When Will You Find Patience?

 At some point over the summer, just when we needed it to happen, the internet suddenly discovered that Kamala Harris was cool. Overnight, her approval rating went from underwater to positive. You can see the whole process unfold on 538's tracker. The purple line improbably skyrockets starting sometime in July. Simultaneously and collectively, the nation completely changed its mind. 

I'm thrilled that it happened. It made the election winnable again. But it has also always made me nervous. Since the change was so miraculous and sudden and inexplicable to start with—I've always been scared that it could evaporate and reverse just as quickly. And already, online, I feel like I'm starting to see faint signs that this is the case. 

There's some ineffable sense that the coconut memes and palm trees are not cool anymore. Maybe even that being an obsessive Harris stan account is now a bit "cringe." And perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. It was Harris's "brat summer," after all. Nobody said anything about a "brat fall." Yet—we need a brat fall! Fall is the only time when anyone actually votes. 

So, I want to plead with the social media hive mind: please, people. The election is only three weeks away. I know that feels like an eternity in social media time. But it's nothing in the scheme of human life and society. Can't we just keep this cultural moment going for a little bit longer? Just for three more weeks? Just until the election is behind us? 

But no—it has never been thus. The problem is generational. To me, three weeks may feel like nothing. But to an eighteen year old on TikTok, who is going to vote for the first time on November 5—it is a not insubstantial chunk of their lifespan to date. 

I had this same realization all of last year. I was like: don't people notice that Trump is going to win this GOP primary? Don't they realize he could win the next election? Why are people not more concerned? Don't they see that our nation is just months away from driving off a cliff? Don't they realize that we are just months (now weeks) away from everything blowing up? 

But, I was asking people online to think six months ahead. For me, that's easy. Six months is only 1/68th of the amount of time I've been alive. But, for that hypothetical first-time-voter eighteen year old I mentioned, it's whole percentage points of their life so far. No wonder they're like: six months? That's plenty of time. We can worry about the election when it comes. But that won't be for ages. 

I confess I've fallen into the same pattern before. At the start of the Biden administration, I spent all my time blasting the new president for his use of Title 42 and other Trump-era immigration measures. At the advocacy organization where I worked, one of our members eventually took me to task for this: "yes, it's a problem," they said—in so many words—"but: keep your eye on the prize." 

Their point was that we still had the bigger fish to fry. Biden may have done things that are less than perfect—but now we have the prospect of an actual fascist dictatorship on our hands. "Aren't you worried about the 2022 midterms?" this person asked. "The 2024 election?" Back in winter 2021, I couldn't have been less worried about either. Those seemed like a lifetime away. 

Oh, youth! "When will you find patience?" Wordsworth once asked, in a sonnet to a great revolutionary and liberator. (Actually, the line is "When/Wilt thou find patience?" in poetic diction, but the above is how I remembered it in my head.) And that is essentially the question I want to ask all the young leftist revolutionaries today: "I know; I get it," I want to say, "but—have patience." 

I know you want culture to move on—but have patience! It's only three weeks from now. You will still be here then. You will still be able to call Harris cringe and make fun of the coconut memes—after we've won the election. Can't you please just wait until then? 

Wordsworth argued: the revolutionary has forces working for them that will proceed in their own due time: nature, love, and mind. Can we not calm down and wait for those to do their own unfolding work? Must we rush on so precipitously? 

Can we not please just enjoy a few weeks more of brat summer? Then we can all mock the summer that was to our heart's content—after we've won this election.