Denial Is Easy
There’s a whole bunch of stuff in place that helps denial flourish and persist. Denial is easy. The media helps our denial. The widespread availability of all the “content” in the world online in streaming new TV series and cool movies and all the music from all time helps our denial. Games too. Social media. Scrolling and videos and memes.
Most of it isn’t helping us face the very hard reality that this world is getting more complicated and it’s going to continue to do so.
You can’t have an ever-increasing population live in high-hazard zones on a finite planet with finite resources in a time of climate change and increasing disasters and have things get simpler. It’s not possible.
Competition for survival and for limited resources like food, water, and energy sources will increase. Many in power and with big wealth will be and are already making plays to hold on to power and wealth… so they can access resources.
That will increasingly look like racism, “othering” of humans, scapegoating, authoritarianism, and fascism.
It’s a means to an end.
It helps divide societies and create hate so people can seize power from a distracted population. It can lead to horrible things. For reference, see centuries of colonization worldwide and the corresponding slavery and pilfering of resources. We’re still seeing human trafficking of the most vulnerable; of devalued lives. We still have colonies. We still have rich countries taking resources from more vulnerable places in unequal arrangements. We still see white supremacy as a supposed justification.
We’re in denial of all kinds of reality here in the US partly because we’re at the top of the food chain; because many of us are insulated from some hard realities… for now.
But we’re also not willing to see what’s happening right in front of us.
Where I live, I’m regularly freaked out by the winter presence of geese. When I was a kid, they migrated. In October and March. That was that. The weather has changed enough that they stopped migrating as much as they used to. Now thousands seem to not know they used to leave the area in the winter. Now geese are around all winter. It’s super weird and ominous. I’ve been back in Iowa for seven years now, and I’ve been creeped out by it the whole time. How many less noticeable species are in a mess because of climate change? What does that do to our overall ecology?
But pick a problem.
Unprecedented flooding in California. Mass shootings daily. Increasing hate and intolerance. Legalized erasure of history and inclusivity. Legalized marginalization of voters and entire communities. A massive wealth shift to the already-wealthy. The shrinkage of the middle class. The rot and atrophy in communities all over this country. The ongoing attempted removal of remaining social support systems of all kinds.
Here’s the media’s headline about “How worried should you be?” on one of the most toxic accidents in US history. It’s not empowering. It’s not about who should be acting and doing and responding and helping. It’s not about how the state hasn’t asked for federal aid, or called back the president. It’s not about how the federal government has a ton of resources to do plume modeling and handle toxic explosions and what the status of all that is. It’s just about worry and fear:
Here’s a harder look at this toxic crisis from Chris Hayes on MSNBC. It’s a deeper dive with actual analysis on what’s going on and how we’re dealing with it or not — including a bit about how we’re not collectively trying to solve this problem or similar ones:
Most of the media narrative has been slow to catch up on this disaster — or hasn’t even covered it. It’s hard to cover because nobody wants to send reporters into a likely-toxic area; which is fair. But it’s also hard to cover because we suck at science reporting, at complexity, at danger, and at anything that we can’t try and wrap up with a happy note.
For example, there may well be hundreds of thousands dead after the earthquakes that struck Syria and Turkey. The Haitian earthquake in 2010 killed something like 220,000 people when tens of thousands of concrete structures collapsed… although no one will ever know the true total. That whole country basically collapsed when that earthquake struck — it’s never recovered. What will happen in Turkey and Syria?
Current estimates range around 40,000 dead, but also “tens of thousands” of structures collapsed. How are there not tens of thousands more dead, too?
Yet the media reporting on it always has to find a “glimmer of hope,” and wants to find some supposed feel-good story in a very late rescue of some person who survived but is probably very ill, lost everyone they cared about, possibly spent days buried with them, and has likely limited access to overwhelmed hospitals to deal with their likely very critical health needs now.
But feel good! Glimmers of hope! Don’t be real about the trauma! It’s not all like that; but there’s a lot. Every climate story comes with some feel-good aspect, but maybe it should come with points about how we’re not doing nearly enough.
Does it keep us from understanding how rough things really are? Does it keep us from acting and engaging?
We Need Reality
We need some reality. We need to be willing to see it. We need to get better at talking about it — no matter how uncomfortable. We need better media narratives, because media narratives drive what we focus on. We need to push media to do better, and we can.
We need more leadership — everywhere, at every level. We need to help each other lead, and to dive into the uncomfortable. We need more engagement from each other everywhere, too… and that need is only going to increase.
Overwhelm
We’re in a tough spot because we’ve been in years of unrest and instability here in the world’s superpower. We’re worn out from mass shootings and a refusal to mitigate even a little bit of the risk. We’re worn out from an intensifying culture war, pushed by an increasing flock of demagogues and some very big media platforms. We’re worn out from the pushback against science and history and truth and reality and inclusivity and equity and just being nice. Our social fabric is torn up and shredded.
We’re worn out from dealing with a virus. We’re worn out from the culture war that enables the virus. Mostly we’re essentially pretending it’s not out there — and it’s a group effort that includes politicians, government, and media. We’ve stopped doing public health, even though the virus continues to do damage. The Biden Administration is ending emergency federal support for tools to help with covid-19 in a few months; which will hurt the most vulnerable the most. Our medical system is a mess. Medical staff are worn out.
When the Trump movement started to ramp up in 2015, I underestimated what it meant that authoritarian movements want to shock and overwhelm people by eroding institutions and creating constant diversions and insanity.
We’re there. This is what it looks like.
We Have Got To Turn This Ship
We’re going to need to get more serious than we have been so far about pulling ourselves out of this crap. This direction we’re heading in cannot be our future.
To be fair, our future is going to be rough either way. Given the growing population in high-hazard zones on a finite planet with finite resources during a time of climate change, the competition for resources will get more fierce. The disasters will increase and intensify. The plays for power will get more fierce — and nasty. Again, that’s part of the authoritarian, oligarchical push.
All of that is coming.
Even in the midst of all that, we can still shift the direction this country goes in for crying out loud.
In all of this increasing intensity, we need a government that is willing to take care of humans. We need more humanity and kindness and compassion and empathy — not intolerance, othering, hate, and a refusal to support people.
That change needs to happen like super pronto.
This stuff is urgent, and right now the hatemongers are making big gains. For reference, check out the number of states and also school districts where Republicans are weakening schools, removing history, ignoring science, banning books, eroding government, and making it difficult for the majority of Americans to thrive and flourish. For further reference, see the US House being currently driven by far-right extremists. The narrative is that the 2022 election was a “clear win” for Democrats… but if that was the case why aren’t Democrats now running the US House; the chamber that’s the most truly democratic? Again — denial is not helpful.
We Need To Up Our Game
This is a community level problem, and we need to get real about community level problem-solving.
We need way better engagement in communities everywhere to turn this ship. We need to out-engineer the gerrymandering, the hate, and the dark money. We can do it by energizing Americans in communities everywhere in different ways than what we’ve done in the past.
We need an intact world superpower to help with all this, too. Things will be rougher around the world if the US falls, crumbles, collapses, or further erodes. We need democracies. Democracies are supposed to help protect all of their people. They will be even more critical as things intensify worldwide. Getting them to function more effectively so they actually do take care of their people will be increasingly critical too.
So let’s do stuff to keep this democracy, and to get into work at the community level. This organization is set up to help with all of this, and we’re figuring out the best ways to do that. This week it’s a lot off conversations with volunteers and board members. Next week we’ll plan to start online Zoom events again. We’re still working on how to go about setting those up so that we get engagement ourselves. Holler in the comments if you want to get in on this event planning.
Those Zoom events will be announced here on Substack in the next day or so.
We’re also doing fundraising on the website and on ActBlue. We’re working toward a $10,000 goal to both keep the lights on here and to help us ramp up for the next few months. We’re at a little over $1,675… and we will be pushing this harder.
Keep the faith — in ourselves and in each other. We can do good in this world, and we need to be ready to do more of it and maybe in some different ways. The cool thing is that we can. We can power through the overwhelm and the nastiness. We can outshine the hate. We can do so much. And we will.
Stick around. Share our stuff. Help us build this work so we can make some real shift in this country — together.
I agree with all that you have to say, Vanessa, and want to suggest that maybe it's time to kick it up another notch. If you follow Thom Hartmann...in his post today he has some very interesting things to say about "culture wars" and fascism. His premise is that culture wars are the grease to move toward all-out fascism. He suggests that we need to get the media to talk in those stark terms. Those of us who recognize our democracy is in peril are already on board. But there are far too few of us. Calling what the Republicans are attempting to do "fascism" instead of allowing them to control the narrative of "culture wars" will anger them. And maybe it will start to awaken those who are complacent. Those who think the "culture wars" will blow away, that their insular, lovely little lives will not be affected by any of this. Hartmann cites research from Nazi Germany--and it is sobering. They didn't see fascism coming until it was too late. Will it be too late for us?