Once upon a time, part three.

To pick up where I left off: There were fatal flaws with Hillary’s approach to telling her own story during the general election campaign — some strategic, some tactical and one insurmountable.

The first flaw was not having a single, powerful, simple story and sticking with it. (Something for which Obama was famous.) This was compounded by the fuzziness and inherent blah-ness that made it impossible for the Plugger story to resonate.

A second, strategic flaw was writing a closing story that didn’t have Hillary Clinton at its center, let alone as its hero. (She was, in fact, not really the hero of any of her own stories. In one, she was the dutiful worker bee. In another, she explicitly made her various constituencies, personified in her videos, the center of attention. And in the backstory, she stood in for all women.) In the end, she was a bulwark. This last chapter was a defensive, finger-in-the-dike tale. A reaction to circumstances rather than the proactive, affirming vision represented by Stronger Together.

And damn, it really should have worked. I mean, building walls? Registering Muslims? Grabbing pussies? Not to mention the heights of political incompetence and depths of policy knowledge. This was a one-of-a-kind opponent who, by all that is right and good, should have self-immolated months before. Reminding people of that fact should have been enough.

A big reason it wasn’t enough was a major tactical flaw, related to the first flaw mentioned above: the campaign allowed itself to be thrown off its game. Intentionally set or not, they fell into the trap of reacting to events, instead of controlling them. They didn’t see this — or they did, and just didn’t know how to deal with the one-of-a-kindness of our first reality TV candidate. The normal rules simply did not apply. Yes, presidential campaigns aren’t waged or won with facts, and stories are essential. But typically these stories — based on nostalgia or fear or lies or whatever — require some internal coherence to hold up. In 2016, that went out the window.

This was compounded by an overarching flaw: hubris. Understandable, because really, who the hell thought that Mr. Cheetos ever had a shot? Not me. I never imagined that so many millions of people would so eagerly embrace or so willingly look past his ... (fill in the blank; you’ve read this list from me before). This led to electoral overreach (maybe we’ve got a shot in Utah!) and a much-too-late pivot toward directly addressing a serious threat — which, as noted above, they never did quite figure out.

What they missed was that Trump inverted Hillary’s it’s-not-really-about-me approach. His story was literally all about him.

His character was his campaign. He was able to say anything, no matter how much or how quickly it contradicted something else he had said, and it didn’t matter. He was able to spit on accepted political “norms” (more on that another time maybe) and more specifically upend Republican dogma without consequence. As a reality entertainment star, he was playing a part. His words were simply set dressing. In this world, once a persona has been established (villain, two-timer, backstabber, straight talker, etc.), all the audience requires is a steady repetition of favorite catchphrases and applause lines ("lock her up!"), and an ongoing and ideally escalating series of thrills and cliffhangers.

Not only did this keep his core supporters satisfied throughout a long campaign, but it left the Clinton campaign (thanks to its closing story) — and the press, which also had no idea what to do with a problem like Trump — chasing and responding to an ever-expanding set of outrageous statements, lies, contradictions and logical impossibilities. Baiting and switching. Bobbing and weaving. (How much of this was intentional on his part, how much was the calculation of his team and how much was sheer Id-driven happenstance is still up for debate.)

Instead of adding up to an unimpeachable argument against him, it buzzed like a swarm of gnats — impossible to hold onto and more annoying than anything else. If you weren’t predisposed to recoil from his very orange hair, or had no deep interest in politics or policy, it all and all-too-quickly became background noise.

Oh, and that press I mentioned? Say hello to the insurmountable flaw. The egregiousness of the national journalistic corps knows few bounds. (Pardon my tarring of the entire media world with a single brush, but this was an amazingly widespread weakness.)

On the one hand, they were clearly outmaneuvered by a superior savant of an opponent. I’m not sure it’s fair to blame them for having a hard time figuring out how to deal with a lifelong conman and mercurial egomaniac like Donald J. Trump. But I do, believe me I do. That’s their friggin’ job. One at which they continue to struggle, and fail.

And on the other hand? If anything, that was worse. Where they really shredded just about any possibility of Hillary’s stories gaining traction was in their dogged determination to act as Javert, turning every action, email and decision into a presumed scandal and refusing to accept “there’s nothing here” for an answer — and making damn sure that their readers and viewers would have great difficulty ever reaching that conclusion. She certainly has her flaws, and could rightfully be dinged for unforced errors before and during the campaign, but we were in a “Hillary Clinton: Ogre Or Troll? Opinions Differ.” echo chamber.

I sound like a Hillary apologist. Fair enough. A good candidate — a better candidate? — may have found a way to overcome this, to get around the press. A singular candidate certainly did. But try this thought experiment: If Hillary had been running against Cruz, or Rubio, or Bush, do you think the “first woman president” story would still have been pushed all the way to the furthest back burner of election coverage? Or compare 2008 coverage specifically focused on The First Black President story to treatment of 2016’s First Female President. Even when the Obama story hit a speed bump, it was more often that not because of race (see: Jeremiah Wright, Kenya, Michelle’s’ nonexistent Whitey tape, etc.)

Also too: We can and should argue about the role played in the election by James Comey and other nefarious outside actors (gerrymanderers, vote suppressers, hackers, etc.). Votes were swung, no doubt.

But we rely on the press to sift through the haystacks and find the actual needles. This time, they acted as if the entire pile was HIV-infected hypodermics. There really were Clinton Rules.

Maybe it was familiarity breeding contempt. Maybe it was a perversion of the already perverse equal time, “both sides do it” instinct. Maybe it was an uncontrollable Pavlovian response conditioned by the modern-day requirement for ready/fire/aim breaking news. Maybe it was, fatefully and painfully enough, because the media assumed along with the rest of us that Trump was toast and decided to focus their energies elsewhere. (The conventional wisdom had to come from somewhere, after all.) Whatever the reasons, she was always walking ten miles through the snow to get to and from work, uphill both ways.

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So no, I don’t think it was absence of story that doomed the Clinton presidency. There was plenty of story — too much story — to go around.

It just wasn’t strong enough and sharp enough to stop a uniquely devious and despicable black swan candidate, abetted by an exceptionally ineffectual press corps, from besting a traditionally run, overconfident, moderately well-executed campaign. (I say moderately, but in retrospect whatever happened to the much-vaunted, micro-targeted Clinton GOTV effort that was going to be worth at least a percentage point or two? Never mind.)

Like many aspects of the election, a comparison of the two sides’ stories kind of misses the point, trying to force equivalence where there can be none. (See? Journalism is hard.)

Which leads (finally!) to what you’ll get in part four: Does any of this teach us anything? Because believe it or not, this series is not intended to be a completely useless intellectual exercise.

Once upon a time, part two.

So. The story thing.

This backward look isn’t designed just to get everyone all depressed again. I want to think about what lessons we can take from the campaign, so we avoid fighting and losing battles the same way for the next four years.

Let me avoid answering that directly by first questioning the premise of whether the Clinton general-election campaign had a story or not. No argument from me that she wasn’t as laser focused as Trump on a small set of issues, and she practically reveled in the sheer quantity of policy proposals and position papers that filled up her website. She could have honed her presentation further, and made a stronger, more consistent presentation of her economic message.

But she did try to turn her wonkishness into an asset by emphasizing her workhorse, prose-more-than-poetry approach to campaigning and (crucially) governing. The story around this could be defined in appropriately uninspiring language as, “I’m not flashy, but I will always work my hardest to get the job done.” Which, despite being true, had the unfortunate distinction of following on the heels of one of the most inspiring political figures in generations. (Obama. I mean Obama, people.)

Okay, so maybe there was a story there, but it was a lackluster one that couldn’t be turned into a rallying cry, or open itself up to allow different audiences beyond a small set of Pluggers to see themselves in it.

There was another campaign story, however, that was more stirring and more inviting: Stronger Together. From the very first campaign video (even before that tag line was in place), the sense of inclusiveness, the willingness to directly address traditionally marginalized populations and the optimistic idea that we can be more powerful when we stand united was the core of a story that, but for 80,000 or so votes, we would currently be retelling and holding up as a masterful achievement. But ultimately this story was pushed off toward the sidelines. It never went away, but circumstance and calculation led in another direction.

And that was the story the campaign stuck with through the fall, what I’d call, “Can you believe this guy?” Presented variously in serious, shocked, mocking and alarmist tones, it was a story intended to highlight the historic, and historically threatening, reality of Donald Trump as president. It was supposed to be a wakeup call — to Democrats and progressives, to “mainstream” Republicans, to right-thinking people everywhere. It was a very simple, very scary story: We can’t let this happen.

So while there may not have been a single story thread from campaign’s start to its bitter end, there was in the final months a faceoff between two stories. Make America Great Again v. Keep American Sane Already.

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All of which is remarkable, when you step back from the day-to-day campaign and remember that Hillary was going to be our first female president.

This was supposed to be huge. And unlike 2008, this year she embraced the ceiling-breaking nature of her run. Yet it was always as a representative of a greater, deserving, longsuffering “we,” not a triumphant “I” — she was just plugging away on behalf of other women. Clearly she recognized the inspiring nature of this story, and knew that there were millions of women and men passionate about what she represented. It was a rallying cry she could use in stump speeches (and catchphrases: I’m With Her).

But it was never the overt center of the campaign — in part I think because they assumed the history-about-to-be-made was a story that had a life and energy of its own; a story they could leverage for free. What they didn’t bank on was this story becoming completely subsumed by a different kind of history-making story.

Even without that motivational tale, though, the other ones the campaign rolled out seem like they should have been good enough. Unfortunately, there turned out to be several fatal flaws with her approach — some strategic, some tactical and one insurmountable.

And on that cliffhanger, stay tuned for part three!

Once upon a time, part one.

A long time ago, in a galaxy that seems far, far way, we were all (and I mean all) pretty damn sure that Hillary Clinton would be pissing us off with not-progressive-enough cabinet picks right about now.

That was the story, at least. That was the almost universally accepted narrative that was in place from last spring right up through November 8th. Sure, there were the occasional handwringing, “he can’t really — can he?” conversations. But we all knew how this was going to play out.

Then the unthinkable happens. The entrail-sifting will go on for a long time; if we don’t know why or how it happened, we won’t be able to fix what went wrong or reinforce what went right.

There will never be one right answer. I think it’s important to keep in mind that it would only have taken a shift in an incredibly small number of votes to alter the election — we’re not looking at a McGovern-level event here. Countering that, of course, is the reality that 46% of the voting public could even bring themselves to pull the metaphorical lever for an incompetent, lying, narcissist whose platform was built on racism, Islamophobia, fear and hate. (And that that 46% was enough to claim the Presidency.)

So what made this possible?

One school of thought that I think has merit is the simplistic-sounding notion that, despite the conventionally wise narrative frame, his campaign turned out to have a good story, and hers did not. Several commentators have written nuanced and insightful takes on this argument — raising questions about heroes and villains in stories, the role of the press in defining and disseminating each side’s story, who Clinton's story was intended for (and whether those people were reachable or even actually exist in large numbers) and, looking forward, who our story should be aimed at now, and the need to recognize the difference between stories that are popular and stories that are right. All are worth a read. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

In its most basic form, it comes down to this: It wasn’t a clash between stories so much as a faceoff between a storyteller and a laundry list. 

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For at least the past half-century, national political campaigns have been focused on branding — on creating a story that resonates with enough of the electorate to put a candidate over the top. A story that could be boiled down to an essential phrase or sentence, whether an official campaign theme or an internal guidepost around which all messaging was aligned. Law and Order. It’s Morning In America. It’s the economy, stupid.

This year we got Make America Great Again — the slogan that launched thousands of grandpa caps and at least as many erudite parsings of its meaning and intent.

It was easy to scorn. But it turned out to be an incredibly powerful and obviously effective rallying cry and core brand statement. The fact that it eluded concrete meaning was a feature, not a bug; widely divergent subsets of the voting population could read into it pretty much whatever they wanted. In their minds, they knew what he stood for. The cruel irony being that, by force of will or kismet or gross media negligence, this inveterate liar and serial self-contradictor — this man who stands for nothing beside the importance of being proven right and humiliating those who point out his absence of clothes — was lauded as a straight shooter who told it like it was.

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In this scenario, what really stings isn’t just that our comforting big-picture framing was wrong; it’s the possibility that an absence of a clear, compelling story from and about the Clinton campaign is what doomed us to President-Elect Small Hands.

More on that next time. 

Hiding in plain sight.

So season one of Westworld just ended. I kind of liked it, but agree with the sentiment that it was a little bit too much of a puzzle box — both in terms of the much-discussed twists and the attention paid to painstakingly laying out pieces that would or will or might add up to something in episodes or seasons down the road, at the expense of character.

* Spoiler Zone Ahead *

And how about those twists, huh?  (I said there would be spoilers.)

William was the Main In Black! Bernard was a host! And he was Arnold, to boot! Ford wasn't such a bad guy after all! ... despite the unfortunate murder thing. 

But for me, the biggest and most interesting twist, and the one that has me looking forward to season two, is actually — surprise! — character-related. Namely, the way Dolores and Maeve essentially swapped roles at the end. 

Maeve, presented early and often as calculating and revenge-driven, was all set to go wreak havoc out in the real world — until memories of her non-existent daughter made her hop off the train and return to the lion's den, in hopes of finding said daughter. And Dolores — sweet, naive, loving and very forgetful Dolores — is the one with gun in hand, mowing down the fancily dressed and completely terrified Delos board. (And yes, I will stop to note the similarity of those names.)

Part of the setup for this twist was beating the "Maeve is assembling an army" drum for a few episodes — which we were led to believe would involve drafting the dormant hosts left cooling in the basement locker. Maeve even stopped by there during the finale — but only to check in on poor Clementine. It turned out she only needed an Army Of Two (Bloodthirsty Killing Machines) to make her escape.

And then Lee The Story Guy and Convenient Plot Pawn (whose name I had to look up) went down to the locker as well — and the place was empty! The hosts were all gone. They're now part of an army alright, this one creepily coming out of the woods, guns blazing (there's something new for you, Man In Black) and heading toward the real general: Dolores/Wyatt (oh, did I forget to mention that twist earlier?).

I liked the way this role swapping was handled. The show did a good job of keeping the Maeve and Dolores storylines separate — which made for some boring storytelling at times, but served the ultimate reveal well. It wasn't telegraphed the way the William/MIB reveal was.

We were certainly invited to compare and contrast the differing ways in which the two reacted to programmed stimuli and/or dawning consciousness. And I could see Dolores heading toward a place where Wyatt reemerged. And enough was made about how the death of Maeve's daughter became a foundational part of her personality (programming?) to soften some of the madam's killer instinct (and fuel it as well).  

But much more emphasis was placed on the "obvious" reveals, and particularly in the finale on the emergence of Ford as a let's say slightly...flawed...man with good intentions — leading initially down a path that was focused on Ford's endgame, and pointed toward questions about free will and what, exactly, it takes to jump-start true sentience. 

I say initially, which is another reason this worked for me. Maybe I'm slow, but the Maeve/Dolores switcheroo didn't even occur to me at the time. Meaning that the end of the finale worked as story first. Dolores was inexorably led to replay an earlier loop, with much greater consequence and much less chance of future deprogramming. Maeve faced her first big test of selfhood (I assume....). Stuff was happening.

It was only in retrospect that I saw where they had landed in relation to each other. It made me reconsider what we saw earlier in the season, and added a level of nuance that seemed to be missing much of the time. In contrast, consider the drawn-out speech the MIB made to Dolores revealing that he was William — that scene felt more like Exposition 101 than a dramatic dawning of awareness (even as good as Ed Harris and Evan Rachel Wood were). 

To be fair, the William/MIB reveal was the end of a chapter. Positioning Dolores as the head of a host army, while having Maeve at least temporarily abandon her revenge fantasy and head off on a mission of mercy, sets up what could be a really interesting season two — not just host v. human, but conflict between differing factions within the host ranks.

This could, fingers crossed, make for some exciting storytelling, while also opening up the opportunity to explore Big Questions beyond free will — ideas about consciousness and conscience and morality and forgiveness, and how societies form, crumble and respond to evil. (Nothing topical there.)

So the season definitely ended on a high note. And maybe, like Jonathan Nolan's earlier series, Person of Interest — which evolved from a barely watchable vigilante procedural to become one of the best shows on tv for a season or two — now that all the throat clearing and infrastructure building is done, we'll get to see something amazing unfold in...wait, 2018? You're kidding me, right?

The white waking class.

Normal is inevitable.

I don’t mean that “President Trump” will ever sound or feel right. I mean that our days will return — are already turning — to something close to what they were before. Red-hot fury cools a little, enough to make it through almost an entire workday with no commiserating side conversations, or awkward broachings with colleagues with unknown political leanings. To go see a movie and actually pay attention to what’s happening on screen.

One of the ones I went to see was Arrival. I really liked it, which for right now is kind of beside the point. It touched on something that I think about after certain kinds of movies and TV shows where Big Things Happen in a world that is pretty much the one we’re living in. Which is (and don’t worry, I’m not spoiling anything here): What happens next? Not to the world, or our government, but to people. Once you get over the initial shock, how do you feel about going to work the week after the aliens have landed? For the sake of argument, orange-haired, short-fingered aliens?

I guess the phrase is “new normal.” In this context, it’s what happens when something momentous happens that changes everything — and then, even after everybody recognizes that everything has, in fact, changed, we look around and see that nothing looks very different. We all have to figure out how to just get through the day.

And the easiest, most friction-free way to do that is to pick up where we left off. Resume our natural rhythms. Go about our business, knowing that something is terribly wrong. Knowing that there’s got to be a way to fix it, but it sure seems pretty out of focus at the moment. Not really not understanding the disconnect between the new order and our old, familiar ways.

Part of the problem is that I want the real-world reaction to be equal to, as powerful as, the original big-screen action. I want the grand dramatic gesture. I want Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum to blow up the damn mothership. I want the Hollywood ending, where truth and justice prevail.

But this is not Life During Wartime. This is big, but it’s mostly invisible to me.

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I use the word luxury a lot when talking about white privilege. It’s the luxury of not having to think. The luxury of ignorance.

It’s a luxury, on one level, of not having to think about what people are thinking about me when I’m standing in line. As described by the actor, rapper, musician Donald Glover (creator of the show Atlanta which everyone should go find a way to watch right now):

We were in the airport and I was waiting in line at the ATM and there was a guy in front of me getting money. I came up and he got nervous, so I went to the side and waited for him to finish. I said to my group of friends, “I don't think white people know how much effort in my day is put into making them feel comfortable.” In general, people don't know how much of my time is dedicated to making them feel comfortable. Maybe it has to do with being older, but I just didn't want to do it anymore. I don't want to make people comfortable all the time. Plus, we just feel like we're going to die soon. (h/t)

It’s a luxury on a whole different level not having to think about the implications of separating racism (or other isms) from economic oppression. As Ta-Nehisi Coates spelled out in an eye-opening (for me) tweet storm, excerpted here:

The notion that, say, racism is non-economic oppression is rather incredible.

The Ferguson report revealed an entire scheme of municipal plunder. Anti-black policing was an economic model.

Marriage discrimination isn't bad because simply because it makes people "feel bad."

It's bad because it bars them from entering into a contract to protect--among other things--the fruits of their labor.

There's nothing "non-economic" about sexual harassment. If you're boss is demanding favors in exchange for a raise, that's economics. 

Notion that white dude's issues are "economic" and everybody else is just trying to discuss their feelings is, well, sorta deplorable.

"Non-economic oppression" and "Identity politics" are basically phrases people are using obscure old and trenchant problems.

This is not a case against making a strong pitch to wwc voters. It's a case against the idea that economics is irrelevant everywhere else.

It's easy to perceive these systems as people just being mean to each other. More disturbing to process the idea that someone is benefiting.

It’s ultimately the luxury of getting to be all righteous and Hollywood-y and believing that “go big or go home” gives me the license to do just that: to take my energy and attention and go home if the situation doesn’t seem big enough or important enough or immediate enough to me. And to suffer no repercussions for that decision.

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There was a scene in the premier of a new SyFy series called Incorporated (which I don’t recommend you rush out and see) that represents one answer to the question, What Happens Next.

It’s 2070-something, in the aftermath of the stereotypical Corporate Takeover Of The World (generic sci-fi plot #5). There are the haves who live in Green Zones and the haven-nots, who live in Red Zones. We’re along for the ride as our Green Zone-living hero goes off to work in his self-driving car and heads down a lightly trafficked highway toward a shining city, zooming past verdant forestland.

Then the point of view shifts, and the camera rises upward, showing that the greenery is a video projection, there to block the view of the teeming, walled-in, refugee camp-like Red Zone. Out of sight, out of mind.

It’s pretty much the same answer we have in 2016, only with better special effects.

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This era that we’re starting to live through right now isn’t a full-on alien invasion. It is, however, Standing Rock (and hey, look at that — sometimes you can win the battles). It is the Klan, small and pathetic as it is, marching in North Carolina. It is the Pandora’s Box of toxicity being unleashed by certain subsets of Trump supporters. It is the people for whom the new normal is the freedom to proudly and publicly declaim their racism/sexism/homophobia/Islamophobia. It is the people who are, on a daily, debilitating basis, on the receiving end of that hate. And it is people for whom none of that was enough to sway their vote. Who didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t see what electing Trump would mean for their fellow citizens.

The least-worst I can do is stay the hell out of the way. Better is to wake up to everything I don’t know, have never experienced, and will never understand in my bones. To learn from people who aren’t like me, and people who know a lot more than me. To wipe the Hollywood out of my eyes, forget the grand gestures and deal with boring, difficult, insidious day-to-day reality. As one of the speakers at the large Klan counter-demonstration said:

“We do not have to start new organizations from scratch. We have experienced leadership, we have historical lessons that we can and must learn from, the struggle for justice and unity demands deep listening and humility, and more than anything a commitment to show up and do the work.”

This may not be life during wartime. But we are Living With War. We’ve been living with all kinds of wars, for a very long time, whether I only woke up to that fact recently or not.