There are lots of hot takes and post mortems circulating about why the US vote went decisively to Trump on November 6. This episode of Kinward is not trying to be another one. But, as this season in politics got stranger and stranger, I knew I wanted to have a nuanced conversation, after the election, regardless of the outcome, with someone I trusted to reach toward a bigger picture. So I asked my brother John de Villier, whom I respect enormously for the wide variety of frames he’s cultivated to see the world through, if he’d sit down with me.
As we acknowledge in this episode, probably every one of the hot takes we’re reading has some truth in it. And, we agree, most of those simple stories don’t come anywhere close to the deeper forces that are at play right now.
This episode of Kinward is about trust. And power, and the information environment, and vulnerability and the origins and ongoing practice of democracy and staying grounded. And mostly trust—which may be the opposite of verlassenheit: the pervasive sense of loneliness or abandonment in the body politic that philosopher Hannah Arendt names as a precondition for the rise of authoritarianism.
John de Villier is an aspiring naturalist turned climate and energy consultant who is frequently distracted by history and the classics. If the world was more ok he would probably be on his knees in the woods digging in the dirt and trying to figure out how the hell trees and mycorrhizae get along so well. His life project is collecting and sharing as many lenses as possible through which to view the world.
