W e’ll never get to draw a line through stupid. I remember, as a kid, thinking Thank god someone is in charge. I assumed someone had it figured out. Lots of someones. Anybody taller than me, in fact. Things seemed to work, so I figured there must be someone making them work. I took this for granted and continued to believe it for too long. Even at forty-two years old, I still believe it from time to time; I still slip into moments where I think that despite everything we’re staring down right now, we’ll end up at some regression to an acceptable, if not ideal, mean.
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On Thursday, when Donald Trump put on a little puppet theatre show and “renamed” Lake Ontario to Lake America, I thought for a moment we might have tapped the bottom of the well of stupidity. There can’t possibly be anything left to draw from it. Some sort of sense must thus prevail, right? Trump can’t unilaterally rename a shared body of water for all who share it or recognize it beyond our borders. US states, beginning with New York, will refuse to play along with the bit. Trump’s most devoted cultists will clap along for fear of upsetting their leader, but most Americans will recognize the stunt as a petulant, juvenile outburst while they struggle to afford groceries and dodge poisoning by blueberries or lettuce. These are sensible checks against the mad king, and that must be something.
But no, none of this changes the fact that, the way things are going, we may never reach the bottom of the well of stupid. The American empire is in decline, its global dominance receding and internal political institutions in decay. Trump is a symptom of this decline, and his inevitable departure from the political scene won’t reverse it. Post-Trump, we should expect more of the same absurdities and vanities from the White House, Congress, judiciary, and the states. And when the hegemon begins to collapse, you can count on the fallout extending beyond its borders. The American drift toward illiberalism already parallels and reinforces democratic decline beyond its borders.
Chaos breeds absurdity. A shift in the global order will feed chaos just about everywhere. So will climate change, growing inequality, and the AI revolution. We don’t know precisely what the coming years will look like, but we know they’ll bring devastation. A deadly flood in Nepal, which we can watch from a distance on our devices, reminds us of the power of natural disasters. Meanwhile, new warnings about the cybersecurity risks of AI draw our attention to the brave new world in which nothing digital is safe or secure. Industries are at risk, along with the jobs they provide, but massive unemployment will look like a cozy Christmas morning compared to a food system collapse, which could happen.
The stupidity of the day is a reflection of a common and growing insecurity. Without security, humans become unmoored, we go adrift. We don’t do well unmoored or adrift. We can follow the stupidity in real time online, up to the minute and participatory insofar as we can weigh in, share our thoughts, or even grieve together. It’s a spectacle—depressing stuff but occasionally entertaining. When Trump renames a lake or shares a hackneyed meme, we can join in mockery, if only in exasperation. So we mock and meme right back, and that’s both a normal response and fair play. But sitting awake at night, looking up at the ceiling, it’s less funny. Then we know how much trouble we’re in; then we fully feel the weight of the fact that the stupidity is less goofy than it is sinister and terrifying.
I’ve said before that there is no panacea to the dread that comes from confronting existential or otherwise grand threats to our ways of living. There is a treatment to help us manage the days, though—a constructive one, I mean. We can choose to do something. Maybe that sounds silly, but I’ve found that doing something helps ease the anxiety, frustration, exasperation, and fear.
You can’t do everything, but you can do something. I do a lot of panels and talks for book and media events and get asked often about ways we can push back. I use this “do something” line almost every time, suggesting that, when in doubt, start small and local, tangible and immediate. Above all, though: start. Take the first step, whether it’s sending an email, making a phone call, signing up for a neighbourhood group, or accepting whatever calls to you as a first step. You’ll find the second, third, and hundredth steps far easier, and you’ll find yourself with less time to indulge in the embrace of a foregone conclusion: defeat.
Forward motion in service of a purpose you care about doesn’t undo the chaos or erase the stupidity around you, but it is nonetheless empowering (and distracting), not to mention a good in and of itself. You won’t save the world, because you can’t. No one can on their own. But you can do your bit to rebalance the ledger on which we track the good and the bad, and sometimes that’s enough.
Originally published as “The Stupidest Day Until the Next One” by David Moscrop (Substack). Reprinted with permission of the author.
