Returning to the United States has been an experiment in reverse culture shock. We are all being forced through the ringer; I know it is not just myself that is feeling the painful spasms of a conglomerate of seemingly apocalyptic issues: COVID-19, the most contagious virus to appear in recent history and develop into a sweeping global pandemic, natural disasters, and political and social unrest on an international scale just to name a few of those issues. It is merely the zeitgeist, or ghost/spirit, of our generation. Every generation has theirs, right?
So why does this feel so different to many of us?
As a teacher of English and Social Studies, I’ve been spending time explaining history to my students. With the discussion of history comes that of change, cause and effect, how the past and the present interact and shape each other. When you study history, you begin to realize that we are simply experiencing the effects of a long stretch of decisions and actions which have been broadly problematic in terms of the overarching balance of things. There are many factors to consider when asking ourselves why we are experiencing what we are experiencing, and not a single one of them is an anomaly. They are all tied to some thread of past events.
Recently, I’ve taken to unpacking and analyzing things for fun. Maybe it’s a sign that I really do need to return to academia, writing papers, and reading texts to further my own educational pursuits. But even without the impetus of a grade hanging over my head, I find myself drawn to these questions. Why are we so screwed? How can I help?
We need to all ask ourselves these questions in this day and age. If we want to prevent the tragedies of the past, the only solution is to learn from the mistakes others were too blind to see.
So here we are, filled with information. Everything we want to know is a google search away. A click and a wall of text. Information from billions of sources. And we ask ourselves, which source is true? Is there a True Source? (unintentional wheel of time reference, any nerds pick that up?) And if there is, is it trustworthy? Sound paradoxical? How do we define truth in this era when the truth we are handed is often far removed from the concrete events that took place?
I know, I’m getting in too deep. This is supposed to be about our US election season, a true mass of unadulterated cringe, but I can’t get past all of the muck that contributes to why this election season is unprecedented in its sheer nihilist grime.
But more than any one election, it is about our collective subconscious. Are we finally waking up? Or are most of us just “fake woke”? We can all proudly point out that truth as we interpret it, like many things, is a social construct. There are realities and the different ways in which we experience them. These days many will agree that most things are overwritten and constructed by our social context. And then there are traditionalists (“boomers” as they are colloquially called) both young and old that say, well, black is black, white is white, up is down, etc. Truisms define truth, and by questioning everything, we are believing in nothing. Dogma, basically. Doctrine. Security. Simple, clear-cut “truth.”
All while screaming about “fake news” and showing more levels of cynicism than I have seen even the most angsty young person display these days. Yes, I would even say that we young people are anxiously optimistic compared to the hardliners who cling to their constructed idealizations of “truth”-the truth handed down by the few to the many, “divine truth” if you will. Paradoxically, we, the younger generations, are set up as the brainwashed and the blind. And yet, we are the most educated generation in HISTORY. We are far from the stupid, over-sensitive idiots the older generations (some members, not all) make us out to be simply because we disagree with them so boldly.
Going back to our unprecedented instantaneous access to gold mines worth of information, most of us are aware that the truth that we are reading is subjective. Everything we are exposed to is subjective in that it is interpreting hard facts in unique ways, some more relevant than others. This is the first time in history where any common Schmoe can post and project their subjective experience into the ether. And people will actually listen. Read. Reblog. Repost. Follow. Repeat. And the echo chamber is formed.
Many point to this when they talk about how things have “gone to shit” – spoiler, but they haven’t. As I mentioned when discussing current events and history, the past plays a direct role in shaping our present, and disinformation is the exact reason we are where we are. People cling to myths that have been created and spread over decades and centuries, myths that validate and explain their very existence. “Going to shit” is relatively a reactive understanding of the fact that we are now exposed to more shit.
This is also why we have generational gaps. Each generation is liable to cling to their own myths and memes which were indoctrinated into them as children and young adults and fully cemented by the time their brains matured. There is a reason most conservatives are older people, even older people that were once more open-minded, and it’s not because time = wisdom = be conservative and distrust everyone and everything to protect your interests. But looking back at the last century of American history – of post-colonial history – you can see where certain myths were manufactured and distributed and regurgitated to a point that made these subconscious concepts come alive and hold the title of Truth in the minds of many.
Many, I might add, privileged individuals who are not aware of how they benefit and are contained by the complacency of this system.
I’ll elaborate on my own experiences to clarify what sort of privileges I mean, because they may not be the privileges you are expecting. Often the illusion of privilege is more compelling than the privilege itself. Hence why our individualist society has so many divisive characteristics that have affected our ability to make decisions intended to benefit the masses.
On a personal level, many members of my family have serious blindspots. They don’t even acknowledge their own biases. This has led to a sort of broken telephone, to such a point that what I express as my own opinion formed on the basis of facts, research, and critical thinking skills holds zero validity in their “wizened” minds.
I have been uprooted, several times over, this year. It is part of why I haven’t been writing. It’s part of why I feel at times like the illusion of control I cling to really is just that – an illusion.
A month ago, we were coping as a community with the aftermath of a devastating category 4 hurricane. Hurricane Laura brought high strength winds that had the power to carry entire houses away, uproot 30 year old trees in their prime, and leave an entire urban area in shambles. A month later, we still haven’t recovered. Everywhere you look, you see trees and debris and sometimes entire roofs sitting on the side of the road, waiting to eventually be carried away. There just isn’t a place for so much destruction. Mother Nature will always win against our loftiest creations. My power went out today, and there is not a cloud in the sky. My parents had no running water and still have no internet access. Simply put, these are things that contradict our dogmatic trust in “Modern Conveniences” which have become essential to all of our lives.
During this period of displacement, I stayed with some members of my dad’s side of the family. Full disclosure: My dad comes from a racist community in a part of Southwest Louisiana which has struggled to integrate. The only time a white person from these sorts of communities is content with coexisting with a person of a different color of skin (particularly of African origin) is when that person is kept in a state of docile servitude. They can sit at the table, as long as they are willing to keep their mouths shut and avoid acknowledging the white elephant in the room.
I’ve been paying attention to these types of people, even as I feel turned off by the things they say, trying to understand where this absurd prejudice comes from. For most of my life, it has only made me angry and filled me with a sense of hopelessness. Hopelessness because so much in our communities is still so broken. Hopelessness because many do not realize they are involved in this post-colonial racist system which is rigged to maintain a sense of superiority among even the poor lower class white folks. But how can they live with themselves? Believing that their neighbor is a “good person” and that makes them less of their skin color? Demonizing an entire group of people?
Fear. I realized fear of losing power was at the center. My dad’s family was not by any means well off. My grandfather was discriminated against for speaking French and being raised in a Cajun household. Mainstream WASP America was not a fan of the Cajuns, until movements began to be made to embrace multicultural identities in this country. But that was slow going. The racial tensions of a working class dichotomy still exist today: the white European side that has been promised social ascendance if they “work hard” and being told that black Africans of the same social class cannot be on the same level as them because they are inherently “lazy” or “ignorant” or “dangerous.” Stereotypes become social codes or behaviors that are warped to fit this narrative, creating a strawman caricature of a default persona set into these peoples’ minds from childhood, easily reinforced by anything perceived as confirming the stereotype.
So prejudice is reinforced by a governmental system, education, small town community paradigms and biases, segregation… Systemic Racism. But in the minds of the racist, there exist exceptions to their rigidly established rules and world view, and because they acknowledge those exceptions they aren’t “really” racist.
The family I stayed with has ascended, on one side, socially. They have a coveted position in a country club gated community with every sort of amenity a person could dream of. Their gated community has a sense of surreal utopia. And outside of this utopia exists the social dilemmas, the unrest, the violence that needs to be policed, the crime they rarely experience firsthand but have been trained to hate and fear.
The threat to their own existence in privileged euphoria.
Then you have a man, a demagogue, a puppet – call him whatever you want – who only thinks of his own power and position. Well, not only his. He also appeals to the selfishness of his followers. In this household, I heard the term “Silent Majority” when talking about these one-percenters ad nauseum. I learned what the term really meant: the MINORITY of people who have access to the MAJORITY of our society’s wealth and production. The ones that sit atop an economic pyramid scheme if you will, one in which they are too far ahead to ever really fall.
Unless there’s an uprising. Unless Trump loses.
That’s what they say.
If Biden wins…we’ll become like Venezuela. We’ll become socialist. Communist! The BLM and Antifa will take over.
These are the words they repeat to themselves, again and again.
I was in this home in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods I have ever seen, in some sort of Stepford reality, and all they could think of from their ivory towers is how they will be doomed if Trump doesn’t win.
Then the comments of how they will not settle for him to lose. Remember, we are talking about the “Silent Majority” – the privileged few with more than the normal amount of access to the Earth’s resources. The same people that boast that they will never want for anything, that they will never struggle again because they struggled enough to get where they are – and that means no one else in their family tree should be forced to struggle either.
These people look to the military with hope that they will back Trump if he loses the election. They refuse to say “loses” – if the election is “stolen from us” is what they say. They identify whole-heartedly with anything and everything he says and ignore anything stupid or wrong he might have said or done. He can do no wrong, to them.
He has become a Divine Leader in the eyes of his followers.
But not only in the eyes of the most privileged. In the eyes of the poor white people I mentioned before that cling to beliefs of superiority and fear their African American neighbors. In the eyes of the NeoNazis and fascists who would do anything to take up arms and shoot all of the people that don’t belong in “Their America.” To the religious fanatics who are appalled by a woman’s choice to abort, who stake all of their political actions on the upholding of “Family Values.” In the eyes of the delusional who idealize him. The shrewd business owners who dream of being him. The old money that haven’t had to worry about their position for too long yet spent so much time hating everything the Democrats or any protestor might say or do.
Yes, there is a radical population that will applaud when Trump announces himself president for another 8 years – as he has said numerous times that he will do with that same greasy confidence, that bravado that makes any sane person wonder if he is perhaps joking or really does believe in his own exceptionalism.
And that same population no longer believes in the legitimacy of our democratic process. They don’t question the resounding mistakes that have been made, the cover-ups and rigged elections, the gerrymandering and voter manipulation, the fact that the one with the most money is almost always destined to win, that we haven’t had a presidential candidate from any party other than the Donkey and the Elephant for well over a century (if ever*). I could spend some time unpacking history, but instead, I will leave some sources down below.
And while these precedents exist, up until now, no president has tried to convince his followers to rise up and overturn due process in his favor. The illusion of democracy – for what it’s worth – has existed, with some stability in this country for centuries.
Not so in other countries. We would do well to learn from the mistakes of others who know of corruption and have been aware that votes were bought and sold and that political legitimacy is often times more of a construct in itself than a reality.
But what does it mean? It means we have a recipe for revolution. Fascism. Left vs. Right. And as always, the Right has an economic advantage, and the “left” – a catchall for anyone that is not okay with being systematically oppressed or seeing others mistreated – is popularly displayed as guerrillas, as rabble, as lawless animals.
In this day and age, can we honestly sit back and accept this? How will we respond, once the votes are counted and our fate is sealed? Does our response matter?
I think it does. Today, although Mother Nature still wins, we have the technology that allows for simultaneous connection all over the world. We need only have the sharpness of critical thought to explore and deconstruct history in order to find the patterns which point to what is happening in the world right now. More than ever, we can hear BOTH sides of the story.
And yet, what those supporting Trump fervently want is for us to question everything. Question the news. Fakenews. Question the election. Watch the polls. It is deeply ironic how they almost, almost get it. That we have been fed lies is undeniable. That we should question things is important. But there is not a conspiracy that has single-handedly destroyed the evidence which points to the facts. There IS more than one truth, but it’s rarely the truth you expect or have been taught to accept.
So let’s not hate for the sake of hate. We have got to become sharper, more critical, more flexible than ever before if we are going to survive these trying times. Look to the same or similar struggles happening around the globe, and the picture becomes clearer. Unity is what we need. Division is what those like Trump want, benefit from, and espouse.
Let’s get out and vote. Let’s not go quiet into this night (nothing good about it). Let’s not go down without a fight.
Let’s not let our Dreams of Democracy (or, more broadly, true Liberty) get drowned out by their thunderous applause.
Historical sources and thingz:
https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/presidential-elections-1
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/partisanship-in-perspective
Diario de una Aventurera 