It’s Midnight in America
January 2021.
You know me. Always doom-and-gloom. Always Mister “But Wait, It Gets Worse.” Been that way for a decade, and for the balance of my career here in public.
For reference, here’s what I first wrote four years ago today:
The neo-feudalist economy caused by unchecked, unregulated capitalism that turned at best a winking nod to social welfare, more often a blind eye, and at worst a joyous ax, has facilitated a nationalist, authoritarian rise in pitch, and an abrupt shift right in federal ideology. Donald Trump is both the drooping wilted leaf of this societal rot, and the root.
Trump the politician, for all his bluster, is the product of fractious wealth concentration among the global elite — men very much like Trump the businessman. It is no secret that this true elite (not the intelligentsia or coastal elite, mind you, they are mere interlopers in the club and not the backroom VIP lounge entrants) have a penchant for shuffling the deck of the world order, and a potential to set fire to it, if it suits their interests. They stoke the flames of racial tension, and ostracize those already precariously perched in society’s margins. So it appears that this has become our new reality.
It is quite easy to get lost in the “now.” For it is all we can sense, and it is all we are given. But it is this “now” that is of most pressing concern. The rhyme of history dictates that disastrous consequences await societies that reach their point of no return. The American and French Revolutions, the American Civil War, World War II and The Red Scare, our current global apple cart, all arriving with near metronomic regularity some full lifetimes apart. Through this lens you could surmise that it would be more surprising if this is not the abyss; it will indeed get dark.
The United States, and all her citizenry — from the browbeaten to the bullheaded — from the Atlantic to the Pacific, will likely face down demons old and new on an unimaginable scale. So is the volatility of our history. So is the course of our progress. To dismiss it as a “blip on the map” is to downplay the enormity and totality of what’s to come. When coalitions form, when economies fail, when dictators rise across the globe, when bodies lay still upon the streets, there is nothing more real or complete. Past watershed conflicts were indeed quite temporary, often lasting less than the course of a two-term president, yet the effects are grave and the forecast is ominous. Battles will be fought. Lives will be lost. Rights will be rolled back or revoked. For marginalized groups, these are perpetually simmering concerns, and set to boil. When a nation fails, the out-groups are often the first to hear its roar, and the first to feel its rage.
And yet, remarkably, humanity has not extinguished itself yet — not for a lack of trying. From fossil fuel-accelerated climate change to nuclear weapons to the mass production of foods that only partially contain food, it is clear that the developed world drifts perilously closer to its breaking point. And with strong-men authoritarian figures and kleptocratic shadow agencies proliferating from pole to pole, we are being steered ever closer toward the abyss without our consent, the ship moaning and creaking as it bends against the stormy sea.
My oh my, that’s a long blockquote. I pulled the whole thing because I wanted to let you know that we’re about where I thought we’d be, for more or less the reasons I thought.
But I also pulled it for another reason: to let you know that the next chapter is a bit less predictable. There’s even a chance — not a great one, but a real one — that life here in the US actually improves in the next year or four, for you and I.
I am a second-generation American who finds nothing special about the United States. It’s well-developed and technologically pretty well-advanced. I don’t subscribe to American exceptionalism. I’ve never thought this was the Greatest Country On Earth(TM). It’s a country. There’s 200+ of them. Many of them are democratic on some level, too.
I don’t think our success or greatness as a nation is preordained, nor do I think we’ve even had a great deal of success of greatness to date. It’s a country. I live here. It isn’t so great that I haven’t entertained the idea of leaving (and I almost did). It’s a former slaveholding nation, an apartheid nation, on stolen land, that is deeply inequitable, worryingly evangelical, and distressingly anti-intellectual. Those truths are self-evident to anyone who’s opened a history book or six.
Still, today we’ve reached the dawn of a new era. It’s 12:01 a.m. in post-Trump America, and I thought long and hard about how to approach this (extreme air-quotes) “clean slate.” I saw people say things like “celebrate today, work tomorrow.” And I stared out into the abyss and felt, “what is there to celebrate?”
After all, there’s 400,000 Americans dead from a virus the last administration and its acolytes actively encouraged to spread. A devastating economic depression that torpedoed the working and middle classes. A climate change crisis engulfing us whole. And a loud prevailing racism among and within my people. All that, plus an active (and deadly!) assault on democracy and truth itself.
I ask again: What is there to celebrate? You know me. Always doom-and-gloom. Always Mister “But Wait, It Gets Worse.” Been that way for a decade, and for the balance of my career here in public.
But, for a moment, I’d like to just rest. Because in the middle of this rest, I have an answer: Today, we’ve been gifted an opportunity. To set things right. To make real progress. To lift each other up. To fight like hell against the forces that face us.
That opportunity really eluded us the past four years. The man who occupied the executive office actively and vindictively sabotaged our better aims at every turn. He made it nearly impossible to get any real work done, and he mobilized a movement of fear, fascism, lies and sadism.
Although that movement remains, the spiritual leader of that movement is now gone. Not dead, mind you, but his power disarmed by the (narrow) will of the American people. There’s a small degree of celebration warranted by the barest of minimums. Here’s why.
Opportunities themselves are worth celebrating. Worth savoring. They’re gifts. We really don’t get many of them. That said, this is an historic moment ripe with many of them. You and I — all of us really — have the opportunity to actively redefine what it means to be a citizen, an American, and a human. Sure, maybe an opportunity is all we’ve got, but if we capitalize on it, it’s all we’ll need.
I’m reminded of where I was in January of 2017. Before the last administration. Before I wrote on Medium. Before I wrote for politicians. So anonymous. So drunk. So miserable. So selfish. So … different. Long before so much growth on the inside and so much hell unleashed on the outside.
I’m reminded of how much can change in just four years — both within and around me. Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe after all this you’ve come to the same conclusion I have: that the horror of the world around us has caused us to cultivate wisdom, strength and power inside of us.
The horseshit grease-fire that was the last four years in America actively turned some of us — I believe, anyway — into better people, or at least revealed that we were better people than we thought we were. (On the flipside, I also learned there are plenty of people who are actively worse than I had realized. They’re all white.)
And so I think given the lack of obstruction at 1600 Penn, perhaps we can summon the character we’ve forged to actually make headway into a significantly greater tomorrow. The odds of that are low, but for the first time in over four years, the odds of that aren’t zero. This past week wasn’t great, but it was the first week I could recall in forever that wasn’t aggressively worse than the week before. That alone is worth celebrating, even if the cheering’s somewhat muted. Now, if only we could get another 207 like it. I have my reservations.
As we’ve seen from [*gestures at everything*], a lot can still go wrong. I think we’re just as far from the dawn of darkness as we are to the dawn of daylight. But, with an opportunity, and good people to lead us, and our better angels guiding us … a lot can go right. It’s up to us — you and I and all — to make sure it does.
So, Happy January 20, 2021. It’s a new day, and a new opportunity for all of us. Let’s not just celebrate it … Let us seize it, and become people worth celebrating.