Only The Decent People Can Save Us (Again)

Decency Is On The Ballot

Oct 29, 2024

In the last few decades, we have been witness to systematic failures in American life. Time and time again the guardrails we believed existed turned out to be illusions, or at best, guardrails without any teeth. The courts, the financial institutions, the legislators, and especially the media – entrusted as the watchdogs of democracy – have absolutely failed.

There is only one group that, more often than not, has been up to the task: The people. The people keep showing up and at the very least, voting to put people in charge to clean up the messes. Of course, once those people are in office they too often respond with timidity and reluctance and don’t go as far as necessary to exercise the mandate they have been given, but the people did their jobs.

In every presidential election since 1988, with the exception of 2004, a plurality or majority of the public voted for the Democratic candidate. That is a data point you rarely see repeated and I am quite certain that if it was Republicans with such a popular vote winning streak both the party and the media would never shut up about it. That is a triumph of decency. It would be easy for voters to be snowed under by the right’s avalanche of lies and hate, ably amplified by their buck-chasing friends in the press, but the voters keep seeing through it.

To be certain, there are structural barriers. Neither Al Gore nor Hillary Clinton became president even though the will of the American people said they should have been. And the presidencies of Bill Clinton, Obama, and Biden have had too many missed opportunities to push the ball forward, even though all three of these men had mandates to go quite far.

But what matters is that enough voters saw through the haze of absolute bullshit to send a message to do the right thing.

Here we are again. The Republican Party has always glowed bright with a hateful intensity, but Trump has allowed them to move that hate from Mitt Romney’s “quiet rooms” to spotlights like Madison Square Garden. The press and the oligarchs that own it at institutions like The New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN and others, are quite happy to make billions of dollars from GOP fueled hate, as long as they can make a buck. They just don’t care about the consequences.

Voters still care. It may be naïve or cringe, or corny, but they believe. Voters have shown us that a majority of them are opposed to hate, opposed to racism, opposed to misogyny, opposed to treating people as second class based on their orientation. And a majority of them are pro-decency.

Yes, most of the pro-decency vote has a liberal ideology but it is more than that. There are people who just don’t like being crude bigots that spend all of their time shoving the faces of the vulnerable into the dirt. There are more of us than there are of them, and they have to effectively cheat or rig the rules to overcome our numbers.

Decency is on the march, but we are at a breaking point, again. Election day or week is not a “fever break” moment. No matter the outcome, but especially if decency is victorious again, we cannot go to sleep. The bad boss at the end of the game has not been defeated. 2004 showed us that. 2008 showed us that. 2012. 2016. 2020. The forces of darkness and depravity do not respect the will of the people and if you retreat, expecting that everyone will finally accept the supremacy of decency – the other side will see that as an opening.

The decent people need to stand up for what they believe in and then keep standing, keep pushing back, until the other people are broken – and then decency most continue to advance and remain forever vigilant.

I voted for decency, and I always will. I know I’m not alone.

If you like this newsletter, please consider becoming a paying subscriber by clicking here to join. I won’t be putting any of my regular columns behind a paywall and they will always be free. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed so far!

— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977