Science Fiction and American Reality

On handling the interregnum.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Like approximately half of the country, I was less than thrilled to see Donald Trump win this month’s presidential election. Trump was an objectively awful president during his first term and I see no reason to expect better results for his next go-around other than positive forces beyond his control. The hard-working staff here has already written at length about the illiberal policies to come. My expectations for the next four years are rather dim.

A related issue is the depressing realization that I am going to have to spend much of the next 96 months analyzing, speaking, and writing about Donald Trump as someone to be taken seriously. The Foreign Affairs essay I wrote earlier this month? That is the harbinger of multiple musings to come. Over the last ten days I have been commissioned to write a few more essays on this topic, so buckle up. This does not count the half-dozen talks and roundtables this past month alone about the future of the United States. On top of all that are the casual and not-so-casual conversations with friends and family about what is to come. More than one person has asked me whether I am worried about being locked up because of my previous published work critical of Trump.¹

My point here is not to lament that my services are in such high demand, because that would be insufferable. Rather, it is to lament that Donald Trump is not even president again and he is already way too omnipresent in my life. At times the desire to tune out has been strong.

I am not the only one feeling that impulse. On Friday The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh wrote about the impulse among non-MAGA Americans to recede into the cozy cocoon of popular culture in the wake of Trump’s narrow but consequential victory.

That desire for disengagement has been a siren song for Kamala Harris supporters (and/or Donald Trump detractors) in the two weeks since the election was called, which have touched off what Politico labeled “the great blue tune-out of 2024.” MSNBC’s and CNN’s ratings are in freefall…. I’ve lost track of how many people have written, posted, or personally told me that they’ve been in a self-imposed partial news blackout….

The most carefree I’ve felt post-colonoscopy was during the two and a half hours I spent at a screening of Gladiator II. Partly because Ridley Scott’s sequel to 2000’s Best Picture chronicles a righteous uprising to topple leaders who lack the temperament for their roles … but, to be honest, more so because it’s an unapologetic popcorn film that features frickin’ sharks in the Colosseum. That’s the sort of nonsense I need now, not the kind that comes with cabinet appointments. If you’re trying to purge politics from your system, fiction can be the best Miralax for the soul….

In some respects, it’s probably therapeutic to set politics to “do not disturb,” at least for a little while. Trump won’t even take office for a couple more months; we certainly can’t call this the “calm,” but the storm hasn’t started yet, either. Take a timeout now to practice self-care, save your strength, or strategize, and you skip the finger-pointing campaign postmortems suspiciously tailored to people’s pet issues….

At some point, the opposition has to get in the game, however much its morale has flagged. The temptation to turn away, or inward, is strong enough that “streaming services may well register an uptick in views of feel-good sitcoms,” wrote The New Yorker’s Lauren Michele Jackson, but without the capacity to “imagine moving onward,” it’s challenging to practice “a politics that is hardy and literate, drawing its reserves not from the lulling precincts of self-care but from urgent struggles ongoing.”

On the other hand, my podcasting partner Ana Marie Cox points out that maybe the key to the next four years is appreciating that epochs tend to end and begin on a regular basis:

As a species and as individuals, we’ve gone through a thousand things that felt world-ending. And yet, the world keeps beginning again. Personal worlds, the world of a nation, the world that is your community. A thousand endings accompanied by immense pain then something else happens.

Yes, climate change could end us. It also might not. The chances of civilization being wiped out are relatively low. So what if you survive? What if you can make a difference in who does survive?

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World believes that there is a way of splitting the difference between tuning out and tuning in, and that is to tune into fiction that offers some useful insights into the current reality. That is literally the purpose of good genre stories. It is one of the reasons I love co-hosting Space the Nation with Ana.

During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic I found myself watching good, not-so-good, and obscure films about pandemics. Bizarre as it sounds, I found them comforting. In part that was because real life was not nearly as bad as what was being depicted on screen. And in part it was because it’s worth pondering the ways in which fiction can inform or obscure our understanding of real-world crises.

So, during this interregnum, I have found myself re-visiting Battlestar Galactica, a show that first aired 20 years ago. It holds up! A plot based around humans losing a war, fleeing to survive, and making all kinds of questionable political decisions along the way resonates with me in 2024 for some reason. Shows that consider how leaders retain the trust of ordinary citizens even if they are doing something a little bit shady is definitely worth mulling over. Questions about trusting authority are also at the heart of Apple+’s Silo, now in its second season. In the near future I will likely be revisiting Andor’s stellar first season as well. Max’s The Penguin dipped into these waters as well.

Every person is different. A large fraction of Americans are looking forward to Trump 2.0. Another large fraction of Americans just want to look away for a spell. For those of us whose day jobs require us to keep our eyes open, a dip into genre can finesse this tradeoff in the short term.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to start watching the BSG episodes where the admirable Laura Roslin is running for president against the shifty Gaius Baltar. I wonder who will win!

1. In case you were wondering, my semi-serious answer has been that I am way, way down on Trump’s enemies list. If his minions have time for me then Trump 2.0 will have displayed a ruthless efficiency that would defy all expectations.