by Barry Goldman
Following the news makes me feel sick. Not following the news makes me feel guilty. This conflict has been going on in my head for years, but recently it has become painfully acute. I don’t make any progress, I just go round and round. I’ve given the voices in my head the names of the two imaginary friends I had when I was a toddler, and I’ve transcribed some of their dialogue below.
Bearky: If we don’t stay informed and keep up with the outrages and stay engaged, the theo-plutocrats win.
Berry-Derry: Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown. They already won. They control the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. They own Twitter and Facebook and the Washington Post and the LA Times and Fox and talk radio. Whether you follow the news or not makes no difference at all except that it makes you miserable. How does your being miserable help anything?
Bearky: It doesn’t help, exactly. But it makes it help possible. If I don’t stay engaged, if I check out and just keep bees – because I’m a rich old man and I can – then help is not even possible. They want me to give up and let them control everything. If I retreat into my own protective bubble and just read novels, they can do whatever they want.
Berry-Derry: And if you don’t? If you read every Substack and every blog post and email, and listen to every podcast, what difference will that make?
Bearky: I don’t know. But I do know it’s important to resist evil. And I know, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
Berry-Derry: Yeah, right. But as far as the actual world is concerned, watching internet commentators and reading blog posts IS doing nothing. It’s sitting quietly in front of a screen. It doesn’t DO anything. You want to know what the enemy wants? He wants you to sit in front of your screen being mad at the world until you get tired and go to bed.
Bearky: So what do you think we should do, go to protest marches and demonstrations? I hate everything about protest marches.
Berry-Derry: Well, it’s a collective action problem, right? If everybody does it, if there’s a general strike and it shuts down the country for a few weeks, the government has to respond. But if it’s just a few thousand hippies marching around chanting slogans, no one cares. The government can ignore them or arrest them as it sees fit.
It’s like the Amazon Problem. I think Amazon is bad. I don’t like how they treat their employees or their suppliers. I think it’s a bad idea for one company to control such a huge portion of the retail sector. I think it’s a bad idea for one person to be so mind-mindbogglingly rich. But you have to admit, they’re very good at what they do. No one is better. And besides, who does it help or hurt if I boycott Amazon? Bezos? Please! It makes no difference whatsoever to Bezos. The only person it makes any difference to is me. I have to put on shoes and schlep to the drugstore in the snow.
Bearky: We agree the collective action problem is a problem. But I don’t think keeping bees and reading novels is doing nothing. It’s like that famous exchange where Robert Wilson was testifying in favor of funding the particle accelerator, and some senator asked how it would help with the defense of the country. Wilson said, “It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.” I think reading novels and dancing and playing music is what makes the human race worth defending. Without those things we’re just a bunch of nasty, violent apes. I want to be on the side that’s against the nasty, violent apes.
Berry-Derry: Fine. Good for you. But it’s still a collective action problem. The Vegetarian Problem is the same. Eating meat is wrong and bad. Factory farming is atrocious. Animal suffering is hideous. No one can disagree. But it makes no difference whatsoever if I stop eating meat. Nothing will happen as a result. Not one cow or pig or chicken will suffer for one less second.
Bearky: Maybe, but if enough people stop eating meat the culture will change. It’s like same-sex marriage or tattoos. There’s a tipping point. Once you get to the tipping point, what was uncool becomes cool. In any case, the idea is to move toward the tipping point. My individual contribution doesn’t make a difference, but when you put it together with the equally meaningless contributions of millions of others it changes the world. Voting works the same way.
Berry-Derry: Right. And that worked out just lovely, didn’t it. It was a lot easier to believe in Democracy before Donald Trump won the popular vote. Masha Gessen said somewhere: If you elect Trump once, well, mistakes happen. If you elect him again, that’s who you are.
And now the same worthless twits who blew the last election to this gibbering malignancy are back asking for money so they can do it again. It didn’t take them a week.
As to tattoos, by the way, I have to think we’re at peak ink. It can’t be cool to have tattoos if the assistant principal at your high school has them. It’s just not possible. But I digress.
Your Fahrenheit 451 fantasy about how you’re preserving Western Culture by practicing calligraphy and listening to Bach, how do you know that’s not just an excuse for selfishness and laziness? Remember when Barbara Bush said, “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” How do you know you’re not just being that kind of odious turd?
Bearky: I don’t. That’s why we’re having this conversation. But how do you know you’re not simply being a masochist. If you’re just torturing yourself out of some deranged sense of duty, why is that entitled to any respect?
Berry-Derry: And here we are back exactly where we started.
Bearky: Right, so let’s go get something to eat.
Berry-Derry: Cheeseburgers?
Bearky: Cheeseburgers. And beer.
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