When I was a high-school debater, I learned about a tactic called “the spread.” Speaking at excess of 300 words a minute, practitioners would hose their opponents in arguments. This hyperspeed would obscure gaps in logic as they jumped to extreme conclusions, often claiming a certain policy decision would somehow snowball into nuclear war. Their slower-speaking opponents would scramble to respond while laypeople watching struggled to process the spectacle, eventually dissociating entirely. I found it disturbing how these debaters abstracted and minimized mass death for the mere sake of argument. Years later, I was relieved to read Ben Lerner’s novel The Topeka School, in which he observed the absurdity of “the spread” and how it permeated real life: “The most common criticism of the spread was that nobody used language the way that these debaters did, save perhaps for auctioneers.” But this wasn’t true: “Even before the 24-hour news cycle, Twitter storms, algorithmic trading, spreadsheets, the DDoS attack, Americans were getting ‘spread’ in their daily lives,” he wrote.
“The spread” has thrived under the second Trump administration. Breaking-news alerts bombard our phones at an incapacitating volume. Every item is framed as an emergency, and regularly, it is — like this weekend, when the New York Times sent the news push, “U.S. Enters War on Iran, Bombing Key Nuclear Sites.” But if everything is an emergency, then nothing is. Processing the gravity of the headlines and the real-life devastation they convey has been impossible. Parsing the White House’s obfuscations is its own challenge: J.D. Vance has said, confusingly, that we are not at war with Iran, but with the country’s nuclear weapons. Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, then hours later accused both countries of violating it. Now there are three wars to keep track of — the war between Israel and Iran, Israel’s unconscionable decimation of Gaza, and the U.S. government’s campaign against immigrants within its own borders who are getting kidnapped and brutalized by ICE. The status of each seems to shift by the minute. Once you’ve caught up, the information’s already obsolete.
At the same time, the stresses of daily life yank us by the collar. My trans friends have been panicking that they could lose access to hormones even before the Supreme Court ruled last week that Tennessee could keep its gender-affirming-care ban. My neighborhood mutual-aid network has been fundraising in anticipation that 10 percent of our community will lose their food assistance when Congress passes the “Big Beautiful Bill.” I’ve committed to helping them, but I also have to find new housing within a month, and exorbitant rent prices have called into question whether I’ll even be able to stay in the neighborhood. I feel alone in the face of an increasingly hostile world. My friends, similarly occupied with the exigencies of their lives, have been hard to reach. Online, it seems everyone is zoning out. People chatter about Love Island; Kamala Harris keeps sending me fundraising emails with the subject line, “Want to meet Barack Obama?”
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Amid the turmoil, my lone bright spot has been Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor. After a particularly brutal evening Saturday, I cried into the early hours of the morning. Then Sunday, I heaved my body out of bed to vote early. That the campaign didn’t demand people pretend things are okay was a revelation. Instead, it was built on the recognition that many of us are suffering, and that instead of withdrawing in self-preservation, we should come together. Mamdani, who started his campaign with almost no name recognition, campaigned tirelessly, popping up at nightclubs and churches, Knicks games and bodegas — always in a suit, even during a brutal heat wave. Matching his endurance, supporters knocked on 1.5 million doors across the five boroughs. Transplants, once content to keep to themselves, have connected with longtime residents; zoomers are building bridges with their elders.
Mamdani’s campaign was an exercise in breaking through the noise. Its message was simple enough for busy New Yorkers to understand — this city should be affordable — and hammered with relentless determination, even as his critics attempted to derail him with accusations of antisemitism. When it became clear Tuesday night that he’d win the Democratic primary for the New York mayoral race, defeating a disgraced former governor backed by the Democratic Establishment and the largest super-PAC a New York City mayoral race has ever seen, it felt like the city had entered a new dawn. My phone flooded with jubilant texts from friends. I met new ones passing by my neighborhood bar where people were celebrating. The major problems of today — war, rising costs, detainment — remain, but our attitude has changed. We can figure it out tomorrow, together. We just have to stay focused.
