When I was a child, I played football (soccer). I don’t remember the coaches’ names, the team name, the field, or any of the players. I do remember getting bullied for our Raspberry jersey color, and getting cheated by a referee being related to the enemy team. I don’t recall a lot about boy scouts when I was young, but I do remember my father’s disappointment when I decided it wasn’t for me anymore. I, however, am a disabled veteran with significant memory issues and am a people pleaser. It wasn’t all doom and gloom; I remember a martial arts place in Florida with fondness. I remember several video games for their music or story elements and treasure them still today. However, sharing them – my martial arts or the games/music – was often problematic. I don’t think I realized it at the time, but the lesson I was learning seemed to be ‘if I can’t do it and enjoy it by myself, don’t bother.’
I had a knack for academics, and generally picked things up quickly. At some point in my insatiable thirst for knowledge and understanding of how people work, my questions started making people bristle with discomfort. I was asking the existential questions many young minds do with sharpness and brilliance. I was met with dismissal and rejection, anything but satisfying answers. I was living a dead-end life, working dead-end jobs, and had just departed a long-term but ultimately dead-end relationship. September 11th had just happened, and it didn’t feel right to me. Even as a young man, fresh out of high school, what was being presented to me couldn’t have been the whole story.
My life up until this point has seen plenty of ‘behind closed doors’ drama, different versions of the truth, being brushed off, or sacrificed for their agenda. Why would I think anything different now? This is the age wherein AM Talk Radio and Fox News have begun to radicalize a generation, and we wouldn’t understand what damage that would do for a while. The Tea Party was only the beginning, and while President Bush Jr. would gain temporary support from a wounded nation, the wake of destruction left behind is something from which we haven’t recovered. In fact, in some areas, it is still ongoing in the present tense today.
I left the country. I was able to leave behind the cultures of ‘F— you, I got mine’ as well as ‘You do it my way, or you’re wrong.’ The price I had to pay for that experience is something I still regret every minute of every day and was not all worth the price of admission. However, guilt shame and regret aside, I come back to my ‘home’ country to find it scarcely recognizable. Growing up, I thought we had disagreements, but we could at least agree to follow the processes and work out a compromise. We would follow the rules in place and work towards the common interest that we were all on the same team. I was wrong, and it was only about to get worse.
The Talk Radio Hosts and Fox News have now been joined by an army of social media trolls and bad faith actors. Foreign operatives, special interest groups (religious groups, corporate groups, etc.), and people who haven’t the slightest idea what they’re actually saying find an out-of-context quote or soundbite and forward it on because it fits their narrative. Akin to many religions, the conclusion comes first and whatever cherry-picked ‘evidence’ that supports it is shared and appreciated, whereas whatever does not support it is rejected and denied.
The polarization gets worse, with the radicalization of one side become extreme to the point of dangerous. Mitch McConnell, who openly celebrates shutting down the senate and sabotaging an entire branch of government, is hailed as a hero in select circles, contrary to the health of the country at large. The Senators who support him mostly get to fly under the radar quietly and get away with insider trading abuses. They refuse to vote on most any bills coming their way out of some party line principle and get to pass the buck as if they are powerless in this situation, a patently false idea.
Finally, the radicalization that started after Nixon’s impeachment and continued through Gingrich and took off with the Talk Radio Hosts and Fox News reached a fever pitch with Trump’s entire history. The election cycle, the lies, the impeachment, the crimes, the family, the handling of COVID-19, and more. Every day it is something new, and it will take years to unpack. We have reached a point wherein a vocal minority of the country is so embedded in the trump team identity; they refuse to be wrong. If they admit Trump is wrong, then they are wrong. If they are wrong about this, where else do they need to examine? The shame isn’t just that we are in this position, but how we got here.
For decades, the people who tend to be the most likely to wrap their identity in team trump, are the ones who also vote for the people who are cutting school budgets. They also tend to vote for those cutting social services, infrastructure, human rights, and the foundations of what makes a modern society great for the overwhelming majority of us. While they are hurting themselves, they look at their “enemies” and try to take solace that they are being wounded too. Instead of understanding, we could be lifting ourselves up together; they would instead harm everyone and accept themselves as collateral damage.
Poll after poll and study after study shows if you remove the name of a policy and the party name of the originator, most people tend to want progress. The labels people put on things has somehow become more important in the minds of many than the actual substance of what’s underneath the label itself. When I was young, I had learned all about independence and self-reliance, but through unfortunate examples. I learned early about tribalism and dismissal for asking the wrong questions or trying to learn the wrong things. However, I experienced other groups and cultures. I found people willing to hear and be heard, change, and be changed. I found what I suspected all along; we can’t do this on our own.
We evolved as social creatures. We’re happiest with other people; we’re at our best with other people. Some of us enjoy large groups, while others enjoy individuals or smaller numbers of people social contact is important. I don’t understand the fear that leads someone, let alone a healthy chunk of a generation, to become radicalized to the point wherein someone like a trump would not only be elected but protected. If most of us had someone in our lives that behaved as he does, we wouldn’t tolerate it let alone celebrate it. We wouldn’t segregate ourselves based on that person and create an alternate reality just for that person. Unfortunately, that’s where we live. I still feel like I’m in the cultures of ‘F— you, I got mine’ as well as ‘You do it my way, or you’re wrong,’ but the people who believe in them the most understand they’re unpopular and they’re trying to rig the system as hard as they can.
They don’t represent the will of the people in national elections. They don’t represent the majority in senate votes (how sad is that), it’s only through archaic systems set up by slaveowners and was widely respected through ‘tradition’ why we are having these conversations. When certain groups realized they just could do whatever they wanted as the will of the people doesn’t matter so much anymore? We live in troubled times.
How does one tackle radicalization? How does one decouple the identity from living vicariously through something else (religion, cult of personality, etc.) It’s not easy, for sure. The first step in any problem is to identify the problem. Let’s be open about poverty in America, for starters. We can continue to talk about fair taxation on the wealthy and the corporate, but let’s have a honest discussion about poverty in the heartland. Let’s discuss the 3rd world conditions Americans face in parts of the country. Let’s not just bury the report and pretend it doesn’t happen. People voted team trump because they wanted change, and we got change alright, just not necessarily the change we wanted.
Whether we want to admit it, The United States of America is never going back to the way it was. Between the Bush Jr and Trump Presidencies (the McConnell senate too), COVID-19 and social isolation, Russian Interference on Facebook and Twitter, Anti-Vaxxers and Flat-Earthers, The Prosperity Gospel Megachurches, life just isn’t ever going to be the same. More automation is coming too, so logistics and service industries get ready for that.
Every day is a new opportunity. A crisis is rarely fortunate; it wouldn’t be a crisis otherwise. However, a crisis does provide us a chance to implement drastic, and often needed, change rather than the gradual slow changes with which people tend to be comfortable. We are already making changes due to the crisis itself, let us make all the adjustments now, and deal with it. For over a decade, I’ve been pushing for a ‘New Deal’ for the 21st century. What better time than a global pandemic to take a good look at it? Businesses are closed due to quarantine, and many are starting to ask for bailouts. The bailout requests are irritating to many everyday citizens, and they should be. Where are the everyday citizen bailouts?
We can tackle radicalization, teach that we’re all in this together, and provide everyday citizen bailouts all at once. We can make some modernizing sweeping systemic changes now. We can honestly discuss American poverty, education, health care, internet access, infrastructure, energy, and more. When this quarantine is lifted, if we just let those with money buy up all the assets on the cheap as the markets soar back to where they were before, and nothing changes, this will be a terrible opportunity lost. If there is no accountability, no answers, if we just get dismissed for asking the ‘wrong questions’ like Trump at a press conference, or me throughout my life?
I know where my hopes lie, but I also know what I think is more likely to happen.
Monk Anchorwind | 21 March 2020