Believing in things is great, actually

In defense of sincerity and earnestness

Last week, New York Magazine published an article by their long-time culture critic, Nate Jones. I could tell that it was making the discursive rounds, but all I knew was that its title contained a cute neologism (“Obamacore”) and that multiple people I trusted told me I needed to read it.

In many ways, I came of age— personally, professionally and politically— during Obama’s two terms. And like many left-leaning Americans, those years of putative hope and change bring up a half-resolved mess of emotions. When I look back on the late aughts and teens, I’m filled with legitimate affection for my idealism, but not for the ways that my political imagination eroded. I regret the ways that my politics in those years were moderated by individualism and a belief that great people (and let’s be honest, great men— a category, I hoped, might include me) could save the world through our intellect, pluck and willingness to put in eighty-hour weeks typing on computers. The Obama presidency coincided with my own worship of technocracy, the years where I put my faith in C-Suite nonprofit jobs to both change the course of American history and save my own soul. It was a stretch of time where I worked nonstop but lost myself along the way. I’m still making sense of that era, trying to hold who I was with both grace and thoughtful critique. I mean, it’s no wonder I wrote wrote a whole book about it.

That’s all to say, if there was an essay in a respected publication offering a critical but big-hearted analysis of the stories that many of us told ourselves between 2008 and 2016, I wanted to make sure that I gave it the gift of an extended chunk of time when I wouldn’t be distracted by summer parenting. And so, it wasn’t until early Sunday morning that I finally sunk my teeth into “Obamacore.” I was ready to be moved, perhaps even challenged, for it to help me make sense of so many unresolved emotions.

As it turns out, those were unfair expectations. Jones’ piece, as far as I could tell, was less a work of searching analysis than a snarky listicle in prose-form, a well-researched compendium of disparate pop culture items whose main bond is that they were once more beloved than they are currently. Remember Hamilton? What about The New Girl? Or Nicki Minaj’s verse on “Monster?” Obamacore! Obamacore! Obamacore! Why? I’m still not quite sure. I think because they were either earnest or hopeful or maybe vulnerable? Or try-hardy? And people liked them, often enthusiastically. But now some of those same people don’t like them as much anymore, which, per Jones, is less a natural evolution of taste— both individual and collective— than a specter with which we need to be reckoned, particularly since liberals are now getting all hope-y and meme-y again.

Here’s how the piece concludes;

But for those of us doomed to remember what the Obama years were like the first time around — the turbo-pop, the undercuts, the novelty Twitter accounts, the Internet Boyfriends, the girlbosses, the hashtags, the precise shades of pink — there is one last bracing thought. For better or worse, these were our ’60s, and we’re all just going to have to come to terms with that.

I read “Obamacore” a few times, convinced I must be missing something. I could see a version of this essay, one with a tighter curatorial eye, that actually analyzed the political messaging behind specific artifacts from the Obama years. There’s something to be said, for instance, about how moments like Hamilton or the Grammy dust-up between Macklemore and Kendrick Lamar shaped a distinctly Millennial style of representation-above-all-else racial politics. But there’s no room for that kind of analysis in Jones’ over-crowded stewpot of references. What do Glee, The Golden State Warriors, Kesha’s party-pop anthem "Tik Tok,” Justin Bieber’s circa-2012 haircut and the pre-cancellation sitcoms of Louis CK and Aziz Ansari have in common? Despite “Obamacore’s” bluster, the answer is not much, actually, except that they were either consumed and/or created with a certain degree of sincerity. You can almost hear the piece scoffing at its readers in the voice of Regina George, or at least a version of Regina George who studied comparative literature at Sarah Lawrence. “Wait, you all really liked all those stupid things? That’s adorable.”

“Obamacore” isn’t really about last decade’s pop culture ephemera, though. Its very first paragraph isn’t about the 44th President at all. It’s about Kamala Harris and the coconut trees and neon green brat shirts she’s inspired. Its message— half-implicit, half-explicit— is essentially “hey, it seems like a lot of you are un-self-consciously engaging in politics again, and just so you know that’s soooo embarrassing.”

I’m spending a lot of real estate on a single essay, but it’s a symptom of a bigger trend I’ve noticed in coastal media treatment of the current political moment, in particular as practiced by newly re-energized left-liberals. In the past couple weeks, The New Yorker has elegized the Democratic convention as a festival of “cringe-millennial culture” while The Atlantic offered that the party is now “trading excessive cynicism for overwrought optimism” and The Guardian has dismissed the entire campaign as nothing but “effervescent little fictions.” And don’t even get our nation’s scribes started on those Zoom fundraisers. The verdict is in: a cardinal sin has been committed unto the Church of the Bylined Cynic. Y’all have cared too much, too publicly. You have shown your hearts. You know, like a loser does.

To be clear, none of these are policy arguments, at least primarily. There have been plenty of more substantive critiques of the Harris-Walz platform from the left, as there should be. Personally, I was deeply disappointed in many aspects of the Democratic Convention— its lack of bravery on Palestine, especially, but also Harris’ line about aspiring to have “the most lethal fighting force in the world,” and the constant hawkishness on immigration. I believe the Harris-Walz ticket should be criticized (and protested) on those fronts, just as it should be celebrated for its populist/pro-union economic rhetoric. But do you know what’s not a problem? That the delegates at the convention were fired up about their preferred Presidential candidate, that they were inspired to have a leader like Kamala Harris or touched by Tim Walz’ model of masculinity. Or, on the other side of the security barricade, that the protesters were equally earnest in their rage and despair at America’s role in the unceasing assault on Gaza. Joy. Heartbreak. Joy and heartbreak intermingling at the same moment. Thank God we got to see it all, out loud.

The issue isn’t that we human beings are filled to the brim with sincere feelings: Rage, hope, love, sadness, fear, isolation, a desire for connection. We can and should disagree with one another on what we believe, about what we celebrate and what we decry. We can and should debate for hours about tactics and strategy and what will actually help build a better world. But there is nothing wrong with our big earnest hearts, nor is there anything wrong with being embarrassing or (God forbid) cringe-y when we allow those hearts to take the wheel. Without those emotions, we have nothing. Without those emotions what the hell are we even doing engaging in politics in the first place?

I have a lot of regrets about how I spent the Obama administration. I regret spending more time climbing nonprofit ladders than getting to know my neighbors. I regret convincing myself that social media bluster could be a reasonable facsimile for organizing. I regret getting excited about new phones and new apps and shiny things to purchase. I regret believing that because Barack Obama was the first Black President and because that speech he gave at the 2004 DNC made me cry, that his election alone would deliver us to a new era. I regret saying that I would organize to push him on issues that mattered to me— drone strikes and family separation and a corporate-friendly macroeconomic philosophy— and then, well, conveniently forgetting to do so.

What I don’t regret, though, is gathering with friends on election night in Madison, Wisconsin in 2008 and hugging literally everybody in the room, experiencing the collective elation that comes when, for a moment at least, all your friends believe in something without equivocation or irony. I don’t regret that night, just as I don’t regret knocking on doors for a State Senate candidate I believe in, or the multiple times this year when I chanted “the whole world Is watching” while marching for Gaza even though I feared that the world might, in fact, be turning its gaze elsewhere.

Yes, in the subsequent decade, my politics diverged from that of the Obama administration in real and substantive ways. That doesn’t mean that the pure burst of electoral effervescence I felt in 2008 wasn’t real, nor admirable. We can and should evolve our politics. We should learn and struggle and metabolize new information about the world and our place in it. But we must also guard agains the pernicious myth that doing so entails moving from idealism to cynicism, from a belief in the potential of other people to a distanced, nihilistic scoff. The problem isn’t that we care. The problem, in fact, is all the ways we trick ourselves into caring less.

End notes:

1. So, there are a lot of things that are wonderful about doing all this (writing and organizing) as a day job, but one of the bummers is that I’m reliant on subscriptions (essentially monthly or yearly contributions from readers) in an era where you all are inundated with way too many entreaties to “subscribe! subscribe! subscribe!” But the thing is, supporting this space is different, I think, then choosing between Peacock and Spotify. It’s a way of saying “something about what this guy is doing has been a gift to me, so I’d like to give a gift in return.” If that resonates with you, I’d love your support. I know that’s no small ask, but I promise I’ll do my damndest to be a good steward of your kind contribution to this work. Thanks for considering.

2. Speaking of “being a subscriber,” one of the benefits I offer is access to the Flyover Politics discord (which my readers share with

   lyz
   ‘s
   Men Yell at Me
   crew). I share that now because, well, it’s a lovely space and it always deserves a shout out, but in particular because my pals there (thanks Caitlin) were particularly helpful in me making sense of my thoughts on this one.

3. Oh, while I’m praising you all as being the best readers in the world, can I just say how much I love that, after publishing this essay, a bunch of you have in fact sent me first day of school pictures (including throwback pics of YOUR first days of school)? A delight!

4. That book I referenced above? It’s good and it’d be very cool if you could buy a copy. Thanks for considering that too (and if you can only do one or the other, just send me an email- I’m happy to send a book to you as thanks for subscribing or comp a subscription bc you bought a book).

5. Next Tuesday, registration will officially open for Barnraisers Project fall mini classes! And, at long last, I can announce the dates and times we’ll be offering them. Want to make sure you find out about all the cool info (like how to register, what to expect, how exactly we keep them free, etc.) Make sure that you’re on the interest list.

6. All right, ready for a spicy Song of the Week take? Well, speaking of “Obamacore” and moments that it’d probably be a lot cooler to pretend didn’t impact us profoundly, I’ll come out and say it: This song made me cry a bunch in 2008. And you know why? Because it took a legitimately stirring speech and set it to uplifting music! You know, the kind of formula designed to elicit earnest emotion. In some ways, I’m not the same guy as the twenty-something email jockey who listened to this song on repeat on a Dell laptop. But the version of me that loved being inspired by a political speech about hope? If I’m lucky, that’ll always be there.