Play within a play. On Saturday, the media called it. Donald Trump was vanquished, Joe Biden was declared our new president, and celebration exploded in cities across the country. I was grabbing coffee when the honking and cheering and crying began, and within an hour the Castro had been chosen, as if by intuition, as the place where San Francisco would be partying that day. Drinking, dancing, and “it’s finally over,” people said. “We did it.”

Was this our Millennial V-J Day?

Was this our victory over Imperial Japan, after our victory over Nazi Germany, and the end of World War II? A years-long sacrifice and collaboration among liberal nations to beat back a physical incarnation of real evil, and a genuine existential threat to our families, to our friends, to our neighbors — was this comparable to the end of Donald Trump? Have we been heroes these last four years, fighting for our lives, and the lives of all free people, across the pages of history? We were told to “hashtag resist.” Was our behavior then something more akin to the legendary resistance of our cousins in France? Was this our Paris under Hitler? Have we been living in a Vichy state?

Are we free now?

This is the kind of language people have been using, but I think the answer to these questions is obvious. Provided the media’s call sticks, the last four years of hysteria might be close to over, as our nation tracks toward a calmer period. But this is only possible because, systemically speaking, nothing in our country has changed. There was no revolution, or fascist rise to power. There was no resistance. There were just elections, among neighbors, and results.

At the national level, the most likely outcome of this most recent election appears to be a Biden presidency and a Republican Senate. This means at least two years of political gridlock, and a trip to the national time-out corner, which seems like a best-case scenario to me. I can’t think of anything our nation needs more right now than a little time to sit and think about its behavior. But the explosion of jubilation this weekend was just another performance in this years-long string of them — the performance of good against evil, the performance of resistance, the performance of misery, even, and a performance of pain. It was an elaborate, national psychodrama, this social media attention grift from Hell, and it bubbled over into every aspect of our lives. It’s also not entirely over, as we now appear to be approaching a performative, public trial:

Welcome to the Trump Accountability Project, the technology industry’s freshest entrance into the Bad Idea Fair, and our latest attempt for the week’s “Making It Worse” ribbon, which I do believe we have secured by leaps and bounds (again). “There must be consequences,” we’re told, and not just for Trump, or for any of the capital “w” Wrong things he’s tweeted, but for anyone who worked in his White House.

Ok.

Out of the gate in 2016 it was total, unrelenting culture war facilitated by a now-booming media economy, and our president was the focus, which he loved. But there was, shall we say, a slight difference of opinion concerning what the man represented. Was he the scourge, or was he the savior? Was he the problem, or was he the solution? Of course, Trump is none of these things.

Trump is an entertainer, and on Twitter he’s a troll — a darker kind of entertainment for a darker kind of world. There were questions early on if America could survive its first Mad King, but notwithstanding his gaudy, golden palaces Trump is not a king of any kind. There is no king. At every level of government we are a nation adrift with no leadership. What we’ve rather become accustomed to from our president is a kind of stewardship, a man in whom we expect, above all things, a presidential tone, a patting of our heads, and a presidential reassurance that everything is fine. Trump could never give us that because Trump is also not a steward. He’s a jester. He is I think technically the most successful clown in human history, and from America’s vacant throne he did what all truly great clowns do: he pulled back the curtain of our reality, he showed us who and what we really are, and he laughed.

Today, the only thing anyone seems to agree on is America isn’t great. This is a stark departure from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 clapback to the rise of the MAGA hats: “America is already great,” she said, a now-inconceivable political phrase. That story has been shattered, and for the foreseeable future there’s no going back to that world. Something is fundamentally off, and as much as I believe Biden is a decent man, he is not going to lull me back into some belief that everything is fine, or that our approach to government before Trump was, in even just some general sense, working. Our middle class is struggling. Our trade and labor policies have gutted our manufacturing capabilities, and much of American industry is stagnating. At every level of government, and from all of our “experts” in media and science, our response to COVID-19 was pathetic. China and Russia are, increasingly, a threat to the free world. Radicalism at home is on the rise.

70 million Americans voted for Trump. How many Democrats would have voted for Bernie Sanders, a populist socialist? On the economy and trade Sanders and Trump are in almost perfect agreement. Their message is simple: something isn’t working. That message is resonating.

So what exactly are we celebrating? What exactly have we accomplished?

Eat local. Saturday, as San Francisco marched in drunken revelry over used needles and human excrement to its victory party, I wondered how many people in the crowd knew what our Board of Supervisors was, or who we voted into City Hall.

This year, I wasn’t really focused on the presidential race because I’ve become incapable of looking away from the car crash that is American local politics. Amidst an objective failure of local government in literally every dimension, my only hope this election was San Francisco would come to its senses and push back against the incumbent machine, if even just slightly. I called for a tying of the tourniquet, so to speak, to stem off any further crisis while the sober citizens among us organized. But if I’m being honest with myself, I always knew it was a fool’s hope. Last Tuesday was an unmitigated disaster. Every tax increase with no plan to improve its stated purpose passed, therefore guaranteeing only further bureaucratic bloat and localized economic depression. Every reasonable candidate lost to the actual worst candidates running on housing, crime, drugs, and homelessness, all of whom were supported by the people in our city most responsible for our current crises. Finally, the evergreen horror: no one who lives here seems to know anything about this.

Over the next two years, barring some spectacular federal intervention, every one of our city’s problems is going to get worse. Government-run homeless encampments will proliferate, money will continue to be funneled into non-profits that only exacerbate the crisis, and no elected person in a position of leadership will assume responsibility for the problem, thus guaranteeing zero accountability for the inevitable, incredible, multibillion-dollar failure. Public education and transit will further deteriorate, and especially with our newly diminished tax base courtesy of the city’s endemic and entirely unnecessary attack on the concept of business. None of our housing challenges will be met, as the anti-progress “Progressive” wing of the Board will fight for “affordable housing only,” which they have no actual intention of building and anyway can’t afford, while they block private construction of every other kind. Hostile policy punitively targeting the tech industry will continue, and likely sharpen, further pushing highly productive and creative workers out of the area — a disastrous loss in tax revenue, sure, but more importantly an untold opportunity cost. Crime, including home invasion, will persist, and prosecution of crime, including violent crime, will likely decline.

But at the end of all of that there’s an election.

It isn’t going to be glamorous. It isn’t going to map to our national psychodrama. There’s no clown in this city pulling back the veil, and dragging us to action, and there’s no opportunity, here, for performative heroics. There’s no opportunity, here, for performative leadership. It’s unfortunately just the real thing — a challenge for real leaders. This is a duty smart people have avoided for years, especially in a city like San Francisco with such tremendous opportunity (at least historically) in the private sector. But look around. Look at your home. This is your home. How bad does it have to get out there before you’re willing to fight?

In 2022 five seats on the Board of Supervisors are up for grabs, along with three school board seats, three college board seats, one of the city’s three BART director seats, the assessor-recorder, and the public defender. We need to run candidates for every single one.

If you live in San Francisco and aren’t insane, you’re part of this. We all have to be part of this. Politically speaking, almost nothing impacts your life the way local government does. This is the fight. This is where we can meaningfully improve the country. Social media LLARPing is over. Academic jargon is over. We’re running politicians with clearly-stated goals, and we’re judging them on their results. That’s the bar, now. The politicians we’re running will 1) be demonstrably cognizant of the city’s many actually critical failures, 2) make solving — not simply addressing, not ameliorating, but actually solving — one or all of these problems their goal, and 3) present a rational plan to achieve that goal.

If you’re reading this, and feeling it, hit me up.

We need campaign managers, and people with experience in San Francisco politics in particular. We need pollsters, lawyers, writers, and anyone willing to run. Check your District. If it’s an even number, your seat is up for grabs in 2022. Let’s make a grab for it, shall we?

This is your life. This is our chapter of history.

No more clown shit.

-SOLANA