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amatyultareA post from early 2016, in the lead-up to the awful 2016 US presidential election. I'm no prophet, but this short essay does feel a little prophetic.
(Subtitled: Electing A Fascist Because It Will Show People How Bad Fascists Are Is Not Quite The Foolproof Plan You Seem To Think It Is)
I have been seeing, with increasing frequency, a wish that Trump will win the election so that “we hit rock bottom and things can get better”. Sometimes this is being suggested jokingly; other times…not.
What I find interesting is how this idea of hitting “rock bottom” (and, more importantly, a presumed immediate upswing) is ultimately tied to a sense of American Exceptionalism and U.S. culture’s love of an underdog story.
Note, I say underdog STORY because us U.S.ians don’t tend to like actual underdogs. We only like once-upon-a-time underdogs who have been affirmed as victors (if only moral victors) by history. We love, love, LOVE to imagine someone suffering nobly - and briefly - for their cause before achieving success. And that arc, from low point to inevitable victory, is part of the mythos of our country from beginning to end.
I can’t help but think that modern media, particularly Hollywood’s three-act structure, is also partly to blame. The major turning point of a Hollywood movie is from “character is at their lowest point” at the end of Act Two to “character triumphs over obstacles and wins the day” by Act Three. This can be done well, certainly! But when we see one kind of story again and again, we start to think that it’s how our own lives will go.
Alternate arcs that are less sexy but at least as realistic as the downfall->triumph storyline:
Does this ultimately fall under that ever-present error in thinking, the Just World fallacy? Yeah, probably. As a fairly privileged U.S.ian, I distinctly remember the moment in my childhood when I first discovered the existential terror of realizing that sometimes, things don’t work out well. Sometimes people suffer, and die in cruel and terrible circumstances, and there’s no last-minute rescue or happy ending. And that could happen to me, or someone I know! It’s an uncomfortable thought, but a necessary one, especially when we start wishing for the whole system to crash because ANYTHING would be an improvement.
I wish I knew a good way to say this to those folks who express a desire for U.S. politics to crash and burn. They’re imagining “hitting the lowest point” as working like a rubber ball hitting a concrete floor. But there’s at least an equal possibility that it will look more like a stone falling into a swamp. Sure, we’ll have stopped sinking - but we’ll be in a bad place, with no immediate prospects of getting someplace better.
(Note: Is it possible for a system to be so bad that it should be destroyed and remade? Of course! However, the people using crash-and-burn rhetoric today generally strike me as not having thought carefully about a) what qualifies as “so bad it’s better to burn it down and start from scratch” or b) whether the kind of “breaking” they propose/envision will facilitate the type of rebuilding they hope will result.)
(Subtitled: Electing A Fascist Because It Will Show People How Bad Fascists Are Is Not Quite The Foolproof Plan You Seem To Think It Is)
I have been seeing, with increasing frequency, a wish that Trump will win the election so that “we hit rock bottom and things can get better”. Sometimes this is being suggested jokingly; other times…not.
What I find interesting is how this idea of hitting “rock bottom” (and, more importantly, a presumed immediate upswing) is ultimately tied to a sense of American Exceptionalism and U.S. culture’s love of an underdog story.
Note, I say underdog STORY because us U.S.ians don’t tend to like actual underdogs. We only like once-upon-a-time underdogs who have been affirmed as victors (if only moral victors) by history. We love, love, LOVE to imagine someone suffering nobly - and briefly - for their cause before achieving success. And that arc, from low point to inevitable victory, is part of the mythos of our country from beginning to end.
I can’t help but think that modern media, particularly Hollywood’s three-act structure, is also partly to blame. The major turning point of a Hollywood movie is from “character is at their lowest point” at the end of Act Two to “character triumphs over obstacles and wins the day” by Act Three. This can be done well, certainly! But when we see one kind of story again and again, we start to think that it’s how our own lives will go.
Alternate arcs that are less sexy but at least as realistic as the downfall->triumph storyline:
- Messy, inconsistent, two-steps-forward-one-step-back style progress where we see incremental improvement over time
- A huge crash followed by a long period of things being really, really shitty
Does this ultimately fall under that ever-present error in thinking, the Just World fallacy? Yeah, probably. As a fairly privileged U.S.ian, I distinctly remember the moment in my childhood when I first discovered the existential terror of realizing that sometimes, things don’t work out well. Sometimes people suffer, and die in cruel and terrible circumstances, and there’s no last-minute rescue or happy ending. And that could happen to me, or someone I know! It’s an uncomfortable thought, but a necessary one, especially when we start wishing for the whole system to crash because ANYTHING would be an improvement.
I wish I knew a good way to say this to those folks who express a desire for U.S. politics to crash and burn. They’re imagining “hitting the lowest point” as working like a rubber ball hitting a concrete floor. But there’s at least an equal possibility that it will look more like a stone falling into a swamp. Sure, we’ll have stopped sinking - but we’ll be in a bad place, with no immediate prospects of getting someplace better.
(Note: Is it possible for a system to be so bad that it should be destroyed and remade? Of course! However, the people using crash-and-burn rhetoric today generally strike me as not having thought carefully about a) what qualifies as “so bad it’s better to burn it down and start from scratch” or b) whether the kind of “breaking” they propose/envision will facilitate the type of rebuilding they hope will result.)
