whit

“I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Mikel Jollett @Mikel_Jollett]

YOU CUT FUNDING FOR THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE.

THIS is what happens when you do that, you fucking ghoul.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

It is insane, @joerogan. But you were warned repeatedly, yet you helped get him elected and helped let this happen. It’s good that you’re speaking up, but please be honest with yourself about the role you played here.

[Pete Buttigieg @PeteButtigieg]

They can't spin this away. The Trump administration contacted air traffic controllers, offering buyouts to leave their jobs. It's a very easily proven fact.

[whit @Whitknee40]

@CerdaJuli711 😭😭😭😭

[Really American 🇺🇸 @ReallyAmerican1]

Trae Crowder explains BRILLIANTLY to Trump supporters why they shouldn't be spiking the football for voting against their own self-interests.

If you only watch ONE video today, make it this one.

[Christiana Figueres @CFigueres]

The result from this election will be seen as a major blow to global climate action, but it cannot and will not halt the changes underway to decarbonise the economy and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Standing with oil and gas is the same as falling behind in a fast moving world. Clean energy technologies will continue to outcompete fossil fuels, not just because they are healthier, faster, cleaner and more abundant, but because they undercut fossil fuels where they are at their weakest: their unsolvable volatility and inefficiency.

Meanwhile, the vital work happening in communities everywhere to regenerate our planet and societies will continue, imbued with a new, even more determined spirit today. Being here in South Africa for The @EarthshotPrize makes clear that there is an antidote to doom and despair. It’s action on the ground, and it’s happening in all corners of the Earth.

[whit @Whitknee40]

@ANNELAMOTT Condescending mansplainer

[Alex Cole @acnewsitics]

"We trust women. We trust doctors." - Tim Walz

[JB Pritzker @JBPritzker]

Not only did @Tim_Walz enshrine the right to an abortion into law in Minnesota, but he also protected other reproductive health care decisions, including the right to privacy. He is the reproductive rights champion that we need in the White House.

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

REMINDER: @realDonaldTrump’s economic “plan” would cost American families an additional $4,000.

It’s not a plan. It’s just a tax.

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

JD Vance just told us to “look at the record” for Trump’s economy.

Ok.

Donald Trump lost 2.7 million jobs.

President @JoeBiden and VP @KamalaHarris have created over 15 million jobs.

That’s the record.

[JB Pritzker @JBPritzker]

JD Vance on Donald Trump:

- Called him “America’s Hitler”
- Said Trump “failed to deliver” on the economy
- Called Trump’s racist rhetoric “reprehensible” (only to begin spreading harmful racist lies himself)
- Said he "failed to deliver on his economic populism"

[David Plouffe @davidplouffe]

Gov Walz dominating JD Vance on the immigration exchange with undecided voters in a western battleground state. Reminding these voters Donald Trump built only 2 percent of the wall and Mexico didn’t pay a dime strongest moment of the debate.

[Nick Jack Pappas @pappiness]

Vance said there are “25 million illegal aliens.”

As of 2024, there are 11 million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States. And they commit fewer crimes than native-born U.S. citizens.

I’d rather live next to any of them than JD Vance.

#VPDebate2024

[Pete Buttigieg @PeteButtigieg]

Remarkable to see JD Vance pretend to be unaware that US energy production is up and US manufacturing is up dramatically right now, much higher than under Trump. Glad Tim Walz is laying down the facts here.

[Mary L Trump @MaryLTrump]

He's losing it and it's a beautiful thing.

[Bradley Whitford @bradleywhitford]

She’s fucking fantastic.

[JB Pritzker @JBPritzker]

Do you ever listen to Donald Trump and think: What the hell is this guy talking about?

[whit @Whitknee40]

How are you an undecided voter in this election???