I recently traveled home to America for three weeks to visit with family and friends. I very much missed and enjoyed being home, especially in the fall and at Christmas time with all of the comforts of family, friends, food, familiar places, sights, and sounds. But after six years of living in the European Union, and gaining some valuable insight and outside perspective, it's been heartbreaking to witness the metamorphosis that we have undergone as a people and as a nation.
On January 21, 2017, in New York City, a group of my friends and I met at a restaurant a few blocks northeast of Grand Central Terminal. The air was filled with a charged electric energy. Millions of other women who joined us all around the country were as determined and pissed off as we were. It was palpable and it felt like the beginning of a genuine movement of, by, and for the people. The signs were everywhere - literally, and figuratively. We were not going away quietly. We were taking action and making ourselves seen and heard. And we were resolute.
Fast forward seven years and what I see and feel everywhere from nearly everyone in America now is exactly the opposite of that day at that period, not too long ago. The energy and passion? Gone. Informed debates and discussions? Less likely. Resolve toward a better future? Meh. Protest? Nope. In a climate where an open, rapidly growing threat of an authoritarian or even neofascist takeover from the Republican Party in America is evident, it has been frightening to witness the current, general response, which seems like high-stakes apathy. When I've been home more recently, I feel like I am the only one who notices this massive elephant in the room.
Has the barrage against democracy by the wealthy and powerful created a learned helplessness? Have we been intimidated into complacency? Have we been woefully uninformed of the true nature, or the stakes involved in the threat? After my many conversations with fellow citizens, any scan of social media on any single day, listening to US radio shows, or regularly reading what comes out of the American press, sadly, it may well be all of the above.
A recent New York Times digital cover caught my eye from December 21, 2023, and is just one small example indicative of where we are in this present moment.
The right side top story: "Just How Rich Were the McCallisters in 'Home Alone'?" In the sub-title: "We asked the Federal Reserve for answers". Several stories down the page, and in much smaller print, read: "Federal prosecutors were given access to phone messages of a G.O.P. lawmaker who discussed overturning the 2020 election." Really? Are we supposed to care more about the wealth of a fictional family, and not so much about audio proof of a real coup attempt on our country by the Republican half of our political system? Why wasn't this a huge top story? This is one of our country's leading legacy newspapers after all.
Unfortunately, journalism in America has been failing miserably to report the full and honest truth about what's happening around us. Why else would so many hard-working Americans consistently vote against their own best interests in favor of what benefits only the very wealthy? Deficiency to outright propaganda in the American media landscape, has made too many people want to lump all Democrats and Republicans in the same corrupt pile or just tune out altogether. The result is groupthink confusion, disengagement, and apathy.
The United States is currently ranked 45th in the world for press freedom (Ireland, where I live now, is ranked 2nd). From the outside looking in at various media reporting, or lack thereof, it is no surprise. The guardrails on media companies, once put in place to protect the public, have since been removed. If eyeballs, ratings, and profits are all that matter to a shrinking news media owned by a small billionaire class, truth and democracy will inevitably suffer. Public perceptions of reality will continue to become even more deeply skewed and warped.
Sabrina Haake stated it perfectly in a brilliant recent article on the subject for Raw Story:
"-- democracy depends for its survival on an informed public. Addictive anger-tainment is the opposite of information, and it is ripping us apart."
There is another area that I find extremely alarming for the future of our democracy. That is the intentional creation of an atmosphere of paranoia, fear, and despair to silence dissent. Authoritarians know that a despondent populace is much easier to manipulate and control than an empowered one.
I could make a very long list of successful, ongoing efforts by the far right to target, and take down progress, and remake our policies, laws, and institutions from public education and universities to the court system and even our own constitution. Racial equality, voting rights, women's and LGBTQ rights, history itself, and much more have also been in their crosshairs. As a woman of color, it's been downright frightening to experience. There has been some good reporting on it that I will leave to the experts, but this is just a piece of an insidious long-game effort that we should all be well aware of.
The other piece of it is well-funded campaigns to intimidate the media, fake ("pink slime") publications to spread propaganda and disinformation, targeted campaigns of bullying, sophisticated troll operations, threats of violence by white supremacist and extremist groups, swatting, social media algorithms boosting hate and distortions. There has also been an ongoing normalization of violence, easy access to weapons of war, and mass gun deaths in our country that do not exist in other industrialized nations. With that, there is open spouting of "second amendment solutions" by right-wing extremists. All of these tactics have the intended consequence of coercion, fear, and intimidation of the general public, but in particular those of us in marginalized groups.
The net objective is for the powerful to maintain their grip on power and privilege at all costs, as they see it begin to slip away. This includes maintaining their massive tax breaks, preserving racial order, and gender hierarchies, controlling the freedom of speech, critical thinking, and education, and manipulating the workings of government and the courts to benefit themselves. To inflict pain, to control. They see any passion and resolve for democracy as a threat to their power.
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