Wednesday Nov 6th, 2024, I woke up in the same United States of America I have always known.

A word on the discipline of hope

Beloved: I woke up Nov 6th 2024 in the same United States of America. 

I went to bed Tuesday night Nov. 5th 2024 a few time zones and an hour later than I did Tuesday night Nov 4th 2016. In 2016 I turned off the television and started writing an essay like this at 9pm EST. 

8 years laters, several pulpits later, several harassment campaigns for the sin of “making the church too political” later, years of being called histrionic, a divorce, the death of comrades at the hands of self proclaimed white nationalist, attempts on my own rather small dull life,  and this Tuesday Nov 5th 2024 I went to bed at 10pm PST. 

A 8 year, and 4 hour difference in bed times, but I awake to the same story. 

Wednesday Nov 6th I woke up in the same United States of America I have always known.

For many this American morning was once again a shock, or if it wasn’t a shock, it was the final death knell in the sincere belief in the foundation of the American Dream: that the basic systems and norms that you had come to rely on in the last 50 years of American civic life to protect you when the chips were down were not going to protect you, or someone you love. 

While there are a ubiquitous amount of post mortem essays of the democratic party, and with that come the ominous warnings about dangers to American democracy as we know it itself, this is still the same America we have all known.

I want to offer a word of hope, but in the last few days I am reminded once again that my “hopes” are centered in decades of liberation work, a political afro pessimism that I hide behind my black futurism and it’s easy to mistake the soaring rhetoric of what life could be for Black Americans if they were just treated like citizens as my belief, or experience as a Black American, but that isn't my daily reality.

My hopes are based in a country I have never lived in, rights I have never been fully afforded, and the shared vision of ancestors, organizers, and leaders who laid down their lives for me. 

My hope in this country is aspirational, a blueprint towards liberation, and ……that's not the country we live in.

We live in a country that by the numbers is incredibly “right” of what the legacy media still calls “the center,” and while there is a lot to say about a party that has lost the majority of working class people, that decided an ideological push to the right by the democrats to court “sane” republican votes was clearly a mistake since 2021, and one can talk a lot about how a party that continues to take whole swaths of it’s voting bloc for granted, gets what it gets, but to be frank: the numbers just don't show that.

They indicate pollsters who have consistently got it wrong since Romney in 2012 because their complete lack of understanding of social media and it’s power, the same advantage the democratic party I know for a fact has been trying to overcome since Obama primaried the living fuck out of the Clinton campaign with facebook, the only major tool at their disposal. I sat in some of those Democratic committee meetings in Philly as the Clinton camp realized the street money and good times were over. We have known since the 50 state initiative with Howard Dean as the head of the party that social media has changed the landscape and any candidate who wants to be successful must work in all 50 states, not just battlegrounds. Something the Trump camp did a lot of. 

But this wasn’t a close race in many ways. 

The numbers don't show competing visions of America, they show exactly what I have maintained since “United States of Grace”, we are living in several different “America’s” culturally, and these deep ontological, political, theological, and in particular economic beliefs, are much larger divides than either party would have you believe. 

But the breakdown of information systems, disinformation, Good ol Uncle Joe dropping out, or dropping out earlier, even some of her earlier missteps in her only 107 day campaign, they may have “happened” but according to the numbers that's not what happened to change the Americans public's mind since 2020. 

All of this stuff was a factor,  like the pro palestinian Gaza freedom movement, the uncommitted movement, while taking up a lot of liberal column space as a possible reason Trump could win clearly wasn’t.

Harris lost by many more states than Michigan. The third parties did split the vote with 99% reporting in Michigan at the time of writing. If Stein and the rest of the unserious crowd of people who are mysteriously unwilling to even be a city council person throughout the 4 years between elections hadn’t been on the ballot, Michigan could have fallen differently.  Harris could have won by 2,830,787 votes VS Trump’s 2,802,048. That’s if she pulled every single third party vote she could have eeked out a win there. 

Even where it “mattered”, the blue wall states like Michigan, that's not what happened overall. Overall it was an epic ass kicking by the Trump campaign that seemed to understand the shifted American political landscape post Covid better than the Biden turned Harris team.

The big question Legacy media will wrestle with was Biden dropping out the big factor? As an election junkie I can tell you he was polling around the same numbers, actually slightly weaker, than Harris ended up the day before the election. 

What about all those other battleground states like Pennsylvania you say: same deal. Very close.

But even if she pulled every third party vote, something I have never seen a major party candidate ever do, she lost. Trump received 3,510,389 Votes. 3,363,484 went for Harris. That's a 146,905 win for Trump. 

Stein pulled 33,790 and Oliver pulled 32,940. Even if she pulled every third party vote she would have lost. Ok you say. I knew the battle grounds were close. Still does not prove this is America. Let's look at “progressive strongholds” on this new electoral map.

Let's look at California. One of the last solidly blue states on the map left. Harris won.  And if you look at percentages and districts instead of people, and look at proximity to more diverse urban landscapes, these factors kept California  blue with 18% more of the overall vote going Democratic, but the numbers indicate much: Harris 6,092,896 VS Trump’s 4,202,262. 

If California is some sort of utopian progressive dreamland in your mind, it isn’t. It is a great picture or snapshot of the political “changes” that are still moving through most of America.

But as Black trans person who has been an unspoken issue on almost every ballot since birth I can tell you with utter assurance that 6 out of 10 of us have always placed their own personal safety, security, and wealth before the welfare of the poor and marginalized. This is the same America I have always known.

Let's look at the popular vote at the time of writing.

70,356,521 For Harris

74,264,010 For Trump

The numbers are pretty clear, the democrats got beaten up and down the ticket with many Democrats even voting for local blue candidates, but breaking for Trump. The Democrats will likely lose the house, the senate, and lost the judiciary a long time ago. Any other candidate and we would be talking about the mandate the voters gave them. 

But the 47th President is a unique threat to the constitution, democracy as I know it, and I am even more convinced this presidency will lead to the dissolution of the union. 

So where is the hope? 

Well first of all reject any notion that 50% of Americans are racist, or transphobes, or queerphobic, or just stupid. In fact since about 2020 I have been concerned with even my own increasingly divisive rhetoric and have endeavored to maintain the average republican voter, and even those who voted for the now 47th President of these United States, are not the proud boys, white supremecist groups, patriot prayer, or a hundred other fringe groups. I have faced those clowns. They are cowards who attack the vulnerable in groups, who will shoot indiscriminately into a crowd, who take joy in beating trans folks and femmes in public. That’s not the average American. That's a rare breed. The average American paid little attention to the election, and voted on feelings, social circle, and finances. The top search in google at one point on Nov 5th was “Biden still on ballot?” This isn’t a frenzied public ready to give up it’s basic freedoms, or I suspect the freedoms of others when they see how that is enacted.

I started this article by saying Wednesday Nov 6th 2024 I woke up in the same America I have always known. This is the same America that my father was born in without the federal right to vote. This is the same America where my parents met and fell in love where it had only been legal for them to marry one another anywhere in the union for less than a decade. This is the same America where it was safer for me to be houseless on the streets than to be queer or trans at home and I spent a decade and half living in the shadows. This is the same America that during the “golden years” of Reagen that would pull up to West Philly in a truck and throw blocks of cheeses and cases of powdered milk at us like fucking animals. This is the America that has slain every seminal Black leader of a generation until we were left with nothing but the most compliant and outright ops in some cases. The America that snatches its kids from queer community to send them to reparative therapy camps. The same America that criminalized a disabled kid selling pot to survive and told me if I pulled up my pants life would be better.

This is the America we have always known, and it has never been able to hold me back once. This is also the same America of the Pettus Bridge, the same America of the uprisings, George Floyd Square, this is the America that gave us the Stonewall Riots, the mining uprisings and Mother Jones Children's Crusade, this is the America where I have gone from Park ave adjacent to park bench and back again. This is the America where a formerly incarcerated, formerly houseless, black, trans, queer person like myself flipped their GED into a Bachelors, then an MDIV, then Ordination in less than 4 years. This is the America where I am getting a PhD and I am a respected writer, historian, and national faith leader. This is the America where I reserve the right to redress the government through direct action, through protest, and through grassroots organizing. This is the America that over and over again hasn’t needed a president, a congress, or a senate figure or leader to tell us when to stand up and change what we see before us. 

This is the America in which despite its obvious contempt for me at times: I have shined. 

This is my home, my country, and my legacy. My ancestors have done more to secure Madisonian democracy at home than any other people group. While everyone else is ready to give into authoritarianism or autocratic tendencies, stay safe and weather the storm, I will be in the same America of my youth, and my entire adult life. The America that is constantly on the horizon, just out of reach, and so enthralling. The one I have always had to fight for. We are the hope we think is missing, and we are the ones we've been waiting for. 

Written in love and liberation

The rev. lenny duncan (they/them/fatale)