And though the past has its share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But its protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it’s a monster and will not obey
— from “Monster” by Steppenwolf (1969)
President-elect Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in part because people wanted their sense of normal back, and a sense of agency. Conspiracy theories such as QAnon arise in times when the world seems in chaos. People want a sense of being in control of their fates. “I want to do it myself,” says the two-year-old. As adults, we simply don’t say it aloud. Trump promised “great again” and delivered chaos.
And when we look for the causes of our misfortunes, we are wired to identify enemies by their faces: jaguars, not falling rocks. Or as Matt Taibbi once put it, there is “a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish… can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs.” Or technology. No face.
Anand Giridharadas spoke with writer Ayad Akhtar (“Homeland Elegies,”) about how corporations have managed to monetize our attention. With it, we ourselves are being monetized to facilitate the concentration of wealth in a system grown beyond our control:
AYAD: It’s definitely not in excellent health. I do tend to think that we live in something like a corporate autocracy. There is no way for people to participate in the decision-making bodies that are actually responsible for most of the infrastructural decisions in their lives.
I don’t know how we’re going to rein in the increasingly powerful, global transnational companies. I see the rise of authoritarianism across the world as connected to this. Really, it’s connected to the fact that there seems to be an organic dissolving of whatever these political systems are, which are no longer able to operate as meaningful checks against those who are actually in power.
To use an analogy from the Roman republic, the aristocrats have arrogated to themselves so much power that the only meaningful check against them is a strong emperor.
Hence the insurrectionist “patriots” who called for “Emperor Trump” on Jan. 6.
The problem is, like Trump, the people in charge by virtue of their wealth fail to recognize their wealth does not signify knowledge or wisdom. Akhtar recalls attending a dinner where invited artists among plutocrats functioned “as sort of adjacent jester figures.”
He elaborates:
AYAD: I was at a dinner one night where I think it really all kind of dawned on me. I won’t say who was at that dinner, but it was some prominent people. This is a dinner party of people sitting around a table and bandying about the latest theories on how to make the world a better place and all of that stuff. The conversation was so deluded. And it dawned on me that these were the people who were actually making decisions about the world.
Their analysis was so flawed and completely determined by the fact that they thought they knew something because they have money. Their social situation and the way that they were treated in the world because of their net worth encouraged them to believe that they actually knew something. And, oddly, they didn’t.
One person in particular corrected me for suggesting that Mohammed had been born after the alleged birth of Jesus Christ. This is a very prominent person who was correcting me about the timeline of Mohammed’s birth — and with derision, not even with a question.
I realized there’s something intoxicating to all involved, myself included, to be hobnobbing with those who pull the levers. Until you realize that those who pull the levers don’t know anything.
As if after four years of the Trump administration, the brain-dead antics of his enablers in Congress and in his party, and the election of QAnon believers to public office we have to be told.
Have a read anyway. It will give you the fleeting sense that there are still sane people in the world.