By Francis X. Maier, First Things, Nov. 19, 2024
Francis X. Maier, a senior fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church (Ignatius).
I spent the evening after November 5 on YouTube. The site was full of time-compressed videos that tracked news media icons and Hollywood celebrities as election night wore on. The clips were mesmerizing. It was like watching a Carnival Cruise ship gradually sink. Passengers went from champagne to life jackets in just six hours. Jimmy Kimmel, Rachel Maddow, the always unpleasant Joy Reid, and so many others found themselves trapped in a Greek tragedy, with the bill for their jumbo helping of hubris suddenly due.
How did it happen? The reasons, as the emotionally battered luminaries said, were legion: misogyny, racism, and transphobia from America’s uneducated, sex-reactionary masses. And the pain was made even worse by bitter treason on the part of Latinos, blacks, and women. Over at Fox News, the analysis was rather different: An elitist Democratic party had vastly misread the real needs of the public. And Trump Ascendant had well and truly crushed the woke left. …
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