I would like to address a particular strain of midlife political malaise—it seems to be particular virulent with men in their 40s and 50s—but women who for some reason want to date them, get it too. I get it we’re all tired, but this particular group engages in what I would like to call subtle yet extreme performative political system disillusionment.
“It’s working as it’s suppose to.”
And if you disagree:
“You just don’t get it. What a liberal.”
Their defining characteristic isn't just disappointment—something we all experience—but an active compulsion to infect others with their cynicism. The sociologist detective in me traces the birth of this never ending relentless cynicism to perceived betrayals (which in their head personal betrayals) from decades past.
For some, the wound festers from the Obama era, a hope extinguished 17 years ago. For others, particularly those further into their fifties and perhaps exhibiting a marginally less racialized grievance, the original heartbreak was Clinton's triangulation nearly 35 years prior—a scar they insist on reopening for public display on a regular basis.
“The Democratic Party is TRASH, TRASH, Trash!! Don’t date him girl, you know at this party in 1995, he gave me gonorrhea.”
You were sleeping with a lot of people back then, including Libertarianism.
This persistent ache, compounded by legitimate economic anxieties and a sense of personal dreams deferred, has forged a persona—a kind of diminished, less poetic Bukowski. A tragic misinterpretation of his "Don't Try"ethos —which is also carved on his tombstone. Which they interpret as a passive, fatalistic acceptance. It is twisted into a grim, active nihilism of —
Do despair.
Do sabotage.
Do resign.
But actually Bukowski, “Don’t try” was part of a letter to William Packard and the full line was “Don’t try, DO”—but at this point it doesn’t matter what he meant, it matters how one interprets it.
Their core pathology lies in a perverse comfort with loss. Having mastered the art of losing, they fear the vulnerability inherent in genuine victory. The potential for renewed disappointment is too great a risk.
Defeat is predictable, manageable, even perversely validating. I have a poem about this very phenomenon.
It allows them to cloak their bitterness in a tattered shroud of stoicism.
But they have a profound misreading of the political project —and often a misreading of Bukowski. Governance is not a fairy tale culminating in a single, eternal "happily ever after" achieved by a lone savior. It is, by its very nature, a continuous, arduous process—a journey demanding relentless engagement, especially after “your candidate” wins. The work doesn't end with an election—it intensifies.
Some embrace losing for the empty certainty it offers and others, to cultivate an image of stoic endurance. But this isn't resilience. It's a corrosive campaign of demoralization. They actively warn the young and hopeful against dreaming, against planning, against striving—insisting that resignation to their own perceived state of "loserdom" is the only rational path.
This posture is not merely wrong—it's politically toxic and intellectually bankrupt.
Past failures, however painful, are not immutable prophecies. They are lessons—important lessons demanding critical reflection, strategic adaptation, and a renewed understanding that meaningful progress hinges on collective action, not the cult of a single individual.
It requires moving beyond the simplistic, binary purview that this individual grips to—a perspective mirrored in the superhero narratives he often clings to, where perfection is the only currency and punishment the reward for falling short.
He punishes himself every morning and now he has to punish you.
The nation deserves better than this mercurial bitterness. Their families—partners, children—deserve far better than to be subjected to their relentless little cuts. They wield the little bit of power they have to sap collective will via podcasts and think pieces. The most successfully of this bunch ironically get exploited (or rewarded) with national syndication by the same hegemonic system players who engineered Clinton and Obama’s failures.
The irony of it all.
This all is rooted in a decades-old misapprehension—the juvenile fantasy that one leader, however gifted, could single-handedly reverse a half-century of systemic entrenchment by entrenched wealth and power.
I can't break this cycle of resentment and projection, but I can remind you and assure you that you're not being naive. These individuals walking the tightrope between masochist and sadist are just projecting their own failures. They want you to play the game too, “Let’s all be miserable together! It’ll be fun.” Is it fun, does anything in these men’s lives look like anything you’d want? Is that the life you want for yourself, your partner, your dog?
They don't have special insight. If they truly understood, they wouldn't be these bitter, failed individuals constantly twisting every triumph into “See, I TOLD YOU it would never work!'"
They would occasionally share joy, but they have no joy, good politics does not have to come along with horrific nasty people and nasty horrific people, aren’t going to give you any useful advice on the collective work we’re going to need to partake in system changing work.
