And so, the world heads into the summer of 2022. The livin’ is easy even if reason, never abundant, continues to suffer from supply chain disruptions worldwide. Tolerance, like Marxism before it, is headed for the great dust heap that is “history”. It was worth a try, but the deteriorating quality of human capital diminishes chances of progress. Rancor now motivates people who, curiously, have the least cause for it. Their resentment — its expression and exploitation — is the source of political power and raison d’état.
In some places, that power, statistically, represents a minority. But the minority prevails through a combination of structural factors, the majority’s apathy, and the minority’s zealotry that is communicated instantly around the world to excite the fevered imaginations of the like-minded. Leaders (“leaders”) chase the whims and desires of these embittered specimen, a process we continue to insist on calling “democracy”. To call it “catering to the emotionally stunted mob” would crush the illusion.
For Ukrainians, the livin’s not so easy. Russia, led by a murderously resentful Putin still admired by millions, is in its fourth month of war in Ukraine and, as a personal grudge, on its legitimate, sensible, and unresentful president. Only Russians understand the reasons. Much as Western observers want to distinguish between Putin and his people on grounds that Russia is not a democracy, Putin’s resentment over the West’s alleged “disrespect” of Russia holds widespread appeal there. He and his people are one on this.
The mob in Western Europe is of a different sort. Its resentment originates with the disturbance of present-day comforts and prosperity. How dare government respond to a deadly global infectious disease with measures designed to mitigate its spread? And why shouldn’t we subsidize Russia’s war on Ukraine if doing so will keep our own fuel costs down? Yes, we stand with Ukrainians, but only to the point where they get in the way of our vacations and cheap heat. Had the world said this in 1939….
Israeli society may be politically fractious but when it comes to the often deadly subjugation of Palestinians, the Jewish mob is united. Few are the limits on zealotry when it comes to the deprivation of rights, theft (or, failing that, destruction) of Palestinian land, obtuse-in-the-extreme legal reasoning, and the countless daily inflictions of pettiness in pursuit of a national narrative that has Arab deracination as its ultimate aim. It’s the gift “the region’s only democracy” offers the world, and which the world accepts with a shrug.
Not to be outdone, India’s ardent Hindus (80% of the population … a mob of more than 800 million people) can think of nothing better to do than create ways to delegitimize the 14% that are the country’s Muslims. The motive? The demographic threat. “There will be a Muslim prime minister in 2029. Once that happens, 50% of Hindus will have to undergo religious conversion, and 40% will be killed.” Fiction as public policy, a way to oppress a minority “other” on grounds of untethered-to-reality fear and resentment.
And what of Africa? Decades after independence, parts of it have ignited in rage at France, their former colonizer. This despite substantial French military engagement to combat jihadists who’ve been killing civilians in the region for sport. Although France had no duty to intervene, the people it sought to protect against the predations of psychotics now excoriate France for not “solving” a complex problem. They prefer to put themselves (and their natural resources) in the hands of Russian mercenaries. Good luck with that.
To the south, Brazil’s 213 million people still submit to the impulses of a gangster-clown (cousin of the bloated US version for whom the American Republican republic nearly committed suicide in 2020) and his party, the ludicrously named “Social Liberal Party”. He encourages further destruction of the Amazon, partly for fun and profit (to the benefit of friends and political allies), and partly to stick a resentful finger in the eye of those who have been sounding the alarm. How dare someone lecture his country. Besides, climate change isn’t even real.
But the cradle of modern mob-driven public policy remains the US of A (“We’re No. 1!”), where half the electorate, whipped into a frenzy by the distraction-for-profit industry, prevents sensible government. The response to yet another school shot up by yet another psychotic young man? Fewer school doors and more armed teachers. Rejected outright by elected “leaders” who hold the country hostage is a (supremely sensible) limit on the availability of weapons. Quarter-wits without conscience like that the price of their “liberty” is paid by dead kids.
Their devotion to liberty is, of course, selective. The reactionary mob, led by a half-dozen religious nuts pretending to be jurists, is about to take from women and minorities long-standing fundamental rights. All in the name of a Constitution that it fails to understand, or which it intentionally misconstrues to justify results that would exasperate the originators of the grand experiment, the “Founding Fathers” right-wingers fetishize, to say: We wanted minority government, certainly, but not one run by obviously disturbed individuals.
We can’t predict what forms of human insanity the rest of 2022 will serve up. It’s reasonable to expect, though, that the failure to implement material changes in our way of life — changes that just might keep us from char-broiling the planet — will endure. That’s not because we don’t know what to do to prevent catastrophe. It’s because enough of our fellow beings, steeped in bile and ignorance, prefer the immolation of all of us. They’re unable to see that their destructive lunacy will make worse, not expiate, their severely damaged psyches. Their intentional blindness directly affects all of us.
