Without Hope

On the eve of his 70th birthday, a writer wonders where it went.

I can’t remember a time in my life when the world seemed so wrong as it does now. This morning in the park when I told a woman that my dog was nervous, she said, “Who isn’t, these days?”

As Trump rolls out his cabinet, which in toto amounts to a parade of the worst this country has to offer, I feel that we are trapped in his fantasy life. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to declare January 6 a national holiday.

But my sense of dread extends far beyond the White House. Across the horizon, things seem bad and are getting worse. Americans, of all people, having long lived in an island of stability, now seem to welcome disturbance, even chaos. I suspect that they like Trump’s disruptive ways because they feel that the American economy is increasingly built to favor the rich and leave behind the middle and working classes. In this sense, Trump’s aberrations, even his odd musings on the size of Arnold Palmer’s penis, are not bugs but a feature. He gives voice to their anger, their sense that the game has been rigged against them. They want to see the tables turned over.

There’s a reason the recent neologism “broligarchy” has become so popular so quickly. Donald Trump may be president, but tech billionaires half his age have become the faces of our time—greedy, self-righteous, and surprisingly ignorant of the nation’s foundational principles.

Few beacons of hope shine abroad. Thuggery is the rule of the day in so many places. The tragedy in Gaza is endless. The Middle East feels like it is teetering. Putin’s war in Ukraine drags on. The hard right—not cautiously conservative, but blindly reactionary—seems in control in places like Iran and India. Too often it uses the trappings of religion or ideology to oppress others, especially women and minority groups. Putin kills his critics. The Chinese government crams Uighurs into slave labor camps.

The worst people, as Yeats wrote just over a century ago, are “full of passionate intensity.” Contrary to the Irish bard, many of the best do retain conviction nowadays, but for doing so they sometimes are being beaten by secret policemen.

Overarching all this hang the threats posted by global overheating, probably the biggest threat facing humanity. Yes, the Earth will be here in five hundred years. But will humans? I sometimes think it doesn’t matter, because humans are causing it, and their disappearance will at least curtail the burning of the planet. This isn’t just a matter of storms, but of clouds of insects appearing in places where we haven’t seen them before, of species going extinct, of people forced to migrate by famine.

As I read over the previous paragraphs, I realize I am saying nothing much that is new. But I feel the need to collect it all in one place, if only to record for myself how I see the situation we are in. I wonder if people in the 1930s tried to write similar overviews.  

I am nearing the age of 70, and all I can say is, I am surprised and sorry that my generation didn’t do better. Martin Luther King Jr.’s arc of history feels badly bent, and perhaps broken.