They Want Your Despair. Withhold It.

Back when I used to write fiction, staying up until 2 a.m. to write stories about zombies and aliens and right-wing dictators that almost no one ever read, I – like Michael Jordan holding the tablet – took another writer’s challenge personally. 

A friend of mine who also toiled with short stories that no one read told me utopian fiction was much more difficult to write than dystopian fiction. She said this as I grinded away night after night on the darkest dystopian stories my mind could conjure (many of which are still on the internet, if you’re interested). Her theory that utopian writing was the real challenge was nothing short of an injury to my ego. I took it as an insult that I was doing the easy work. Creating dystopia isn’t easy, I thought. Do you know how tough it is to come up with new and inventive deaths? Do you have any idea how many ways I’ve discovered to describe gushing blood or a person’s entrails or injury to one’s eyeball? 

My writer friend told me to try a utopian story if I thought it was so easy. In a huff, I agreed, and within twenty minutes of sitting down behind my laptop that night, I gave up and watched X-Files. It was indeed fucking difficult to write fucking utopian fiction. 

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And so it is with the political imagination: It’s so terribly easy to imagine worst-case scenarios and pitch-black futures in this age of ascendant fascism. I find it nearly impossible to imagine best-case or even good-enough futures in which the fascist threat is held at bay by normal folks who reject those who want to end the American experiment and usher in an age of endless authoritarianism. Sometimes I forget that resisting this fascist menace is even an option because it feels so overwhelming, like a wave building up in the distance, gathering height and speed and threatening to wipe away everything we know. The determination of the fascist movement, the oceans of money to which it has access, and the lack of will among those who can best oppose it: These things mingle and metastasize until we can no longer conceive of a better future. 

This has always been a challenge of leftist politics. Socialist activists and politicians in Europe during the postwar period begged their fellow citizens to imagine a better future, one in which resources are shared, the environment was protected, and people were afforded access to food and education and recreation. The socialist left challenged people to dream of a world where everyone had dignified lives, where they were not treated as soulless cattle for their capitalist masters. 

Imploring folks not to give in to their darkest thoughts of what the future could hold has worked to varying extents over the generations. FDR was wildly successful with this strategy, for instance, and the public’s embrace of a better future led to one of the most significant economic policies in history, the New Deal. 

More than ever, we need to imagine a better future. More than ever, we need to embrace our own agency and realize as one people that we do not have to give in to fascism, that there is nothing inevitable about the American right’s attempt to create a Republican/Trumpist dictatorship. 

Read more about the role of bad-faith politics in fascist movements

In imagining a brighter future, I’m not referring to wild-eyed leftists or mainline liberals or any other part of the left-of-center political spectrum. I’m talking about all decent folks – apolitical folks, independent voters – who see the fascist beast growing every day and fight the urge to give in. I’m talking about anyone who knows right from wrong – anyone who has a shred of moral clarity and wants to be on the right side of history. 

Here’s the thing about giving in: It’s way easier than pushing back. 

‘This Is Why We Cried’ 

Fuck doomerism. I said it, and you should say it too. For far too long, leftists on social media have succumbed to doomerism as a way of life. 

We are constantly logged on, scrolling through nightmare post after nightmare post, reading analysis of what these nightmares might mean for us and our families and our friends, and we inevitably give in to this nightmare as unquestioned reality. We are sin-eaters on our own accord, stupidly believing that if we consume enough bad shit, the bad shit will be no more. This helps no one, and further emboldens a viscous fascist movement that wants nothing more than for you to be demoralized. They want your despair. They want to drink it down, to gulp it greedily. It satiates them. It’s up to you to withhold tha despair, to say no, you may not have it. You may not sink your fangs into me and drain me of my hope. 

I want to be clear about the stakes of the 2024 election. The right is coming for everything. They are going to end same-sex marriage, they’re going to repeal the Civil Rights Act, they’re going to end free elections, they’re going to imprison and deport immigrants with and without proper documentation, they’re going to criminalize all abortions in all states, they're going to crush dissent, and they’re going to terrorize anyone they perceive as an opponent to their anti-democracy agenda. And they will be ruled by a monarchal president blessed by the Supreme Court conservatives with unlimited power. You will not recognize the United States if Donald Trump wins in November. Know that. Embrace it and push back. This is the antidote to doomerism. 

After the Supreme Court on Monday eviscerated the U.S. Constitution and granted the president limitless power, my wife was strangely quiet. We read about the ruling together and sort of moaned and grimaced the way you do when you’re trying not to spiral. The constitutional order had been destroyed and it was time to move on with our workdays. 

My wife later said she didn’t have a big reaction to SCOTUS ushering in fascism because this was always in the cards after the 2016 election. “This is why we cried on election night,” she said, referring to a tearful election night get-together we had at our house to watch what we thought would be a Hillary Clinton coronation. “We knew this would happen. We understood what it meant to lose.”

We did not cry for Hillary Clinton. She had nothing to do with the 2016 election, the same way Joe Biden has nothing to do with the 2024 election. These deeply flawed old-guard Democratic candidates are nothing but a means to block the fascists from taking (permanent) control of the United States government. We cried that night in 2016 not because we so desperately wanted a centrist Democratic presidency, but because the Supreme Court was now lost for the rest of our lives. As we all now know, the Court is the only thing that matters. Any hope for a liberal majority for the next half century was lost on that November night. 

So we have mourned what we lost when Trump had a perfect run-out and won the White House with an impossibly small margin in a few critical states. The mourning is over. We know what this man can and will do if he achieves power once again, this time with zero checks and balances. A man ruled by his heedless and ruthless id cannot be allowed to reign over us. This is where our agency comes into play. 

The Only Way Out Is Through

As a natural-born doomer, I truly wish there was another way to beat back the fascist menace looming over us. I wish we could sit back and criticize the feckless Democratic Party and capitalism and everything else that has plunged us into this existential crisis. But again, doomerism is what the fascists want. It is their lifeblood.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time scrolling BlueSky to better understand the Supreme Court's decision to end the country's constitutional order and what it means for the 2024 election (as an aside, I've come to appreciate BlueSky as a place of cultural and political analysis that is not poisoned by far-right trolls on Elon Musk's social media platform; you should join BlueSky if only for this election cycle).

In my low-simmering panic scrolling, I've come across folks who are virtually grabbing like-minded people by the shoulders and shaking them out of their doomer neurosis. I can't tell you how much this has helped me over the past 72 hours. I can only hope they do the same for you, my fellow doomer.

Hayes, a poster at heart who blesses us with his presence on BlueSky, connects the dots when he says we must reject nihilism and seek a path out of this fucking disaster. Nihilism, after all, is the affliction that animates the fascists. They believe in nothing, they ignore or take pleasure in human suffering, and they have no interest in justice or fairness. Because to the nihilist, nothing matters. It's an internal fight with which I've struggled for most of my political life. If we give into nihilism, we give into fascism. We become them – the worst of all outcomes.

That these are not the actions of a confident political party is worth our attention. The right wing is flailing, and has been for some time, knowing its policies are terribly unpopular with the American voter. They're trying to find ways around the stumbling block of democracy. The Supreme Court's recent rulings is all part of the American right lashing out against a system in which it can no longer survive in traditional ways. They know full well that the people hate them and their goals and the grotesque man they have chosen to lead them. This is why the people must not have a say anymore.

Actress Taraji P. Henson did what everyone with a conscience should do over these next few months and recently used her platform at the BET Awards to shine a light on the fascist maggots writhing beneath the surface of our politics. Henson during his BET Awards speech warned the audience of Project 2025, the right’s playbook for ending representative democracy and establishing a permanent right-wing dictatorship in America. 

Nothing is over. The outcome of the 2024 election is up to us, not them. Americans rose up and said no to fascism in 2020 after a four-year dalliance with it. The 2020 election was a civic emergency and the people responded in kind, choosing a living, breathing avatar of Democratic Party failure over the monster who had gotten lucky and accidentally won the White House in 2016.

We face another civic emergency in November. Maybe every presidential election will be an existential threat from here on out. I don't know. I can't think about that right now. In the coming months, observe your desire to be a doomer and reject it outright. Join me in saying no to nihilism.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @cdcarter13.bsky.social and on Threads and X at @CDCarter13.