Why do they want us to think our world is on fire?
Senator Ted Cruz. Photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons, some rights reserved
America’s first official 2016 presidential contender, Texas Republican Ted Cruz, went viral a couple of weeks ago with a video where he told audiences, “The whole world’s on fire. The world is on fire, yes. Your world is on fire.”
That video caught my eye same time that another clip was spreading fast on Facebook. It turns out Hollywood is preparing to release yet another end-times movie, this one a blockbuster treatment of a nation-destroying earthquake originating on the San Andreas fault in California.
“We will get hit again,” a wild-eyed actor promises. “And it’s going to be a bigger monster.”
I’ve thought a lot and written a fair bit about this phenomenon before. Humans tend to be drawn to narratives about threat, disaster, and apocalypse. Whether it’s zombies or ebola plagues or Obamacare, there’s something in our reptiles brains that sparks in exciting ways when we’re confronted with the idea of primal threats to life and limb.
But I think it’s important for Americans living in an increasingly saturated media world to be aware of this gloomy zeitgeist. Whether it’s our friends sharing Facebook messages about the deadly, imminent peril of terrorism or politicians hoping to link their fortunes to our fears, the end-times are in vogue right now.
I think it’s also worth paying attention to the fact that, increasingly, a constant sense of overwhelming menace is big business for a lot of people. It’s unclear whether Senator Cruz will ever be president of the United States, but there’s no doubt but that the constant, pulse-pounding, the fuse-on-the-bomb-is-lit rhetoric has pushed him very close to the pinnacle of American politics.
He’s not alone. Republicans who’ve struggled to articulate clear policy ideas that might provide an alternative to Barack Obama’s leadership instead default to what amounts to a breathless invitation to panic. How can we possibly talk about ideas or policies or practical alternatives when the sky is falling? How can you ask us to talk about the fine details of Social Security when we’re trying to save the world?
Hollywood can hardly go wrong with a film about an asteroid or a Biblical flood or an ice age or zombies or the sun going supernova
It is, sadly, mostly a waste of time to cite facts showing that most of this fear-baiting is utter nonsense. By every metric, the world is a safer, less war-like more stable place than at any time in history. Fewer people are dying in military conflicts. Fewer people are dying in plagues. Fewer people are dying of hunger, thirst or dire poverty.
We have institutions capable of dealing with most of the threats we confront, including the truly dire ones. Ebola was really scary. But using modern science and by devoting global resources to the problem, it was contained. Roughly 10,000 people have died from the epidemic so far. That’s half as many people as die every year in the US after catching the flu.
The truth is that even those threats anchored in scientific fact — yes, the San Andreas fault is real and so is climate change — aren’t going to produce the kind of devastating end-times that sometimes worm their way into our imaginations.
Meanwhile, here in the US, we continue to enjoy an astonishingly high standard of living. We’ve bounced back from a terrifying recession. Things aren’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. But neither are we being stalked by the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
It’s not just conservatives or mindless Hollywood types trafficking in fear
But we can’t just single out jingoistic souls like Senator Cruz for trying to keep us all hiding under our beds. This zeitgeist is more powerful, more pervasive than that.
Some of our most interesting writers and thinkers have devoted themselves in recent years to visions of global horror. Margaret Atwood’s novelistic treatments of a post-climate change world make Cruz’s rhetoric look downright tame. Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” and Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” draw their narrative power in large measure from the idea that everything’s gone to hell in a hand basket.
So why do so many people, from so many different political and cultural persuasions, want you to think your world is on fire?
Part of it is simple greed. That stuff sells. But I think it’s also a lack of imagination and rigor. It’s easier to make spittle fly about the end-times than it is to actually govern or balance a budget. And artists who can’t figure out anything new to say about our complex, muddled, modern world find it much less troublesome to imagine a world thrown back into a state of primitive, dog-eat-dog turmoil.
Yes, McCarthy’s “The Road” offers a wrenching portrait of a father trying to keep his son alive. But does it say anything about what it means to actually be a father in the modern world? Not really. For the vast majority of us, the challenge these days isn’t keeping our children alive. It’s finding ways to help them connect and be good people. That is a much harder story to tell.
So those two videos — Ted Cruz’s sermon and the trailer for “San Andreas” — got me thinking about all this. But I want to add one more video to the conversation, the one that actually convinced me to wrestle with all this doom-saying one more time.
It’s all still here!
A new Netflix sitcom called “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” actually grapples with America’s apocalypse fixation. It tells the story of a young woman who’s been living in a bunker her whole life, convinced that the world has ended. She emerges to find that the world is still chugging along just fine, and it’s actually still pretty darn great.
“It’s all still here!” Kimmy gushes. And she sets off to explore all the complicated, messy, weird, hard and beautiful things that are out there. I know it’s naive to pin my hopes on one screwball comedy, but the message here strikes me as kind of weirdly, happily subversive. “Life beats you up. You can either curl up in a ball and die or you can stand up and say ‘We’re different and you can’t break us.'”
Cheesy, I know. But if I have to choose between a world on fire and a world where people refuse to live in bunkers — mental and otherwise — I’m with Kimmy.
Brian Mann, I disagree with your estimation of our position overseas. Obama’s recent decision to arm the military dictatorship in Egypt is like throwing gasoline on an already out-of-control fire. It’s no wonder people across the Middle East hate us.
OL –
We’ve been arming the Egyptian government since forever. Remember, this is the Egyptian government that threw out the Muslim Brotherhood.
But again, this is a question of context. There has literally been conflict in the Middle East for as long as we have records. The US has been deeply involved really for almost as long as we’ve been a nation.
Is it ugly? Yes. Is it complex and troubling? Yes. It is on fire in some new and frightening way? I see no factual support for that idea.
Remember, the biggest news out of the Middle East right now is that the US is trying to find a diplomatic solution with Iran, long our bitterest foe in the region. That’s not fire. That’s water. That’s an attempt to ease tensions.
It may not work. But it’s a long shot from the days, not so many years ago, when we were reporting daily body counts of US service members.
–Brian, NCPR
Brian, it is complex and troubling in a new and frightening way because 9/11 changed everything.
Didn’t that event make us think differently about the enemy? As ISIS is spreading like a cancer, it is not far fetched to think of what could happen here, given the fact that over 1,000+ Westerners have joined their cause (as reported by ABC news). That means sleeper cells not afraid to blow themselves up and as many others as possible.
Communist dictators hated America and yes, their nuclear missiles were aimed at us, but ISIS and its offshoots have a mandate to destroy the infidels. That covers a whole lot of people here and elsewhere.
You keep asking what is Cruz up to. I think he is sincere and passionate about protecting and preserving our country.
Look at any map of the Mideast and tell me that it doesn’t resemble a spreading wildfire?
CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/videos/international/2014/08/11/orig-jag-sciutto-isis.cnn/video/playlists/jim-sciutto-the-brief/
Cruz is calling it as so many others are seeing it.
I have looked at the map and, no, it’s not spreading like wildfire. Five years ago, the US had two fully active wars underway in Afghanistan and Iraq. We had body bags coming home on a regular basis. Now that’s not happening.
Right now, ISIS is a very serious regional concern.
But ISIS pales compared with past threats, including the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Lebanese Civil War, the Syrian invasion of Lebanon and let’s not forget the Iran-Iraq War which raged for nine years killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Why didn’t Americans talk about the world being on fire in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon? Or during the thirteen years of the violent Intifada? Or during Yemen’s 1994 civil war?
And why, given that there’s nothing particularly different now, do your sources of information want you to believe that we face an imminent peril now?
–Brian, NCPR
This is also the regime that overthrew a democratically elected Egyptian government. We have long supported authoritarian governments around the world because they were seen as “less bad” alternatives. Not an easy call to make, but one which usually turns populist feeling against us. It’s a crime when Republicans do it, but it looks like Obama mostly gets a pass. Either way, it adds fuel to the fire.
“And why, given that there’s nothing particularly different now, do your sources of information want you to believe that we face an imminent peril now?”
Because we are sobered with the threat of attacks being made here in America.
We hear about a heinous crime in another state or another city and we are concerned and troubled. But when it’s in our hometown and the danger is down the street, we respond differently.
Here are my final thoughts, then I’ll step away and let you have the last word.
We were attacked 11 years ago. It was an attack that in many ways brought America into the modern age of global conflict, where quite small but frightening violence, amplified by wall-to-wall cable news coverage, replaces overwhelmingly large violence which used to be the norm.
There are far fewer deaths, far less physical damage (as in, by exponential margins) but it’s quite horrific and looks even more horrific on television.
9/11 style attacks had been going on in Europe and the Middle East for a century, but you’re right, with the exception of the Oklahoma City bombings by domestic terrorists we’d seen nothing comparable on our soil.
I think it makes perfect sense for America to have heightened our sense of caution, defense, intelligence gathering, etc., after 9/11. Whether it makes sense to live in a state of anxiety where your cable TV station and your politicins are constantly telling you the world is on fire?
I have doubts about whether that’s healthy for a democracy.
And I’m also skeptical that it’s really — for guys like Senator Cruz — all about 9/11. Go back and listen to the tape of what he said. When he says the world is on fire, he’s talking about a much more complex basket of issues. He’s talking about Barack Obama. He’s talking about liberalism. He’s talking about the Affordable Care Act. He’s talking about gay marriage.
And to be clear, I don’t mind him disagreeing with the President or opposing gay marriage or whatever. But to escalate from “we have a strong disagreement over issues” to “the world is on fire” strikes me as a posture worth questioning.
–Brian, NCPR
you know they could end this all, by giving those with no hope or future just that…in usa…quit doing nothing about heathcare reforms that go no where, implement the helthcare reform that covers all, medicare for all starting at the stste level & at federal level back up the states to give them support. This would go far in restoring hope & faith.
Brian,
Just before he stated the world is on fire, he said the Obama-Clinton foreign policy is leading from behind. Obviously, he believes this current administration has not done enough (Benghazi comes to mind). He’s a Conservative. He’s a Republican. No surprises. And yes, ISIS is spreading in the Mideast. Christians, Jews, and yes, Muslim infidels are being slaughtered along with specific threats to America.
To say you are skeptical – that he was also referring to liberalism, the Affordable Care Act, and gay marriage, well, it’s not a surprise what his opinions are there. To include these may reveal the real issue – Cruz’s Christian world-view – which is a source of irritation to many on the left.
You know talk about convincing people there is a big bad wolf…we should be talking about on here the implementation of sect 1332 of the aca, it comes into force in 2017, january…this allows the states to inovate and hopefully come up with medicare for all and replace the aca, it’ll come in covering all at a far lesser cost than people pay now for health insurance , no deductables or co pays either, paid for by witholding taxes & revenue collections…a much better way to fund it….support for fed to states to back it up with support. time is now….
Kathy, a truly Christian world view would advocate turning the other cheek.
I know it is Good Friday and all, Easter weekend, Jesus preached about love and the meek shall inherit the Earth and all; but if the Middle East has been the center of war and atrocity since the beginning of time shouldn’t we all switch to a religion that arose somewhere that has been more peaceful?
good friday & easter monday comming, a rebirth of the notion we need medicare for all in usa…think about it instead of listening to those who scream wolf! this is realistic.
I agree knuck.
some very peaceful religions have come from places historically not so peacefull.
Tibet comes to mind. only after centuries of warlike behavior did the Tibetans finally see the light- but at least they changed.
not so much for the children of abraham.
budism, Shintoism, seem more earth and people friendly. the earth is our mother, and the sky our father, even the greeks knew this.
jews, Christians, muslims are three brothers of the same family fighting for attention from daddy.