(Why) Americans Are Too Busy Reacting to Authoritarianism to Act Against It

Why Aren’t American’s Interested in Why Their Society’s Collapsing?

umair haque
Eudaimonia and Co
Published in
6 min readJun 15, 2018

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Here’s a tiny observation.

Americans have become reactionaries — whether they know it or not. They are always desperately, furiously reacting. Alarmed, shocked, baffled, outraged by the day’s latest, and usually terrible, events. A school shooting, camps being built, a President insulting Canada, elections being hacked, the list is endless. But to react is, at best, to play defense, and at worst, to be manipulated, something like a marionette on a string. Having become reactionaries, what Americans aren’t anymore is authors of their own destiny as a nation.

Here’s how the cycle goes. The authoritarians say something, do something, terrible. They separate mothers and kids, put kids in camps, and so on. Americans respond with sudden disbelieving explosions of outrage, fury, despair, anxiety, dread, denial, bewilderment. But the common thread is that they react. The authoritarians laugh, mock, taunt. The very next day is the same — but worse. What else would it be, if a society is only ever always reacting? Yet doesn’t that reactionary cycle define American life now?

Why is that? Why are Americans trapped in this spin cycle of reacting desperately, furiously, anxiously, a little too late, every single day, to the ills of authoritarianism — which also means that they can’t ever really act against it? After all, if all that Americans can do is react to authoritarianism’s daily transgressions, each one a little more terrible and violent than the last, then authoritarianism will surely win, because it is constantly pushing the bar down into the abyss. So until and unless Americans can explain authoritarianism, instead of react to it, they will simply have no power over it. If you cannot explain a thing, if you do not understand what causes it, but are only ever responding to its effects — what power do you really have? You are impotent — just as Americans find themselves today.

Hence, the desperate, futile spin cycle of reaction in America today tells us something interesting and I think a little important. Americans aren’t very interested in why their society is collapsing — only in the…

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