Us humans have been ruled by oligarchs, kings, dictators, what have you, for eons. We tolerate these rulers until they have killed, stolen, destroyed more than we can endure. Then we kick them out or murder them and replace them with another overlord. Over and over again. For a tiny sliver of history, we tried ‘rule by the people’. We called it democracy. We called the ruler, ‘the government’.
In the west, ‘the government’ has had a long run. Ideas of government by the people brought with it ideas of individualism. The importance of the person not just the people. Ideas that made modern western people less tolerant of rulers than their predecessors…more demanding. Now many western people are itching to kick out ‘the government’. It’s not surprising. ‘The government’ in many respects acts like the other sorts of rulers and has inherited human’s historical aversion to being ruled. The thing that shocks me is that we can see what we are replacing it with. Yet we are doing it anyways. The replacement is not even pretending to solve our grievances. He despises the individual. He believes humans are best used as fodder. And he is not trying to hide his intentions. That’s the part that shocks me.
As Heather Cox Richardson says, “The Trump administration is replacing American democracy with a kleptocracy, a system of corruption in which a network of ruling elites use the institutions of government to steal public assets for their own private gain.” We got sold the idea that smaller government was better…that the bureaucracy was bloated and elected lawmakers were corrupt. Most of us believed that was, in many ways, true. Then we got sold on the idea of privatization…that government should not own the mechanisms of survival. Many people believed that was true, as well, although most people didn’t understand what privatization meant (HCR’s definition pretty much sums it up). We already believed that the ‘elites’ were bad. It’s in our DNA. Although most of us are still confused about who the elites are—government folks? private corporation owners and profiteers?
We got confused because many of the same folks who believed in smaller government also believed corporations were the evil ones. Here’s a part that I don’t get. Republicans, libertarians and others call for less government…it’s the enemy. Republicans are looking to overthrow the government elites, drain the swamp, install a new regime…you know the story. It all sounds so radical. Maybe even with a hint of necessity. Yet right before our eyes. With no sense of propriety Trump and his buddies are putting the power, the money, the military, the future, the planet…in the hands of the folks who are clearly manipulating the world economy through the very corporations Republicans, libertarians and others profess to hate. Is your head spinning? Mine is.
What am I missing here? What makes this make sense?
So far, the folks who are into replacing government with the new face of oligarchy, monarchy, dictatorship, what have you, are winning. And even some of the smart ones of us are saying “Trump might be a slob, but he’s doing what needs to be done.”
Some of us are dizzy. It’s like we have a collective case of vertigo. We have been spinning in an unfathomable vortex of history repeating itself. I am a historian. And for my historian fellows, I know we don’t believe history repeats itself. But I believe it does go around and around using the same basic ingredients, elements, factors, energy, human constituent parts. Around and around. Believing there is something new. Something different. Around and around. Yet recycling the same old, same old. Around and around and around. Some of us praying. All of us hoping. Most of us skeptical. dizzyingly skeptical.
Maybe AI will spin us out of our human whirlwind. Into something completely different. I hope not. But I am tired of more of the same. We need something outside of ourselves to save us from ourselves. No matter how clever we get we still aren’t quite clever enough to fix our messes. I’ve been thinking that all our cleverness is just creating more clever problems not more clever solutions.
Spirits? Saints? Aliens? The ancestors? Jesus? Super heroes? It’s no wonder people believe in these sorts of otherworldly solutions. It is one of those moments in human history where humans appear to be hopeless and perhaps, collectively, we need to look elsewhere for hope. In my tiny, insignificant life, I have never been so completely out of suggestions. So completely without answers. And so fascinated by the otherworldly.
Yet, in a way, I am relaxed. It’s not that the future of the world is out of my hands. It’s always been out of my hands. But now the future is also out of my realm of understanding. And not only that. It’s out of my realm of imagination. Now, what else is there for me to do but relax. And watch and wait.
Oh, I won’t stop advocating for better housing conditions for poor people. I won’t stop creating safe spaces for people to live. I won’t stop encouraging my grandchildren to pursue their creativity and their passions. I won’t stop fighting racism and trying to soften the discord between peoples. That’s enough to keep me busy.
The world. The planet. The eternal purpose. The cosmic plan. Even oligarchs, kings, despots and ‘the government’. I’m just letting that stuff go for a while.
