Is there a decision you’ve avoided making or something you’ve put off doing for too long? Some thoughts on the US presidential election, deleting Twitter, and Philp Roth’s The Plot Against America.
“There is still the ballot box and people can still vote without anybody telling them what to do. […] When November comes, we’ll find out the results, and there’ll be time then to decide what to do.”
These words are from Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America. They are spoken by the father of the narrator (the narrator also being named Philip Roth, although this is a work of fiction). I chanced upon a copy of The Plot Against America in a charity shop late last month, for just 10p. I read most of Roth’s work around two decades ago, but somehow had not read this one before. Finding a copy of this book right before the 2024 US presidential election felt almost like a sign from the universe that it was high time I took the plunge. A quick summary of the book’s plot is enough to indicate why it felt timely and relevant to read it.
A dream, a nightmare
The Plot Against America is set in a version of 1940s America in which Charles Lindbergh becomes the Republican candidate in the 1940 presidential election. Lindbergh defeats Franklin Delano Roosevelt and sweeps to power, ushering in a very different era of history from the one we know. In our actual history, Lindbergh held far-right beliefs, and was rumoured to be a Nazi sympathiser. In The Plot Against America, President Lindbergh signs documents of “understanding” with Hitler’s Germany and Hirohito’s Japan, meaning that America does not enter the Second World War in the way that we know or knew it.
President Lindbergh’s popularity skyrockets as a result of the popular perception that he has used America’s position of strength and power to deliver a lasting peace. But not all Americans get to enjoy this peace equally. From the earliest days of Lindbergh’s presidency, some people feel emboldened in making aggressively antisemitic statements. The Roths experience this first-hand in a series of disturbing encounters while on a family visit to the seat of American democracy, Washington, D.C.. Back home in Newark, New Jersey, Roth’s father summarises this trip to his friends:
“We knew things were bad, but not like this. You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, we live in a nightmare.”
You don’t need me to spell out the potential resonance and relevance of The Plot Against America to the moment in which we find ourselves now, and to the way things could go from here.
In the line of dialogue I quoted at the start of this post, Roth’s father is putting off a decision on whether to follow the example of one of his Newark friends and escape with his family to Canada. He is terrified and furious about the way things might go, but wants to delay any decision to leave until after the November 1942 congressional election, a time when all might become clear.
The Philip Roth who narrates The Plot Against America writes at one point of the dissonance between how we study historical events and how they feel as we live through them:
“As Lindbergh’s election couldn’t have made clearer to me, the unfolding of the unforeseen was everything. Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as ‘History,’ harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”
You don’t need me to tell you how things might now be becoming clear in light of the results of the November 2024 presidential election. The results are in. The unfolding of the unforeseen is underway.
Now might just be the time
Is there a decision that you’ve avoided making or something you have put off doing for a long time? Now might just be the time.
A small example of an overdue decision that I have just made. This past Monday (11 November 2024), I finally deleted my Twitter account. I hadn’t used it in nearly a year, but I was holding on to it in the unlikely hope that things might improve (See eX-Twitter blues). There is no chance of that happening now, I believe. Additionally, anyone still using it from yesterday (Friday 15 November 2024) automatically ‘consents’ to having all their posts used to train Musk’s AI tool, under the latest revision to its terms and conditions. Twitter used to mean so much to me. But I don’t want any part of what it has become, or where it might be going.
Today is as good a day as any to take a clear-eyed look at where you are in the world, at how you feel about your place in this world, and at whether there are any long put-off decisions that are now due.
Now might just be the time.
May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.
May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.
IMAGE
- Charles Lindbergh arrived at Croydon Field, Surrey, England, May 29, 1927 via Wikimedia Commons.
- Charles Lindbergh working on engine cph.3a51858 via Wikimedia Commons.
- Crowd at State and Madison (Chicago) celebrating news that Charles Lindbergh has arrived in Washington, D.C. via Wikimedia Commons.
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