’t be possible but many times it is. We need to think a lot less about our own individuality because individuality as an individual right is already granted to Americans a priori as part of our culture. And while I encourage non-Americans to embrace and develop their authentic selves precisely because they’re more likely to grow up in countries that are more collectivistic in nature, in our case, I encourage Americans see the group first precisely because we seldom do. We need to see the big picture again and think more about the ways we as a society can support and encourage altruism, patience, collaboration, kindness, basic human decency, open-mindedness, civic and political participation, cross-cultural dialogue, local investment, honesty, fair play, & yes tolerance, a hated term I realize. But this kind of cultural paradigm shift can only happen if we stop treating cruelty, violence, greed, and selfishness as authentically human qualities. It can only happen if we, as a society, stop calling all human behavior that’s group oriented or altruistic or utilitarian “socialism.”
Being authentically selfish is not a cultural value I want to incentivize, but since I don’t have a right to dictate the way that other people live their private lives, even if I vehemently disagree with it, I think it makes sense to focus our attention on the public space and the public discourse at large. We should incentivize the common good but support the altruistic private self. We should discourage selfishness and egocentricism but support our own complexities and differences as people who see and live the world differently. We should nurture a cultural discourse where people make individual decisions about their own bodies but also where laws encourage us to cooperate and support each other, even if we don’t always see eye to eye or understand each other. And to that end, I’d argue that authenticity can be a great thing, but goodness is always going to be more valuable to society, even if it’s not authentic behavior for certain people. We can create incentives to make people strive for goodness while discouraging (but not humiliating) antisocial behavior. It might be incredibly satisfying to watch our “enemies” publicly shamed, but in the end, this shame simply creates a new cycle of revenge to shame the other side ad infinitum. And if we’re being real, I don’t think shame is useful to the long-term needs of the planet.
Authenticity isn’t an absolute value but a relative one that should be considered among but also weighed against other important values like the common good, class, racial, & gender equity in our pluralistic society, sustainability and social governance, mutual respect, the empathetic imagination, accessibility, tolerance, open-mindedness, inclusion, & the conditions of our social ecology. OTOH, if your community cannot or will not accept who you are or if they argue that who you are damages them—whether that’s actually true or not—in that case, you deserve to find your own community where you can be who you are and where you will be loved, protected, & supported both personally and culturally. As long as you don’t hurt other people, there should be room for all of us in the world to lead our authentically complicated lives. But our authenticity is just one of many things to consider. In the long run, I’d argue that it’s not the most important thing to aspire to if you’re absolutely miserable or if people run for the hills every time they see you. There are other things to worry about. There are other things to strive for. And I’d argue that inauthentic kindness is superior to authentic cruelty.