The Ghost of Denmark Vessey

America has been longing for a real knock down, drag out existential crisis since the end of WWII. Civil rights, Watergate, the Cold War, the World Trade Center attack. These and many other crises came and went, yes, changing the landscape a little along the way. But nothing has toppled us, completely upended the system as we know it. We drag the whole dysfunctional thing behind us like a ton of bricks. The system we all know was put in place to create stability, during and after WWII. Though far from perfect, it has served us well. It is still mostly in place, a system that doubled down on our capitalist instincts, even as it guarded us from our worst impulses. What this system has produced is great scientific and technological advancement, a relatively stable economy, and growing wealth inequality. Our excesses and past sins, have led to a social unease, creating stagnation, political stalemate and a deep longing to create something entirely new: something better.

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Our obsession with comfort and convenience at any cost, however, has kept us from exploding into revolution. The progressives had the right idea, a post capitalist society with equality and prosperity existing together. But the message was watered down by the Democratic establishment, becoming too conciliatory and elitist. The word revolution decried by the progressives became sanitized to the point of meaninglessness. Those ideas have now been swept away in favor of the extreme right’s vision, one of totalitarianism, mass privatization, a trickle down economy and ethnic purification.

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This draconian scenario is now getting its chance to really prove itself. It is doomed to failure, of course, mostly because these ideas have already been tried and always failed. But also, because there is a basic drive in humanity for freedom, liberty and justice. These three values have been thrown around by the right and the left for decades but they sadly have yet to be fully realized by any system yet conceived. The reason is because people cannot agree on the methods for achieving such a system. We have not yet been able to embrace the other of our founding values, the one I mentioned in the progressive’s vision: equality. Even after many years of struggle, from slavery to civil rights, all the way to the Me Too and the LGBTQ movements, our  society continues to believe that some people are entitled to more rights than others. This bigotry simply has not gone away. In fact, it has led us to this juncture. It’s as if it is an engrained part of our DNA, irrevocable. In choosing “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and not including equality, our founding fathers may have set us up for the capitalism on steroids we now must endure.

See the Light

But must it be this way? In many ways, this recent full throttle experiment with authoritarianism, privatization and ethnic purification, which we know is doomed to fail, may lead to a breakdown in governance that will necessitate a new and better way. When faced with the very real existential crisis we have secretly been longing for, will the better minds among us, as they are picking up the pieces, choose to put them back together in a better way, a more just and equal way? Or will they simply reconstruct the old tired system that led us to this juncture in the first place? This later way, was tried on a much smaller scale with the election of Biden, who was tasked to provide a true and steady hand to lead us out of the crises left behind by Trump One. I believe Trump Two will lead to a total and utter collapse of the system we all have known since the 1940s. What will we do then, when everything is finally broken beyond repair? What will the people do? Will our clamoring for entitlement, comfort and convenience finally give way to a more free, just and equal society? Or will we simply try to piece the old system back together again, like Humpty Dumpty?

Either way, whatever happens, I find viewing the world in these larger terms to be more helpful for my psychological well-being during this time of chaos and uncertainty. I really believe, at the end of this nightmare, the vast majority of the people will choose a new and better system. It may not look like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s equal justice or Bernie Sanders’ Social Democracy, or even Ronald Reagan’s City on a Hill. My only hope is that whatever system emerges in place of the one we are currently losing, after the sacrifices of lost lives and suffering we are only at the beginning of experiencing, we find a better, more enlightened system.