The Performance of Certainty

Diary Entry: November 1, 2016

With exactly one week remaining until the election, the social atmosphere on campus is strung tight. A sterile, suffocating consensus permeates the air. In polite society, and particularly within these hallowed academic walls, “Trump” is no mere candidate — he is a moral contagion, an all-encompassing social faux pas. Performative disgust toward him has become the inevitable toll extracted from anyone wishing to participate in public discourse.

This publicly declared dogma imposes a bizarre constraint. Everything unfolds silently and deafeningly all at once. It is as though everyone senses the tension but studiously avoids acknowledging it. Whispers circulate about the “latent Republican” — a political cryptid rumored to prowl the College of Law, terrified to break cover. Here, within the supposed colosseum of free debate, certain opinions have been effectively excommunicated as heresy, driving entire ideologies underground. The stigma is absolute.

I know this sounds absurd, yet it is the undeniable reality.

I witnessed this collective orthodoxy in all its zealous glory this morning. I was sitting in a Contracts lecture, parsing the esoteric nuances of consideration, when I glanced at the earnest young man to my left. He was hunched over his notebook, furiously scribbling away. After exchanging a few polite pleasantries, and since the looming election had already siphoned all the oxygen from the room, I decided to test the waters.

“What do you think about next week?” I asked.

He immediately straightened up, suddenly animated.

“It’s decided. It’s a finished story,” he replied with the careless, categorical finality of a man discussing the weather.

His self-assurance was utterly impenetrable.

“I don’t know,” I countered, leaning into the role of the skeptic. “Things don’t seem quite so black and white. What if this university consensus is simply an echo chamber? Maybe Trump might actually win.”

He looked at me with that profound, almost clinical pity typically reserved for the hopelessly lost. He leaned in, much like one might when gently correcting a child’s foolish mistake.

“Listen,” he began, dropping his voice into a patronizingly explanatory register. “I studied these issues at Columbia during my undergrad.” He dismissed any alternative reality with a single, arrogant wave of his hand. “The only real question is whether the Democrats will sweep Congress as well.”

He hurled this credential at me like a definitive counterargument — a silver bullet meant to mercifully execute my naive skepticism. He required no further debate; his academic pedigree had already spoken for itself. Settling the matter, he simply chuckled softly with a know-it-all’s smugness, shook his head, and returned to his notes as though the entire exchange had been nothing more than a minor embarrassment.