I can't speak for all Americans, because there are 330 million of us and I've been elected to speak for exactly none of them. So when I say, “I think we Americans are in a lot of trouble,” I'm simply pointing out that I consider myself one of the citizens of the USA, and some of my problems might be your problems, too.
So, about COVID…
In college, I double-majored in European History and Sociology. The main reason I did that was because these subjects require relatively little math, but I also thought it would be a good basis for a future degree in journalism, or failing that a good basis for some kind of writing career. I did end up in some kind of writing career, just not the kind where I’m dashing out of the bullpen chasing down a lead on some hot new story that’s gonna blow this case wide open! I do still think about a more traditional journalistic career, though how I think about it has changed over the years.
New York City conductorettes wearing masks during the influenza epidemic of 1918. (National Archives photo no. 45499323)
In my twenties, the question was, "What could have been?" What could have been if I followed Scott Eric Kaufman’s advice and took the traditional journalism route, made the contacts I needed to make, got the internships I needed to take, and became a genuine newspaperman? In my thirties, the question is now, "How long would I have lasted?" Because I know myself a little better now, and how resentful I am of the general public.
Not you. You're cool.
The upside to a double-major in History and Sociology is that I have a pretty well-rounded perspective on how badly people treat each other in these artificial systems we've built to run the world. The downside is that I have little faith in the permanence of any solution to suffering. Systems often corrode, if they are not corrupted first.
Brave New World
When I was young and dewy-eyed, I really believed everyone was working - or at least hoping - for a better tomorrow. Just by living in a modern civilization, we abide by a social contract - a tacit agreement to follow the laws of the land and not make life difficult for fellow members of the community. I scream "social contract!" when some jerk merges into my lane without signaling or even looking over their shoulder, because either would represent the bare minimum of respect for the people they're sharing the road - and this mortal coil - with.
My problem, as a younger person, was that I assumed everyone's vision of "making the world a better place" was the same. My vision involved more critical education for children, comprehensive care for homeless and mentally ill, tight regulation on corporate lobbying, robust social programs, a clear separation of church and state, perhaps an even clearer divide between news and entertainment, environmental laws that could be enforced with extreme prejudice, investment in renewable energy, and even heavier investment in space exploration and cancer research. Also, it would be nice to get some state-funded eggheads working on the secret to eternal youth, replicator technology, and universal healthcare, but no need to go sci-fi right out the gate.
Obviously not every American feels this way. I’m a California liberal. For my fellow citizens, their "better places" may be influenced by their family, social status, jobs, experiences, and the color of their skin. That's easy to understand. Less easy to understand, and what I've only realized in recent years, is that there are an alarming number of people who would quibble with what my definition of "the world" is. I thought we'd settled this eons ago: Big round thing in space orbiting a yellow-type star on the unfashionable end of the Milky Way Galaxy. Actual adults contest this in the year two-thousand and twenty-two.
Here's the thing about me: I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility that the world is flat, or that a god made it in seven days, or that we’re living in a simulation, or the Roman Empire fell last Thursday and everything since has been a mass hallucination, but as long as the evidence points to us living on a 4.5-billion-year-old ball of dirt in a silent and near-infinite void, well, I'll go with that. It’s not any less weird. See, I'm not a scientist; I can't do higher-level math because I majored in History and Sociology; but I trust people who have studied this shit for decades of their lives. It's part of the social contract.
The Diamond Age
The point I'm struggling to get to is this: Neal Stephenson has written many excellent books, one of which is The Diamond Age, and in this book set in the future, society has broken up into individual sects, or phyles, that follow very exacting codes of conduct. The idea here is that, instead of culture being a vague way to describe where/how you grow up, people essentially "buy in" to one of many cultures. Neo-Victorians subscribe to Victorian protocols and etiquette while the Celestial Kingdom bases its philosophy on Confucius. So, if you want to be a Neo-Victorian, you can apply to be one, but you must adhere to a morality and lifestyle that has been formally agreed on.
It's a fascinating idea, and one that Stephenson explores thoroughly in all its contradictions, flaws, and surprising benefits. Obviously, I don't think we should all start behaving like Victorians, but the idea of "buying in" to a culture has forever latched itself onto my brain.
In Angels in America, Tony Kushner points out that the US is a melting pot where nothing melted. I read the news every day about people refusing to get vaccinated for COVID, about Americans who think Trump or Biden are the devil incarnate or the second coming, and I scroll through Reddit watching Americans being truly awful to each other in grocery stores and on airplanes, and it is very clear that nothing's melted and no one's working in the same phyle.
You want to get really depressed? Read about why healthcare workers are resigning en masse. It’ll mess you up.
It would be a fascinating experiment to ask every American what kind of social contract they'd be willing to buy into. If we could all get on the same page, we could actually start working on that better world. Unfortunately, I doubt there are enough pages in America to accommodate our raggedy-ass book.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
One of the most fulfilling jobs on my resume was editor-in-chief at Planet Experts, a news agency wholly dedicated to reporting on climate change and environmental issues. I interviewed so many smart people doing so many cool things. My tenure with PE was also when I got my first major dose of "some people really don't care what the science says," followed by "some people are actively working to deny it."
While I can't condone that ignorance, I can at least understand it. Climate change is a large subject and its impacts are felt over long time periods. Yes, climate changes naturally over time, but human industry imposes a measurable and deleterious influence on that process. The issue is nuanced, and it's easy to misrepresent or misunderstand the science. On top of that, making any headway in correcting the dangerous swing of our climate requires the cooperation of industries who have an unfathomably large stake in doing business as usual. I understood the politics of climate change.
On a fundamental level, I do not understand what has happened in this country in the last two years. The reaction to COVID has disturbed me more profoundly than any major event in my life. September 11 was a terrible day, but it was an act of terrorism, and terror is easy to understand. This, the federal government's initial reluctance to respond to COVID, then the willful ignorance of its severity from my fellow Americans, the mass refusal to mask up, the conspiracy theories, the deepening divide between those who will get vaccinated and those who will not, is beyond my understanding.
I do not hyperbolize. I say this to acknowledge my limitation. I cannot emphasize clearly enough that I honestly, genuinely do not understand how this could happen. And yes, I read the articles about what people believe and I listen to the rants about freedom - and I've been doing that for years, and I still do not get it.
I don't get it. People are dying. Some 800,000 in the USA, and 5.4 million around the world.
People are dying, and those that don’t may develop persistent health issues we’re still learning about.
Members of our community are getting sick, and others don’t care.
I think "social contract," and I think about The Diamond Age and Tony Kushner, and I would happily buy into another culture if it was in any way feasible.
I think we Americans are in a lot of trouble.
Traffic cop in New York City wearing gauze mask, 1918. (National Archives photo no. 45499301)
If I'd stayed on the journalism circuit, at what point would I have thrown up my hands and said, "It's not worth writing about this anymore?" Nobody is listening to each other, and what isn’t immediately understood is taken to be malicious fabrication.
One thing becomes abundantly clear with a History/Sociology degree: Cultures come and go. In the last couple centuries, America has seen a steady rise in technology and quality of life. It's been like this so long that it's easy to think things will always improve. They don't.
There are countless cultures that crawled out of obscurity to achieve several centuries of social, military, and artistic progress, only to collapse. Sometimes they're destroyed by a superior military force: The Carthaginians were eliminated by the Romans in three generation-spanning wars, and their children were sold into slavery. Sometimes they collapse under the weight of their own hubris: The western Roman empire was ultimately sacked by invading tribes, but the incompetency and corruption of its leadership prepared it to fall centuries beforehand.
Recorded history goes back about 10,000 years or so, but humans have been around for more than 10 times that long. A lot has happened between then and now, but none of those cultures lasted long enough to tell us about it.
I'm not preaching the apocalypse. I don't think America is on the verge of collapse, no matter how much it looks like it sometimes. Few countries in the last few centuries have disappeared completely, but they all diminish eventually. The last half decade has been a preview for how we’ll decline: Fighting each other over facts, forcing science to debate magic.
America’s rise was unique, but its decadence is not. We leapt to the head of the international pack with terrific military and economic gains, then got high on our own supply for a few generations while other countries adapted to the modern world. Now, we charge more money for inferior products, outsource our jobs to those who effectively use slave labor, elect weirdoes and incompetents to public office, poison the land, amuse ourselves with toys and amphetamines, and blame the previous generation for our current problems.
None of this is new to history. You see variations of it in every time and continent. I admit I’m surprised that, given how much more we know about the world than any former culture, we're still going insane. But maybe that’s the problem: We’re all connected all the time, and there’s no time to take a breath and think.
I think we're in a lot of trouble, but that's just one American's opinion. Obviously, there is a lot I love about the place; it's why I'm still here. It's why this hurts so much.