I wonder why, precisely, this fills me with such dread. It's the natural order of things for nations and empires to rise and decline. It makes no more sense to protest than to argue against death.
In fact, I wonder if my outrage at American decline is just that--a protest against death. Perhaps we want our countries to be immortal precisely because we aren't.
One part of me thinks, "No, you're outraged because an American-led order would be more pacific, benevolent, and enlightened than the chaos and war that inevitably ensues when an empire collapses--and God help us all, in the nuclear age. It's logical."
But another part of me knows that I'm taking this *really* personally. Too personally. All major emotions are personal. I'm outraged because the United States is losing power in a grotesque, humiliating way--a narcissistic wound of the first order.
And outraged because the United States and I are, if not the same thing, too close to disentwine.
Anyway. There's a large literature connecting "humiliating loss" to the onset of major depression and generalized anxiety. See, e.g., jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap….
Anyway. There's a large literature connecting "humiliating loss" to the onset of major depression and generalized anxiety. See, e.g., jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap….
If you're an American who isn't feeling a massive sense of humiliating loss, you're *really* not paying attention. For your mental health, don't. But if you're feeling depressed and anxious, consider that idea: We've experienced an almost primal humiliating loss.
It doesn't get more humiliating, for an American, than "realizing you've become yet another third-world basket case country that's not even very powerful anymore."
The idea that we're the greatest empire ever to bestride the globe--and a *good* one, too (or at least, a hell of a lot better than the alternatives)--is baked deep into our collective and individual sense of ourselves. We're not that, anymore.
We're not even good at self-government anymore. We don't seem to be doing so well at freely exercising our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The rest of the world looks at us in horror and pity.
I swallowed the America Kool-Aid. I believed all of it. I still do. I don't think I'm the only one left, but "people who believe America was the greatest political experiment in human history" are obviously a minority now. Most of my fellow citizens have gone nuts.
We grieve losses, but when these losses are humiliating, we become depressed and anxious. That's something different. This is, for 320 million Americans, one of the most humiliating and cataclysmic losses imaginable--the idea of an exceptional America that leads the world, gone.
And the way it happened is so humiliating. For all of us.
Maybe that's why I haven't had much to say on my newsletter. I'm too depressed and anxious to write. Too much humiliating loss.
Maybe that's why I haven't had much to say on my newsletter. I'm too depressed and anxious to write. Too much humiliating loss.
