It was nice while it lasted. The spun-sugar conception that everything self-regulated is for the best has not only failed, it has been failing over and over again throughout this reality-avoiding 21st century.
You could say it started with our intervention in Iraq, where our assumption was that our government had some basic understanding of what was prudent and in our national interest. That it could be trusted not to gin up an untrustworthy case for a war against the wrong adversary with no real plan for anything other than a senselessly fanciful best-case outcome. Oops, fail.
It continued when our faith in unregulated markets brought us the biggest financial collapse since the 1930s. We had been assured that markets didn’t need much regulation and that they maximized efficiency and were reliably self-correcting. Oops, fail.
We’ve been operating on the capricious assertion that giving ever-escalating tax cuts to the rich would yield big benefits for everyone. Oops, fail. And that the climate would somehow take care of itself. Oops, fail. And that our democratic systems were safe from tampering and would reflect majority opinion. Oops, fail.
And lately, that we could stand aside and let the Internet corporatize whichever way the biggest players pleased and that it would all work out for the best. Oops, fail.
Notice a pattern yet? The pattern is that people have to pay attention, and spend some time and effort paying attention and creating and maintaining systems that protect their interests. The comforting position of “I’m really not that political” needs to be seen for what it functionally is: a shirk. Maybe we’d prefer it to be otherwise, but sorry. You and I and everybody else have some ongoing work to do. The economy won’t self-regulate in your interest. The government is not going to self-regulate in your interest. The Internet is not going to self-regulate in your interest. The climate is not going to self-regulate in your interest. Making these things work for you is going to require some effort. Some work. From you.
And it’s not even the case that we can fix some things and then return to blissful disengagement. We need to change not just certain broken mechanisms, but our whole sense of what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. It means ongoing learning and thinking and some work. We have disengaged all the way to the brink.
Don’t “oops, fail” this last chance.
