As Election Day approaches, the country is gearing up for an exaggerated showdown between two opposing forces, something that could become extremely serious if a second assassination attempt occurs on former President Donald Trump on Sunday.
The world is watching, and the American people are watching the outcome.
But not everyone is on board. Some are outraged by comments like “eating cats,” while others have turned it into a meme on TikTok. Really great music Get out of there.
To be sure, 2024 is a battle between Democrats and Republicans, but it has also exacerbated the divisions between two other camps and reshaped divisions in America. On one side are the “catastrophe theorists,” those who believe the election of Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris represents a moment of truth in American history. On the other are the “casualists,” who believe the stakes are far less significant.
This divide can be seen on the grandest stages of culture, media, and politics, as well as in everyday life. Catastrophists and casualists exist on both the left and the right. In many ways, catastrophists who believe Trump should win and people who believe Trump should lose have more in common with each other than they do with casualists who support Democrats or Republicans.
Doomsayers share the belief that American democracy is at a crossroads. They have raised the stakes to epic proportions. And they disagree only on one fundamental question: who is the best candidate to support at this critical moment.
Casuals see the situation quite differently. Of course, there are anarchists and nihilists among them, but most of them are simply ambivalent about the outcome, as they trust the people, i.e. the people, more than any particular political party. They believe that the ruling party has less influence over the direction of the country than the domestic community, and are not swayed by arguments one way or the other.
But most casual voters have clear preferences. There are those on both the left and the right who clearly prefer their own candidate over the other. They are the “lesser of two evils” voters. But they calculate, explicitly and consciously, or even unconsciously, through their actions that this election is not necessarily important for the future of the country.
Take Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host and now independent media star who recently Dedicated an episode to His show was replaced by an interview with a so-called revisionist historian named Darryl Cooper. Most of this conversation was essentially a reconstruction of World War II. Who was the “main villain” of the war, Winston Churchill or Adolf Hitler? Naturally, this became a topic of conversation for many. This was an editorial choice on Casual, and they revisited such topics a few weeks before November.
Similarly, there is the case of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who hosts Reduced She announced that she would be hosting the show just one day a week on Mondays in 2022, a schedule she has not changed, although she did make appearances at special events during the height of the election campaign.
If Maddow truly believes a Trump victory poses an existential threat to America, surely she would adjust her workload to focus on doing all she can to save the country?
This isn't to say that Messrs. Carlson and Maddow don't want their candidates to win, or that they don't think the country would be better off with a Trump or Harris president — they do — but the risks are much less than they would be if they lived their lives as catastrophists.
Ezra Klein of the New York Times is a doomsayer. In February, he used his position at the paper to call on President Biden to step down as the Democratic nominee. Klein did this not because he loves America and wants a strong leader with no obvious cognitive impairment, but with the clear goal of beating Trump in November. Klein was pushing for this long before it became commonplace in July after Biden's disastrous debate defeat. It's also worth noting that he called for an open primary process rather than Harris' nomination, because he believed it would put the party in its strongest position.
And Klein held this view in contrast to some in the Democratic Party elite. I told the Bulwark In July, he spoke on a podcast about “top Democrats” who said they don't actually believe Trump is an existential threat to democracy, despite the talking points Democrats make. They would say to Trump, privately of course, “I could live with it if Donald Trump wins.” These politicians may hyperbolically call themselves catastrophists, but their actions and true beliefs are those of everyday people.
And then there's Elon Musk, who endorsed Trump shortly after the assassination attempt in July. Musk has donated millions of dollars to Trump's election support, a clear departure from his previous positions as a political liberal, then an independent, who stayed out of the fray. In this election cycle, Musk has been a doomsayer, Agree to serve Under the second Trump administration.
As for 2024, some prominent politicians are leaning towards a doomsday perspective: Former Vice President Dick Cheney has endorsed Harris, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement have switched from the Democrats to Trump's side, and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has also endorsed Trump.
We live in strange and interesting times, with Cheney as Democrat and Kennedy as Republican, and the catastrophic tendencies of those involved have brought us to this moment.
Taylor Swift came off the sidelines last week to endorse Harris. She endorsed Biden in 2020, but 2024 is a more noteworthy calculation. The last election, in the middle of a pandemic, was a doomsday-riddled election cycle. This time, it's not the same. Trump is getting support from a range of constituencies he didn't have before, including many young and minority voters.
Swift's election choice sets her apart from other celebrities like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who has said he regrets using his massive platform to speak out for Biden in 2020 and will remain neutral in 2024. The Rock has taken a casual stance.
This is not a diagnosis of which side is right, nor is it a judgement on one side or the other. I am a casual observer myself, but I think there will definitely be doomsayers arguing in 2024.
America is hopelessly divided on many issues, but there's one area where we can find common ground: Some people across the broadest political persuasions believe America will be fine no matter who wins in November.
And some think that if the other side wins, we're totally screwed. Dick Cheney and RFK Jr. agree.
NewsNation contributor Steve Krakauer is the author of Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.
