Two short stories about non-inevitability

The thing about the future is...

The first story…

The President of Kenya believes that he is God’s chosen leader. His rise to power was aided both by his ability to charm big money Bretton Woods power brokers and also, according to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court, his willingness to commit crimes against humanity. He talks a lot about hustling, which is famously a word with multiple meanings. This is all to say, William Ruto, like so many authoritarian-curious leaders, has never been one for backing down.

When word got out last week that the Kenyan police had fired live rounds, that dozens of protestors were killed or disappeared, there was nothing in William Ruto’s biography to indicate that the young Kenyans on the street—the protestors fighting like hell other against the President’s sour cocktail of austerity, broken promises, and regressive taxes—might lose the battle but win the war. The crackdown had already started. Hope should have been lost.

The second story…

French elections happen in two rounds, a fact that I must have learned the last time France held elections, but which I definitely forgot. I’m sure there’s a wise, sacre bleu rationale for conducting elections in this manner, but its main function, as far as I can tell, is that after the first round you get a full week of punditry about the outcome that will most definitely happen based on the initial batch of results.

Even if that had not been the case, even if we only had pre-election polling, all the smart prognosticators would have still predicted that National Rally, the party promising One Easy Trick to make France great again (the trick is getting rid of immigrants) would cruise to victory. That’s the prevailing narrative of the moment. We are in a “populist era,” we’re told, which doesn’t mean an era in which we care for people, but instead an era where every country gets their own version of Trump and that particular candidate always gets to win.

And yet…

Sometimes we are surprising, us human beings. Some among us are braver than the rest of us can ever fathom. The police in Nairobi killed protestors, but their friends stayed in the streets. International pressure turned against the government. The President who never backed down had to renege on his least popular policies. He agreed to a live social media mea culpa session with the same activists that just days before he had derided as lawless thugs. As of this writing, the kids are still shouting for more. They are making sure the martyrs of the movement won’t die in vain. They’re pushing for resignation. They’re dreaming of a revolution.

Sometimes we are brave beyond belief. We flood the streets and stay there even after the bullets and gas canisters are fired. And other times, we confound expectations in quieter but still meaningful ways. The French left, whom the pundits said were fated to infighting and navel-gazing, came together before it was too late. It was a tenuous alliance, but sometimes alliances are like that. A strategy coalesced, faster than anybody anticipated. Some candidates stood down, others stood up. Plans were both made and, importantly, followed through.

I saw a video from election night, from a National Rally party. The young men in crisp suits looked smug as the results were about to be announced. Wine glasses were held aloft, prepared for a jubilant toast. There was no toast. Their name notwithstanding, the cocky young men did not, in fact, rally the nation. Their party got third. The leftists won, the infighters, the ones who we are told aren’t currently ascendent. The news interviewed a Muslim woman in Paris. She cried with relief that she could go outside the next day without fear that an empowered NR supporter would tear off her hijab.

Neither story is finished, mind you. Both stories are complicated. Both could still turn sour.

But also.

The political world is full of extremely confident people whose job it is to convince you that they know the future. They have crunched the numbers. They know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, which candidates we’re stuck with, which kind of people will and won’t vote for them, which dreams are and aren’t possible. Here in the United States, they can tell you that Joe Biden will stay in the race and be thoroughly trounced by Trump, that Project 2025 will become the law of the land and that our job will be merely to despair all the horrors that come our way. They’re not making it up. There are patterns. There are precedents. But you know the damndest thing about the future? It hasn’t happened yet. It will come in due time, much too fast, but never so soon that we don’t have a chance to build it.

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End notes:

-I’m back in the States again! I decided to take a break from the movie series this week (and might next week as well— especially with the Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee). Thanks so much to both of my guest writers—

Lynn Yellen

and

Kate Berger

— for pitching in while I was gone. If you haven’t checked out their pieces, on Twelve Angry Men and Clueless, I highly recommend both.

-As paid subscribers know, rather than host Thursday discussions while I was gone, I wrote a couple fun little travelogues instead. I enjoyed writing them. So many pictures of weird Swedish signs. I missed our discussions, though, so look forward to another one on Thursday.

-The Right Kind of White: Still a book! Still worth buying! Also: I really enjoyed talking to Kari O’Driscoll on her “It’s Relatable” podcast. I hope you listen.

-Song of the week goes to Movaz Warombosaji Nation, a Kenyan group who reworked Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” into a Kiswahili protest anthem. Has a song called “Reject Finance Bill” ever gone this hard? I think not!