{fast-forwarding from 5+ years ago…}
It would be hard to overstate just how dire our current predicament truly is — and while it may be tempting to encapsulate our woes within the confines of the grim year 2020, this is evidently an acute flare-up of a protracted period of internal crises and ignored preexisting conditions. To name just a few: dictatorial machinations reflect the ascension of the “imperial presidency” across many administrations; electoral vicissitudes derive from decades of misinformation and targeted suppression; and mass-media convolution is the logical result of a long arc toward the corporatization and celebritization of the news.
The mere passing of dates on the calendar won’t be enough to save us, any more than the tabulation of votes has been sufficient to end the ambitions of a Lame Duck tyrant. An administration that has flouted science at every point from climate to Covid isn’t going to be persuaded by simple mathematics, nor will assertions of “facts” or “truth” hold sway with large swaths of a populace that has been conditioned to embrace the veracity of “reality” programming and the idea that all news is “fake.” A regime built on outrageous claims and unvarnished denialism can only end up clutching to those same tired tropes.
Now with a long dark winter looming, the interregnum between viral resurgence and vaccinated respite coincides with an agonizing limbo between chief executives, as the erosion of “checks and balances” in our vaunted system fully reveals itself. Meanwhile, the window of time to act on gathering existential threats is closing fast, while a wearied people see their futures subsumed within the maelstrom. How much more can we take, literally holding our breath and continually refreshing our news feeds to see if the world is still there? Not to be fatalistic, but it appears that this is a “long haul” scenario on multiple levels:
Corruption Fatigue: While it may be true that both parties feed at the corporate trough and engage in practices like cronyism, the post-Emoluments era has intensified the implications of widespread corruption. The dizzying array of political scandals, aberrant behaviors, flouting of norms, personal profiteering, and more that has been on full display during this Machiavellian tenure sets a new bar for what passes as ethical behavior in public office. While some of the immediate damage *might* be mitigated with a new administration, the lasting effect will be a dangerous cut-rate standard of “not as bad as that guy.”
Campaign Supernova: The trends have been clear for some time, but the present crisis sets them in hyperdrive with few remaining guardrails in place. To wit, massive sums infusing campaigns, dark money posing as “free speech” flooding the political sphere, reduction of complex ideas to crafted memes, the complicity of corporate media in reality-show infotainment programming, and more. The penchant for stunts and spectacles comes into sharper relief as (re)election bids tragically undercut the vestiges of democracy; the alternative enters as a stable “old guard” but seems ill-suited to restore vigor in a watered-down world.
Fire and Ice: Ecosystems are collapsing, climate destabilization is intensifying, and the space between titanic disasters is reduced to nil. Floods and fires, species extinctions, toxins and poisons, deforestation, food insecurity, and much more have become the hallmarks of this era. Four years of imperious denial, deregulation, and dereliction have baked in the most deleterious effects and nearly run out the clock on our sliver of opportunity to act. Rather than talk about the sweeping changes needed to avert cataclysm and give youth a navigable future, we get a recurring discussion on whether fracking is bad. Enough said.
Covidiocy: Medical science and public health apparently have become the enemies of liberty now, and anyone who chooses to heed their warnings is a timorous dupe of deep state propaganda. All you need is a mass infusion of experimental antibodies and it’s up-and-away in your Superman costume! You can almost hear: ‘Hey, maybe we’ve failed spectacularly in the biggest moment of convergent crises in our lifetimes and thousands have died needlessly on our watch, but even the haters will have to admit that it’s been the greatest failure ever, and anything coming after the word greatest doesn’t really matter.’
What the Tech?: Big Tech is a runaway behemoth controlling even the most mundane moments of our lives, the brainchild of unfettered engineering and the fulfillment of Orwellian fantasies from a bygone day. But c’mon, who else can orchestrate anything from a new car to a box of precut carrots arriving on your doorstep at the touch of an icon? Sure, the kids’ virtual school platforms don’t work so well all the time, and social media can be a cesspool of vitriol and self-aggrandizement — but that’s just “get off my lawn” stuff at this point. Even quarantine and tyranny aren’t so bad if streaming services stay active.
Losing the Race: What century is this again? While rosy predictions that we had entered a post-racial phase weren’t quite on point, there was some nascent hope that perhaps at least a post-racist society was possible. But then came a Dog Whistler-in-chief with winks and nods and calls to “stand by” while the powderkeg continues to simmer and routinely boil over. We’ve seen the ugliest side of inferiority complexes manifesting as supremacist constructs, replete with tiki torches and surplus fatigues. But this isn’t just cosplay or even cop-play; festering racism is a fundament of myriad social ills at all levels.
This is just a sample of long-haul issues at hand, but together they tell a similar story. Rather than trying to confront these items in isolation or remediate them serially, there are structural factors at work that underscore all of these intersecting crises, including skewed power relations and escalating inequality in society, dependency outstripping autonomy, complicity by necessity, the pervasiveness of imposed Hobson’s choices, flouting the logic of ecology, the failure of collective imaginations. (Feel free to impute your own meanings to these phrases or develop your own list of systemic points of tension.) I could go on, but…
That’s not really the main point of this jeremiad, after all. Drawing back to the implications of living through the pandemic (anyone remember that period?), it appears that the order of the day is simultaneously to triage symptoms while seeking a remedy for the source. Equally evident, however, is that neither palliatives nor inoculations are going to be sufficient once an ailment becomes endemic and its origins are bound up with our underlying political economy. While quick fixes and easy answers remain elusive, perhaps the lessons of preparing for the long haul will at least encourage us to keep one eye on tomorrow while steeling our resolve against today’s maladies.
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NOTE: The original timestamp on this piece shows December 4, 2020, which seems like forever ago yet not much/enough has changed in the interim. I can’t remember why I never posted or published this one; maybe because it’s on the negative side and I was trying to flip the script (and calendar)? Anyway, I just stumbled upon it when looking for something else and was trying not to look at the news of this day. But you can’t escape the sense of d vu all over again…