I think most liberals right now are distraught because there wasn't a huge sweeping victory and a slim victory will not only mean bad political outcomes but it will also deny them the visceral pleasure of wallowing in the sorrow of their foes, a pleasure they eagerly anticipated.

I see this as an extension of the emotional logics of American ungovernability and related to the "cruelty is the point" phenomenon on the right.

Think about it as sports--say NFL football. We don't like to think about football this way, but the pleasure of football comes disproportionately from seeing other people lose. This is structural. In any given season, there is only one winning fan base and 31 losers.

It's the same in politics. As we become more ungovernable, material outcomes become more alienated from electoral results. Then we find ourselves increasingly in situations where culture war dominates, since it is, more than redistributive issues, essentially an emotional battle.

This means, in turn, that everyone is denied the pleasure of winning and takes solace increasingly in the pleasure of seeing others lose.

We know this is why Trump is such an effective avatar of the Right: because he is everything that *offends* people on the left.

But consider: What liberals "loved" about Biden was just that him winning meant Trump would lose.

These thoughts are a bit frayed atm. Going for a nice walk and to listen to some music and then perhaps to the office to read some Wendell Berry.

Some folks seems to think I meant that there were no material stakes , and that is not my point at all. I think liberals are underestimating how much their emotional reaction is also routed through resentment, a reaction I see as symptom of national ungovernability

If this is about to go viral (maybe?), I absolutely demand you people AT LONG LAST DAMMIT make this go viral too because it is my best work: https://twitter.com/gnrosenberg/status/1317498093512908800?s=20

never gonna give up on you beautiful opus leg dei tweet. you're my special boy and I love you forever.