This evening I talked to one person who asked: do people have the energy to keep doing this? Organizing, opposing, fundraising, voting. It’s been a lot. Anti-Trump America has been at this for a decade. Do people dust themselves off and go back to it in two years? I think we have to take that seriously as a question. Because people are truly exhausted. People can choose simply to withdraw back into their private worlds – their families, their hobbies, the private, insular world of non-involvement, civic passivity. I don’t think that will happen. But I think many people will be having that conversation with themselves. That is very much how autocracies take hold. People get tired of fighting. Mass withdrawal from the public sphere is the foundation of autocracy.
Ik kan alleen voor mezelf spreken. Maar dit is de derde verkiezing op een halfjaar tijd die “ik” verlies. Dat vreet aan een mens.
