Thread by @thrasherxy

1/x Something I find fascinating in the slow-moving transition of POTUS power & COVID lockdown is a reaffirmation of how existence is RELATIONAL. No one, office, no nation, no honorific exist independently; we depend on one another for our very existence.

2/x Trump can't stay in power w/o relationships. The presidency depends on recognition of others—not just internally by voters recognizing Biden as next POTUS and opposition party (recognizing Trump) but externally by other states (already recognizing Biden as next POTUS)

3/x "The world is moving on." When the United States was formally conjured into being, it wasn't only England recognizing it which will it into existence, but it was Spain, France and the Dutch Republic willing it into existence.

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1326750424641245186

4/x The ontology of a nation isn't without conflict, of course. In 1783, many people living in the United States did not consider it a country; many, MANY native tribes and 1st nations did NOT accept a United States.

5/x But, we are willed into being in relationships, and the internal of the voters seeing Biden as POTUS + external force of other nations seeing Biden as the POTUS t + yrs of this nation viewing others imbues their views of us with power—all making him the President elect

6/x Similarly, but on a microscope, I think a lot of us are struggling w feelings of our existence bc hardly anyone is reflecting us. For many of us, we are so isolated that trying to conjure our existence into being w/o the reflective power of how existence is created in

7/x relationship to others is difficult. It requires an enormous level of cognitive dissonance. The act of making our brains will ppl on a screen into being when they're not there & pretending to be fully human in front of a screen is exhausting. And it leave us feeling unmoored.

8/x For Trump, and I don't mean this abt him with the slightest empathy, he likely has no need for others in the nature of his existence; there is only him. I may be using it incorrectly, @PatBlanchfield, but I think Trump is a creature of solipsism.

9/x So Trump can't process that the world without him, this his identity as he knows it, that the office he holds no longer exist. Unable to relate to others or to need their engagement, he cannot process President Donald Trump no longer exists. He is disappearing,

10/10 But the world is NOT solipsistic.

We need one another to exist.

And so as most voters + world leader recognize Biden/Harris, their jobs are willed into existence.

And as we recognize one another—even remotely—we will one another into existence, too.

Goodnight.