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“As for Europe, the results of the U.S. midterm elections are a severe blow to Marine Le Pen in France, to Alice Weidel and the AfD in Germany, and to Nigel Farage and Reform in the UK.”—Dr. Michael MacKay
Dateline: Paris, France. Another sleepless night. A million messages of joy.
And the Schadenfreude on Twitter rolled deep…
“Truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will deny him three times.”—Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister
“It turns out, ‘I looked at a beautiful ass’ isn’t a winning closing message.”—Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass)
“I think we owe Zelensky a huge debt in bombing Russia data centers.”—Ames Osaycnuc, activist, Lansing, Michigan
“Turns out America doesn’t want a South African Nazi running our government.”—The USA Singers
“I just wish Mitch McConnell were alive to see this.”—Connor Ewing, assistant professor, Political Science, University of Toronto
I partook in the revelry, with a few contributions, namely: “MAGA didn’t mind the fascism but the gas prices were too high.”
And oh the memes, they were glorious.
The first one came from Dr. Marci Shore. It was a gift of a GIF:
And from my European friends, myriad Mind Enterprises GIFs, embodying Europe waking up to the news from America.
It was geopolitical analyst Monique Camarra from Italy, who sent me the blue smoke signal from the Sistine Chapel that inspired this missive: how will America’s Big Epic Tuesday impact the upcoming European elections?
But before we get to that: more joy. The Pope met with Bob Dylan today, and many of my friends populate the US government. Among them: David Pepper in Ohio, Fred Wellman in Missouri, Deb Haaland in New Mexico.
I spent the early morning hours into the day in weepy mode.
Against all hope, I hope.
I also came in and out of fear.
What time does Trump start bombing Americans and blame it on Antifer?
Seriously though. I am serious.
But back to the exquisite joy.
The blue can of whoopass unleashed in America was so powerful, even Putin can’t noodle the margins. It was simply too definitive.
Hell froze over.
Texas flipped blue.
I stand on street corners and project Seamus Heaney:
“History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that the farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.”
It hurts to believe.
Yesterday, the Bette community came together from all over the world to virtually hold space for each other. It has been a long and very fucked up decade.
And today, I stand a little taller as an America in Europe.
Europe never stopped loving us. They just wanted us to fix our shit.
We’ll see, but at least we have purchase.
I asked our team of thinkers to share with us how they are feeling today and what they think this might mean for Europe, and here are their responses:
“Last night was stunning. I was especially happy to see Vivek Ramaswamy lose to Amy Acton. He is despicable in a there-is-no-bottom kind of way. (I never knew Ramaswamy at Yale, but as someone who spent nearly twenty years as a professor there, I feel quite a bit of guilt-by-contiguity. . .) At one moment, I found myself unable to bring myself to tell my fourteen-year-old daughter what he’d done because it was so sickening. It is so long past time to take down the bad guys. Yes, this will impact Europe elections, but with the caveat that it depends on how much Congress can constrain Trump from acting as a volatile Russian asset.”—Dr. Marci Shore, intellectual historian, University of Toronto
“Ohhhhhh... elated… last night was a ‘we the people’ moment to send a crystalline message to Donald Trump: the idea of making Americans poorer, killing Americans on the street, threatening them so they’re too frightened to work or socialize in public, and degrading and deriding them into submission was unequivocally rejected as the status quo. The loudest message, however, was reserved for the mute GOP that ceased to work for the people, that set aside decency and bent to their deepest immorality. The principle of consent of the governed is beautiful to see in action.
I’m going through videos and extremely tearful. Never give up. The amount of disgust and rejection of what the administration is doing is stunning and was totally underestimated.”—Monique Camarra, geopolitical analyst, Siena, Italy
“This midterm election has left me feeling more hopeful and with a little more faith in people. Despite Republican gerrymandering and the millions poured into the election by Elon Musk and other billionaires, Americans were able to see through the lies and deception. Just imagine how many people had to turn out to overcome the obstacles of redrawn maps and voter purges! I have more hope today than I did yesterday. And I think it bodes well for the upcoming European elections. Hopefully, Europeans will not only feel the same sense of hope but will be inspired by what happened here.”—Jen Senko, filmmaker, The Brainwashing of My Dad
“My friends are celebrating the collapse of MAGA dominance, and I am both delighted and emotionally exhausted. But I am uneasy about what the future may hold for us. There are reasons why a large swathe of the American electorate pinned their hopes on Donald Trump, and those reasons have not miraculously vanished. It is troubling to recognize that if the economy had been in better shape, the outcome of this election would likely have been very different. A response to immediate material contingencies should not be confused with a collective change of heart.”—David Livingstone Smith, Tage Danielsson Guest Professor, Linköping University, and author of books on dehumanization
“In January I wrote a strategy note for an Ohio campaign arguing that the way to beat a culture-war opponent is to refuse the contest and drag every conversation back to local, specific things voters can check for themselves. Ohio became the test. Vivek Ramaswamy ran the most attention-grabbing attack ad of the cycle. Amy Acton didn’t take the bait, and the Republicans’ own polling showed it backfiring.
The national picture tells the same story. The Republican vote barely moved all year. What moved were the undecided voters, and in Florida, South Carolina and beyond they broke almost entirely one way. Discipline didn’t win over Trump’s voters. It just gave the undecided ones no reason to go back.
Trump’s coalition depended on him meaning different things to different people. The evangelical, pro-Israel wing saw a defender of Israel. The anti-war, distrust-the-elites wing saw a man who would expose the powerful and keep America out of foreign wars. The Epstein files and the Iran war each forced him to pick a side, and both times he picked against the second group. The figures that group trusted, from Tucker Carlson to Marjorie Taylor Greene, walked away, and their audiences didn’t follow them anywhere. They just stayed at home.”—Matt Pearce, independent researcher & NAFO founding member, SE42 Labs
“I note that 8 of the 27 member states of the EU have elections coming up. So, what did the American blue wave teach us? Tyranny and mean-spirited political leadership has consequences. In America’s case, the Democrats did not win so much as the Republicans and MAGA lost! As a whole, the Blue Wave proved once again that Democracy can prevail over tyranny when the voters are well-informed and have the courage to stand up to tyranny and do their civic duty.”—Martin Sheil, retired IRS criminal investigator
“I allowed myself to feel overwhelming joy at the results in the United States last night. It was a solid repudiation of the Trump regime and the MAGA cult that extended from the Senate to the House to Governorships to state legislatures. It is rare to witness times of pure freedom and true democracy, where citizens realize the liberal ideal that the individual is a rational calculator of self-interest and can join with others in the public realm to wield collective power.
It is my hope that an activist Congress – powered by an engaged citizenry – will punish Trump and his regime for their crimes and treason and also wipe out the MAGA cult with a restoration of the rule of law. Over the next few years, Americans should abolish the imperial Presidency so that never again will the worst human being wield the most unchecked power.
As for Europe, the results of the U.S. midterm elections are a severe blow to Marine Le Pen in France, to Alice Weidel and the AfD in Germany, and to Nigel Farage and Reform in the UK.
There is a widespread prejudice in Europe that Americans are lazy and ignorant. But that characterization doesn’t hold up when it is clear that a majority of Americans who voted were able to overcome the hostile oligarchy and the incompetent news media to make the connection between Trump regime corruption and their declining quality of life. If Le Pen, Weidel and Farage are going to blame Muslims or immigrants for all the problems in their countries (but offer no real solutions) then who is being lazy and ignorant? If Americans are willing to start the hard work of rebuilding their country and turning away from fascism, then it’s up to Europeans to come up to the mark.
Ukrainians threw out their Putin puppet and they fight the Russian fascist invaders. It took way too long, but Americans are finally carrying out a variant of the Revolution of Dignity which Ukrainians had 13 years ago. It’s up to Europeans to realize this grand historical moment – to fight for democracy and against fascism.”—Dr. Michael MacKay, political philosopher, Ottawa, Canada
In Bette’s Blessing of the Midterms Happy Hour yesterday, both David Livingstone Smith and I held firm on not underestimating how serious these fascists are and how the judicial and media coups in the U.S. struck near fatal blows to democracy’s heart.
With this sobering thought in my mind, I ask you to consider the words of Russia watcher Ruth Deyermond, senior lecturer, Department of War Studies, King's College London:
“There will now be a temptation in many parts of Europe, including the UK, to think that things will eventually go back to normal with the US and that Europe can stop its reluctant shift towards strategic autonomy. That would be a serious mistake. Europe can hope that Congress now limits the Trump admin's attempts to harm European security, and they can hope for a more friendly presidency in 2 years, but neither will return the US-Europe relationship to what it was. None of this is to say that Europe shouldn't try to build a strong security partnership with the US in future. But Europe can't ever again depend on the US as the guarantor of its security.”—Ruth Deyermond on X
Prioritizing digital sovereignty is vital for the national security of European nations. Musk and Thiel won’t suddenly change their fascist stripes, and as Smith predicted with Trump, they could well become more dangerous.
As I walk to the Eiffel Tower tonight, timing my view for maximum sparkle, I know that Russia is trying very hard to gain control of the French government in next year’s election.
So I am sending out extra sparkles of love wherever I go. I am glittering like the Eiffel Tower at midnight.
The remaining free world cannot afford to lose another democratic country to hate and spite and petty grievances, algorhymthically served up by psychopathic billionaires.
Oui shall overcome.
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