(Written in early 2005; this was the only column I ever wrote for my college newspaper.)
We, as a species, have a habit of expecting that the worst thing possible is exactly what will happen, if for no other reason than it so seldom does. This preparation in the mind – to expect abject terror, defeat, or sorrow – makes it so that when things are nominal, or average, or so-so, we are relieved.
It is this sort of mental rigor that has built our society into the danger-enabling machine that it is. We have airbags in our steering columns because we expect to get thrashed head-on by a bus, all glassy eyes and mechanical disposition. When we don’t – when, instead, we poke out into an intersection on a close yellow light and get into a wreck – we think to ourselves, It could have been worse. My car is totaled, but at least I’m not bleeding freely from the eyes.
It is a strange way to live. We assume, always, that the worst will happen, so we guard against it. We structure our activities and our merchandise with disaster in mind, and when disaster doesn’t come, we’re thankful. Off of this gratitude we build patterns of carelessness, facilitated by the fact that so long as we don’t crash through a station wagon full of nuns at roughly the speed of light, we’ll probably be okay.
This makes it difficult for us as a population to learn from our mistakes, because we have front-loaded everything in our personal lives towards tragedy. Mistakes carry almost no weight. Results must be tragic to be remarkable. We literally have to be almost decapitated to take anything like wisdom away from a barfight.
The problem here is context. If we installed 15-inch railroad spikes to pop out of steering columns on impact instead of downy, supple air bags, our attitude towards vehicular safety would change considerably. No more zipping in and out of traffic. No more making it through intersections by mere inches on our way to the mall. No more intense cell phone conversations while doing 90 on I-35. Now we deal with accountability of a tangible sort. Now we get off the phone and use our turn signals.
In reality, though, this is not the case.
Government embraces the same false sense of immunity. Standards are re-ordered to create two categories of consequence: death or awesome. Anything other than sheer obliteration is acceptable and even hailed as a success. I posit that the reason the American public took so long to notice that the wheels were off the wagon in Iraq is because government lives like we do. Hell, after all: the government is us.
So it should be no surprise to anyone that wars get rougher by the day although we are told that things are going swimmingly. It should not be shocking that politicians paint themselves as defenders of freedom and righteousness and then participate in fraud, or help business marginalize the American worker, or sell out CIA operatives for political reasons.
When Katrina happened, we actually witnessed a worst-case scenario. We knew it when we watched it on the news and felt slightly guilty that our homes weren’t under 8 feet of water and our relatives weren’t stuck in attics hoping for rescue. It was the tragedy we always prepare ourselves for, so we were able to process it.
But it should come as no surprise that in the weeks that followed several hundred dead was considered an upshot, that those predicting something worse were painted as hysterical fatalists. It should be no surprise that the tens of thousands of shattered lives got a fresh coat of media paint as a long road to recovery and a new group of people ready to enter the Ownership Society. It should not be surprising that very little mention is made of the fact that these people lived in crushing poverty to begin with, and now face little more than nature-made gentrification.
Even in the face of total disaster, the impact apparently wasn’t hard enough to immediately trigger a metaphorical face-full of cold, unforgiving consequence for those in leadership roles. As citizens and voters, it remains to be seen whether we have the will to wield the Flaming Sword of Rebuke.
I doubt we do. The same old song is playing, and the new bosses will probably look an awful lot like the old ones in 2006. The days of Nixon, after all, are over.
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