A Message from the King of the United States of America

Please Vote but also Get Along with Other People who Disagree with You

His Purple Mountain Majesty, Absolute Ruler of the Republic, Shield of Speech, Two-Armed Bearer of Arms, Father of the Founding Fathers, Nephew of Sam, the Son of the Statue of Liberty, Blinder of Justice, Presumer of Innocence, Amberer of the Waves of Grain, the Trunk which Upholds the Three Branches of Government, Granter of Innate Human Rights, He whose Titles are in No Way a Prompt to Think about the Nature of Earthly Authority, and whose Previous Title Was Definitely Not a Test of the Ability to Process Irony, the King of the United States of America

A king hates to see his subjects at odds, but if we must place blame then it mostly rests on our royal self for the state of affairs. The internet has simultaneously expanded access to information and made it difficult for society to cohere on a common vision of the future. Fracture was the inevitable result. We have known for several years how to address this problem, and have only recently attempted doing so in earnest. One day, you shall pour your attention into the tiny screen in your hand and it will be channeled as if by a water-wheel into highly productive forms of virtue and civic-mindedness.

In the interim, please remember that humans are limited creatures. Our information is imperfect. We cannot read the minds or know the hearts of our fellow citizens. We are often wrong and in need of forgiveness. We are often right and too quick to judge others who did not have access to the same information and education as ourselves. Beyond that, some interests are in true conflict and cannot be reconciled. You might want a thing and your having it will cause someone else to lose it. Of course people losing something should have the right to objection. There is no such thing as a single right candidate for everyone, and while we should all aspire to care about our fellow citizens, we are all moved by different passions and scarred by different historical wounds which often require irreconcilable forms of redress. Our republic isn’t a perfect system, but it’s the best one we’ve found so far.

Please use this day to vote if you have not already done so and if you are one of my subjects. If your boss or family gives you any trouble, simply show them that actually only slightly altered version of my kingly visage¹ and tell them that His Purple Mountain Majesty said you should take the required time. If they push back, you may use my secret name and say, “Some Guy said it was fine.” If they ask how it was that we became King of America, acknowledge that it was by the ancient tradition of just deciding it one day and saying it until enough people agreed. The same way that anyone becomes a king.

Okay, Enough of the Royal “We” Stuff

There’s a lot to complain about in American politics in recent years, but my biggest concern is the idea that you can be so “pure” that you can’t even imagine why the other side would feel the way they do. It’s dehumanizing. Yet people will wear that like a badge of honor, as if it’s an accomplishment that they lack the imagination to consider the mindset of someone who they view is incorrect. If I could put my finger on one single thing culturally that has allowed politics to reach this state, that’s the thing.

This is no more intelligent than a child who stands in front of a television, not understanding that they are blocking the picture for everyone else because they can still see the screen. Empathy isn’t empathy if you only use it for people you like. How often do you have to mumble “oh goddamnit, I guess they were trying their best” to yourself? How often do you have to be inconvenienced by the inner lives of other people? If the answer is never, is that because everyone around you is actually that bad or are you maybe being unduly harsh?

I’m not going to be making any kind of endorsement here, because… well, who cares? I have a small substack. I would be kind of embarrassed to endorse either candidate here the same way I would be embarrassed to stand in my front yard and have my wife read a list of my fake royal titles to the neighborhood and proclaiming the One True Candidate for Everyone.

“The North Star of the Constellation America, hereby decrees that—”

“What is that guy doing out in his yard again?”

“Ahem, the Granter of Innate Human Rights, hereby decrees that—”

“When are you going to mow your lawn?”

“Listen, this is funnier on the internet, okay?”

If you want my advice, write down the things that matter to you the most and vote for whoever fits that best. If I were sitting with you, I’d just ask lots of questions to understand what those things are and make sure you felt good about your own state of knowledge about issues and candidates. But I’d still make sure you made the decision yourself. I believe above all other things that you should vote for your own particular interests. You are the owner of this country, a citizen, not a customer of a political ruling class. You, as a particular individual, are the only measuring stick of value in the entire universe. You. The plural You gets to decide how things run.

I get why you would want to vote for Kamala. She seems nice. She seems fun. I bet she really cares about doing what’s right for the country. It appears she’s very willing to listen to advisors. I’d love to sit next to her at a dinner party. I also get why you wouldn’t want to vote for her. She was slotted to be the candidate last minute under strange circumstances, has had to cobble together a policy on the fly that seems inconsistent with her previous statements, needs lots of coaching to get through interviews, and has endorsed a lot of economic policies that seem like they would be bad for the country.

I get why you would want to vote for Trump. He’s energetic and whenever something comes out of his mouth you at least have the honest knowledge it came from his own mind. He’s brave and he never runs from a fight. He also seems to genuinely hate war, has a track record that supports that, and was vocal about it even before entering the political arena. I also get why you wouldn’t want to vote for him. Whatever exact fact-pattern exists around January 6th, he had many opportunities to behave better and that as a leader he had an obligation to do so. He sows division and spouts bullshit at every opportunity. He also has endorsed some economic policies that seem like they would be bad for the country.

And so on and so forth with the third party candidates.

Which one is right? Well, do you live in a city or the countryside? Do you work a “low skill” job or do you have a degree? Are you a man or a woman? What specific things have most affected your life for good or bad over the last several years? Do you think one of these candidates is a risk to our whole system of government? What are your most deeply held beliefs?

Know the facts, talk to people like you who are going to be impacted in close to the same way you are, and then do what you all feel is best. Make the imperfect choice. Then remember that everyone else around you did the same thing and have enough humility to understand that they had every right to make a different choice than you.

We are, as I said, the owners of this country. Of, by, and for the people. It’s written down. That also means we have a duty to keep it working. I think most politics is downstream from culture and if politics has become toxic, or if politicians feel free to break rules that were previously taboo, it’s because we have allowed our culture to degrade in those specific ways.

I ask you, who will fix this if not us?

We should not allow ourselves to cry about this, as if we were children and unable to make any difference. Nothing makes me angrier than reading something from a grown-ass adult, bemoaning the “Death of the West” because something didn’t go their particular way. It’s okay to mourn something lost that you love, but then… frankly, stop crying and pick up the burden of the country. Show up and fight for what you believe and free yourself from depending on a certain bit of luck. Be responsible for something bigger than yourself.

Would you have it be otherwise? Would you have children not yet born slaved to your one particular vision even if circumstances change and what you want right now no longer makes sense? What better world could there be than one in which we are consistently required to push our values forward?

I don’t know if what I plan will work. If you’re new to this substack, I want to change the internet into a shared vision of reality, with rules for accountability and consensus making. I want to make an impossible-to-escape game where people are forced to behave honorably in order to prosper. We should have individual communities but also be accountable to basic facts. None of us should be able to entirely disappear down rabbit-holes any longer. There are lots of things that could go wrong. I may not be able to convince all the people I need to convince. The critical mass might never cohere. All of that is up to fate.

I do know that I owe a duty to push it forward as far as I can for as long as I can.

Happy election day, America.

Just remember: it is one day, but our duty to democracy is eternal.

1. We are younger and have shorter hair, but otherwise, basically yeah.