Living in Post-History

I remember very clearly when, just after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11 2001, a group of media pundits declared that irony was now dead. From my perspective as someone who had not long before lived their life as an instrument of United States foreign policy it seemed a thoughtless and amazingly uninspired idea that demonstrated a profound lack of understanding about the world we live in. I didn’t get why some of the, supposedly, smartest people in the nation were so abjectly unaware.

I have been thinking about that moment in time a lot. At the time it seemed like the United States was headed for a reckoning over its place in the world. Looking back, not only did the reckoning never come, but the US doubled down on the types of activities that caused 9/11 to happen in the first place. Our president at the time urged Americans to go to the mall.

It feels like that is happening again; to me at any rate. I don’t watch TV news or listen to news while I drive to work. I read my local newspaper daily, online. Interestingly enough, it seems like there really is no Washington DC when I read the news online. trump does make headlines when he tries to repeal sections of the constitution or eliminate entire federal departments via executive order. His handing the reins of government to illegal immigrant Elon Musk is treated like politics as usual. In the world of the news media this is all normal.

trumps antics are inescapable on social media. There are his fans fawning over his latest blunder as a brilliant move in a game of 6-dimensional chess that will own the libs. There are his haters and critics who take his latest blunder as a brilliant move in a game of 6-dimensional chess that will change the course of history forever towards the worst possible outcomes. I see him putting on a show to deflect from what he really seems to care about.

trump and his apparent puppet master, Musk, are playing the vulture capitalism game on the federal government. The big win in this particular game is tax cuts for people who will never be able to spend the money they already have. The strategy is to dismantle the government and use the spoils to fund those tax cuts.

I started this essay talking about the death of irony. I think what we are seeing now is the premature announcement of the death of history. As trump fills out his kakistocratic government and hands power to his billionaire cronies it seems like they think that they have everything under control. History shows that nothing is under anybody’s control regardless of time or place.

All of this to say that the view from the trenches is very different from the view you get from the ivory towers of academia or the media or from the government’s hall of power. trump and his associates believe themselves the masters of the universe; at least, that is how they present themselves. Meanwhile, in the trenches, trump fan and foe alike are taking serious looks at what is going on in the country. The people in the trenches have different measures of success.