And I wish I had more to say about it. There really isn’t much there. It’s subtitle is A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time, and I guess that resonates with the left-leaning intelligentsia, but at the same time, it kind of misses the larger point that its title suggests.
The trouble with reality, after all, is that -- at least from a political point-of-view -- it is constructed out of ideology; of late, two ideologies, each in further and further retreat from one another. So only for some is there moral panic.
Perhaps you picked up this book because an icy hand grips your viscera; sometimes squeezing, sometimes easing, always present. And you suspect that this intimate violation, this forced entry, proceeds from something more profound than politics. You imagine that reality itself is engaged in an epic existential battle and you stand helpless against the onslaught, as the truth is trumpled into dust.
It’s telling that Gladstone went with “trumpled” instead of “trampled” -- because, of course, for others there is no moral panic. Truth isn’t being trampled or trumpled. Truth is in ascendance again, finally, after decades of being denigrated and demeaned.
President Trump is the demagogue that today stands for one side of that equation -- his moral superiority crushing any moral panic his opponents may be feeling -- and Gladstone will spend a lot of her 92 pages focused on his role in our current drama. And real questions remain as to whether he is the director or only another actor in that play. But the “trouble with reality” was with us before he arrived on the scene and will be with us long after he had departed.
For this, Gladstone appropriately pulls from Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, who reminds us that the stakes were long ago laid out by two of our most recognizable dystopian prophets, George Orwell in his 1984 and Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World.
In Orwell’s vision, he notes, we are crushed by a merciless oppression imposed by others, whereas in Huxley’s vision, we are seduced, sedated, and satiated. We enslave ourselves.
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much information that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.
“Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
“In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain.
“In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us…”
Orwell, who in 1948 was fixed on Nazi devastation and Soviet ascendancy, seemed to have nailed it. But thirty-seven years later, Postman saw that in our time and place, it’s unquestionably Huxley. He portrayed a world that leads ineluctably to the election of Donald Trump.
The sad lesson of Brave New World, of course, is that by the time the World State is established, it is already too late to do anything about it. Those within are happy to be there and it is only the “savages” who look at it from the outside who can see the crushing waste of it all.
By the same necessity, I suppose, Gladstone can only write her book for the savages, horrified by the slide into authoritarianism that they see as they are slowly pushed into the tiny reservations that exist outside the Trumpian bubble. She offers advice for what we can do to detect, dissect and categorize the leader’s toxic tweets, but when it comes to actually fixing the problem, she doesn’t have much to offer.
Meaningful action is a time-tested treatment for moral panic.
Focus on policies that matter to you. Congressional offices keep tallies of phone calls from their districts. Make calls. As for street protests, they feel great, but unless they are large and well planned, they’re not all that effective. Since the president actually may believe the polls are rigged, even the most exemplary protests are unlikely to move his needle.
But protests do raise funds. When the American Civil Liberties Union showed up at airports to assist travelers caught in Trump’s travel ban, it garnered six times the donations in a single weekend that it usually gets in a year. And they do spook legislators, especially in their districts.
Protests also have another impact: They transform observers into activists. As Brian Resnick of Vox wrote, “If people who are showing up to protests just because they are curious and sympathetic eventually move on to greater, more consistent action, the movement grows. And change can happen.”
But not soon, and not without sustained effort. Action is vital. Democratic progress stalls without that eternal tug-of-war. But activism alone does not address the bigger issue, the focus of this tract. You cannot march to a long-term solution to your reality problem with a cadre of like-minded allies. That is a solitary journey, and it never ends. You have to travel out of your universe into the universe of others, and leave your old map at home.
It’s up to you, she seems to say. Protest, agitate, donate, vote, yes, but more importantly, get out of your reality bubble and go live in the bubble of others, at least long enough to see what it looks like on the inside and gain the credibility needed to establish a dialogue with them.
But while you’re in there, I suppose you’d better watch out for the feelies, the orgy porgy and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. Although John the Savage couldn’t make the transition to the World State, there’s no guarantee it won’t seduce you.
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