Will the Baddest Bad Guys Please Stand Up?
Honestly, I'm just trying to create a cohesive understanding of the dumpster fire
[Today’s post is a little heady but boy howdy I am CRAVING some thought dialogue on these topics. I would especially enjoy hearing your thoughts on these issues!]
Welp, here we are. In the new regime, wondering what awaits us in the years ahead. Have you been keeping up with the news, or trying to ignore what’s happening and focus more on what’s in your immediate control? I’m trying to do a little dance between the two but of course I always lean more in the “firehose of political information” direction than the other. More than anything though, right now I’m struck by the patterns playing out, by the systemic lens(es) I’m trying to grasp all of this through, and the connections this all has to where we’ve already been (globally) in the past.
I’m trying very hard to wrap my mind around the various systems of power in play (we’ve got Christian Nationalist / Fascists, Techno-Bro Billionaires, an authoritarian so-called “populist” leader…). There’s a lot going on. Who is manipulating whom? Who is the baddest bad guy? Who’s going to come out on top, and what is their agenda? And how do you resist effectively in a not-yet-annihilated democracy like ours?
The advantage of having “your” people out of power is it gives you a lot more flexibility to see systems with a critical (and hopefully, clear—not just cynical) eye.
With what I’m about to say, I am not implying that Trump voters should be given a pass because ‘oh, they were misinformed, they were economy voters, they just didn’t know any better’ NO. Were their weaknesses and fears exploited? Absolutely. Is our information / social media economy a dumpster fire? Hell yes. Do we rapidly seem to be becoming dumber / less informed as a society and losing critical thinking skills? Um, it sure seems so? But in the end, I still believe people have agency and maybe at some point, one should realize a steady diet of Fox News is designed to manipulate your emotions and make you feel a certain way. So even with all that…
The way I have been framing The Problem lately is much less about the 49.8% of voters who cast their vote for someone as immoral, unethical, cunning, and — may we say, evil — as our current leader…. and much more about the systems that would enable the rise of such a man. Because remember:
Trump is a symptom. He is not the cause.
He is the person willing to swoop into a moral and ethical vacuum, to prey on people’s fears and vulnerabilities and propensity toward hating the outsider. But in a healthy, functioning society, his rise to power would never have happened.
The Saturday before inauguration day, I went to a People’s March rally in Columbus, Ohio (the closest big city to me). I would not call myself an activist by any stretch, but it was nice to get more in touch with the politically-active side that used to be more engaged before I had children.
A few takeaways from the People’s March:
This is not a Left vs Right issue; it’s an Up vs Down issue.
The manufactured culture wars are a mere distraction to keep those without much power busy fighting about not-the-real-issues while those who do have power keep scooping up more and more for themselves. (I mean. It worked great for Trump, right?)
Leftists in particular have a tendency toward perfectionism (including what others would call “political correctness”) but we’re going to need to include many people in the umbrella of what we’re fighting for, even the ones who don’t say it “right” or whose other beliefs might feel a little unsavory. It requires some real big picture thinking, but I strongly believe that for progressives and economic populists to get any traction in society, we’re going to have to move in that direction.
Back to the healthy, functioning society. Far be it from me to summarize all of recent history in one cute little blog post… I’m just trying to pull in information pieces that I know. (And if you know things too, please weigh in in the comments!). Here’s some of those threads I’m attempting to weave together:
~ Most people have heard of the book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, published in 2000. I’ve started reading it for the first time and it feels WILD to realize, as a Millennial, that the patterns we are still struggling with were already starting to deeply affect American society in the 1980s and 90s. Declines in social / community engagement, declines in political engagement, declines in being informed about the news. Our increasing distance from each other and our dissolving social networks (especially local ones — much as I love my online networks, they’re not going to feed me a meal or watch my kids for me) seem to be creating a society that doesn’t know how to show up for each other.
~ The internet also allows us to self-sort into reinforcing bubbles of thought, which can be great for a sense of safety and belonging but also doesn’t challenge us to understand those different than ourselves — or can create the illusion that everyone thinks the way we do, when we don’t see anything else.
~ I’m no economics expert, but neoliberalism and NAFTA helped pull manufacturing jobs out of the US, leaving large swaths of the country out of work and lacking purpose. These economic conditions are ripe for creating resentful, influenceable people eager to find a scapegoat to cast their problems onto.
~ Meanwhile, white people in the US are beginning to lose their assumed majority status and this makes many of them uncomfortable. As their grip on power feels uncertain, they become more reactionary, scapegoat the outsider even harder, and find ever more calculated and devilish ways to hold on to control. (I don’t want to underplay how powerful this one is! I also believe racism is intrinsically tied to economic exploitation, but the system is designed to have the races fighting against each other [unnecessarily] for resources, but racism/xenophobia shows up powerfully on its own regardless of original source).
~ Unfettered capitalism: the lack of regulation, the rise of unchecked monopolies, a crazy economic system that permits the existence of BILLIONAIRES (a class of person that I personally think should be absolutely illegal; no one should be allowed to hoard so much wealth for themselves and smugly think that they earned it)… our upside-down economy, welfare-system-for-the-rich has turbo charged The Problem.
What I’ve also been trying to puzzle together is how *our* former people, the evangelicals, the Christian Nationalists, have inserted themselves into this game. Because now they’re all in bed together and I can’t tell … well, who’s the dom, to continue that metaphor. 👀 The evangelicals have been hard at work politically since at least the 1970s to create a conservative culture where women stay at home and do not share the same rights as men, abortions are illegal, and segregation is at least a de facto if not a de jure thing. They are, of course, the creators of Project 2025 (thanks, Heritage Foundation), and we’re waiting to see exactly how many of their plans they will push through in this new administration.
If I were making a flow chart, it seems like we’ve got: Christian/cultural conservatives making calculated power moves for decades while our social cohesion and individuals’ average economic stability falls apart. A “populist” style leader arises in 2015 who captivates the attention of angry, resentful masses who wrongfully blame marginalized groups for their woes instead of the real enemy of an unjust economic system. The Christians are happy to seize the moment and ride his ascension to power in exchange for the things they most want: a radically conservative SCOTUS, culture wars that support their agenda of social hierarchy / two genders / men and women in specific roles, and freedom for *their* religion to do whatever it wants. And he’s happy to do that for them, because he doesn’t actually care about any of that as long as he can hold on to power.
Then, the billionaires and corporations, with no moral conscience and driven only by love of money, see that the way they can best succeed and keep earning money in this new system is to bend the knee to the king and kiss the ring, in exchange for a free pass to do whatever they want. They’re happy to do that because they are amoral or, really, immoral.
And then. And then?
We have a lot of neurodivergent people in here, and I am guessing most of you feel as sickened as I do watching this all unfold, regardless how close we are to actual harm (some of us very; some of us insulated). We’re systems thinkers and we can’t unknow the things we can see playing out in front of us. It feels like screaming into the void. Even if we’re screaming together.
I keep coming back to community, though: in the darkest moments, we have to find each other. We find each other online, but I also hope you find the real life humans in your own communities who are doing good things, who care, who are making a little bit of difference in our pocket of the world. Find the bright spots, find the beautiful, and keep the faith — not faith in an outside savior, but faith in ourselves and each other.
Love and hope to all of you.
Christine, this should be an above-the-fold article in the NYT!! You hit it out of the park and six blocks beyond!!
Thanks for sharing these powerful words.