Our first book The Urban Homestead went to print just as the financial crisis of 2008 hit and its success I attribute, in part, to the well known fact that in times of economic stress people turn to subjects such as growing food, canning, mending, and preparedness. Enthusiasm for these subjects surged after the stock market crash of 1929 and the oil crisis of the 1970s. Catastrophic financial trauma usually results in a rightward turn: fascism in the 1930s, Reagan in the 1980s and the shape-shifting postmodern right of our time.

By now, myself included, we’re likely fatigued by a tsunami of premature hot takes on the U.S. election results this month. At the risk of adding yet another, I want to mention one aspect related to our book and the subject of this blog. Specifically, I’ve long thought that what caused many of us to turn to pastimes such as gardening and cooking has a lot to do with a metaphysical uneasiness with postmodern consumer culture that the 2008 crisis greatly exacerbated.

Figures on the right like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Viktor Orbán know how to exploit this uneasiness. These far right politicians accurately name our anxieties: a lack of meaning, skyrocketing grocery bills, and downward class mobility. In contrast, neoliberal, centrist politicians, such as the leadership of the Democratic party, tell us its our own fault, that it’s all in our imagination, that we’re uninformed, that we should download a mindfulness app and suck it up, and that, ultimately, you’re on your own to solve your unhappiness. While the centrists gaslight us, the far right misdirects—instead of grounding these legitimate concerns in the system itself they blame whatever minority group is easiest to kick down—immigrants, trans people, imaginary communists etc.

The results of the U.S. Election last week are a resounding referendum on that centrist gaslighting and scolding. It feels as though the shock of 2008 has finally delivered us, after many bumpy years, to the end of the ‘end of history,’ in the sense of Francis Fukuyama’s notion that liberal society has reached its peak, fulfilled all our needs and we can all just go to brunch. Fukuyama’s teleological fantasy hit a wall this month and brunch got permanently canceled.

Food and Drugs
One of the things I’m least looking forward to in the coming years, is hearing the raspy voice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tapping into that spiritual unease I’ve just mentioned while, possibly, wielding immense power over our food and drug system. Like his far right compatriots, RFK Jr. does the same two step rhetorical dance by first accurately calling out the rot at the core of our food and medical systems but then going on to misdirect our attention from the real cause of the problem: a system based on capital accumulation that only provides food and healthcare as an afterthought.

RFK Jr’s rhetoric isn’t worth the time it would take to refute but it would be a mistake to condescend to his followers who face the same chronic health concerns and the plague of sadness that effects us all. Condescension, a fatal trait of the professional classes that support the current Democratic party is one of the reasons Harris lost in my opinion. I knew there was a problem when, a few months ago, I spotted a sign in our neighborhood of $1.5 million+ homes reading, smugly, “Harris for President OBVIOUSLY.” Cults do this type of messaging which is more about reinforcing notions that you’re somehow part of the chosen few rather than, much more productively, winning people over to your side.

You also can’t “fact check” your way out of this crisis or RFK Jr.’s bullshit. The overly literal and materialist biases of the ruling class are part of the problem. We have somehow neglected the tool kits that religion, poetry, art, philosophy and the humanities offer to refute the impoverished belief systems of people like RFK Jr. We don’t need fact checkers, we need better belief systems backed up by the principle of love of neighbor.

No Plaster Saints

Lest I contribute to black pilling anyone who still reads this old blog, the two things keeping me going this week include the fact that the local campaign I helped out with succeeded in throwing out a corporate Democrat by appealing to people’s material needs, most specifically addressing the problem of high rent in a very unaffordable city.

I’m also holding in my mind this picture of the no-nonsense Dorothy Day looking like a character in a film noir. I can imagine her taking a drag on that smoke and saying, as she once did, “Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.” Then I can imagine her, as she also did, getting to work in a struggle harsh on systems but big on love of neighbor. As she said, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

Update: Shortly after posting this Trump nominated RFK Jr. for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services which will Senate confirmation.