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Our wee one has been home sick from school all week. And now the fever has jumped the host. But the joy and optimism unleashed this week is undiminished. Since we’ve been reading y’all’s socials we know we’re not alone in this: just waking up these last few days has been a pleasure. Yes, the crime family is digging in atop their desired ballroom bunker, now helmed by new chief of staff Stephen Miller, but the landscape across the nation shifted in remarkable ways.
Another world is STILL possible after all.
The Democrat sweep was so overwhelming that it immediately shorted out MAGA’s denialist legal preparations that had been poised to suck us into months of national anxiety and worse over the vote.
We had allowed ourselves to hope for incoming U.S. Senator James Talarico after a virtual lifetime under one-party rule in Texas. But the Governor and Lt. Gov? The Ag Commissioner, Railroad (ie. Oil & Gas) Commissioner, State Comptroller, and the Texas Board of Education? Oh, and the Texas F’in’ Supreme Court?!
We still remember the shock we felt checking out the down-ballot returns for the first time at the The Texas Tribune on election night, seeing stripe after stripe of blue pulling ahead of red. It wasn’t even close in most races.
Much of the legacy media has attempted to frame all of this around $5 gas. But intertwined has been the experience of rising fascism and fear over our eroded democracy.
In Texas and across the country, everyday people saw for themselves the fruits of Trump II—ICE’s brutal seizures, beatings, and killing of brown and Black immigrants and citizens alike, peppered throughout by Homeland Security’s jokes about ethnic cleansing. We felt the impact of the Big Beautiful Bill’s unprecedented wealth transfer to the billionaire class. We saw Trump’s allegiance to despots like Putin and Netanyahu—and rebelled.
People encountered SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s funding of relentless anti-trans ads on YouTube and even while standing in line at the corner store and said: NAH. Even here in the public laboratory of MAGA cruelty that has been Texas. Brandon Herrera? Nope. Unrepentant racist Bo French? Feck Off.
As Mia Wong assessed:
Some immediate checks this sweep brings:
- MAGA's Collapse. When personality cults collapse they bring down networks of supporters and enablers as well. Perhaps nowhere is this as visible as the resignations at the U.S. Department of Justice, which had been twisted most conspicuously into a tool of Trump’s authoritarian power grab. ("You stand by Trump at your own peril at this point,” former Republican Texas House speaker Dade Phelan told Texas Monthly. In the Lone Star State, he said, this was an “extinction-level election” for Republicans.)
- No U.S. Constitution rewrite. That's right, Texas billionaire Tim Dunn won’t get to enshrine the rights of oil and gas polluters via a Constitutional Convention thanks to so many Democrat state governors ushered into power.
- No nuclear strike on Iran. Recall all the chatter in the days leading up to the election about an “insane” war plan brewing for Iran (highly suggestive of a U.S. nuclear first strike). How that story was quickly followed by reports of U.S. troops being trained to dig mass graves, and encouragements to stock the cellar with rations? It all just evaporated.
- It means teachers from K-12 to higher ed can breathe a little easier about teaching the realities of slavery or calling trans kids by their preferred names without fear of being fired.
- How this 'thumping rebuke of the US-Israel relationship' and ICE violence shifts policy will depend on all of us.
A year ago, MAGA architect Steve Bannon—who not only lifted Trump domestically, worked to rehabilitate Epstein in the public eye, and attempted to export MAGA-style fascism to Europe and Latin America—perhaps fluffed himself up a bit with his prediction.
Recall:
“As God is my witness,” he said last November at a forgettable conservative awards dinner, “if we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison, myself included.”
To which U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., poised to lead the U.S. House Oversight Committee, has now responded:
"Oversight Democrats are ready to take on the crooks, the con men, and the Trump crime family. Lawyer up.”
The popcorn is popped; it’s time for the show.
Houston is already breaking ties with ICE. Heavy industry in Corpus is being forced toward paying its fair share for water the people desperately need. SpaceX’s bid to absorb more of our sacred lands is already being challenged by our incoming Governor—even as Tesla is stopping production of the gawdawful Cybertruck.
It’s OK to take a moment to lib out on some of this goodness as long as we hold close exactly where these changes came from: years of collective grassroots organizing. Yes, we need to put our shoulders to the task of turning electoral victory into substantive change. But part of that is finishing the beast to make sure that this white supremacist scourge never rises again.
Our contributors and newsletter correspondents are busy cooking up their election analysis with an eye to the near future. In the meantime, Deceleration invites you to an experiment in mapping out our deeper collective dreams and desires at our “futurecasting” event on November 15 (see below).
There will surely be fights to come on all the fronts we've had to contend with in building to this point. We know we can’t rest for long. But for now? Enjoy, fam!
—Marisol Cortez & Greg Harman
Event
'Dreaming the Worlds We Want: SATX in the Year 2276'
What do we want San Antonio to look like 250 years from now? And how will we have gotten there together from seeds we're planting today? Join Deceleration for an experiment in 'futurecasting.'
Marisol Cortez | Deceleration
On Sunday, Nov. 15, 2026, Deceleration will gather for “Dreaming the Worlds We Want: SATX in Year 2276.” We invite our readers and supporters to join us that day for an experiment in "futurecasting"—a process for collectively imagining the community we long for, then looking back from that imagined future on the seeds we are already planting today.
Against the obscenity of official celebrations of the U.S. 250th, coming as they do amid ICE violence, climate emergency, and genocide, we offer a counterimaginary. What do we want San Antonio to look like 250 years from now, in 2276? How will we have gotten there together? What skills, teachings, relationships, practices, and values are we already embodying in 2026?
Grounded in the Zapatista struggle for “un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos” (a world in which many worlds fit), “Dreaming the Worlds We Want” is a space for sharing our dreams and desires. Amid our rage and grief at the world that is, we will gather to celebrate the many ways we are already creating the worlds we want and protecting the worlds they have never and can never destroy.
Arts & Letters
The Big Bend Looms Large in 'The End of Nowhere,' a Whirlwind Study of Grief
The loss of a child and a mother's search for meaning drives deep into the metaphysical power of space—and gets a talking-to—in a new film raising funds for the Big Bend Conservation Alliance at screenings in San Antonio and Fort Worth.
Greg Harman | Deceleration
hildren represent the very best of us. In life, and often in film, a newborn represents an invitation to improve oneself by better preparing their way. Although children may also be cruelly twisted into extensions of our own impossible expectations and disappointments, one thing they can never be is a neutral artifact. On the highway of life, these supposedly helpless bundles of joy hold a veritable tire iron over us as they both haunt us from the past while tugging from our futures.
To harm a child—The End of Nowhere, a new film shot in a precious clutch of five days, reminds—is to loose a whirlwind in our souls.
Fortunately for Ella—the tortured protagonist of this 80-minute film who seeks both her missing daughter and mysterious “ghost lights”—her actions all unfold in a space of supreme durability. The Big Bend, we’re reminded of that now-famous quote, is where the river itself “is kept in a big stone box and water runs uphill.”
Analysis
How Co-ops and Open-Source Software Can Help Create More Just Energy Systems Worldwide
As power consumption surges for projects of dubious social benefits, post-growth advocates see ways of helping communities discover and maintain the boundaries of energy ‘sufficiency.’
Syris Valentine | Deceleration
When I first moved to Seattle, few knew what an “air quality index” meant. It wasn’t something meteorologists and weather apps yet had any reason to include in their daily updates. But as climate change steadily dried the region and large wildfires expanded across the U.S. West, wildfire smoke began to creep into the city so frequently that late summer became our de facto smoke season.
I grew tired of having to check clunky government websites to understand how breathable the air outside was. So one year I built my own personal air monitor, spending the better part of six months learning how to program an Arduino microcontroller that would automatically ping its readings to my computer.
That entire experiment would not have been possible, however, without the free and open source software movement that has grown steadily since the 1980s. Much of the basis for this movement was inspired by the principles adopted among early hackers who believed, among other things, “All information should be free.”
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