THINGS HOPED FOR IN THE NEW YEAR
Among our greatest challenges rescuing our democracy is the most urgent.
We are living through difficult times, painful times. No one I have spoken with, without exception, feels otherwise. The problems and challenges we confront are huge, comprehensive, and they loom relentlessly. Their weight feels crushing. We are confronted with a perfect storm of dangers, each alone capable of categorically changing the human condition dramatically. Coming at the same time, they are unique in their destructive power. I have lived through urban riots, volatile protests, political assassinations, the threat of nuclear annihilation. But through it all, it was still possible to see a brighter day ahead. Today, I do not feel the consolations of a sunnier future.
There are two types of hope. There is hope that emerges from empirical facts. In other words, one finds oneself within circumstances wherein there is substantial warrant to be hopeful even if the evidence is not totally moving in the right direction. Then there is what we might call the “hope of the hopeless.” It is sustaining hope despite the evidence. It is when we search for reasons to be hopeful and come up empty. It is striving to remain hopeful not because there is a substantial basis, but simply because there is no alternative. I fear that my hope is increasingly veering toward the latter variety.
I identify three major challenges, though of course, others may choose to add to the list. In my reckoning we are menaced by climate destruction, the persistence of the global pandemic, and the plausible demise of American democracy.
Of the three, coping with the pandemic provides the best chances for a long-range remediation. Tragically, many more will die. Our unnatural separation from others and our compromised, wearisome lifestyles, may plague us for an indefinite future. But my sense is that even if Covid-19 is not completely vanquished and gone from our lives, we will be able to accommodate ourselves to a new normal. Receiving vaccinations may become a routine annual event, such as acquiring a flu shot is now. Such a future is far from optimal, but it is one that I can foresee and to which we can adapt while reclaiming our normalcy. It is a great and tragic problem, but of the three I believe it is temporal. It yields the greatest empirical hope.
Climate destruction is the most comprehensive. Unless humanity can rise to meet it, all else will not make much of a difference. We are dealing with the fate of our planet. This year’s ending has given us a glimpse of the future – rising temperatures, unprecedented storms and flooding, wild fires, our planet's ice caps, glaciers and permafrost melting, oceans rising and shorelines receding, changing life cycles in the biosphere, precious species accelerating toward extinction. It will only get much worse, if it does in fact get better. But there are strong reasons to doubt.
Our climatologists are impressively honing their skills to analyze and predict the complex dynamics of climate change. But the innumerable consequences for humanity come with their own complexities which may elude prediction. The devastation caused by climate change is generating mammoth economic cost. One estimate predicts that by 2050 the world economy will shrink by 23 trillion dollars. And then there is the damage to agriculture, which is the most vulnerable sector, flooding, hurricanes and the destruction to infrastructure. The harm caused to health due to rising temperatures and disease is ominous. And we need to add the costs of the contrivances built to keep the destruction at bay.
Beyond these consequences, are the political and military. As Donald Trump was denying climate change, one agency of his government that was and is taking it most seriously is the Pentagon. As flood and drought cycles change, many agricultural areas on the planet are becoming unsustainable. As they do, people migrate, first to cities and then across borders with increasing desperation. We are now most likely seeing the largest movement of displaced persons in human history. Many are fleeing political persecution and war. But many are “climate refugees” who ironically are fleeing to the very nations that, through burning fossil fuels, have been the cause of their flight. Pentagon planners realize that the mass migration of peoples is politically destabilizing and engenders conflict. Changes in the availability of arable land and water resources will most likely be a cause of a less stable and more bellicose global reality. My conclusion is that the variables resulting from climate destruction are so numerous and complex that they elude capacity for accurate prediction.
The good news is that humanity collectively knows what needs to be done to halt and reverse the destruction of the climate and our environment more broadly. The bad news is that humanity needs to act in unison, especially the large industrial and industrializing nations. What's needed is unprecedented political will on a global scale. This is where hopelessness leeches its way into my psyche. Humankind is being put to the test as never before. Recent climate conferences do not speak well about the world reaching the necessary targets, even provisionally. The full effects of climate change lie in the ongoing future. Its full impact of disaster is not felt immediately. This reality undermines the urgency that is necessary to save the planet. Sources of hope fall short of the dangers that confront us.
But of the three challenges, it is the threat to our democracy that I find most painful. All things change. Nothing endures endlessly. The United States, however imperfect, has survived as a democracy for 245 years. There is no determinism that ensures that it will go on. There are powerful realities that suggest that it won't.
However tumultuous previous times were, I was left with the feeling that the foundation of our constitutional democracy was sound. Today there is strong warrant to suggest that it is not. We are coming to the first anniversary of the insurrectionist assault on our nation’s capital. Behind it is a mass movement that is intent on subverting our government. One of our two major political parties no longer functions as such. It is rather a mass movement in the thrall of a demagogic leader who is bent on subverting our democratic system to meet his own narcissistic needs.
His base is comprised of tens of millions of our fellow citizens who subscribe to the fiction that the election was stolen. The “Big Lie” is merely the most salient manifestation of pervasive irrationality that has gripped the minds of millions, replete with conspiracy theories, a disdain for expertise and repudiation of science, facts and the test of evidence in order to ground belief.
Moreover, our demagogic former president has unearthed the demons of hatred and racism. He has appealed to the fears and resentments of Americans who cannot adjust to a changing society from which they feel increasingly alien. He has employed the tactic of scapegoating immigrants, refugees, minorities, women, and the disabled in a manner that could be taken from a fascist playbook. His operatives at this moment are working to change the rules of how electors are chosen by state legislators to ensure that in the 2024 election he will emerge the winner even if he loses the popular vote. Aggressive gerrymandering is stacking votes in districts favoring Republicans.
All this is very ominous, and it feels at this point like an unstoppable juggernaut.
Focusing on the last of these three issues, what is it that I hope for in the next year?
I hope the successful passage of Biden's Build Back Better plan. Though not an economic determinist, I believe that economics plays a pivotal role in molding consciousness. I surmise that a great deal of the division, tribalism and irrationality that is sundering the American fabric can be traced to the reality that the American dream has stalled. When people feel that the doors of opportunity are closed to them and their children they despair, and become insecure and angry. In turn, this generates resentment. Resentment has become a powerful driver in forging American political values at the grassroots level. Resentment fuels racism and contempt at a government accused of giving away hard-earned money to undeserving dark-skinned people populating our cities, and to immigrants. It is a generator of hate and doctrines of replacement and white supremacy.
The obscene wealth gap, forged by neo-liberal economics, undermines democracy because it lands large numbers of disaffected people in dead-end, low paying jobs, thus fomenting economic anxiety. It further divides us because it allows the wealthy to live increasingly privileged, privatized lives while diminishing public space and sense of a shared society and destiny.
I therefore hope for a more egalitarian society founded on economic justice. While this will not totally overcome our problems and save democracy, I believe it is our best shot. It would help restore hope.
I eagerly yearn for leaders who will loudly and without equivocation speak out against the destruction of our democracy as our most urgent crisis. Leadership has grown silently absorbed in smaller things and petty preoccupations. The silence is stifling and the air is foul. Where are the necessary voices?
What I hope for in the new year are profiles is courage. We desperately need statesmen and statewomen who will put democracy and the their country before their careers and self-interest. We need leaders who will combat the cynicism of our times with a renewed message that speaks to America's original values that have always held out the promise of America. We need courageous leadership to reinspire us with hope. We need re-enchantment with American ideals.
I hope for not only political leadership but moral leaders who will raise our spirits and speak loudly to what is best in us. We are losing our humanity in a sea of cynicism, anger, and despair. We need moral leaders, people themselves of substance who will speak from the high plane of dignity and reconfirm our belief in what Lincoln referred to as the better angels of our nature.
Dr. Chuman, like so many others,I share your grief! (BTW, I was one of your grad students at Columbia about 13 years ago.) I have a political blog which has the words “Human Rights” in the title. A Russian entity apparently hacked it in 2018, and I quickly realized, after the news media reported a huge security breach of American government sites and databases (c. 2019), that it was absurd to even think that any government entity was ready to defend my “freedom of speech” when the U.S. government could not even effectively protect itself. The hacking and the American political disaster silenced me (vis. the blog: barrydesaw.com). Dr. Chuman, your remarks did not even mention two HORRIFIC threats to humankind in this century: nuclear weapons/WMD and artificial intelligence. (Artificial intelligence is an inestimable threat to human freedom and well-being over the long term, even if the United States becomes the “dominant” nation in AI, and the threats are too deep and too numerous to even begin discussing.) I am now nearly 63, and I always wanted to be positive and upbeat in my old age, but all I see and mentally apprehend brings me to GRIEF! There were several moments when the destruction of American democracy seemed very real to me. One was when an instrumental minority of Americans decided (November 2016) that the presidency was a trivial thing and any dog could do it. Another was in 2019, when the 45th president’s infamous phone call to the Ukrainian president was FULLY KNOWN to the American people and only 50 percent of Americans polled said they believed the president should be impeached. Still another head shaking observation was that in late 2021, President Biden was reported to have an extremely (& inexplicably) low approval rating among Americans: below 40%. Do those people realize that this is their VERY LAST SHOT at democracy? It is useful to recognize that the German people of 1932 and 1933 were not voting to destroy democracy but simply to Make Germany Great Again. Thank God I am not young!!!
Please watch Don’t Look Up on Netflix