Biden Meets the Moment; Now It's Our Turn
Summoning greatness, President Biden steps aside and gives the pro-democracy majority in America a chance to defeat Trump and the MAGA authoritarians.
Collapsing stars have few options. After exhausting their fuel, a medium star like our Sun becomes a white dwarf, slowly fading into nothingness over eons. Massive stars meet a different fate. When they collapse, it triggers a supernova, which releases so much energy that it can outshine an entire galaxy for months; in certain instances, the implosion of a massive star leaves a black hole in its wake.
Much like stars, a society can collapse in on itself when the accumulated weight of its culture, politics, and history becomes too much for it to bear. In the United States, we’ve been blessed to have each of our collapses generate a supernovae of energy that led to a societal rebirth—think the American Revolution, Civil War, World War II, or the 1960s.
Not all societies are so lucky. History is awash in glorious revolutions that promised an end to suffering only to bring totalitarian devastation. A black hole in which society devours itself—Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution in China, or Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in France .
Societal collapses are high variance events. Everything is up for grabs. In the Summer of 2024, we’re teetering on the edge of another collapse in the United States. Until this morning, I was worried that we were headed for the third option—a white dwarf society. This is the future Trump and MAGA want. When nothing matters, when everyone and everything is corrupt, when the jaded and cynical response to an event is the one that gets the most purchase, when the goal is turning everything into a meme or a joke, we’ve exhausted our societal fuel and turned into a white dwarf nation. In such a society, things that seemed preposterous just a few years ago–like a twice impeached sexual assailant of an ex-President who suggest that we ingest bleach to combat a global pandemic retaking the Presidency after an insurrection and 34 felony convictions to rule in an explicitly authoritarian manner–can become reality.
But things look different today because we are led by someone who found greatness. President Biden defeated the authoritarians in 2020; once he realized that he couldn’t do it again this year, he did the honorable thing by stepping back and endorsing Vice President Harris. He realized that we are at a hinge point in history with two paths before us—in one, Trump wins reelection and MAGA is forever; in the other, Harris wins for all of the pro-democracy Americans and the pattern of American rebirth is repeated, with Trump(ism) weighing the GOP down until it reforms or collapses in on itself and is reborn (or replaced) by a new center-right party.
Today was a good day. We have four months to finish the job, elect Harris, and build on the progress of the last four years to make this another era of American renewal.
Let’s go.