Knowing and Denial

 

About a half decade ago I had a blog called Dorid's Pool, where I published various hand drawn strips with characters from my "Not Ashamed to be Related to a Monkey" series.  This was one of them, back in the day when no one thought Trump could ever gain the party's nomination, much less a seat in the White House.

The problem is, I could easily see it happening, even as I was appalled by the idea, even if it felt slightly crazy to even consider it.  

I see patterns.

I pay attention.

Recently my sister was shocked when a relative of her husband's posted a right wing meme that reflected the call to arms at the Capitol building this week.  I didn't understand why she was shocked.  At one point in the conversation, I told her I knew this was going to happen. She responded "you didn't know, you suspected." 

I think a lot of people knew. I think they know the same way they know if they are in the center of a cone of probability for a hurricane that is much wider than the cone itself, that it's going to rain.  Sure, by her logic you would only suspect rain, since the rain bands might break up over the area where you live, but it's less reasonable to believe that.

Every time you drive over a bridge, do you only suspect that it won't crumble beneath your car? Do you only suspect that the sun will rise in the morning? 

Societies have guiding rules. This isn't something new. These are formula that have long ago been worked out.  I remember about a decade ago seeing a discussion of this at the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles County which preceded the publication of the book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel.  There are patterns which repeat.  There are factors which lead to certain responses.  Societies are predictable.

I've been warning my kids for over a decade that this is coming: that the ideology in the United States has become increasingly divided, a pattern I saw starting to emerge in the 80s.  I wasn't sure if my kids thought I was just nuts (my prediction of the fall of the Berlin Wall was a decade off, who knew it would happen that fast?), but as time passed, they took it more and more seriously. 

I don't know if this is the the end of our society as we know it. I suspect it is the beginning of the end.  And I know the end will come some day.  But we have all the ingredients for a collapse:  gross economic inequality, ideological division that has brought people to the streets, a plague, and a leadership that has sown discord in order to advance their own power.  We've been told that the "outsider" has endangered us: Mexicans stealing American jobs... the China virus... the Gay Agenda... it's all scapegoating on a grand scale, making enemies of people within and outside our society and using those enemies to galvanize a sense of community among a community, inflaming them to anger, stoking the fight or flight instinct until we have the kind of horrendous disaster we had on the 6th in Washington.

And I know that this violence is not over, and is likely only the small seeds of beginning. I know it because all the ingredients are still there, and it will take time to rectify.  In the mean while, the Bugaloo Bois are having their day.  We've lost four American lives to this already.  I am afraid to say we will likely lose more.  I am afraid to say that I also know, with honest Abe certainty, that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and we are living in such a house. 

That our divisions are also being stoked by the death around us in this pandemic, and the associated economic losses, and the constant fear Americans are under that they will lose everything, whether they believe in the reality of the pandemic, or their hopes that this is all somehow not happening, and instead scapegoats the opposition party as fabricating the crisis.

The issue here is even more complex because while the right responds with this level of anger and violence, the left sit stunned... deer in the headlights.  For many people, it seems that they could not conceive of this kind of massive organized insurrection in our nation.  Oddly, the shock comes from the same people who take to the streets (albeit more peacefully and meeting with more resistance) in the Occupy Movement, The Women's March, The Science March, and Black Lives Matter.  We all understand the power of the people rising up, but the difference is huge. 

The right looks at the past with rose colored glasses, whether it's 1776, 1861, or the 1950s.  They see what they consider a tradition and a way of life, a way of life that made (at least the white majority) comfortable.  There was more income equality (among whites) and everyone "knew their place" (which involved a lot of people being forcefully put in the places white men wanted them to occupy) This W.A.S.P. privilege, specifically W.A.S.P. male privilege, was, to them, a culture ordained by God and Country.  Today they see anyone wishing to gain the privilege they have in our society as somehow taking away their own.  That their standing is in society is based on what amounts to an American Caste System, one that irrevocably saves their space at the top of the order.

The left, on the other hand, looks at the future with rose colored glasses.  We truly believe that, as Martin Luther King Jr said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice". Too many, however, believe that it's not work to bend the arc of the moral universe, but the natural state of things. That humans are, at their core, good, and may hold some spark of divinity.  That human nature is altruistic, fair, and high-minded, and that those who do ill are likely victims of some sort themselves, mentally ill, and in need of compassion. 

We cannot take the rose colored glasses off the faces of the others, but we can remove our own.

We need to realize that what's happening in America is a long standing pattern, that homo sapiens are animals, and like other animals are guided not only by experience, but by instinct and fear.  That we are in a fight or flight situation, some of which is artificial and manufactured by greed... things like climate change, income inequality, and political scapegoating. Others are natural and unavoidable, like this pandemic and the loss of life and economic disorder related to that.  We need to accept that we cannot and should not step back into a world where one demographic's values, belief, and "racial purity" were held above others by systematic oppression.  At the same time, we need to recognize that people are not suddenly going to be accepting of all things and live in some sort of harmonious discord. 

We all have within us the bestial and the divine, to use religious language.  We on the left like to think that humans have a more natural bent toward the divine, and that we need to shine a light on that.  The right would not call themselves bestial, but are motivated by individual survival, that most base of instincts. It's something reflected in the concept of  "Rugged Individualism" and "The American Dream" which involves  the idea of clawing your way to the top... a misunderstanding of Darwinism, and the idea of "Survival of the Fittest". (Darwinistic "fitness" is defined by reproduction, not the ability to kill off competitors).

Once we recognize and can separate the illusions we cling to, we can know with more certainty. Once we can let go of our liberal desire to keep our rose colored glasses on, to believe that we are a nation united, that people are at the core "good", that the other side is just "blowing off steam" we can put aside the denial and shock and start taking action. 

Until then, we really aren't "woke".