Note: I started this post way back in January of this year, a year after the insurrection that seemed to transform the political realities in this country. I abandoned it at that time when other circumstances in my life demanded attention. Also, I had begun to run out of steam for maintaining this blog. The weight of the rampant foolishness and patent disingenuousness in my country had become a burden to think about — not to mention live with.
But with Election Season in full swing once more, and with Consensus Reality once again on the ballot, I thought I'd crawl back to this and present it for your inspection. It ain't pretty, perhaps. But it is honest and, I hope, thought-provoking.
Here goes...
Well, that was alarming.
But then again, so much of modern life, whether here or abroad, is alarming. It’s based on unrealistic and unsustainable understandings of the world. I have been saying for the last two years, in the face of the pandemic, that we are at a civilizational moment, a moment of reckoning for all the grotesquely unsustainable ways we in the developed world have tried to live our lives. More recent events, both here and abroad have only reinforced this in my mind.
We are indeed facing a national crisis of unprecedented implications, but it is rather different than what many, even most, American recognize.
What good is vaccinating 80% or 100% of American people, when there are a billion and a half human Petri dishes in Africa, victims of colonially produced and post-colonially maintained systems of inefficiency and inequality? The US has donated around 1 billion doses of vaccine. Well, that’s about 1/3 of the solution, but the real problem is getting those shots in people’s arms. Before they spoil. Do you wanna talk about a broken system?
And as with the pandemic, so too with the environment as a whole. It’s one big problem. Beside it, everything else pales. In the end, both fascist and progressive alike will have to bow before it, sooner or later. The only question is: How will we face the challenge of living with it?
While some Americans wring their hands about the possibility of a second civil war, and others openly cheerlead for it, and a few others actively prepare to initiate it, we are being called to reimagine human civilization itself, based not necessarily on technology and technological solutions (which seem at times to be feeding the cycle, not breaking it), but upon recognizing the supreme importance of the planet upon which we depend, and therefore upon the communities which we build.
America, beside this, all our troubles and mutual hostilities pale.
It doesn’t seem to me that enough people on this side of the Atlantic are really, really listening. Am I worried about America's political future? Yeah, sure. What happens here always has an impact elsewhere. But I’m even more worried about the world that my daughter will live in.
To me the unreality of American life in all its forms — economic, political, cultural — is of a piece with the reckoning of which the pandemic is only the most obvious bellwether. This article may be correct: The US is probably facing a crisis of massive political proportions.
But to my mind that’s an epiphenomenon. One more way in which Americans are striving to live the American dream of exceptionalism. We don’t want the rules to apply to us.
Well guess what: the rules apply to everybody.
The author of this article, as perceptive as it is, calls for the left to get their act together and make changes that will repair the system. Fair enough.
But what changes are proposed here, except changes within the system? The only changes that will really make any difference for the long term to the planet, not simply to our nation, have to take place in the minds of the people. Only then can the Consensus Reality possibly penetrate beyond the jingoistic noise that dominates contemporary American public discourse.
Until that happens, whether or not we have a Second Civil War, whether or not we remain a single country or break up into four or six or 50, won’t really matter in the long term. Consensus Reality transcends left and right, woke and racist. And the outlook is looking pretty grim. Do I want freedom and a liberal democracy? Of course. But on what terms?
Another way to put it: While we’re busy fixing America's broken system, why don’t we really fix it?
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