This will be, as most are, an unread and unloved post. A first post in the grand tradition. The nature of Power Vacuum will be informed opinion. Research-based arguments or commentary. It is easy enough to watch CNN and fire off a response. What I want to do is take the topics that interest me: American and Middle Eastern politics and write about them within a larger historical context. What do Donald Trump and Ashraf Rifi have in common? What about Donald Trump and William Jennings Bryant? Probably nothing. Maybe a lot. I don’t know yet.
This is a difficult time for people like me. I’ve lived outside the United States for years. I grew up and worked amongst “the costal elite.” I am, in many ways, the embodiment of all that was repudiated on November 8th. But there is, of course, more to it. I spent the last year of my life working with the most conservative people imaginable: farmers in the far North of Lebanon. On the surface we have nothing in common. But the surface isn’t everything. And to write conservative Sunnis off is just as arrogant and distasteful as to write off the millions of people who voted for Donald Trump.
I’m not going to change my opinions. I’m not going to find the rhetoric and, at least thus far in the the transition, the abhorrent people that Donald Trump has appointed any less awful once they get in power. Still. I refuse to write off so many people who I believe voted out of a base fear of the future.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow will be all politics, no sentiment. Safe in the knowledge that this post will never, ever be read by anyone.
Power Vacuum 