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“Signs of a struggle”

Nov 04, 2026

∙ Paid

Very big night!

Certainly, the decisive defeat of Republicans and Trump specifically in the last night’s midterm elections changes the math for myself and I’m sure a lot of other people. We were in one timeline; now we are in a different one.

I’m sure there will be a lot of internal soul-searching and bitter fighting over what comes next. I’ll be writing a longer piece about what I think the best path forward is, but I just want to point people to this quote from my election night 2024 essay, posted on November 6, 2024 in the middle of the night as soon as the race was called for Trump:

Although Trump has provided America with an unprecedented opportunity, I believe the risk of disaster has never been higher than it is right now. As one Russian official said of attempts by the Czar to modernize Imperial Russia shortly before the Revolution: “The most dangerous thing you can do to a bad system is try to reform it.”

We are in the danger zone right now and, just like in Russia before its revolution, there are going to be a lot of critical moments coming up where our collective success or failure comes down to the clear-eyes and cool head (or lack thereof) of a few individuals. Defeatism, despair, sabotage, these are eternal forces that overwhelm weak-willed people in times of crisis. One term that often appears in the history books that should be on everyone’s minds now is “a fatal loss of nerve.”

As the internal chaos that I pointed out on Election Night 2024 finally comes to a head, I hope that everyone remembers that the goal in politics should always be the best outcome possible. Now is not the time to show greater tolerance for or deference to counterproductive behavior, even though the breakdown of traditional enforcement mechanisms to halt it is only going to accelerate, but rather to raise standards and ourselves to meet the moment together as best we can. Now is the time to make something work. The status quo is not working.

I closed out my Election Night essay with this:

Trump will preside over America’s 250th anniversary celebration. This is a significant milestone for our country because of the (false) pop history maxim that states most empires only last for 250 years. Even though the proverb is fake, many want it to be real. They want it to all go away. Everyone is so unhappy. Everyone is so stupid and angry and ungrateful and insane. It has to stop. It will stop. We will stop it.

I still believe that. We’ve come a very long way and have a lot longer to go. The path forward is narrow and hard to see but the only thing that guarantees defeat is giving up. Survival of the fighters!

With all that out of the way, you can ask your questions for the next mailbag episode in the comments section, but only if you’re a Benevolent Patron. You can upgrade using the button below.

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I’ll try to get to everything in one go, but since I think this is likely to be a busy episode I kindly ask BPs to limit themselves to two questions each. If there’s an unmanageably large number of questions I’ll just break the new ep into several parts.