When was the last time the United States faced a true existential threat?
Yeah, it’s been a very long time. Most Americans, if they’re aware of it at all, only know about World War II through books. The Cold War? While the experts were very well aware that we were teetering on the edge of an existential abyss, and certain scientists used the prop of the Doomsday Clock to make explicit the dangers of nuclear war, I honestly think that only a small proportion of the population understood – in their bones, as the old saying goes – that everything could disappear in nuclear dust if thing went awry. I know, growing up in that era, I was not in the least concerned. It was words, words, words, and while I understand some people came out of that era terribly traumatized, I was not one of them.
And how do people who have never faced a collective existential threat react in the realm collective actions, aka choosing national leaders?
Well, I think we’ve been seeing that for the last 25 years. They increasingly vote for what they want and what threatens their way of life, and who best represents that, rather than an assessment of what threatens the nation and who has the best policy proposals for approaching the problem.
And Donald Trump has, as his central theme, the message that No, you don’t have to change, my opposition simply is trying to victimize you. He is firmly in the camp that nothing has to change, everything will go on and on and on. After all, within his limited lifetime it has, hasn’t it?
This tallies with this report by Garrett Graff at WIRED:
While vacancies and acting officials have become commonplace in this administration, the moves by President Donald Trump this week represent a troubling and potentially profound new danger to the country. There will soon be no Senate-confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, director of national intelligence, principal deputy director of national intelligence, homeland security secretary, deputy homeland security secretary, nor leaders of any of the three main border security and immigration agencies. Across the government, nearly 100,000 federal law enforcement agents, officers, and personnel are working today without permanent agency leaders, from Customs and Border Protection and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
The nomination of Richard Grennell to the post of Director of National Intelligence, a post that he apparently is not even legally qualified to occupy, is simply another symptom of Trump’s belief that change is unnecessary because there can be no existential threat because … he’s never lived in an America which has experienced such a threat. He lacks the imagination to see any threat except from the political forces that call for change. It doesn’t matter who occupies the DNI post, just so long as he’s loyal to Trump.
This is why the Climate Change crisis, an existential threat to our form of civilization, and possibly to humanity, runs into denial, although these days it’s changed from denial that it’s happening to denial that it’s humanity’s activities that are causing it.
Because to accept that scientific finding that climate change is anthropogenic would be to accept that a lifestyle has to change.
And climate change is only just beginning to involve dramatic effects. World War II involved invasions, mass deaths, and other terrible events. Climate change is a lot more subtle, although storm damage has to get our attention – if only locally. Lost shoreline some more. When Miami goes away?
We’ll see if the citizenry finally realizes there’s some existential threat out there.
