I’ve been thinking a lot about the media’s coverage of what’s happening in the United States right now.
One formulation I’ve seen repeated ad nauseam is “The Administration is Winning Now… But Will It Last?” (This CNN piece is the latest example.)
The premise of all these pieces is “people aren’t upset about these policies right now, but if the economy falls apart, they will be.”
This might be true (although given how addled all of our brains are as a result of smartphone addiction, I don’t know that most people are clear-minded enough to draw a connection between terrible policies and their financial wellbeing).
But the unspoken assumption underlying these thinkpieces is basically nonsense.
People may become disenchanted with the U.S. government, but that government is now an autocracy, meaning that the people will have no way to make their disenchantment matter.
When you vote a dictator into power, you don’t get to vote him out again. Because you successfully voted against having the power to vote.
A 0% historical success rate for removing elected fascists.
This piece by Chris Armitage, “I researched every attempt to stop fascism in history. The success rate is 0%.”, lays out the reality very clearly.
When a country elects a fascist leader and his government, removing them again is basically impossible.
I’m in Turkey at the moment, another country who decided in 2014 that they needed a proto-fascist leader at the helm (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan).
It’s 11 years later. His opponents and anyone who poses a threat to him is in prison. The laws of the land have been completely transformed to allow him to do what he wants when he wants. His family members have been massively enriched at the expense of the public.
And Turkey continues to function. I’m here on vacation. It doesn’t feel like a fascist dictatorship to me.
But it’s certainly not a democracy anymore. And it’s naive and dangerous to pretend that the U.S. is still a democracy.
There are actions to take; nostalgic daydreaming isn’t a good one.
I like the four suggestions Armitage puts forward for what to do now in his piece (getting the Blue States together to fight back against the administration; “Irish democracy” in which states and bureaucrats fail to comply with the letter of the law without directly fighting, thus gumming up the works and making it hard for the administration to do anything; actual secession of key states; international intervention).
As he points out, these all sound kind of insane. But they are actual options for fighting back.
The alternative — watching opinion polls and daydreaming about the midterm elections or some kind of reckoning based on now-outmoded democratic mechanisms — is dumb.
I feel the same way about all the media coverage of Gavin Newsom’s social media team.
It’s great that they’ve figured out a better way to mock Republicans online. It reminds me of the 2024 presidential debate in which Kamala Harris made her opponent look pretty out of touch and silly.
He won the election. She… didn’t.
I’m all for mocking the eminently mockable. But that’s not action. That’s not going to effect change. Something radical needs to happen, and someone who still has a modicum of power needs to lead the charge before it’s truly too late.
It’s not just U.S. politics.
Clearly I pay far too much attention to the political landscape in America. It’s an obsession of mine. It’s as engaging as it is horrifying.
But I think the basic premise of this piece — that we have to acknowledge the reality that things are fundamentally different now, and stop imagining that they will return to “normal” — applies to a bunch of what’s happening right now.
We are living through a time of chaotic collapse.
Technology stopped serving people around 2015 and started serving the bottom line of large tech companies at the expense of people. It’s destroying the fabric of our society and making our individual lives immeasurably worse.
Global warming and the effects of pollution are making the climate increasingly unpredictable and endangering the lives of everyone on earth.
The collapse of norms around human rights and genocidal behaviour is allowing disgusting people to murder and displace innocents with impunity.
What to do?
I don’t know how to make sense of all this, obviously. We’re in it, and we have an incredible ability to normalize it.
But I do think we need to face it and be honest with ourselves about it. Pretending it’s a blip, that things will restore themselves soon and we’ll be able to look back on this weird few years and laugh about it isn’t a great strategy.
What is a great strategy? If I knew that, I’d like to think I’d be at the ramparts leading the resistance.
I am inspired by Armitage’s approach, which proceeds from what’s already true (America is a fascist state; it’s not a democracy anymore). If that extreme statement is true (and I think it is), then only extreme responses are possible.
If I’m right that technology is destroying our minds and our children, then only extreme responses are possible.
If I’m right that genocidal monsters are getting away with murder and ethnic cleansing, then only extreme responses are possible.
If I’m right that the climate itself is rendering the planet unlivable, then only extreme responses are possible.
That’s an unpleasant set of conclusions to draw, and I don’t know what I mean by “extreme responses.” We as individuals don’t have the power to take truly extreme actions. But we may have the power to push for action that fits the enormity of the problems we’re facing.
If you have thoughts on any of this, I’d love to hear them. Even if they sound a little crazy.
Great post.