America Is in Denial

'Watching angry commentators on cable news, I’m reminded of H. L. Mencken’s observation: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.”'

Great quote.

I was surprised to see this was written by Mitt Romney, completely missed the page title and only realised at the end

Romney tries really hard to "both sides" this, but he misses an important distinction. The left is supposedly ignoring immigration and national debt. The right is supposedly ignoring climate change and attacks on our political system. I'm willing to grant those for the sake of argument, but here's the difference: the attacks on our political system have made it impossible to solve any of the other problems - even the ones that those supporting the attacks supposedly have as priorities. The only way to avoid a dystopian future (or more dystopian if you really can't resist hyperbole) is to solve that one first. The only way to solve that, in turn, is to stop listening to "both sides" and get the people attacking democracy out of power - ideally behind bars - before it's too late.

Romney's right, but incomplete. Our current problems are made cataclysmic by our also becoming unable to function anymore except by groupthink.

I think our lifeblood is not tribalism — we aren't that alike to divide into only two tribes — I think the real problem is fear. We've allowed ourselves (and the past 30 years of childrearing) to be overwhelmed by it and now can't function without assurance: being in a crowd of others — the most basic form of security known to animalkind — safety in numbers. The result of that now, intellectually, is we simply refuse to entertain ideas or arguments not already endorsed by others. So we cleave to whatever 'gang' is handy, never mind how dysfunctional their agenda or ideas or rationales are.

The hallmark of our times is the death of the individual.

> When entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesn't end well.

At least in the case of global warming, the US are in good company: the whole world is failing (some more, some less, but nevertheless all failing) to confront the challenge.

What I find most fascinating is that this reads completely counter to the authors supposed ideology and public positions, in a way that I'm not quite sure where they stand. It keeps changing so much.

One beautiful thing about science is that it doesn’t really matter if you believe in it or not. It’s based on the seeking of truth using a proven method. Those who ignore climate change will suffer, especially those who are poor and uneducated. Luckily, this knowledge is not hard to find these days, and I suspect the youth of the coming generations will take a different outlook of climate change, one irrespective of political belief. At a certain point if you want to continue living your life, you need to accept the facts and vote for positive change. Whether that comes from a blue person or a red person loses its meaning when the world around us burns.

This essay was Mitt's entry in the annual 4th of July platitude contest.

He is a consummate politician who is afraid to offer any concrete suggestions to deal with the problems he mentions.

It might have been interesting to hear his ideas about gun control, abortion rights, etc. - If he has any.

But, the 4th of July is just another day in America, "Home of the Brave":

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/shooting-reported-july-4th-...

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> Even as we watch the reservoirs and lakes of the West go dry, we keep watering our lawns, soaking our golf courses, and growing water-thirsty crops.

Residential water use has plummeted in the west. Some areas, like vegas, use less water than the 70s, not accounting for population changes. Arizona is the second best residential water manager in the world behind Israel. Agriculture uses the lion's share of water and can be cut off when things get really tight.

> As inflation mounts and the national debt balloons, progressive politicians vote for ever more spending.

The US must continue printing debt (expanding money supply) to continue the dollar's status as the reserve currency. And not all spending as bad, much of it can be an investment expecting positive long term returns.

If you want to find bloat, look at our government-subsidized suburban lifestyle and the sheer cost of the massive amount of infrastructure required to maintain it.

> As the ice caps melt and record temperatures make the evening news, we figure that buying a Prius and recycling the boxes from our daily Amazon deliveries will suffice.

Yet again blaming individuals' choices when large corporations are by far the largest global polluters. As well, this applies to a thin slice of the global population. most people, even in the US, can't afford to think about climate change. For example, higher gas prices translate to questions on whether there will be enough food on the table, or whether it's even worth the time to go to work anymore.

> When TV news outlets broadcast video after video of people illegally crossing the nation’s southern border, many of us change the channel.

Illegal border crossings have been declining and were at the lowest point in the last 10 years before Biden. There has been a huge amount of discussion about this politically, a large amount of Americans do consider this a big problem.

On one hand, where I want to give Mitt Romney some benefit of the doubt for being sincere (and he probably is somewhat) in his conviction where he eventually stood against the leader of his own political party, he did, in the beginning, try to rosy up to Trump in the early months, producing a now infamous photo of him looking rather submissive, smiling with Trump at a dinner table after opposing him during the 2016 primaries. It's telling that only after failing to actually be chosen for a position in the administration did he begin his brand of pitching to the "centrist" crowd as a voice against Trump while voting with him a good fraction of the time in the senate.

One of the under appreciated outgrowths of the Trump years is the rise of a crop of "centrist"-leaning conservatives who really agreed with Trump on almost all of his actually achieved policy goals but really just disagreed with his supposed incompetence or brashness or with the attempted insurrection, but had Trump had a different demeanor, they'd be along for the ride.

"When entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesn't end well. "

> I hope for a president who can rise above the din to unite us behind the truth.

That was Bernie Sanders. Every debate, every mud sling, every derail, Sanders was a guy who would put the conversation back on track on doing what's right for the American people.

You can't fix a dish that has rotten ingredients. You have to throw the dish away and start over.

Related: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/338480/term-for-...

We have a completely bifurcated ontology. Just as one minority sees their other group as being left behind, another sees their other-group as having a now-completely false consciousness. Imo, we are alien tribes to one another, and I look at western democracies and see the same separation that precedes litigating a divorce. I can score points on people I disagree with all day, but I don't bother because those points are worthless and not redeemable for anything good in the world.

To expand that analogy, most divorces try to start as reasonable, but once you are actually free of one another in the separation, it becomes a war for the previously shared resources and custody, enabled and inflamed by people who get paid out of the shared pot either way, and any courtesy or civility is leveraged back as weakness. These differences become so irreconcilable that we have evolved a completely parallel court system to handle it. The whole process of litigating a divorce is debasing and shameful for everyone involved, and almost nobody gets out with their basic human dignity intact. It's a useful analogy because everywhere I have seen it, it's a microcosm of war.

What does a good outcome look like? In time the hostilities cool to where it's no longer an animal fight for survival. Typically in a divorce, women get the home and the kids, and men get some freedom to start another family, and some limited opportunity via visitation to guide their kids and help them become fully actualized people. Generally, the women go on to find new supportive companions, and the men move on and rebuild as best they can. This analogy I think is very close to the culture war divide, where, if we take it any deeper, it becomes just as much of a quagmire as who's right and wrong in a family dissolution as it is for red/blue, but it's useful to abstract it out with an analogy so we can look seriously at what I foresee we are very likely to be confronted with.

To me, Romney is like the sensitive ponytailed new friend who starts hanging around under the pretext of helping, but he's just another vulture circling a struggling relationship looking to make vulnerable people dependent on him. The cultural divide in America has always existed, but it has only really become dangerous because of carpet bagging opportunists who don't believe in truth whispering in the ears of the primary parties. People presenting themselves as centerists are usually just fluid and unprincipled, and by inserting themselves between mostly stable complementary sides, and by dissolving edges and boundaries, they create new distance that puts themselves in the middle. It makes them manipulative and dishonest brokers.

I am not a centerist, because I think our political differences are complimentary and mutually moderating forces that truly build one other and benefit us all. The proposal I would make would be that we agree to recognize that America has made good lives and a society together, and this attracts interlopers who would like a piece of what you have built together, and they use some very appealing and seductive techniques to try to lever themselves between you. They appeal to our feelings of outrage, pride, envy, aggrievement, and shame, among others. It's a very old trick, and it works in the microcosm as well as in the macro.

I live in a country where politicians preach togetherness and unity but always with themselves in the middle, and mainly spend their efforts trying shame anyone who isn't interested in their meddling as illiberal, oppressive and revanchist. If only we were as intolerant of their sleaze as we have become of each other, there might be a way to hold this thing together. If not, it will be sad, but I think we all know how this goes.