The postmortem has arrived, concluding voters elected Donald Trump because of “the economy.” After campaigning against him with the red alert message that he is a fascist, Kamala Harris lost all seven swing states. The “economy” message, not the democracy message, won the election.

What is this “economy” that prevailed over traditional liberal values? It’s the one that loads microplastics into our wombs and brains, defines destruction of our habitat “sustainable development,” and makes us happy when gas costs less than $3 a gallon. That happiness is bound to a nostalgia for days when it cost less than $2, a nostalgia that is the essence of MAGA — and the reason that COP29 is not a climate change conference focused on ending fossil fuel use, but instead an orgy of oil-producing plutocrats making business deals.

MAGA happiness is, like Democratic happiness, bound also to a bipartisan pride in American exceptionalism, the belief that a deity chose America to spread democracy everywhere — a spreading that amounts to the USA terrorizing the peoples of the world in a forever war that never establishes democracies. That’s “the economy” that won the election: of the 1% who control D.C., and D.C. that allocates more of our tax dollars to military spending than ever before, intending MAGA-ly to spend even more to keep “the economy” growing.

As member-owner 2080 of the River Valley Co-op, I remind us that Sojourner Truth moved to Northampton in 1843 to escape the economy of slavery, genocide and misogyny that was fully normalized/endorsed by Wall Street investors, the best universities and the MSM of that era, including the New York Times. Her abolitionist community’s tiny, principled attempts to BDS the U.S. political system disturbed the serenity of the privileged Southerners who visited every summer to enjoy the climate and amenities of our town, and the local merchants who served them.

However ineffectual and discomforting these actions seemed, they led to the collapse of the Whigs, the formation of a new political party, the election of Lincoln, and by 1863 the re-establishment of liberal values and restructuring of “the economy.”

In a culture where presidential elections are decided because of “the economy,” what you buy (and sell) is a political act. Boycotting genocide as it presents itself for sale at the co-op or any other market is a tiny, principled act of liberalism in keeping with the model of Sojourner Truth and her allies. It is feared only by those who protect “the economy.”

Kurt Heidinger lives in Westhampton.