Blog

Legacy and Deception

“He who will lie will cheat, and he who will cheat will steal.” As the George Santos saga unravels, my inner mother’s voice repeats her father’s words. I never knew him but have a sense of a man of his time and place, a small business owner/storekeeper, deeply rooted in his tiny rural community. In a family photo, surrounded by a raft of children, though small in size, he’s the solid centering presence, satisfied with what he’s made in all parts of his life. Almost a century later, in very different times, Santos is a very kind of different kind of self-made man (literally). In photos he’s usually alone. Hard to sink roots, if you’re dissatisfied with who and where you are. Harder still to maintain connections, if you keep changing your story, shifting your identity, betraying people along the way. And now in this latest incarnation, he’s a Congressman!

The Enigma of George Santos

Santos’ remarkably nondescript face probably lends itself to amateur psych profiling. What’s behind the ordinary exterior? Pathological liar? Fabulist? Fantasist? But is the implication that he can’t stop himself or that he’s calculating, a man with a plan? His lies have mostly been smallish, to serve his own purposes, improve his standing. But could he have pulled it off (aka gotten away with it) in more, can we call them “authentic,” times?

Post-Truth Influencers: GOP’s Greek Chorus

As is it, he’s emerged as a small-time bit player at the edge of the GOP/right Greek chorus of post-truth influencers, busily churning out miasmas of paranoid conspiracy theories, political/social/cultural attacks, and relentless self-promotion. In their hands, out of their mouths, “free speech” often seems to decouple from responsibility. There’s a sense that, “Since [much of it has been] primarily an online movement made up of people who don’t use their real names, there’s no accountability….” (Chris Lehman. Deja Q. The Nation. February 20-27, 2023). But we’re also in a post-shame “attention economy.” And whether on TV, radio, or online, these folks do use their real names because, for them, that’s the whole point.

The Evolving Landscape of Shame

Back in my grandfather’s day, “….shame was a powerful force in American politics [and life]. That time is not now.” (Tamara Keith. When politicians have no shame, the old rules don’t apply. NPR. February 15, 2023). Nowadays, “it’s more important to be noticed than to be liked.” (Danielle Lee Thompson. The Real Reasons Santos Won’t Resign. Politico. February 2, 2023). Or respected or trusted. And media personalities become like performance artists, acting out, disrupting, shaking things up “yelling and screaming and denying.” (Shirin Ali. The House’s Four Options for Punishing George Santos. Slate. March 16, 2023). Jesus, quoted by St. John, said that truth will set you free. (John 8:31-32). But, in these times, falsehoods often seem to pay much better. (Philip Bump. Sean Hannity: Actually, it’s all the other media that are dishonest.Washington Post. March 2, 2023). And in that business model and marketplace, Santos has leverage on GOP leadership who need him to maintain their slim House majority.

Media: Performance Artists or Truth Seekers?

Of course, bigger actors get to tell bigger lies. Fox News has wholesaled baseless “stop the steal” narratives and claims that voting machines and software could be/had been(?) rigged to flip votes from Trump to Biden. (David Folkenflik. Off the air, Fox News stars blasted the election fraud claims they peddled. NPR. February 16, 2023). And QAnon, born on the “dark web” and still mostly online, has created its own echo-chamber world, while inching closer to mainstream. Building on the country’s long and familiar “paranoid, apocalyptic, millennial” tradition, it’s attracted roughly 20% of Americans—about 30M of us! And “disinformation” is considered a “necessary” strategy “to throw off the media and the researchers looking into the movement.” (Lehman).

The Rise of Disinformation Movements

Polarized as we are, the “other side”—mainstream media, Saturday Night Live, late night talk show host monologues—retaliates with ridicule. Can anybody really believe this stuff?! And our heads spin, and we go numb, and sometimes a bit crazed/off kilter under the constant bombardment. Recall Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, with John Tenniel’s illustration of playing cards dancing around her in a head-to-toe whirlwind. And there’s the conversation about believing impossible things. Alice laughs and insists it’s impossible, but the Queen of Hearts replies, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” George Orwell, like my grandfather, understood that there are no little lies. He reflected on the start of the Fascists’ Big Lie era. “This kind of thing is frightening to me because it often gives the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. After all, the chances are those lies, or similar lies, will pass into history….So, for all practical purposes the lie will have become truth.” (Looking Back on the Spanish War. 1942). Too bad Orwell isn’t still here to offer his scorching insights.

Polarization, Disinformation, and the Battle of Belief

Most disturbing is the violence, hard words often leading to hard, though often inept, deeds. Q prophesies a coming “storm” of brutal reckoning for “evil, child-violating, [and blood drinking] liberals.” (Lehman). Of course, this recycles the evangelical/fundamentalist Rapture revenge fantasy. “The elect imagined themselves gazing down upon the sufferings of those who jeered at their beliefs, ignored, ridiculed, and marginalized their faith, and now, too late, realized their error.” And “the reality it purports to present is cruel, divisive, and tragic.” (Karen Armstrong. The Battle for God. Alfred A. Knopf. 2000). Think Marjorie Taylor Green advocating a new civil war, “divorce” of red from blue states. And Evangelicals’ calls for the US to become a “white nationalist Christian” country. Apparently, they missed the part of American history when the founding fathers established “separation of church and state” to avoid a repeat of Europe’s centuries of bloody sectarian violence and religious wars. Not to mention the carnage of the Civil War that almost tore this country apart. Another Lewis Carroll memory: the Queen shouting “off with their heads” of those who displease and disagree.

Legal Battles in the Post-Truth Era

Fortunately, despite recent Supreme Court decisions, the law has not yet gone full post-truth. More than 1,000 January 6 participants have been charged. Alex Jones (no relation) of InfoWars has lost two defamation suits to parents of murdered Sandy Hook children he’d spent years falsely accusing of fraud. When his defense that he believed his words failed to meet the burden of proof, he tried to duck out of paying large settlements by filing for bankruptcy. Fox News will try a freedom of the press defense in two defamation suits brought by voting machine and software companies. But discovery documents that prove Fox “talent” did not believe their unproven claims may rise to the level of “malice” required to prove defamation. (Folkenflik). No mirror in this case, but shades of Wizard of Oz, the man behind the “voting machine” curtain?

Political Scandal: Fading Out or Lingering On?

But political scandal isn’t what it used to be. Political outrage can quickly lose force, turn anti-climactic, then fade away. This may happen for Santos, though not if his fellow first-term New York Republican “colleagues” have anything to say about it. Feeling tarnished by association, they want him gone asap. But good luck, as they too come up against the same circular political logic of that slim majority. Meanwhile, he plays the injured party and accuses them of lying about him! (Olivia Beavers. New York Republicans go to all-out war against Santos. Politico. March7, 2023).

Santos: Con Man or Politician?

More con man/hustler than politician, Santos bears resembles recent “regular,” old-school, scammers. Perhaps he sees Congress as only another steppingstone to greater fame and fortune? Consider Elizabeth Holmes of the fake blood testing tech company Theranos; Sam Bankman-Fried and his celebrity shills of FTX Exchange crypto; Anna Sorokin (aka Anna Delvey), ersatz socialite and entrepreneur. They’ve all faced or will face criminal charges for “selling” fake stories to venture capitalists, other big investors, and ripping off “friends,” while diverting a significant portion of funds to luxe lifestyles. I can imagine the trio watching Santos (on TV in jail/prison common room?) and wishing they too had chosen politics, where it seems possible to “hide in plain sight.” At least for now, though ethics investigations are underway. I recall Lewis’s other title, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. In Tenniel’s drawings, our heroine passes through the mirror, and then emerges on the other side. And “what fun it’ll be, when they see me through the glass in here, but can’t get at me!” And the new Congressman, similarly untouchable for now, can safely cavort and taunt. And for him, being at the center of controversy, rather than just another first-term Congressman, is probably the cherry on top.

Scammers and the Allure of Trickster Tales

Why do people get taken in by scammers? And not just Q followers either. The web of course is full of them. But even those of us “…who never expected to be victims…often…are among the most vulnerable.” (Bob Carlson. Why Sophisticated People Are More Likely to Be Scammed. Forbes. July 25, 2022). Believing“themselves too smart and well-informed to be tricked….made them less careful.” We seem drawn to trickster tales that read like the plots of movies. And, fiction imitating life, movies have been and will be made—about Holmes and Sorokin/Delvey already. Bankman-Fried will probably soon have his moment. Trickster POV is so much sexier than tales of downtrodden victims fleeced of life savings. But Santos, though perhaps prepping for his closeup, may be stymied. His NYS Congressional “colleagues” mean to take revenge with a bill to prevent him from profiting from books or films on his exploits.

Background Checks and Political Memory

So, what can we learn here? Clearly, we need better checking of candidates’ backstories. But will that happen? A NYC screening company recently launched a “Don’t get SANTOS’D” social-media marketing campaign. “We would have known in minutes that [he] was a fraud.” (Carl Campanile. NYC vetting firm eyes silver lining to George Santos lying scandal. New York Post. February 12, 2023). But more robust checking would likely step on toes already in place and require special authorization from Congress, which can’t manage to pass universal background checks for gun purchasers. So, this may be another problem recognized, yet avoided as unsolvable.

And that brings us back to short political memories. Outrage has a very limited shelf life. So, Santos has been shoved out of his much-desired spotlight by the bank failures and calls from the ex-President for violent protests when and if he’s ever indicated. (Ayman Ismail. What’s Worse for Donald Trump Than Getting Indicted? Slate. March21, 2023). A small timer doesn’t stand a chance against the Disrupter in Chief, master at “setting the terms of a media frenzy.” (Susan B. Glasser. Trolled By Trump, Again. The New Yorker. March 23, 2023). “You’d think we would know better by now, but here we are, being rolled by Donald Trump.”

I ask myself what my grandfather and Orwell would think. I answer that truth is the only way out of the current national malaise. And that would take, at long last, prioritizing “skills at governing” over “disruptive approach[es] to politics.” (Julian Zelizer. Opinion: The one political priority that could unite a divided America. CNN. March 16, 2023.) But only time will tell if enough of us are ready and willing.

The Complexity of Climate Change

Climate change is a tangle, not just science and politics, but human dislocation and loss, national boundaries and finances, history, race, neo-colonialism. Oh, and pile on war, ethnic/religious conflicts, drug-cartel violence, along with ingrained tribal sense of who belongs and who does not. Are these “our people?” Is this “our problem?” Meanwhile, this country may or may not be on the cusp of being forced to admit big, bad, dislocating, weather patterns—drought, floods, wildfires, desertification, tsunamis—don’t just happen elsewhere, but hit us too.

Human Crisis by the Numbers

The human crisis comes with staggering numbers, and they rule. By mid-2022, some 103 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced. That included 52.3 million internally displaced in their own countries, 32.5 million refugees outside their home countries, 4.9 million seeking asylum, and 5.3 million “in need of international protection.” (UN Refugee Agency). The UN also estimates that 345 million people live in acute food insecurity (famine at the most extreme) in 82 countries. Easy in the crush to forget each represents a living, breathing, feeling, human being, around half of them children. World Vision, modern evangelical missionaries, offers a heartbreaking estimate of very young migrants. “[A]bout 1.5 million were born as refugees between 2018 and 2021. Many….are likely to remain in exile, some potentially for the rest of their lives.” In online photos, my eyes go to the smallest exiles, carried, hauled, led, by mothers, fathers, older siblings, away from all they’ve known and into the unknown, with no guarantee of safety or survival. Children, smaller, less physically able to get out of the way, are always at greater risk.

Childhood Memories and Dislocation

These images resonate with memories of my road-trip childhood. Not as near the edge: my family rode rather than walked, albeit in an increasingly unreliable Ford. And we had a known destination, routes drawn on gas station roadmaps in pencil or crayon. Highway junctions we were tasked to watch for. We also had the buffering of American immunity, and a home to go back to. But aren’t all children dragged along by their parents’ choices? We could only strap on for the ride to whatever town with a baseball team my dad was managing each summer. In hindsight, I appreciate the chance to sample different communities, to meet folks both alike and different in close-up sharp focus. But getting there often felt confusing, dislocating, made me suspect the adults didn’t have a clue. No motel reservations meant repeat “no room at the inn” nights, with neon “No Vacancy” signs flashing and floating by in what felt like endless darkness. On the positive side, uncertainty may have fueled invention. My sister later described half anticipating that we might sail off into nothingness as the car crested hills. I, in the same car, anchored in wondering about folks who lived in houses and towns we passed. She became an artist; I became a writer/storyteller.

Forced Displacement: A Global Perspective

Causes of war and climate change differ, but both can lead to dislocation, which etches deep into lives new to this world. The documentary film The Mexican Suitcase (2011) “debriefed” adults who’d been very young during the Spanish Civil War. They spoke of constant gnawing hunger and fear, of running and trying to hide when bombs fell—Nazis’ test run for WWII, a la Picasso’s Guernica. And when the cause was lost, exile parents, expecting no mercy, carried and led them across the cold and snow of the Pyrenees to France. Little mercy there either, as emigrants were confined to a bone-chilling, windswept beach, without shelter or facilities, where many died. No wonder desperate families accepted the offer of another crossing, this time over the Atlantic to start again, reinvent and reframe, make “new lives in the new world” of Mexico. The film raises an existential question: Where do exiles belong, if the country they left has ceased to exist [or become unlivable]? And how much of yourself do you leave behind and need to reinvent?

Historical Exile and Endless Roads

Human refugee stories go way back. Consider the Bible and Moses and the Israelites, who escaped the Egyptians and then wandered the desert for 40 years. As for the road itself, the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno devised his Paradoxes to prove that motion was an illusion. Constantly dividing distances in half meant travelers never arrived/reached their goal. Do refugee children ask, “Are we there yet?”

Limbo: Life in Waiting

But how does that apply when “there” typically means refugee camps, where bodies in motion morph into bodies in stasis, not allowed to leave, or work [at least formally] or become citizens of host countries? Sheer numbers make the displaced a problem the world, with UN funding, prefers to shove “out of sight and out of mind.” So, though temporary in theory, in practice, camps look and function as if permanent, can grow to the size of cities, and all the while never appear on official maps.

The Invisible Lives of Child Refugees

For child exiles, these places can become a kind of low-horizon limbo, “open air prisons,” where they grow up, and may become parents, then even grandparents, while they wait, hope, then lose hope. Limbo is a Christian/Catholic concept, a vestibule to heaven, where unbaptized babies were sent. Innocent, but not “washed clean” of original sin, they couldn’t cross the threshold. The idea has always struck me as heartless/heedless cruelty. And who had the authority to say? Refugee’s lives run in harsh parallel. “I hear you knocking, but you can’t come in?” Even harder on those displaced by climate, who still fall into a legal void if they cross national borders. Without standing under international law, they don’t qualify to request asylum. Are these “our people?” Are these “our children?” Are they anybody’s people, anybody’s children?

The World’s Failure to Share Responsibility

Thomas Gray might have referred to child refugees, when he wrote, in his famed Gray’s Elegy [Written in a Country Churchyard] (1750), of “mute inglorious Miltons,” who were “born to blush unseen, And waste… sweetness on the desert air.” The Whitney Houston song The Greatest Love of All comes to mind. “I believe the children are our future; Teach them well and let them lead the way; Show them all the beauty they possess inside; Give them a sense of pride to make it easier; Let the children’s laughter remind us of how we used to be.” But at best, the world offers these children a deferred future. And I think not only of what they themselves lose, but of what we in the world lose by keeping them outside the circle. Consider too the pent-up negative energy created by excluding them. Belonging nowhere, the only way “…[to] survive…[a refugee camp is] imagining a life elsewhere….neither the past, nor the present, nor the future is a safe place for a mind to linger for long….trapped mentally, as well as physically….thoughts constantly flicker…between impossible dreams and a nightmarish reality. In short, to come here you must be completely desperate.” (Ben Rawlence. City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp.Picador. c2016).

Overcrowded Borders and Collapsing Systems

Amnesty International faults the world community, and “in particular wealthy nations [for] failing to meaningfully share the responsibility for protecting people who have fled their homes in search of safety…[for] failing to agree on and support a fair and predictable system for protecting people forced to leave everything behind because of violence and persecution [and increasingly climate risks].” And again, climate refugees continue to face special challenges even as their numbers increase. In contrast to governments’ delay and denial, big reinsurers, like Zurich Re, which back insurance companies, take a more practical view of climate trends that could cost them billions. In the wake of Hurricane Ida (2021), the premium for my wind and hail policy, through the “only game in town” state insurer, doubled. And, with severe weather events on the rise, that’s happening nationwide. Consequences are even more severe on the “frontlines of the climate crisis” in less resourced parts of the world. “Imagine losing your home or livelihood due to a devastating flood. Going hungry because of a failed harvest or drought. Or being forced to flee your home due to rampant desertification, rising sea levels or a lack of clean drinking water. This is [becoming] reality for millions and millions of climate refugees, for [whom] climate change is real, and… is happening now. And as the threat of climate change increases globally, their numbers will grow exponentially.” (Sean McAllister. There could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050. Zurich Climate Change. January 13, 2023).

Detention Centers and Climate Risks

The US has our own refugee detention centers, many privately run. Countries do try to fend off , shove “out of sight and mind,” the burden massed desperate and destitute people. As of 2020, ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) held detainees in 128 facilities, often in isolated rural areas. Of these, 72 were “identified as facing significant climate-related risks” likely to grow more severe as climate woes worsen. (Aleen Brown. Migrants fleeing hurricanes and drought face new climate disasters in ICE detention. The Intercept. March 31, 2022). Overcrowding and climate intersect with infrastructure breakdown of water, sanitary, heat and cooling systems, to put desperate people into even greater misery. And the whole rickety system will likely be overwhelmed, even collapse/break down as numbers climb, with the expected surge of some 680,000 peoples across the US-Mexico border between 2021 and 2050 (ProPublica and New York Times analysis. 2021).

Remembering Names, Telling Stories

Circling back to refugee children, I wonder how many in US detention centers house those separated from deported parents or detained after they crossed the border on their own. Countries even leerier of taking on children, who can’t support themselves. So important to say at least some of the names, to tell some of their stories, to not leave all nameless, mere numbers.

· Abdul Sharifu, who froze to death in a Buffalo blizzard, started his refugee journey in 2022 at around age 6, after he lost his parents to war. He then spent 15 years in a refugee camp. Known for his willingness to help, he’d gone out to try to buy milk for a neighbor’s baby. Perhaps, with all he’d survived, he understimated the danger. So, not a happy ending: there are no guarantees on the refugee road. But his child will have been born by now and have the chance to make a life in this country.

· Deborah Veach, a Jewish child Holocaust survivor, spent an extra five years in a displaced persons’ camp waiting to enter this country. A happier ending, and she knows and has lived the refugee’s plight. “…[H]istory keeps repeating itself…Basically we have DPs on our border with Mexico, you have DPs from Ukraine. I don’t think people realize the repercussions for these people who are trying to find a place to live. These are good people who are just placed where they are by history.” (Andrew Sillow-Carroll. UN Exhibit remembers when the world turns its back on stateless Jewish refugees. Times of Israel. January 10, 2023). Amen.

Loneliness in Modern Society

Earlier this year, the US Surgeon General issued a public health advisory titled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. (2023). This comes almost 40 years after Ray Oldenburg the growing problem and suggested a remedy (Great Third Places. 1989). “[I]n modern suburban societies time is primarily spent in isolated first (home) and second (work) places. In contrast, third places offer a neutral public space for a community to connect and establish bonds.” Such spots “host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals.” And that promotes “social equality by leveling the status of guests [to] provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities.”

Coffee Shops as Social Hubs

The advisory also appears some 50 years after Starbucks piloted the coffee-connoisseur market few had suspected we’d develop a taste for. And then, starting from a single kiosk, paired coffee with the sit-down café, explicitly styled a third place, which it exported around the world. And meanwhile sparked local and regional variants nationwide. Since then, cafes have become their own market niche, part of America’s social infrastructure, drop-in, work, meet up. And the only rent is the price of a caffeinated beverage—and maybe a pastry.

The Profound Impact of Loneliness

Surprised the SG, on a nationwide listening tour, to discover the depth and extent of American’s dislocation. People “felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant. Even when they couldn’t put their finger on the word ‘lonely,’… all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, from every corner of the country, would tell me, ‘I have to shoulder all of life’s burdens by myself,’ or ‘if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice.’ Had he missed the news on how we can no longer seem to talk to each other?

Far more than “just a bad feeling,” our embedded “loneliness harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death….Given the profound consequences…we have an opportunity, and an obligation, to make the same investments in addressing social connection that we have made in addressing tobacco use, obesity, and the addiction crisis…..If we fail to do so, we will pay an ever-increasing price in the form of our individual and collective health and well-being. And we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country. Instead of coming together to take on the great challenges before us, we will further retreat to our corners—angry, sick, and alone.”

Unveiling Starbucks’ Social Mission

All about coffee and human connection, Starbucks mission statement says. So, have cafes become pockets of civility and sociability surrounded by general alienation, even hostility? Not quite. From where I often sit, they’re active in selling coffee, etc., which is, of course, the point. But the connecting part’s fuzzier, passive, “talking the talk but not walking the walk,” with a “build it [or open it] and they will come” assumption. Many of us do, but once inside, we’re on our own, unless we get rowdy. Not like the old TV show Cheers, “Where everybody knows your name.” If not already acquainted, we stick to separate bubbles, in parallel-play proximity. Perhaps Americans require something stronger than caffeine.

Community Challenges and Martin Buber’s Wisdom

Martin Buber, of I-Thou fame, had a more realistic, yet still mysterious, appreciation. “Can one really want community in the same way one makes plans, sets goals…?” No, he answered. But “[w]hen people really engage with each other and respond to the experience with their own lives, when people have a ‘living middle’ at their center, then community can arise among them….” (How Can Community Happen? (1930). from The Martin Buber Reader: Essential Writings. Edited by Asher D. Biemann. Palgrave MacMillan. 2002).

Shifting Perspectives on Social Issues

View the advisory as aspirational. Put the idea “out there.” Let it marinate. See if it gains traction. That’s the way public policy works. A decade from the initial attempt before the majority of Americans accepted tobacco’s health risks (Wikipedia). And loneliness and isolation are qualitatively different, far more complex, not something(s) we can touch, slap a warning label on. Declare a “war” on. The Overton Window is a political frame for looking at how attitudes and opinions change over time. “The range of acceptable ideas or window of actual possibilities is always in motion. This means that what was once unthinkable can, and often does, become acceptable, normalized, eventually standard policy.”

·Podcasts and Controversies on Loneliness

That process has already begun in small ways. Cite efforts like the Atlantic’s podcast series How To Talk to People, hosted by Julie Beck and Rebecca Rashid. The episode How Not Go It Alone (June 26, 2023) featured Mia Birdsong, author of How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community (Hachette Books. 2020). For Americans, ideas of self-reliance can work counter to making connections, asking for and offering help. But as Beck noted, we all share a universal longing for “the sense that you are part of a rich, interconnected community. That you have an extended network of support and love, full of many different kinds of relationships that serve many different purposes.” And expect controversy along the way. More pricey government, “nanny state,” silliness? Or even worse, a “deep state” bureaucratic conspiracy? If “mere” emotions can pose genuine threats, have we become a nation of wimpy cry-baby whiners? And even if there’s some truth, doesn’t that only prove science and progress narratives took a wrong turn and left us empty and stranded, uprooted from small “home” communities.

Small-Town Nostalgia vs. Modern Reality

Mayberry and “white picket fence” nostalgia remain enduring tropes. How many movies use plotlines of high-flying cosmopolites who return to discover what really matters? But I reflect on my own family, four generations and counting away from a tiny, “home” village. Everybody knew everybody else, and they told stories, gossiped, as easy as breathing. No need to think about connecting; they couldn’t get away from each other. I suspect my dad could hardly breathe there, had to leave. Women didn’t go on their own, but my mother hitched a ride and so did we. And we’re enduringly grateful. And never felt those “down home” revelatioms. And those who left became kind of legendary. My dad’s vehicle was baseball. A cousin once confided they saw our lives as glamorous. Really?! An uncle on Dad’s side, “a railroad man,” settled in Florida and supposedly had a town named after him. My brother once visited and found the place laid out in anticipation it would grow bigger than it actually had. Stories seldom match reality. And now, demographics show small places shrinking, losing their own “living middles.” Nowhere to go back to, even if we wanted to.

The Surgeon General’s Call to Action

The SG calls for a “movement to mend the social fabric.” And a start to “destigmatize loneliness and change our cultural and policy response…by reimagining the structures, policies, and programs that shape a community to best support the development of healthy relationships.” In a bottom-up commitment, “It will take all of us—individuals and families, schools and workplaces, health care and public health systems, technology companies, governments, faith organizations, and communities—working together.” Reminds of George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light” slogan, leaning on community organizations to take the heavy lifting and costs off government. That was 1988, around the time Oldenburg was working up his ideas. They do tend to cluster, cross influence with ideological differences, come back around. Does that suggest this might become a bipartisan cause? Probably expecting too much in these polarized times.

Crafting an Advisory on Loneliness

Probably intentional the advisory implies but does not directly link loneliness and political polarization. Deep in national malaise, our only point of agreement, from different perspectives, is that the country’s in a bad way. And the issues seem fundamental, systemic, go clear back “to the writing of the Constitution — debates and compromises that resulted in representation in the House based on population and in the Senate based on equal standing for the states; the odd system by which we elect presidents; and lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices. In general, the founders often distrusted the masses and sought to create structural protections against them.” (Dan Balz and Clara Ence Morse. American democracy is cracking. These forces help explain why. Washington Post. August 18, 2023).

Existential Risks and American Democracy

If we mean to rebuild community, start with more detail on the advisory-crafting process. First draft of a template for moving forward? Not naming names, but what kinds of folks contributed, shared their personal anguish? How large was the population? Let’s not call them a “sample.” Did they self-select in response to an announcement/invitation, were they identified by state and local agencies, were they picked at random in standard survey methods? Was contact made by phone, door-to-door, in public meetings? How many refused to talk, hung up, slammed the door? Did some regions show up lonelier than others? Were urban, suburban, or rural areas loneliest? And how, given levels of polarization, were interactions managed to reduce potential for angry confrontations a la school and library board meetings around efforts to censor curricula and ban books? Anger can feel so much more powerful than pain/hurt. But then, and most important of all, perhaps some among us have reached such states of desperation it can spill out in a kind of social Tourette’s Syndrome.

Active Citizenship in a Divided Nation

As the advisory notes, we face huge existential risks. Balz and Morse cite Jill Lepore, director of Harvard’s Amendments Project. “There is value to a written constitution, but only if it can be changed. The danger is that it becomes brittle and fixed — and then the only way to change your system of government or to reform a part of it is through an insurrection.” Distressing to think we may lack the imagination and good will to find a better, less destructive, way. Appalling to hear reckless and thoughtless talk of “a new Civil War.” Have those folks looked at ongoing death, destruction, trauma in Ukraine? Better heed the advisory’s message: “it will take all of us.” And that raises questions of who today merits trust. If current leaders can’t navigate out of gridlock, perhaps we can only trust ourselves. Become another, more active, kind of citizen, as we try to refashion a new “living middle.”

Starbucks’ Mission Evolution

And that will take talking together. And cafes, even though not as advertised, may be the very places. Starbucks’ current mission statement reads, “With every cup, with every conversation, with every community—we nurture the limitless possibilities of human connection.” But I read reports of shifts behind the scene, like a pivot back to kiosks for new locations. Bricks and mortar retail is expensive. Standing connections though seem like a contradiction. And there’s a sense of other reinventions, following image slippage, crying over spilled coffee(?). There was the push back when workers tried to unionize, and accusations of punitive action against organizers, which the company denies. (Alina Selyukh. REI fostered a progressive reputation. Then its workers began to unionize. NPR. July 6, 2023). The company did better handling a racial profiling crisis—apologized, closed a bunch of cafes, shut down for a day to conduct nationwide staff sensitivity training. The strategy’s been featured in case studies on how to properly handle controversy. But in a more cynical view, it was all an elaborate PR maneuver. Perhaps, the way narratives layer, it was all of the above.

Cafe Connections: DIY Possibilities

Can’t stop thinking of, even wax a bit visionary over, those “limitless possibilities”. Café connections have always has been DIY, without direct company intervention. And in a way, that can be an advantage, allows the spaces to be whatever we like. I’ve seen folks come in to wrap Christmas presents, talk over business deals, do job interviews, hash out insurance options. Not exactly eavesdropping, but can’t help hearing, unless you use earphones. So, why not, rather than shrinking spaces, another kind of reinvention hosting conversations? The business case would be a chance to sell more “product.” And perhaps the most useful part the SG and his minions could offer would be to develop DIY manuals or kits to help support and give these efforts some semi-official standing. And Starbucks and other café proprietors could become partners, simply agree, or just not object if folks took the initiative. Say asked to take over for a weekly hour or so to hold regular, informal, DIY talk sessions. And, as per Birdsong, the only rule would be mutual respect. And what if these small, but substantive, connections could help seed something gradually trending toward non-violent reunion?

High School Girls and Global Events

Sitting in a coffee shop, I have a gaggle of Catholic high-school girls to one side. Different uniforms but still recognizable. Would other young girls consent to wear matching plaid kilt skirts, white blouses, white school-initialed ankle socks, oxford, or saddle shoes? Energetic, loud, giggling, but not obnoxious about it, my neighbors don’t so much as glance over their shoulders at the TV screen replaying the first Israel airstrikes on Gaza. Meanwhile, though the sound’s off, but I can’t look away from the same scenes on another screen I face. Could this be one of those flashpoint moments when the whole world changes? History can sneak up on us. Seem predictable, transparent as glass in hindsight. Why didn’t we see it coming? Because we’re prone to deny/downplay right up to the shocking moment(s) when the glass shatters, and jagged edges start to draw blood.

Time, Perspective, and Unveiled Stories

We each carry our histories with us, and I was once just such a girl, though in a different uniform. These days, I’m freshly attuned through a storytelling project a friend and I put together with 8th grade/13-year-olds she teaches at a Catholic girls’ school. We have complementary perspectives. She’s profoundly Catholic, schooled by gentle and supportive nuns, while I’m a “recovering Catholic,” who came through grade and high schools under two orders of nuns who seemed to take as given their direct lines to God. But later, a more reasonable set of nuns helped “redeem” my college years and instilled admiration for the church’s going-toward-the-light “social gospel” work. My friend and I consulted to develop about a dozen weekly story prompts focused on helping the girls navigate, “get their minds around,” high school, social media, recent history, the world. We partnered with the girls, who shared story snippets one-on-one, then each told her partner’s story, first-person, to the full class. Our theory was that momentarily “becoming” a classmate could help reduce “mean girl” impulses and build understanding, empathy, respect, community. The girls, game and willing, consistently impressed. Questions bubbled: how much besides the uniforms has changed? What kinds of adults might the girls become and what kind of world will we pass on? Possibilities for human error are endless. Yet, looking at those bright and mostly interested faces, I found many reasons to smile and hope.

Uniforms, Identity and Shaping Lives

Private schools each become their own small worlds. Uniforms unify insiders and separate/differentiate them from outsiders. In my family, we segued from my older sister’s and my boxy forest-green jumpers to my younger sister’s shapeless plaid skirts and blazers. Both paired with saddle shoes I still react against. A historic theory claims a link between unsettled times and shorter skirts. Among our girls, some wear skirts knee length, others hike them higher than our nuns would have accepted. And that could sometimes unpredictably prompt ripping out of hems, regardless of wearer’s embarrassment and loss of sense of agency. But today and at this school, it’s a non-issue. The girls seem much freer in their bodies too, not required to stay in their seats all the time, allowed to chat a bit, not so constrained by “keep your legs crossed” rules. Except for scholarship students, they’re mostly children of privilege, with parents who can afford pricey tuition. Not surprising, with little to fight against, that they appear generally compliant, essentially “mainstream,” yet still so thoughtful at a very young age. The school programs in community service to encourage active participation and growth into women of substance, active in their communities. Will they continue? Will they lean into more questioning? Perhaps even toward a bit of rebellion?

The Evolution of Adolescence

Ideas on adolescence and how to handle those weathering it morph as well. Christianity early designated 7 years as the “age of reason,” the capacity to tell right from wrong. In the Middle Ages, kids from that age up could be executed for a variety of crimes we wouldn’t consider that serious today. My high school’s anthem proclaimed: “Worldliness buffets the stronghold of truth. Be Alma Mater defender of youth.” This seems to echo in present-day agenda that strives to “protect” and “shelter” certain young people—from themselves and their urges and hormones, from uncomfortable historic facts, from sex and “woke” diversity education, from books somebody’s decided deserve banning. But somehow, that protection stops short of finding ways to prevent the physical and emotional trauma of threatened and actual school shootings. And I and my cohorts didn’t have to cope with the immediate, jagged, intrusive, edgy kaleidoscope of social media and the sleazy undertow of bullying, body shaming, grooming. In class discussion, the girls expressed growing interest in boys and reported online exchanges. Sadly, some boys feel empowered to request nude photos. And if that doesn’t work, headlines report AI fake nudes, with real girls’ faces imposed. Not something, as far as I know, my age group ever had to cope with. The girls have watched the film The Social Dilemma, so they’re informed. And they’re still only 13!

Unveiling Edges: Social Media Challenges

The openness of class discussions kept surprising me. We were more talked at, not encouraged to question, to have opinions. A nun once told me I needed to learn to obey more. I only nodded, but knowing myself to be very shy and quiet, figured I’d do better learning to obey at least a bit less. That world felt as if it would last forever, but as we told the girls, ideas move and shift. And the façade was already shaky. Billy Joel foreshadowed some of the downside in his smarmy Only the Good Die Young. “Catholic girls start much too late….Why shouldn’t I be the one?” And the satirist Tom Lehrer may also have felt a chink, lampooning the silliness in Vatican Rag. “The man in the confessional will tell you if your sin’s original.” We’d borrowed the record from the girls next door and my dad, as purist and traditionalist as any nun, made us return it as soon as he heard the words. But too late, with waves of transformation already sweeping in. Starting in 1962, the Vatican II church council began tectonic shifts—vernacular mass in local language, altar facing the congregation, nuns coming out of habit. Priest-altar boy scandals didn’t come to light till later and even now are not fully resolved. Though I did have to go through basic “Safe Environments” certification to work with young girls.

Learning from Past to Present

So, how young is too young to start thinking of serious matters? If each generation has its own tale to discover, live, tell, then trying to force replay of an earlier time is counterproductive, pointless and ill prepares young people to live their own times. And, in delaying introduction of reality to kids, do we also risk infantilizing adults who yearn to go back to more “innocent” times? Recent experience has amply demonstrated chronological age doesn’t automatically equal maturity, ability to cope with frustration, willingness to find effective compromise. (Alex Abad-Santos. People forgot how to act in public. Vox. Aug. 21, 2023). Besides January 6, we hear of folks pitching tantrums on airplanes, throwing stuff (cell phones, bras, underwear) at performers during concerts, talking on phones during movies. (Tina Reid. Public freakouts, burnout, and bullying are all here to stay. Axios. Sep 1, 2023). So, who qualifies as “responsible parties?” When all the big issues feel overwhelming and insoluble? When so-called “leaders” often seem to shy away from even trying? Thinking of Israel-Gaza and Ukraine, I recall an earlier example of what in those Cold War days was called “brinkmanship.” How far can we/they take it? During the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962?), I have a sense memory of walking down a darkened hallway feeling end-of-the-world dread. In the words of Pete Seegar, “When will we [they?] ever learn?”

The Power of Dialogue in the Classroom

Research proves human brains don’t fully mature till the mid-20s. So, our girls are at a delicate, formative, age, yet eager to learn about the world and themselves, in the midst of uncertain times. We calibrated in the story project, striving to balance sampling of knowledge/information/context with support for growing sense of self. I witnessed the process at work in those open discussions curated by skilled and inspired teachers like my friend and a NYC public school teacher I’ve read about. When a student asked if she was “Team Israel or Team Palestinian,” the teacher, herself Jewish, responded that she was “Team Humanity,” and that “she thought both the Hamas terror attacks in Israel and Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza are horrific.” (Faith Karimi. A student asked a NYC teacher which side she’s on in the Israel-Hamas war. Here’s what she said. CNN. Oct. 27, 2023). Amen.

Young Activists: Inspiring Change

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, young activists, many only a bit older than our girls, refuse to be infantilized. Not prepared to wait, they grab hold of their own stories and challenge their elders on critical issues like climate change, even take them to court. Portuguese kids sued 32 governments in the European Court of Human Rights for failing to protect them from the climate crisis. In the US, a judge sided with young environmentalists who sued state agencies for violating their “right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the environment.” (NPR, Associated Press. August 14, 2023; William Brangham. Young Activists in Montana win landmark climate change lawsuit against state. PBS. August 15, 2023). And high-school students of color in a low-income Baltimore neighborhood continue a decade-long environmental justice campaign focused on air quality and small particulates that embed in lungs. They’ve already stopped a giant waste incinerator project and now take on the bigger challenge of stopping a big coal storage/transit station. (B.A. Parker, et al. Student activists are pushing back against big polluters — and winning. NPR. Oct. 4, 2023).

Reflections on the Story Project

On the last day of the storytelling project, we asked the girls to tell us about their perspective on the experience. Most said they liked it. In an earlier time, I might have suspected they meant to please, to tell us what we wanted to hear. But I’d had the chance to sit in on those class discussions. So, I trusted in the accuracy of their reporting. And they told us they appreciated the chance to share, to listen, to learn about classmates. One found “public speaking” easier when she could act as someone else. One wished the project would keep going.

Empathy in Action: Navigating a Complex World

Very gratifying and it strikes me we’re probably asking a lot of the girls only just across the threshold of adolescence. Of course, they’ll focus on immediate, short-term, matters: boyfriends or hopes for them and in another 3 years, driver’s licenses, rite of passage to independence. But two years later, they can they register to vote at age 18. And they’ll will grasp the significance, women in this country having only got the vote around 1920. Going forward, I hope our story project might contribute to the girls’ growing understanding that as humans and social animals, we need each other. But we won’t always get along and that can sometimes degenerate to the extremes of war, too often without an exit strategy. The important thing is to keep talking, listening, sharing stories. A leader of the International Red Cross, speaking to NPR a negotiating Israel-Hamas hostage release, said we don’t have to like each other, we don’t have to agree, but we talk. And I hope our girls might continue to apply their narrative skills to help us “address [our]selves more empathetically to the fears, anxieties, and needs….which no society [and the world] can safely ignore.”(Karen Armstrong. The Battle for God. Knopf. C2000). Amen.

The Ebb and Flow of the Sexes War

Considering the state of our nation, I think about what used to be called the “War of the Sexes.” By the 1950s, former Rosie the Riveter, needed during WWII, had been relegated back to the kitchen, bedroom, nursery. Then came the 1960s women’s movement, with books like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, imagining a larger place in the world, which kind of happened, until the Roe overturn reminded us it couldn’t be that simple. Before, it was said younger women, lacking direct experience, took for granted, didn’t appreciate, the sacrifices previous generations made, especially around “reproductive rights,” which at present seems like an oxymoron.  Not only were women “of childbearing age” young of course, but they, along with the rest of us, didn’t really “get” that in this country big issues are never settled once and for all.

Billie Jean vs. Bobby: Circus of Gender

In search of shifting generational zeitgeists, I find the circus-like, pop culture, of the Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match (1973).  A PhD thesis (Andrew S. Jorgenson. James Thurber’s Little Man and the Battle of the Sexes: The Humor of Gender and Conflict. Brigham Young University. 2006) argued that, rather than hating women, the New Yorker humorist and cartoonist saw what Simone de Beauvoir called “the second sex” as the more powerful half of couples. Really?! And why was the actual divide treated as laughable, when whatever power women possessed back then was unofficial and covert?  Women only got the vote in this country about a hundred years ago. Until the late 1970s, we couldn’t obtain credit cards or bank accounts on our own. 

Historical Constraints on Women

Remember this particular “war” can’t ever be abstract. It invades, takes hostage, very personal, very intimate, women’s bodies and lives. Though “[v]irtually all states…. allow an abortion when necessary to save the life of the pregnant person….the laws don’t explain just how close to death the person must be before the abortion can be performed.” (Most state abortion bans have limited exceptions—but it’s hard to understand what they mean. The Conversation. January 26, 2024).  Turns out some states dusted off old laws, while others drafted new ones, both having little basis in medical realities. And so, we see and hear chilling reports of women forced to carrying to term fetuses with no chance of survival, of attempts to indict women who’ve suffered miscarriages. And compounding these traumas are deep legal, physical/health, emotional and economic wounds to women and their families. And OB/GYN doctors must choose between providing appropriate levels of care and risking legal consequences, losing their licenses, and wrecking of their careers. Many make wrenching decisions to leave their patients and states. The closest equivalent for men is war and resulting PTSD, which also plays out in and across bodies.  Katherine Ann Porter wrote, in Pale Horse Pale Rider, that “old men send young men out to die.” Numerous documentaries show “wounded warriors” who’ve come back emotionally and mentally wrecked, suffering “moral injury” from what they’ve seen and done.

Descartes to Stardust: Mind-Body Split

Moral Experiments on Reproductive Rights

Not really a surprise then that the country has become an outlier on reproductive rights. We’re prone to “moral experiments.” Think Prohibition, which Americans widely tried to ignore and get around, leading to an erosion of confidence in law and allowing the Mafia to solidify its criminal reach. This initiative again puts us out of step with the rest of the world and even with many of our own citizens. Catholic Ireland voted to legalize choice, while many largely Catholic countries in Latin America are gradually moving in that direction. Given the opportunity, citizens in several US states have voted against extreme bans enacted by their legislatures. Not surprising either, given our truncated history of rights, that women are subject to backlash and backsliding. Patriarchy remains the default, operating on autopilot. Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me (2020) was released prior to striking down of Roe. But even then, she stressed that the basis of the original ruling was women’s right to privacy rather than equal rights, which current events yet again prove women do not have. So, our status as full citizens has always existed on shaky ground.

Unresolved Endings, Fluid Frontiers: Portelli

Alessandro Portelli linked American literature and national character. “Deliberately weak endings…. in many American literary classics…. [allow] alternative possibilities and multiple choices….” (The Text and the Voice: Writing, Speaking, and Democracy in American Literature. Columbia University Press. c1994). “Eventually the telling must come to an end, but the story goes on.  Narrative and geographical openness may be a message of optimism; it is also a safety valve against tensions that do not dissolve when the book is closed…. America is an open country and because its contradictions stay open, its conflicts unresolved.”  So, racism and sexism persist, along with related questions of who “belongs” and who does not. And given cultural traditions, can women yet be said to fully belong outside the home base?

If, as per Portelli, writing is “a way of controlling time,” what can we say of the ephemeral, confrontational, online communities where we’re still getting our bearings? I note sloppiness, frequent typos and/or missed or misspelled words, even malapropisms (wrong but sound like) tapped out in the rush of frenetic, 24/7 “news” cycles. Print journalism and reporting are no longer present to curate, organize, fact check. And once something’s out there….no taking it back, retracting, correcting.  This further amplifies “America’s fluid frontiers, its composite, mobile, egalitarian democracy, the degree to which it seems, more than any other nation, to live in the present…. improvisational, digressive, expansive, fluid…?”  And again, the “…missing endings weave together a sense of emptiness and a sense of expansion, of possibility and chaos—the deeper opposition that lies at the heart of the American dream—the opposition between endless optimism and ultimate desperation.”

Verbal Wars: Lakoff and Johnson

Trauma on the National Stage

But what if we could step back and view the current standoff as traumatic all around? “Trauma hurts, it can fill us with reflexive fear, anxiety, depression, and shame. It can cause us to fly off the handle; to reflexively retreat and disappear [dissociate?], to harm others or ourselves.”  (Resmaa Menakem. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies.  Central Recovery Press. c2017).  And what of children born from such fraught, coercive, reluctant, ambivalent, circumstances? “…if the fetus’ mom experiences trauma….her baby may begin life outside the womb with less of a sense of safety, resilience and coherence.” 

Hope: Healing and Dialogue 

Menakem continues: “[O]ne of the best things each of us can do, not only for ourselves, but also for our children and grandchildren, [for society, country]—is to….heal our trauma.” Not sure what that might look like at the national level, but we’d surely need to start by getting better at talking to each other. I find encouraging signs, like a conversation with my hairdresser. She identifies as conservative, but she’s a woman too, and believes we need to talk more about these issues, maybe through committees made up solely of women. And on NPR, I heard a presentation among state governors from different parties on finding ways, even when we disagree, to try to listen more and treat each other better.

Introduction: Witnessing Disaster Porn

Photos, videos, and stories from Hurricane Ian crowd my phone. Over in Florida, yet it feels like Yogi Berra’s déjà vu all over again. Since Katrina (2005), we float in clouds of voyeuristic disaster-porn, tales of terror and loss illustrated with visuals of wrecked, flattened, splintered or burned-out communities. I recall entrepreneurial types adlibbed disaster tours to New Orleans’ devastated Lower Ninth Ward. Amazing no one came up with a “running for their lives” storm-surge video game, or perhaps by now somebody has, and I missed it. Real life can be so much scarier than any made up zombies. And I wonder about the ethics of turning other folks’ suffering into spectator “sport.” Not possible where I live: we’ve been on both sides, morphing from observer to observed, in a kind of whiplash, depending on storm tracks. Could be us on camera next. Last year, with Ida, it was.

Climate Change Controversy: The Battle of Narratives

Is this climate change in action? Depends on which stories you believe and who’s telling. Scientists who parse the data say yes, probably, with their usual caveats that environmental science can’t control for all variables. Culture warriors politicize without proof, question/scorn the science, insist humans aren’t to blame anyway. Florida Governor DeSantis did blame the “liberal regime media” for wishing Ian would hit more populous Tampa, “because they hate Florida.” Really?! Like sticking pins in a voodoo doll?!

Environmental Impact: From Storms to Earthquakes

From where I sit though, whatever’s happening does seem to have us surrounded. To paraphrase Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, we have storms, rain, and flooding to the right/east of us (Kentucky, Florida), and wildfires, heat waves and drought to the left/west (California, Arizona, Colorado). And the Mississippi River, along its entire length, is at its lowest level in years. Here in Louisiana, the US Army Corps of Engineers is dredging to prevent saltwater intrusion up from the Gulf of Mexico and into drinking water. And recent research suggests melting glaciers and rising oceans may contribute to earthquake activity.

Manufactured Denial: Unmasking Corporate Influence

A mistake to treat denial and science skepticism as natural phenomena. They’ve been created, marketed, sold. “Documents reveal that ExxonMobil has known since the late 1970s that its products cause global warming. A decade later, the company ignored its own scientists and financed a campaign to deceive shareholders and the public about the realities and risks….” (Union of Concerned Scientists. 2016). And in 1991, the conservative Koch-backed Cato Institute convened a conference titled “Global Environmental Crisis: Science or Politics.” (Geoff Dembicki. From his book The Petroleum Papers excerpted as How Koch Industries, Fake Scientists, and Rush Limbaugh Invented Climate Denial. Vice. October 14, 2022). And now a recent report shows that “half of the 50 largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world were oil and gas fields and production facilities,” and owner-operators underreport their emissions by a factor of three. (Fiona Harvey. Oil and gas greenhouse emissions ‘three times higher’ than producers claim. The Guardian. November 9, 2022).

Vulnerable Regions: Ground Zero and the Canary in the Coal Mine

Florida’s been called “ground zero” for sea-level rise, Louisiana’s been called “the canary in the coal mine.” Both extend out into the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico and regularly in the path of extreme weather. And they’re low lying “water worlds,” with blurred edges where land begins and ends, in which “man” has felt free “…not so much [to] adapt to nature as he has reordered nature to serve his own ends.” (Nelson Manfred Blake. Land Into Water, Water Into Land: A History of Water Management in Florida. University of Florida. c1980, c2010).

Lessons from Environmentalists: A Call for Change

I reach to my bookcase for Frederick Turner’s Rediscovering America: John Muir in His Time and Ours (Sierra Club Books. c1985). The proto environmentalist and Sierra Club founder told a different story situating humanity within nature and helped convince Teddy Roosevelt to start the National Park system. My copy has history; the author’s gift to my husband, inscribed “For Bob Jones, with many thanks and admiration.” He referred to Bob’s work designing and building barrier island restoration projects to protect Louisiana’s disappearing coast, eroded by over a century of deforestation of virgin cypress, and digging of lumbering and then oil field canals and pipeline channels. No complete maps even exist; apparently nobody bothered in the early days. Perhaps they assumed it didn’t matter, would make no difference. I also pull out Mike Tidwell’s Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast(Vintage Departures. c2003), on the human costs to communities of fishers and oilfield laborers, rooted in generations of family, history, and folk culture, as rising waters lapped at and ate away their home places.

Denial and Consequences: Sacrifice Areas

The concept “Sacrifice Area” applies. Wikipedia definition: lands “permanently impaired by heavy environmental alterations….” A 2022 UN report found millions around the world in such areas, “particularly in those used for heavy industry and mining.” In a variation on old colonial mercantile systems, some places and peoples provide (natural resources, raw materials) and absorb impacts of extraction, while central/metro areas and corporations consume and reap most benefits. And when resources and/or economic value play out, used up communities are abandoned with wastes from activities that made them complicit in their own ruin. Today, post-industrial, we struggle to reframe a national identity if our great expansion is over. “[E]nvironmental optimism is hard-wired into [our] character….Even in…[a] tight spot, not many want to hear that the country has finally come to the end of its providential allotment of inexhaustible plenty….” And there’s “a sense that if nature comes up short, that other infinite resource, American know-how, can make up the difference.” (Simon Schama: The American Future: A History. Harper Collins. C2009).

Global Response: COP27 and the Path Ahead

Denial undercuts preparedness. “Your failure to plan does not equal my emergency.” Bob posted that statement above his desk. Imprudent decisions range from homebuyers failing to check on flood hazards or purchase flood insurance to governments and corporations linking their best interests to fossil fuels. As the futurist Ari Wallach noted, “….we carry short-termism on in our daily life at the expense of our future self, and—perhaps most important—the expense of future generations.” (Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs. Harper One. c2022). We’re also prone to “disaster amnesia,” lulled by the calm between storms to fall into wishful thinking that it won’t happen again. After Hurricane Lili (2002), I told Bob, “99% of the time, it’s a great place to live, but there’s that .1%.” Since Hurricane Andrew (1992), over 5 million more people have moved to Florida, a good number into Ian’s path. But, even when lessons strike close to home, people can be slow learners. A post-Ian Wall Street Journal headline read “Home Buyers Flock to Florida Cities Devastated…, with a sharp price run-up.”

Looking Forward: Paradigm Shifts in Global Response

So, we’re in a cliffhanger, but still not ready to make hard decisions. This year’s UN environmental report finds “no credible pathway” for global nations to reach their commitments to Paris Accords’ carbon emissions goals. As for the private sector, ”…. companies are setting goals they don’t know exactly how they can deliver on, [as] the pressures….to [publicly] respond to climate change build.” (Catherine Clifford. Companies are making climate pledges they don’t have the capacity to keep. MSNBC. October 26, 2022). The UN report concluded “…the only way to limit the worst impacts …is a ‘rapid transformation of societies.’ “ (Damian Carrington. Climate Crisis. The Guardian. October 27, 2022).

As I write, world leaders are meeting at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt. Regular review of progress on commitments either creates “a space to manage climate change” in a “zone of peaceful competition, collaboration, and one-upmanship” (Robinson Meyer. The Paris Agreement is Working…For Now. The Atlantic. November 9, 2022) or it’s yet another empty exercise of elites talking to each other. Some of the biggest emitters—China, Japan, India, Australia, Canada—chose not to send top officials this time. And yet there’s finally talk of “damage and loss” reparations—what big-emitter wealthy nations owe to non-emitting poor nations hit by climate-related disasters. There’s even been some discussion of private sector financial contributions, though no clarity on how that might work. (Allyson Chiu, Sarah Kaplan, Siobhan O’Grady, and Michael Birnbaum. COP27 live updates: U.N. chief calls for global climate pact, warning of ‘highway to climate hell’.  Washington Post. November 7, 2022).

Preparedness and Future Generations

Paradigm shifts occur when existing models no longer provide adequate solutions and answers. After over 40 years, climate change remains a “wicked” problem. “…The fate of civilization depended on it…. But it wasn’t a political problem…. Political problems had solutions. And the climate issue had none. Without a solution—an obvious, attainable one—any policy could only fail.” (Nathaniel Rich. Losing Earth: A Recent History. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. c2019). A Guardian documentary titled Climate carnage askswhose job is it to save the planet? Key actors’ non-attendance sends a message, as does the presence of over 600 energy industry lobbyists. Both suggest cozy government-industry-economy relations that make short-sighted choices seem like the only possibilities, even as “…global challenges like climate change, pandemic disease, financial crisis, and tech disruptions are exploding and are on a collision course with fragmented geopolitical structures….” (Wallach).

The Role of Activism

“[C]an we make a better us?” Fitting that Wallach raised the critical question standing on a beach, another in-between water world. And, sand shifting underfoot, he coined the term “Intertidal” to refer to bigger and potentially cataclysmic changes like those currently happening. “…[U]nderlying ideas, narratives, and rules of what it means to be human….[are] called into question.” When “old ways of being and doing no longer work….” and “complex interactions have increased, but trust has fallen to historic lows.” Yet elites, nations, corporations still try to play by old status-quo rules, though their vested interests and conflicts of interest keep getting in the way.

Meanwhile, young people, not content to wait, are going outside official channels and taking matters into their own hands. They understand the stakes, that we’re all in this together, on this small, crowded, and damaged planet. They’re the ones who’ll have to live with what comes next. And that has me thinking about who’s on the inside and who’s left outside. Was it intentional that the venue’s a resort area, with hotels allowed to charge “exorbitant” rates young climate activists often can’t afford? And that the host country is closely tied to Gulf oil states like Saudi Arabia and has an oppressive regime that would violently crack down on and possibly jail demonstrators? There was a lot of outside action at COP26 in Glasgow.

That brings to mind other activists—Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, the Arab Spring, Iran, etc., etc. And I’m reminded of the old Whack-a-Mole carnival game. Folks rise up in one place and they’re beaten down, some even killed, but then other folks rise up somewhere else. Why do they take the risk? Remember Emma Lazarus’ verse on the base of the Statue of Liberty. People everywhere “yearn to breathe free.” As the economist Alice Rivlin stated, “…average citizens are far more able to engage in civil, constructive dialogue on public policy issues than politicians [and elites, nations, corporations] are,” and with life and the future at stake “they are more willing to hammer out pragmatic compromises.” (Forward to Bringing Citizen Voices to the Table. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer with Wendy Jacobson. Jossey-Bass. C2013). Perhaps, together, we can take things into our hands and find our way forward.

Introduction: The Enigma of Mar-a-Lago

Following the Mar-a-Lago search and aftermath, I think of Abraham Lincoln. “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” And I recall the current ex-president once bragged that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in NYC and get away with it. Or did he? I recently read that he may not have uttered those words after all, though most folks assume he did because it’s so much in character. But then even the doubts fit too. Keep ‘em guessing.

Trickster Figures: A Historical Trope

While the plot not so much thickens as curdles, I’m reminded of trickster figures in folk tales, who bend the rules and play slippery and often spiteful/malicious pranks. It’s a trope that extends far back in human history. Our species has an innate/baked in need for dramatic tension. And some among us have an inherent need to serve it up. Checking for synonyms, I find swindler, charlatan, fraud, con artist. So, don’t think cute, cuddly, chubby-cheeked and a bit cheeky, Disneyfied imps. Think more Loki in the old Norse Eddas, a shapeshifter, with a grudge against the gods, and plotting to tear and/or burn everything down to get even. After famously reappearing in Richard Wagner’s opera Gotterdammerung (“twilight of the gods”), he’s lately resurfaced, classic bad boy in numerous sci fi books, films, video games. That makes sense: I always thought the January 6 rioters acted as if they featured themselves heroes in a massive video game, even wearing costumes. And, lightly anchored in reality, probably engaged in magical thinking, they somehow expected no real-world consequences.

Fresh Air Insights: The Destructionists

Two days of Fresh Air on NPR radio offer insights. Day 1 (August 21, 2022): The Destructionists is the title of Dana Milbank’s book on what’s happening in the Republican party. Former political reporter and now Washington Post columnist, he took the story back to the 1990s, when no-compromise opposition became standard practice, shunning across-the-aisle dealmaking, casting Democrats as enemies, provoking crises like budget standoffs leading to government shutdowns. It’s a contrarian strategy, a term defined by Wikipedia as literally “being against.” Looks like another trickster synonym. Not that these tactics always work as planned. McConnell’s announced intention to limit President Obama to one term failed. Repeat challenges constrained but did not eliminate the Affordable Care Act (“Obama Care”). And, in hindsight, leadership probably miscalculated in refusing to sanction any official membership on the House Committee investigating the January 6 riot/insurrection.

Diminishing Returns: Searching for a Positive Identity

Some on the right have started to recognize diminishing returns. Joseph Epstein wrote an op-ed for the conservative, Murdoch-owned, Wall Street Journal: Republicans Should Stand for More Than Opposing Democrats. (Aug. 30, 2022). Taking a positive view of motivations, he even used the term “loyal opposition.” Really?! But he apparently understands the contrarian approach can carry seeds of its own defeat. “Democrats are for particulars…among other things, fighting climate change, eliminating student debt, taxing corporations more heavily;….Republicans [are on] the defensive, seeing it as their chief task to block costly Democratic bills and other attempts at radical change. …What, apart from … opposition, does the party stand for that American voters can get behind in the passionate way that wins elections?…The lack of positive policies or programs leaves Republicans open to the old argument that the party stands for little more than the defense of the rich and the maintenance of the status quo. In this scheme…the Democrats stand for progress, they are the party of the people, holding the torch of social justice high, while the Republicans stand for regress, the continual enrichment of the 1%, a deep insensitivity to injustice and suffering.” It’s ironic that this is very close to George Lakoff’s summary of progressive values, which he views as being on the defensive. (Don’t Think of an Elephant. Chelsea Green Publishing. C2004, c2014). So, which party is the victim here?

Dirty Tricks and Political History: A Darker View

Day 2 of Fresh Air (August 22, 2022) offered a darker view focused on “dirty Tricks,” a long, though certainly not honorable, fixture of our political history. Remember Watergate. And some are breaking from the ranks. Tim Miller, a former Republican operative, in his book Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, offered an insider’s perspective as a self-described [confessed?] “hatchet man,” who “helped create the conditions that enabled the rise of Trump.” This included cooperating/colluding/lending mainstream credibility to extremist folks/sites/outlets he knew spread destructive untruths and hate. Miller spoke about what it meant to “get it,” that the whole point was to win, whatever it took. He interviewed former colleagues he knew well, who privately condemned the ex-president, but still found reasons to support him. Typical profile: arriving in Washington as young conservative idealists in their 20s, they were drawn to the centers of power, and enlisted in the attack regime, probably (I assume) because that’s where the jobs were. My experience as a NYS Senate fellow earlier in my career gives me a smaller-scale sense of the dynamics and attendant impulses/choices/temptations. Interviewees admitted they didn’t believe the “alternate” messages they crafted and pushed, but they rationalized. A common theme seemed to be underlying resentment of liberal’s assumptions of moral superiority. All politics can get very personal too. And it turns out Miller himself is gay and was in the closet most of the time he did that kind of work. So, how many versions of layered reality are we dealing with here?

Consequences and Accountability: Buck Stops Here?

Somerset Maugham said, “You can do anything in this world, if you are prepared to take the consequences.” Harry Truman, president 70 some years ago, put it more succinctly: “The buck stops here.” But does the buck ever stop when you keep spinning reality, because your sense of identity won’t accommodate admitting you could ever lose? And when you’re backed by influencer-apologists who fabricate reasons and excuses? Though far less articulate, this claque falls within the tradition of American oratory—Daniel Webster, Henry Clay (preeminent defender of slavery), Frederick Douglass (former slave). The list is a reminder that our true identity as a nation encompasses many different and often contradictory and even mutually hostile stories. Alessandro Portelli described a “Golden Age of American oratory” in the late 19th century, when speakers became “a chief source of political information, inspiration, and entertainment.” But by “making emotions audible and visible…” oratory also made itself suspect. “[I]n the very act of manipulation and controlling the sources of disorder—the crowd, the heart, the emotions—the orator is contaminated and tainted by them….” (The Text and the Voice: Writing, Speaking, and Democracy in American Literature. Columbia University Press. C1994).

Oratory as Suspect: Manipulating Emotions

When viewed through trickster/contrarian lens, I suspect that much of our current dilemma stems from extrapolating on the kinds of stories we’ve traditionally told ourselves about who we are. As Elvia Wilks noted, “Western literary forms tend to focus on the story of a person against the backdrop of the world.” (Death By Landscape: Essays. Soft Skull. c2022). And Wilks continued, quoting Amitav Ghosh, “relying on such ‘individual moral adventure’ tales banishes the collective…..” That we’re all in this together. And in this time of climate change, etc., such narratives also distract us from real, as opposed to manufactured contrarian/trickster, crises. Meanwhile, banishing “the nonhuman world…to the background” puts us increasingly in “an untenable position—and that future generations will name our era ‘the great derangement’ because of our ‘collective suicide’ as opposed to collective action in response to the urgent threat facing the human species.” And with threats (real or imagined?) of armed civil war are floated, I circle back to Lincoln, who recognized existential risks of internal violence years before the real thing broke out. “At what point then, is the approach of danger to be expected?….It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Trickster Perspectives and Current Paranoia

So, trickster/contrarian perspectives contribute to current free-floating paranoia. What and whom can you believe and trust? And that seems to lead to different versions of “final days.” Along those lines, Jonathan Rauch wrote a piece I find chilling. (Trump’s Second Term Would Look Like This. The Atlantic. August 29, 2022.) “The MAGA movement has been telegraphing its plans in some detail…overt embrace of illiberal foreign leaders;… behavior of Republican elected officials since the 2020 election; Trump allies’ elaborate scheming…to prevent the peaceful transition of power; and Trump’s own actions.” The template, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, much admired on the right, has declared, ‘We should not be afraid to go against the spirit of the age and build an illiberal political and state system.” Rauch concluded, “We can’t say we weren’t warned.” The certified actual president has taken up this theme, with a prime-time speech and on the mid-term campaign trail.

The Unraveling Template: Trump’s Second Term?

Then I find Steve Benen’s article Do Republicans agree with Trump’s demand for a do-over election? (MSNBC. August 29, 2022). Rather than staying focused on 2024, the trickster ex-president remains fixated on the election he still can’t/won’t admit he lost. He wants to rewind and hold the previous vote again or be immediately installed as rightful president. But again, the right not being monolithic, the idea has no credence with serious thinkers like Charles C.W. Cooke, author of The Conservative Manifesto and senior writer for the conservative National Review. “That is not how America works….American politicians do not lose their reelection races only to be reinstalled later on, as might the second place in a race whose winner was disqualified. This idea is otherworldly and obscene.” Not to mention ludicrous, like January 6 and Mar-a-Lago documents justifications.

Hopeful Conversations: Rebuilding a National Story

So, it seems trickster/contrarian narratives have done some damage. And, as per Wilks, “Symbiosis cannot be re-created where it has been lost…An ecosystem that has lost crucial elements has already adapted to the changes to the extent that simply re-adding what is lost might have harmful instead of restorative effects….” We might hope additional information– January 6 Committee and Mar-a-Lago—might change minds and hearts. But Miller didn’t end his book with the customary “how to fix things” chapter; he perceived little willingness to let go of the message. And yet, Benen suggested this might be the time to “help generate a worthwhile conversation.” And so, I remain hopeful, recalling the friend who said, just after the 2016 election, that maybe we needed to go through this. She meant we’d have the chance to recognize what we don’t want. Of course, that was before we had any idea how far it would go. Yet I still hope that those of us who are willing can start to work together to discover what we do want, beginning with a more inclusive national story, that has room for us all. And I find especially hopeful that our first president, George Washington, who “couldn’t tell a lie,” but who owned slaves, nonetheless set us on our democratic path when he turned down becoming king. Now, that’s a real American story.

Introduction: The Hologram of Fading Democracy

This is an existential moment; we retell ourselves identity and origin stories while democracy may be evaporating before our eyes. The idea switches on and off like a fading hologram that looks real but has lost its energy while we hardly noticed. The US, the world’s oldest modern democracy, has now fallen to 26th on the Economist’s Economic Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. (David Meyers. US remains a “flawed democracy” in annual rankings. Fulcrum: Leveraging Our Differences. February 14, 2022). Our lowest score since the index began in 2006, and along with extreme polarization and events like January 6, we have issues with “the electoral process, government functionality, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.”

The Power of Stories

Stories are powerful. National decline is a recurrent theme. I’m reminded of an old TV public service announcement: an egg sizzles in a frying pan, with the voiceover “This is your brain on drugs.” Not sure how effective the message was in its day. But nowadays, online conspiracy and the Big Lie that someone must be to blame have become like digital frying pans, sautéing true believers in the oil of fake news and alternate realities. A recent NY Times “Daily” newsletter discussed The Idea of American Decay (Lauren Jackson. Published Jan. 7, 2022. Updated April 18, 2022). The web cuts both ways. “For decades, academics have warned that partisan gridlock, politicized courts and unfettered lobbying were like dangerous substances—if taken in excess, America’s democratic systems were at risk of collapse.” For just a moment, I felt pleased that my personal instincts and insights lined up with experts’, but then distress and discomfort set in. “…what happens when the idea itself gets mainlined?”.…When a majority of the American public rewrites the story they tell themselves about their country’s standing in the world?” Note another drug culture reference as the country continues to suffer the deadly opioid crisis.

Nostalgia for the Past: The 1950s Dilemma

The flip side of decline narratives is nostalgia for “the good old days,” which often seem to closely resemble the 1950s. I am not among them; I grew up in that era and found it stifling. But the US seemed to be on top of the world, rolling in prosperity and power. A Time magazine cover story proclaimed, “The American Century.” George Lakoff summarized the preferred foreign policy position of “the best and most powerful country in the world,” the global policemen, able to justify “using our military power…” [and covert, undercover, operations], in our “national interest.” (Don’t Think of an Elephant. Chelsea Green Publishing. C2000, 2004). And the rest of the world just had to go along for the ride. What was good for the US had to be good for everybody else? Right?

Learning from History: Weimar Republic Lessons

But, like it or not, those times are now in our rearview mirror. Soren Kierkegaard famously said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Of course, that applies to history as well. And stories do not repeat, except in sci fi time-travel. Perhaps that explains the current popularity of “superheroes save the universe” movies and American “might makes right” gun culture. In real life though, we’re on a one-way street, without certainties or guarantees. And only we can save ourselves, if we pay attention. There are lessons to learn and echoes and warnings and parallels. As well as mistakes to avoid, though we may stumble into them anyway, anyway, human memories being short.

Cautionary Tales of Failed States

And history throws up cautionary tales. The term “failed states” refers to governments that disintegrate to the point they can’t carry out basic functions. Before getting there, they may struggle as “fragile states,” which appear to function, though they’ve lost legitimacy in citizens’ eyes and fail to buffer them from societal and economic shocks. For a long time, we assumed such narratives only apply in the “3rd World”—Latin America, Africa, Sri Lanka recently. But I find a headline: How Democracy Dies in the 21st Century. (Brian Klaas. July 21, 2022). “… the United States has proclaimed itself a ‘shining city upon a hill,’ a beacon of democracy that can lead broken nations out of their despotic darkness. That overconfidence has been instilled into [our] citizens, leading…to the mistaken, naive belief that [other] countries…have something to learn from the U.S. rather than also having wisdom to teach us.”

The Shattered Montage of Reality

I’m fascinated by the many ways we humans can misstep. My husband and I used to talk about whether we, as a species, are smart enough and have the will to try to make things better. We never arrived at a satisfying answer. And that has me thinking about what we can learn from German experience, a time of many missteps. After losing WWI and the Kaiser’s abdication, the country devolved into the democratic Weimar Republic. Shaky from the beginning, it limped along until it descended into the “dark side,” the savage, murderous night of the Nazi era. Hard to pick out the worst of that toxic regime. Instead, I regret all that it wrecked, all that we’ve missed out on. The short 14 Weimar years (1918 to 1933) witnessed a dazzling efflorescence of creativity that still resonates a century later. The Bauhaus modeled workshop training of architects, industrial designers, artists, artisans/crafts people. The literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin originated theories of art, literature, technology and society, media and film still important today. Bertholt Brecht revolutionized expressionist theater. The UFA film studios produced classics like the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920), Metropolis (1927), The Blue Angel (1930), before being harnessed to the Nazi state propaganda machine. 

Cult of War and Violence

Meanwhile, the public and political sectors were shaky, in ways that look scarily familiar today. The preface to The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg. University of California Press. 1994), described that time and its own discordant narratives. “What appeared to some…as the birth of modernity and the dawn of a modern technological age, seemed to others the epitome of alienation and decadence.” And this with a traumatized populace, “still in shock from the loss of a four-year war and a nearly fifty-year-old imperial identity.” And it happened in the context of “celebration of violence, yearning for charismatic leadership, and communal fantasies of male bonding.” And with paramilitary bands like the “Freikorps” (typically war vets) roaming the streets in support of rightwing political causes, carrying out assassinations, serving as foot soldiers in political coups. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, et al. haven’t gone quite that far yet, but they’ve come close. Humans operate with a limited playbook, and we copy, borrow, steal as needed, often consciously unaware of earlier models.

Germany’s Democracy: A Brief Attempt

Benjamin described how German perceptions of reality morphed into a kind of shattered montage that seems to foreshadow the information overload (too much to take in) of the digital age, “….emerg[ing] around the end of the war, when it became clear to the avant-garde [artists] that reality could no longer be mastered. The only means we have left, for gaining time and keeping a cool head, is above all to let reality have its say—in its own right, disordered and anarchic if necessary… [creating] montages from bits of fabric, tram tickets, shards of glass, buttons matches—and by this means, they said: You cannot cope with reality anymore. You cannot deal with these odds and ends of rubbish any better than you can with troop transports, influenza, or Reichsbank notes.” (Garlanded Entrance: On the ‘Sound Nerves’ Exhibition. 1929.)

This also intersected with the growing cult of war and violence, which Benjamin recognized in Theories of German Fascism (First published 1930). “…The ‘eternal’ war that they talk about so much here, as well as the most recent one—is said to be the highest manifestation of the German nation….” But “Until Germany has broken through the entanglement of …such beliefs…it cannot hope for a future….If this corrective effort fails, millions of human bodies will indeed inevitably be chopped to pieces and chewed up….” And so, it came to be. Benjamin, a German Jew, had no illusions about the threat to him and his work. Stopped at the Spanish border in his attempt to escape occupied France, he committed suicide in 1940.

So, Germany’s first try at democracy never had a chance to take root. It had arrived quickly, without preparation for civic practice. In The German Decision (first published 1931), Heinrich Mann wrote how, “In one historical moment, after the defeat in the war, it appeared as a possible way out, compared to the disaster of the monarchy and the threat of bolshevism [communism]—only a way out, not a goal, much less a passionate experience….simply set itself up…saw foreign democracies resting securely on majorities and took this arrangement to be inviolable….did not even allow the suspicion to arise that they could be defeated, plundered, and deprived of their rights despite the ballot….”

Lessons from T.S. Eliot: The Hollow Men

Admittedly, Germany is an extreme example. But isn’t that the point with cautionary tales? They’re supposed to remind us of where we don’t want to go, of what we don’t want to become. They can also help us avoid complacency and the “American exceptionalism” assumption that we’re immune. T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men (1925), reflected pessimism about the post-war world, with the famous line: “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.” So, we could say that Germany experienced the bang and dragged the rest of the world along—twice. The US, on the other hand, has a much longer history and grounding in democracy, though given recent developments, we’ve been letting that slip. And this makes it reasonable to fear that we could risk letting democracy fade away, again like a hologram, there but not quite real any longer.

Facing the Real Threat: Democracy’s Fade

As Klaas wrote in his Atlantic article, “We may not be doomed. But we should be honest: The optimistic assessment from experts who study authoritarianism globally is that the United States will most likely settle into a dysfunctional equilibrium that mirrors a deep democratic breakdown. It’s not yet too late to avoid that. But the longer we wait, the more the cancer of authoritarianism will spread. We don’t have long before it’s inoperable.”

Hopeful Perspective: Choices and Cycles

The prognosis may seem dire and gloomy, but we would do well to remember that trend is not destiny, that loss is not inevitable. And that not even the worst lasts forever. Think of the fall of the Nazis. The pendulum swings and there are cycles of darkness and light. And so, we do still have choices and a little time. And I hope we can find ways to use both wisely and well.