The truth is our election system is flawed. But it will only be improved if we trust it enough to use it to elect people committed to fixing it. - Pete Buttigieg

"Nothing is more human than to resist loss, which is why cynical politicians can get pretty far by offering up the fantasy that a loss can be reversed rather than overcome the hard way. This is the deepest lie of our recent national politics, the core falsehood encoded in "Make America Great Again." Beneath the impossible promises — that coal alone will fuel our future, that a big wall can be built around our status quo, that climate change isn't even real — is the deeper fantasy that time itself can be reversed, all losses restored, and thus no new ways of life required."

But I was admittedly frustrated after Iowa. The conspiracies multiplied. Someone noticed that our campaign had purchased software from the same software company that made the flawed app in Iowa — enough to send the Twittersphere into a tailspin. A staff member on my campaign was married to someone who ran a company that invested in the company that made the app — clear evidence! No one really took the trouble to explain what all these tidbits were supposed to amount to, but then, conspiracy thinking is not obliged to answer questions; it merely asks them, insinuating.

To dial up was like watching a rocket launch: first the top light was on, then the second . . . then came the sound of the modem talking to whatever it was talking to . . . sounding like an Atari game’s parody of birdsong or of a clarinet solo, pinging and ponging as more and more of the little lights came on, blinking and then steady, orange and then green . . . the sound building to a crescendo that recalled the noise of TV static, as machines confided who-knows-what secret binary handshakes between them while I listened. Then came a key change. Then the pitch of the static pulse tweaked, now higher, now lower, and then, gloriously, the final light went to green and I was online, in orbit: cyberspace.