EPILOGUE

A common footnote often left out when discussing the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 is the fact that Congressman Abraham Lincoln didn’t actually win.

No, Stephen Douglas successfully defended his seat, with the Illinois State Legislature voting the incumbent senator back in, 54–46.

Douglas wasn’t just any politician, either. He was one of the architects of “popular sovereignty,” the doctrine that Congress didn’t have the right to determine laws on slavery. It was up to the settlers in each state, he argued. Lincoln, who, as a strict abolitionist, opposed popular sovereignty, was therefore painted as a radical — in Douglas’ telling.

But while Douglas may have won the battle, Lincoln would ultimately win the war. News of the debates stretched far and wide across the nation, and Lincoln began building a reputation as an engrossing speaker. Two years later, in 1860, he ran for the presidency, and won.

For the purposes of this piece, I didn’t find Postman’s commentary on the debates relevant solely because of what they say about our information ecosystem. I also didn’t bring up Lincoln and Douglas because they ran against each other in Illinois (though it was, oddly enough, a fun coincidence).

I brought them up because that Senate race of 1858 occurred during a point in time with massive technological upheaval. Sophisticated railroads had begun popping up across America; messages that formerly took a week to arrive by horse now took mere hours. Another invention, the telegraph, helped zip messages to any city east of the Rockies. At the time of the debates, “Lincoln and Douglas knew they were speaking to the whole nation,” one historian wrote.

And — just like with Jefferson and newspapers, F.D.R. and radio, Kennedy and television, and Obama and Facebook — we’re currently in the midst of another technological evolution, between the increased omnipresence of social media and the rising complexity of artificial intelligence.

Throughout reporting this story, I was never once interested in forming (or sharing) an opinion on whether or not Kat will win her race. According to a poll her team released in late June, she’s currently trailing the Evanston mayor, Daniel Biss, by seven percentage points. With roughly fifty percent of potential voters still undecided, however, it’s truly anybody’s race, and Kat has seven months to make her case to voters and close the gap.

Past this race, though, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the power of the platform Kat is building. On July 2, her campaign shared that they’ve raised over $900,000 across 22,000 donors — essentially, for all intensive purposes, with Kat operating as one-woman marketing team. And while only 700 of those donors actually live in the district she’s running to represent (raising questions around the correlation between Internet reach and actual local outreach) it would be naive to write off Kat’s work over the years — and the bond she’s formed with her audience.

I think back to our conversation at The Original Pancake House, as she discussed her frustration with being labeled as an airheaded “influencer,” a term she says she’s never used to describe herself. “I did a one-hour explainer [video] on white Christian nationalism last year that goes through the entire history of Project 2025, and how to fight back,” she told me then. “And, like, you can call that whatever you want, but I have gotten so many emails from people that were actively de-radicalized by that — not to mention all the ones who found it educational.”

“If you want to call it ‘influencing,’ by all means, go for it,” she adds. “I just care that the work matters.”

I don’t believe our culture is beyond repair. I’m not sure if I’d vote for Kat if I lived in District Nine, either. And as a writer, the existential doom when considering a future of illiteracy is, quite simply, really frightening.

But complacency is not an answer. A phrase that has stuck with me in recent years is “the media you consume becomes your reality,” and these days, there are too many people falling down rabbit holes from which there may be no way out.

And what I believe Kat Abughazaleh says about America is that these highly influential technological tools at our disposal aren’t solely wielded to win elections. No, they’re a legitimate form of expression, and communication, and we’d be foolish to pretend otherwise.

“My mom uses TikTok,” Kat told me. “Your mom uses Facebook. My dad watches YouTube all the time — I showed up organically on his algorithm once, and he was so hyped about it.”

“We’re long past where this is, like, a fun little hobby to me,” she concluded, as she finished up her chocolate chip pancakes.

---