“The battle against extinction can only be a collective endeavor.”
Sophie Pinkham
“The Collective body” THE NATION 4/13/2020
Way back, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Watergate, energy shortages, pollution, and cities in riot, my friends and I would get together to indulge various substances, and occasionally discuss the impending downfall of modern society. What would we do? Did we have the life skills, resources, and courage to escape urban disaster and live in the wild? Naturally, since we were so close, we would stick together to make a go of it. Ultimately, we never left civilization, but many of us did take up planting gardens and other down home activities—rewarding pastimes that have nourished and nurtured many of us through the years, while we individually made peace with the establishment. The establishment treated us as harshly as it did previous generations, but eventually, we became the establishment—bottom rung, most of us, but still, “we’re in.” I like to think we have made it a little nicer, around the edges anyway. Now a new apocalypse approaches, symbolized by a bearded old man wearing a MAGA hat, toting an assault rifle, and glaring at the world from atop a pile of toilet paper. And people are gardening again.
Exemplifying the progress we have made, the environment is now a legitimate concern in public discourse. Even diehard apologists for big business have had to take into account the reality that we all share the world. For our part in the unspoken agreement, we nonconformists agreed to live in a corporate world—driving cars, working jobs, and seeking change through accepted political channels—doing what people do when we can: live together, peacefully. We gave up heading for the hills to live off the land, gave up trying to destroy the culture in order to save it. Knowing the society we were born into had nurtured us and still had much to offer, knowing it was home, we chose to work inside it, trying to improve it—ecologically, economically, socially.
The power-loving top rank of society’s corporate fringe never intended to compromise. They have been striving since the Depression and New Deal to restore the rich to absolute power. Their subtle coup has been astonishingly successful, even though their policies had no footing among the ninety-plus percent of the people who have been (and still are) hurt by sparing the wealthy from their social obligations. Nevertheless, Election Day, 2020 found our society dominated by the greediest, most conniving elements of the upper class, put in power by zealous votes of commoners. Then a minor revolution occurred—mostly peaceful, leading to the peaceful election of Joe Biden, a practical leader from the establishment’s loyal opposition. Biden’s election (by a small majority) was nowhere near radical, but meant to implement some long-needed changes to the current status quo—to make it more inclusive, more egalitarian. This was too much for partisans of the ruling regime. The old man in the MAGA hat came down from his toilet paper mountain, and joined his cronies in an attack on the U.S. Capitol building. They did not teepee the place—they wrecked it like a barroom brawl. Apparently, many Americans want to keep the apocalyptic, corporatist coup of the past half century.
Our rebellious countrymen and countrywomen believe that Donald Trump was made President of the United States (his first government job) by God—a stunning conviction in a nation that once fought a revolution against divine right monarchy. Why an almighty providence would need help from a mob is unclear. What is clear is that our republic narrowly avoided an Orwellian future of “a boot stomping on a human face—forever.” We turned back a coup that would have solidified a society wholly dominated by its wealthiest residents, supported by average men and women, led by someone who has sung the praises of selfishness all his life. The apocalypse was narrowly averted, yet millions of Americans stand in the wreckage, ready to reinstate it.
Apocalyptic signs abound. Though gratifying medical progress is being made, the world remains under attack from a previously unknown virus. We dare now to hope that the threat can be arrested, but the damage will take a long time to repair, under the best of circumstances. The gasoline crisis of the seventies was replaced by a shortage of toilet paper, which probably says something interesting about America’s collective psyche. Here we all are, isolated for no one knows how long, in a new reality resembling a combination of “The Machine Stops” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” We stay in contact using electronic media, and few dare to contemplate what we might do should the media fail. We try to maintain buoyant spirits and cheer each other up, trading games and stories on Face Book, but we miss getting together. We want to get back to normal, even though it is obvious that returning to our former normality is not only undesirable, but impossible. The virus has effectively shut down the world, economically and socially. Germs lie around that we have yet to hear of. If we wish to avoid repeating the ordeal we are now escaping, we cannot go back to our old way of doing things.
The pandemic, a symptom of predatory, ruthless capitalism, leaves us stuck inside our self-imposed cells because people who agree with Margaret Thatcher, that “There is no society,” have been allowed to run the world with scant interference from everybody else. Our corporate rulers, who grudge spending money on medical personnel, treatment, and equipment, let supplies of medical essentials fall desperately short, worsening the pandemic. No one can predict the rise of germs, but in the twenty-first century, humanity does have the wherewithal to reduce such threats—if humanity is more important than profits. Donald Trump’s egomaniacal bungling of the pandemic worsened our situation, but Trump’s presidency is also only a symptom of the fatal illness of greed. Considering how events have turned out, we deserve to be mad, and we need to stay mad, if we hope for any real change when this immediate emergency is over. We are in a fight for our lives. Only righteous anger, springing from healthy fear, can energize us into making the deep social changes we must make, to avoid another disastrous pandemic. From an excess of rugged individualism, we need to recognize our global interconnectedness and interdependence. Then we need to act: make collective changes to install social and economic, as well as political democracy.
Intelligent anger channelled non-violently could effectively win, but vengeance will not. Our fight is with causes and institutions, not people. Wholesale killings of elites went out with the Bolsheviks, and we know now that bloodshed only brings a new rank of elites, gorged on self-righteousness, probably worse than the old ones. The plutocrats running our country know how to deal with violence, and they have all the weapons they need. The COVID-19 pandemic could bring on the apocalypse for uncontrolled capitalism, with its incredible yet still insatiable benefits to a privileged few. Democracy, perhaps even civilization itself, probably lacks the strength to endure more global assaults like the yearlong disaster we are only beginning to leave. The rightwing is still waging war, and will resist every reform we try to make. We still need to fight back. And while we’re at it, we should keep planting our victory gardens.