Five Reasons the Shitty World is About to Get Shittier

1. People see things as absolute good vs. absolute bad and choose sides based on a surface analysis. They root for their good guys and want to see their bad guys destroyed. They refuse to see the gray areas or the points where many seemingly opposing things can be true simultaneously. In the Israel/Hamas War, the pro-Israel side deems all Muslims, especially Palestinians, as evil, libels and dehumanizes them. In contrast, the pro-Palestinian side deems all Jewish people as evil tools of Israel, regardless of their location or beliefs. The pro-Israel side ignores the large number of innocents harmed by the retaliation. The pro-Palestinian side ignores the fear and mistrust in the Jewish world, first from centuries of oppression by Christians, then the Holocaust, and later terrorism. They also ignore the large number of Jewish people, in Israel, in the USA, and elsewhere who disagree with Netanyahu and the Likud policy and have taken the disagreement to the press, to the streets, and to their representatives. Both sides ignore the large number of real-life Nazis who hate Muslim and Jewish people and see the conflict as an opportunity to destroy both. And everyone forgot that the culprits of this centuries-long debacle rest in Europe where religious infighting propped up bad monarchs and colonialism and two world wars reshaped the world in unworkable ways. But let’s blame the smallest groups of victims of monarchy, religion, colonialism, and war because everyone likes a good BBC show about aristocracy.
2. People Forget Fast. Disappointment with Biden and the Democrats is leading many back to Trump and Republicans as if Republicans are an antidote for whatever is going wrong. Suddenly, people remember that the years 2016 to 2021 were great, with no mention of millions dying of Covid, an armed coup attempt against Congress, all the baffling political pardons, including for Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Stephen Bannon, and George Papadopoulos, and economic policies that left everyone not in the top 1% in shambles including Trump’s trade policy with China that lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, his mismanagement of Covid led to supply chain collapse and further job loss, and more tax cuts for the rich, also incitement of racism, misogyny, and bigotry that littered the streets, schools, malls, entertainment venues with dead bodies.
3. People rely on stupid quick fixes that don’t work. I know several people, and I don’t really know all that many people in the first place, but I know several who rely on some cult beliefs to improve their lives. I’m not talking about the Trump/MAGA/QAnon cult. I’m talking about those little self-help cults that convince people that their lives are not real or they can get rich or at least get relief fast. Yes, there is an entire group of people who believe they are not real and that everything in this world is a mere ego projection and the actual reality, and everyone’s authentic selves sit in heaven with Jesus. That’s not Catholicism or Protestantism but something called The Course on Miracles. Or, if it’s not Jesus, then it’s some other deity, often a rip-off of an Eastern religion, who has also failed to show itself. Some believe they can manifest their desires by wishing for them through the air under some version of quantum physics with which no credentialed quantum physicist agrees. People make money selling this stuff to vulnerable people who then don’t get the help they need, be it financial, legal, family, or mental health. And so many people are more likely to join a self-help cult than a community group or a trade union that might actually help them.
4. People fail to question or challenge bad things to fit in or win corporate publishing deals. I recently attended a writer’s conference where a speaker from the Freedom to Read Foundation spoke about book censorship. But, very few of the attendees came to her session as if censorship is not an issue for writers who are trying to sell books. Instead, one of the authors was confronted with a shocking question: how do you write to please the censors? The author was taken aback by the question, as was I, and they handled themselves very well in responding, but still — what kind of author wants to please the censors, and why weren’t all the attendees at the censorship discussion? This is all not to mention the hundreds of thousands of workers in the real estate and mortgage industries who obeyed their bosses in the decade or so leading up to the 2008 crash and the failure of our government to hold the bosses responsible, which is how you get Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried characters who believe that if you’re wealthy and connected enough, you’re never held accountable. Now that Holmes and SBF are convicted and jailed, I’m still waiting for those bankers and mortgage company managers to be held accountable — and yes, I know it’s never happening. On balance, corruption and fraud are still winning.
5. Social media is dead, but no one went to the funeral. META is all ads and other sponsored materials, but people comment on these for-profit posts as if they’re actual posts. Many of the comments were also purchased. You rarely see friends’ posts anymore, so if you sit on social media for any part of your day, you're interacting with agendas backed by dollars and not people. Further, did you know some hackers stole Meta accounts from the Kitten Lady? Yes, we live in a world where someone would steal the social media accounts of a person who raises awareness and money to help sick and abandoned kittens. X, otherwise known as Evil Twitter, is racist, lying, and nuts, but too many people can’t or won’t give it up because they don’t want to lose their audiences, not thinking through exactly who those audiences are now. The Elon Musk fan club doesn’t seem to care to whom he gave the keys to the so-called free speech platform. On YouTube, mildly left-leaning content is frequently censored, while wildly racist material rarely has a problem posting and sticking. Newer platforms remain small and tribal, and some are difficult to use. And, real journalism, the old-fashioned stuff, is subscription-based and expensive, gouging everyone bit by bit until we get frustrated and cancel everything and go back to fake news on social media.