Perpetual Doom
Reflecting on Crisis
Just this week, opponents of American intervention in Iran sounded every alarm they could find. Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon warned that our involvement would result in everything from American soldiers dead to the collapse of the Republic. A similar story is being told by numerous other voices across social media.
Over the weekend, critics of the parade for the Army’s 250 year anniversary likened the display to fascism, calling it “Soviet” and a demonstration of Trump’s dictatorial tendencies. One commentator even likened it to the symbol of the end of American hegemony.
Going back a bit, but also in the realm of foreign policy: commentators across the political spectrum have alluded that Russian aggression in Europe will surely lead to a continental war unseen since World War II, engulfing all of our allies.
It’s nothing new, but this highlights a depressing reality of political discourse. Society has zero idea how to have a political conversation without dramatic hyperbole and it's destroying our ability to describe real crises.
People nowadays vote with their social media engagement, both figuratively and increasingly literally. It is common knowledge that hard stances, dramatic framing, and bold language are the ingredients to good social media. Nuance, measured consideration are liability.
This has of course had a profound effect on our electoral politics. When every crisis is an overwhelming force, an earth shattering new paradigm, you’re not interested in the incremental. The enshittification of our discourse through outrage chambers on Twitter and Bluesky emphasize this. Incremental is boring. Incremental doesn’t save us from the proverbial asteroid.
And, yet, incrementalism is also the most powerful force, for both negative and positive outcomes. The destruction of society through toxic progressivism is incremental. The destruction of our discourse through social media is incremental. On the other hand, our life-changing technological development has been incremental. Even in our most fundamental school–personal finance in a capitalist system–praises incrementalism. It’s called compound interest.
More than likely, what kills or saves society will be incremental. Despite this fact, we continue to search frantically for a savior. We look to larger than life figures, magnetic charisma with big plans to save us. We look to Donald Trump and Barack Obama. To a lesser extent, we look to AOC and that new communist mayoral candidate in New York, and Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk. We hope that these Great Men will deliver us from the pressing forces of destruction, which few seem to be able to define coherently yet everyone agrees are present.
Perhaps our large-scale societal despondency, our national depression plays into this. We feel downtrodden and beaten so we need a savior. Every problem becomes The End of Us, and every solution must be St. Michael the Archangel. So Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon scream about American intervention, and the political left screams about the end of Democracy with every Trump post.
If we truly face our downfall, it will happen procedurally. If Democracy does indeed die in darkness, whatever that means, it won’t be a flip of the light switch, it will be a sunset and a twilight and a dusk before nightfall. And the opposite is true.