When election season rolls around I always run into a lot of people who are having a really bad time. It’s the drumbeat of terrible news Last minute plot twist and scandals. It’s absurdly downvoted. It’s the feeling that we – especially those of us who like me live in California almost powerless When a very important decision is made. Nothing to do but wait and see what happens – not that that stops me from frequently refreshing all the models and looking at the internals of all the poles.
So I wanted to talk about how to approach presidential elections without pretending they don’t matter or letting them become the sole judgment of whether our world is headed in the right direction.
Obviously who wins on Tuesday is a big deal. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have very different views on Ukraine, Gaza, tariffs, legal immigration, etc. Attempted coups in Latin AmericaOn abortion, whether you should get the Electoral Board to annul valid election results, and more. I’m not here to argue that you should be zen about elections because it doesn’t matter – it matters a lot.
But I think that when you step back and take some perspective, it’s clear that many of the things that matter most to our lives, the lives of our loved ones, and the lives of everyone on earth are not decided. Elections and how those things go are much easier to influence than elections.
What really matters is looking back
Often the most important pieces of gear that affected people’s lives—for better or worse—did so without a single mention on the debate stage or campaign platform. antibiotics. Immunization. Mass electrification. Contraceptives. Internet. atomic bomb Factory farming. Most of the ways we live in the 2020s instead of the 1920s – and the 2020s are much scarier than the 1920s – have happened despite bad presidents and without much help from good ones.
Even when an issue is hotly contested, the key thing that drives change is often only tangentially related to the part everyone is arguing about. We are in a much better position to fight climate change Because solar is so cheap — most debates about everything else end up being a rounding error in comparison.
One of my colleague Dylan Matthews’ most famous anti-Future Perfect-flavored takeaways was that George W. Bush was actually, if you did the math, a great president because of PEPFAR, his AIDS program that saved at least a million lives in Africa. A time when no one gave AIDS the priority it deserved. Of course, he also started a few unnecessary wars in the Middle East and a pointless expansion of the surveillance state in the name of freedom. Of course, his domestic policy agenda was mostly a flop or forgotten after 9/11. But still, he saved many children.
How much to consider George W. Bush’s defense is mostly a philosophical question, and frankly I don’t care — I’m not a judge of his soul. But I think it’s a very important thing if you’re thinking about how to do well in this world. The things that no one pays attention to, the neglected programs that a dedicated visionary can make happen — these are often the ones that have the biggest impact on the world.
Remember what’s important
Choice is important. But they are far from being the only important issues. And in the noise and chaos and fury of any given moment it is very difficult to guess which of the many issues contested in an election really matter. (Pandemic prevention in 2016, just a few years before Covid hit, wasn’t much of a problem, to take just one example.)
So if you’re feeling paralyzed and helpless about the election, refreshing news sites instead of doing real important work toward a better world, my advice — which I’ve had only mixed success adopting for myself — is to stick with everyone else. Things that are just as important and things that are much, much easier to change.
Instead of letting every twist and swing of the Wisconsin vote control your mood, work on the things that really matter and none of our politicians are bothering to address. This is an important decision that you don’t have much control over. But the direction of our country and the world is an important decision of yours to do There is a huge amount of control.
Many people are alive today because of the personal efforts of dedicated individuals who decided to solve some problems they could no longer bear. Many important scientific projects need volunteers. There are dire evils to work towards ending, and dire dilemmas that will become less of a dilemma as technology and human creativity give us all better options.
So the next time you want to “refresh” the poll, think about whether you’d find it more empowering — and the world would find it more effective — to pick something for you. other That is really important, and instead of that.
