Happy New Year…?
Thanks for your patience, friends.
I’ve been trying to get a handle on everything. I’m guessing you have been too.
Our new normal — always grasping for a handhold, always reaching out for footing.
What’s next?
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to find the trend lines that were racing upwards in 2020 wouldn’t magically reset at the beginning of 2021.
Nonetheless, our normalcy bias and deep longing for the status quo exert an inexorable pull.
Most years, we associate the New Year with a fresh start, a blank slate, a hopeful, forward-looking rounding of the corner.
This is always socially constructed, of course, reified with holiday and ritual. But the calendar’s turn feels cruel amid overlapping crises, like a promise unfulfilled.
It feels as though we’ve been robbed of respite.
Longing for the New that we’re accustomed to welcoming each year, there’s something horribly jarring about the uninvited Sameness this time around.
The grim, exhausting continuity.
The crises haven’t stopped.
Indeed, there’s no quick escape from large crises, once set in motion. And we’ve no shortage of overlapping crises to wrestle with and overcome.
Inverting this, we can perhaps recognize that this New Year DOES offer unprecedented opportunity, promise, and hope, after all.
Some months ago, I wrote:
“for all the uncertainty and hardship ahead, we have the historic privilege of fighting for a future worth leaving to our grandchildren. We get to decide what we’ll be remembered for. What a moment to be alive.”
The monstrous scale of our crises can only be matched by the magnificence of our ambition to solve them.
The scale of our tremendous opportunity is proportional to that of our terrible risk.
To overcome our shared challenges, we must purge the toxic, maladaptive rot from our systems — social, cultural, political, economic. We can only replace these broken, unsustainable pieces with something that serves us all better.
Nothing else will do.
And charting these uncertain waters will require all of us, at our best, pulling together to get through the Long Emergency.
Last year, I hope, was a wake-up call. This year, we must stand up and take collective action.
We’ve also got to acknowledge the feelings along the way.
I hope you’ll indulge some of mine and share some solace in my sifting through them.
I tweeted that in August.
Although I anticipated post-electoral violence, watching the events of the last week or so has still felt like a lurching, wrenching shift beneath my feet.
Like the world going through a phase change, catalyzed by the violent energy of long-festering fascism, shifting us into a new, disorienting state of uncertainty and danger.
All the while, Ontario, where I live, has continued its predictable, infuriating stumble up the COVID curve, spurred by a long, enduring commitment to half-baked half-measures, while new variants threaten the New Year with newly dangerous transmission.
Many leaders are failing us.
Beneath the numbness, I am angry. I am frustrated and I am scared — a black lump of fear that feeds my anger like coal.
Or, I imagine, the anger is a rough, thin blanket, patching over the icy dread.
Perhaps you too feel a sense of whiplash from how much the world has changed, in the last week, the last year, the last 4 years. How rapidly things have shifted and destabilized.
“What reality is this?”, a YouTube propagandist asks amid a “40-minute continuous shot that moves from the breach on the western staircase of the Capitol to the shooting of one of the rioters.” (Ackerman, NYT).
“What is this? What is life?”
Years ago I studied El Señor Presidente, by Miguel Angel Asturias, a Nobel-prize winning Guatemalan author and diplomat. The 1946 novel is a classic in the “Dictator Novel” genre and a pioneering work of Magic Realism.
It’s a helpful guide for bewildering times.
One of Asturias’ key insights was that the crisis of autocracy obliterates our previous sense of reality, leaving us in a confusing dream-like state.
Magic Realism, as a literary device, helped to capture the same unreality we’re now all floating through, grasping imprecisely with words and concepts from the Time Before.
Have you tried counting in a dream?
Have you tried working in a dream?
Is this real life?
Are our systems truly so vulnerable to shock and disruption, degradation and collapse?
My partner rightly points out that what feels like a disorientingly precipitous burst of grotesquely florid instability has deep roots in the neglected parts of our collective garden.
This didn’t happen overnight. We just weren’t paying enough attention.
There’s that normalcy bias again. We tend to underestimate risk.
The thing about complex systems is that their states endure until — suddenly — they don’t.
Seemingly small actions and peripheral trends can have disproportionate consequences.
Change is often non-linear.
Perhaps we note some persistent trouble, like the steady lap of waves at the base of a sandy cliff, but the crisis itself arrives with a sudden gut-drop as the cliff face shears away.
Then, no putting it back together. Entropy is a bastard. Ask Humpty Dumpty.
We’re living through a terrible, fraught moment. It feels like a tenuous, dread-filled perch atop a shrouded precipice, waiting for the next lurch beneath our feet.
The surest way to imbue this moment with sense and purpose and value is to dedicate ourselves studiously to the lifelong, societal lessons it offers, and to attend urgently to the erosion that will otherwise undermine and overwhelm.
We must heed these lessons now if we are to continue our march across the generations; if we are to bequeath a legacy that transcends the horrors of the past and finds more stable footing than the present.
The scope of our risk:
We are on a grossly unsustainable path. What is unsustainable cannot and therefore will not be sustained. Our systems will not survive current stresses.
The scope of our opportunity:
Though our current path will not be sustained, it is up to us to choose the path we take instead.
We get to build a deeply resilient, regenerative economy that reverently foregrounds our profound interdependence with each other and with all of the planet’s living and non-living systems — with all our relations.
It’s the only way we’ll survive.
We simply must get serious about reciprocity and deep resilience.
If we do not define ourselves by reciprocity and resilience, embedding sustainability deeply into our culture, economy, political institutions, and so on, we will be defined instead by compounding, escalating crises from which we are ultimately unable to recover.
We cannot be complacent in the face of ‘gradual’ erosion from our unsustainable trends; the shift, the crisis, or the collapse comes too suddenly.
Non-linearity, remember?
It’s tough to catch that moment before the cliff falls away. Tough to pull back just in time.
Too many neglected the corrosive effects of white supremacy, conspiracy theories, and religious extremism on US politics. Now, the GOP’s facade has fallen away.
It has become an irredeemably anti-democratic party, unmoored from reality, unfit to rule, and unbelievably dangerous.
GOP leaders who thought they could “ride the tiger”, fomenting the delusions and grievances of their base in order to maintain minority rule, have found — oopsie — the revolution always eats its own.
Wealthy donors and businesses who, over decades of bankrolling anti-government politicians, perhaps thought this was all just a manageable sideshow to lower taxes and less regulation have suddenly found — oopsie — they were actually undermining the stability of democracy the whole time.
Our leaders are ignoring systemic risks all over the place.
COVID-19 is just the latest in an increasing series of novel disease outbreaks, following decades of warnings by experts that biodiversity loss, industrial animal factories, and anti-microbial resistance are loading the dice.
People have warned about poverty, racism, and poor social safety nets for years. But their systemic risk has become all the more obvious during the pandemic, as our long failure to sufficiently protect and provide for the most vulnerable has made our collective suffering immeasurably worse.
We are caught off guard because we have neglected our complex interdependence.
Poverty isn’t an “over there” crisis. Biodiversity loss isn’t a “some day” problem. Basic social welfare isn’t a “nice to have.”
Q-Anon isn’t just a “wacky fringe” of the GOP.
Complex systems are more than the sum of their parts. So these problems overlap and interact, amplifying each other, revealing emergent properties and producing unpredictable shocks.
The storming of the Capitol was set in motion not just by Trump and his immediate enablers. It was a culminating point at the intersection of long-converging trends.
It will not be the last.
But if we learn from this moment, if we take seriously the lessons of complexity and interdependence, we can begin to chart a new path.
A resilient, regenerative, sustainable path.
It will not be easy. But it is the only real choice open to us. And we should be excited to chart it together.
Below, I’ll share some of the things I’ve been reading that help shed light on where we are.
But first, take a quick break for a Kermit the Frog Sea Shanty! Honestly, I’m probably going to have to get on Snapchat / TikTok after this.
Singing together is one of the oldest, strongest forms of healing we have.
ShantyTok truly is “the viral escape 2021 deserves, not least because sea shanties were “sung by sailors and other seafaring labourers to help them synchronize movements.”
Our task now, like seafarers of old, is exactly that — to pull together. All hands on deck, keeping each other’s spirits up as we push through the storm as one, to smoother seas and clearer skies over the horizon.
Soon may the Wellerman come, my friends.
Here’s what I’ve been reading:
“Hitting Net Zero is Not Enough” — Emily Pontecorvo, Mother Jones
“Climate restoration, as Futerman defines it, has three components: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, actively removing carbon from the atmosphere to offset any remaining emissions, and then continuing to draw it down, so that the concentration in the atmosphere begins to decline, “restoring” an earlier version of the climate.”
“These Trees Are Not What They Seem” — Ben Elgin, Bloomberg Green
““For the credits to be real, the payment needs to induce the environmental benefit,” says Danny Cullenward, a lecturer at Stanford and policy director at CarbonPlan, a nonprofit that analyzes climate solutions. If the Conservancy is enrolling landowners who had no intention of cutting their trees, he adds, “they’re engaged in the business of creating fake carbon offsets.””
“‘Carbon-Neutrality is a Fairy-Tale’: How the Race for Renewables is Burning Europe’s Forests”
“A flaw in the legislation meant that woody biomass was fully categorised as renewable, even if it came not just from wood residues or waste, but from whole trees. This meant that companies could directly harvest forests for pellets – rather than making pellets from the by-products of timber cut for other uses – in the name of sustainable forest management.”
“The Impact of Conspiracy Theories and How to Counter Them: Reviewing the Literature on Conspiracy Theories and Radicalization to Violence” — Amarnath Amarasingam, in Jihadist Terror: New Threats, New Responses
“Researchers who interview neo-Nazis and jihadists and swim deeply in their propaganda output have inevitably noticed that there exists a strong and steady stream of conspiratorial thinking that animates much of their worldview.”
“The Case for Disbarring Rudy Giuliani, Other Trump Lawyers—And Even Some Lawmakers” — Maggie Jo Buchanan, Fortune
“Disbarment of dishonorable attorneys is far from the only type of accountability needed in the wake of the Capitol assault. But the legal profession must demonstrate its commitment to its own ethical standards by rejecting those who have advanced the President’s attempt to overthrow American democracy.”
“The Coming Avocado Politics: What Happens When the Ethno-Nationalist Right Gets Serious about the Climate Emergency” — Nils Gilman, Breakthrough Institute
“Right-wing environmentalism and climate alarmism are coming, and as they do, the political battle lines over the environment are going to look very different from the ones we have experienced during the past few decades. No longer will the primary battle be between conservative climate change deniers or skeptics, on the one hand, and liberal climate realists on the other. Instead, the primary fight will be between those who treat the reality of climate change as an imperative for creating a more inclusive and egalitarian world, and those who see it as a justification for exclusion and hoarding, retreating into ever-smaller circles of empathy.”
“The Antler Guy Isn’t a Climate Activist. He’s an Eco-Fascist” — Emily Atkin, Heated
“Indeed, there’s a well-documented connection between white supremacists and green living; specifically, the “yearning for purity in the environmental sphere and a desire for racialized purity in the social sphere.””
“Far-Right Extremists Around the World Are Drawing Inspiration From the Insurrection on Capitol Hill” — Christopher Miller, Buzzfeed News
“Jason Blazakis, a senior Research Fellow at the Soufan Center, told BuzzFeed News that some coordination between overseas far-right extremists and US-based extremists has long existed. But after last week’s insurrection, “those connections may harden because of what is perceived to be a success for the far right,” he said.”
“Learning From the Failure of Reconstruction” — Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker
“It was not a fly-by-night operation. It was not a misguided group who got a little out of hand or something like that. It was really an attempt to completely subvert the democratic process by violence. And I think that the lesson, if we want to get a lesson out of it, is the fragility of democratic culture.”
“The Capitol Hill Mob Wanted to Intimidate Congress. It’s Working.” — Zack Beauchamp, VOX
“According to Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), this is a major reason why more House Republicans aren’t voting to impeach Donald Trump in the wake of the attack on the Capitol.
“The majority of them are paralyzed with fear,” Crow said in a Wednesday MSNBC appearance. “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears — saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment.””
“The Historical Roots of the Security Failure at the Capitol” — Lauren Pearlman, Washington Post
“The federal government chose not to use the tools at its disposal to limit the work of White extremists, in part because the tools were never designed to be used against them.”
“Republicans Must Unambiguously Admit That Trump’s Lies Threaten More Violence” — Greg Sargent, Washington Post
“Republican calls for “unity” are conditional: Unity can only be premised on a blanket agreement not to acknowledge the truth about who and what are actually to blame for violently tearing the country in half. Until Republicans tell the truth about all of this, their professed hopes for unity are empty nonsense, to be treated with derisive contempt.”
“In Wake of Capitol Riot, GOP Legislatures ‘Rebrand’ Old Anti-BLM Protest Laws” — Alleen Brown, Amelia Lacy, The Intercept
“The bill is raising concerns among rights activists. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida strongly criticized DeSantis’s proposals and the current bill, condemning the governor for trying to “rebrand” his crackdown on protests against police brutality as concern for what transpired at the Capitol last week.”
“You Can’t Fight Fascism by Expanding the Police State” — Evan Greer, Fast Company
“The storming of the Capitol was organized in plain sight. It was egged on by the sitting U.S. president and several members of Congress. No amount of additional surveillance could have prevented it. It was not lack of intel that led to this massive security breach—it was a systemic cultural and political unwillingness to take the threat of white supremacist violence seriously.”
“Wednesday’s Capitol Hill Riot Was Even More Violent Than It First Appeared” — Brian Stelter, CNN Business
“On Wednesday we witnessed history through a handful of soda straws, to borrow a metaphor from the 2003 Iraq invasion. Journalists bravely covered the riot in real time and deserve enormous credit for doing so. But in the fog of chaos, it was impossible to see the full picture as it was happening.”
“The American Abyss: A Historian of Fascism and Political Atrocity on Trump, the Mob, and What Comes Next” — Timothy Snyder, New York Times Magazine
“The lie outlasts the liar. The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? And to whose benefit?”
“In Capital, A G.O.P. Crisis. At the R.N.C. Meeting, A Trump Celebration” — Jonathan Martin, New York Times
“Even as the president faces a possible second impeachment proceeding, this collective exercise in gaze aversion was not the most striking part of the meeting. More revealing was the reason for the silence from the stage: Party members, one after another, said in interviews that the president did not bear any blame for the violence at the Capitol and indicated that they wanted him to continue to play a leading role in the party.”
“We’re All Antifa Now — If You Want To Live In A Democracy, That Is” — Umair Haque, Eudaimonia
America’s challenge is creating an anti-fascist society. And that can only happen when behaviour and attitudes — especially by white people, towards their colleagues and relatives and friends change. People who are fascists should not be tolerated as simpletons or bumpkins or hillbillies for whom moving elegies are written. They are not any of those things. They aren’t children throwing tantrums or poor, benighted victims. They are grown adults choosing an ideology of violence and brutality that is now culminating in American democracy being desecrated and violated, with precision, organization, funding, and planning.
“Trump’s GOP Has an Ugly Authoritarian Core. A New Poll Exposes It” — Greg Sargent, Washington Post
“57 percent of Americans say Trump bears a great deal or good amount of responsibility for the assault on the Capitol. But 56 percent of Republicans say Trump bears no responsibility at all, and another 22 percent say he bears just some, totaling 78 percent who largely exonerate him.
52 percent of Americans say Republican leaders went too far in supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. But 51 percent of Republicans say GOP leaders didn’t go far enough, while 27 percent say they got it right, a total of 78 percent who are fully on board or wanted more. Only 16 percent of Republicans say they went too far.”
“The Assault on the U.S. Capitol Opens A New Chapter In Domestic Terrorism” — Daniel Byman, Washington Post
“So what does almost 20 years of U.S. counterterrorism experience since 9/11 tell us?”
“Will the GOP Turn Into Hezbolalh?” — Daniel Drezner, Washington Post
“The majority within the GOP has a choice to make: They can discipline their own insurrectionists, or they can go the way of Hezbollah and become a violent nonstate actor.”
“The Capitol Rioters Weren’t ‘Low Class’” — Adam Serwer, The Atlantic
“Throughout American history, political violence has often been guided, initiated, and perpetrated by respectable people from educated middle- and upper-class backgrounds. The belief that only impoverished people engage in political violence—particularly right-wing political violence—is a misconception often cultivated by the very elites who benefit from that violence.”
Finally, if you look at nothing else, check out AOC’s incredible Instagram Live that she posted following the attack on the Capitol. She is simply an incredible leader — a strong, clear voice that pierces through the awful fog and noise.
She demonstrates what is possible when we demand better.
She gives me hope that our crises will create the leaders we need to overcome them.
Stay tuned for more from me.
In the meantime, stay well and take care, as best you can.
For now, I’ll take my leave and go.
— Aladdin