I don’t actually trust, The United States in particular, but humanity broadly, to protect what got us this far. Few things highlight this distrust more than the Surrounded “debates” where online flame-wars get personal representatives. If Crossfire signaled a precipitous decline in how we conceived of meaningfully disagreeing, Surrounded seems to have found extra gasoline for the fire.
Let’s start broad, and try to grasp what it means to “share reality.” This is an ongoing foundational fight where we invoke the consequences of information silos from the internet, the language of academics versus “real America,” and where you exist on a dispositional spectrum from staunchly authoritarian conservative to adventurous brain-fell-out level of open-minded liberal. In a world that flirted with making sense, you could make the reasonable argument for both types working in concert in their respective lanes. But that no longer exists.
Surrounded presumes the same folly of the rest of our conversational landscape. It presupposes that everything can or should just “simply be debated.” It presumes a degree of good faith, capacity, and understanding. If 30 seconds into an hour-long series of increasingly incoherent exchanges you’re already dialed up to 11 and “I know you are, but what am I” or “Why won’t you answer the question?!” You’ve chipped that much more away from establishing a shared broader reality that isn’t the endless errant bickering and self-destruction.
I don’t trust us to protect what’s important because I’ve been in social work and regularly watch people commit self-righteous suicidal acts. Your body can absolutely become dependent on a substance, but I promise you what unites all addicts has nothing to do with their drug of choice. People who huff Trump are doing the exact same thing as those who downplay their meth use. Incidentally, so are the people who refuse to parse the word “genocide.” So are the people who refuse to act morally without consignment from their sky-daddy. So are the people who use smarmy pride to indefinitely avoid. If you read this last paragraph and felt yourself uncontrollably react…guess what.
When you kill your capacity to choose, opting instead to obfuscate, scapegoat, destroy, or ignore, first you kill yourself, then you kill the rest of us. This simple recipe can be enjoyed thousands of times a day. Every inflammatory picture that whizzes past your eyes. Every disconcerting interaction with someone not on your level. Every detail of the story about your victimization. You will have a permanent shit-eating grin massaged into your face, a dumbfounded brow, and a tone dripping in ravenous excuses.
Every high-minded concept like “democracy” and “rights” will be perpetually humbled by the human animal. It’s why your sky-daddies magically conform to the norms of a given era. Ramy Yousef gets to say in a stand-up special he doesn’t care if you’re a Jew…today. Jesus gets turned into a white guy. We’re gonna always default. I think those of us who can stay aware of this should find a kind of reassurance and simply build it into our models for trying to survive, if that in fact remains the goal.
Do I need democracy and rights if I can meet my needs other ways? This is at the heart of every rich person’s attitude and calculus when they’re co-opting a “populous” message. Bear in mind, you’re as “rich” as you are imaginative about your options. Can you make it to Colorado to have an abortion? Most people I know, sure. So, how important is bodily autonomy really? Do I live in a flood prone area? No? So, do I give a fuck if Florida drowns?
People are reluctant to say these kinds of calculations out loud, but again, they’re making them 1000 times a day, landing, roughly, and what they feel in any given moment. In a population that’s perpetually aggrieved, feeling victimized, angry, and proud of how stupid they are, you’re always going to land somewhere close to “Fuck them, I got mine.” What you have, more than anything, is a personal narrative of how correct and righteous you are. The hostility you’d adopt against that analysis? Perfect hostility, absolutely required. The only thing more perfect was Trump’s phone call looking for votes.
We genuinely have lost the distinction between what makes a plane fly and what gets your heart racing. I don’t think a species incapable of separating those two things will survive. I just don’t. I don’t think it is foundationally trustworthy, anymore than I trust my animals to stay out of the trash.
Our ship sailed when we lost the distinction between “expert” and “I saw it on facebook.” We jumped right over the cliff when we ignored the power brokers for the narratives they literally served us. We dug an inescapable hole when we refused to defend even basics of civility, accountability, and common sense. The game has been over for so, so long. I can’t count the amount of posts bragging that they voted for the first time this cycle after such and such pretend-reason.
I hate to say it, but I’m feeling more or less content to let it die. We’re built on a skewed-enough narrative about what America really stands for, and we’ve only invited an infinite sea of incoherence to continue bathing in. It’s just reaction against reaction against reaction against reaction until it all falls down. We don’t believe in anything. Those who do believe in something do so on no evidence besides feels and vibes. They feel like they want the power. They feel correct. They feel justified. Back and forth.
You’re not thinking. You’re not even trying to think. You’re not on a team or part of a coalition. You can’t name the game. You do not, fundamentally, at all accept the nature of life and death. It’s all a series of personally gratifying abstract concepts that fuel your self-conception. You do not actually give a fuck about anything else but you. That’s why Trump is your president. You will not, under any circumstance, concede and sacrifice what you must to wield the kind of power that de-fangs excuse-ridden authoritarian behavior. Now, again, you get to experience how it makes you pay.
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