Society
The Instability of “Normal”
America is not “normal.” Pretending otherwise will only exacerbate the problem.
Some time ago, I encountered a funny tweet that, in many ways, summarizes the current state of America:
The hilarity of the tweet aside, it really drives home an important point about our society: Many individuals often find it easier to pretend that an issue does not exist, rather than confront it directly and face what is likely to be a significant price to repair it. That is, until their car’s engine starts billowing smoke while in motion and proceeds to combust after a long period of neglect.
That, in a nutshell, is America today.
This is a reductio ad absurdum, of course, but the incessant desire among many people to “get back to normal” is, in some sense, reflective of our collective refusal to acknowledge that there is nothing “normal” about America. Absolutely nothing. And, more specifically, there is nothing “normal” about our political economic order, which continues to push the limits of capital well beyond what it can handle.
Of course, many people have long argued that capitalism is an inherently unstable system — its insatiable desire for growth being the source of this instability — and, thus, would eventually crumble under the weight of its own excesses, while inciting political-class conflict along the way.
Noting this point, Oliver Cox wrote in Caste, Class and Race that “capitalism, especially industrial capitalism, because of inevitable dialectical development, its internal contradictions, is unstable and will sooner or later resolve itself into a more permanent system.” Writing in the midst of World War II, Cox was by no means sanguine in his belief that the end of capitalism would necessarily portend a better, more generative state.
Rather, he cautioned that this instability could very well exacerbate the worst characteristics of capitalism if left to its own devices — illustrating Germany’s transition into a Fascist state as a case in point. In other words, whistling past the graveyard, in Cox’s estimation, was the absolute worst thing those committed to building a better world could do.
And, yet, this is precisely what many of us have elected to do.
Despite the fact that COVID-19 is still infecting and killing tens of thousands of people each month, sports — both professional and college — are back in full swing, to the delight of many. Many states have fully “reopened,” virus be damned. And though air traffic is still significantly lower than it was before the virus emerged, there is evidence that this trend has begun to reverse. Taken together, it seems as though many Americans are searching for any semblance of “normal” wherever they can find it.
But such a search will be in vain. “Normal” simply does not exist.
There can be no “normal” when hundreds of thousands of people are forced to choose between their health and food on the table. There can be no “normal” when leaders express their frustrations about property damage sustained during protests against the state-sanctioned murdering of Black people, but do not call into question the legitimacy of “private” property itself — an idea which has historically been used to justify the very dispossession that many are critiquing. There can be no “normal” when the billionaire class grows richer, while others struggle to make ends meet. Truly, there can be no “normal” as long as billionaires exist at all.
These are the noises of America. They are not “normal.”
Turning up the music and pretending otherwise will only make matters worse.
