A friend suggested “Nincompopulism”, but I don’t like calling people names…
One of the things that’s really striking to me about stuff that keeps coming up recently, whether it’s in politics, or on Wall Street or wherever, is that people are doing a lot of noisy, boisterous stuff these days, perhaps with some short term objective in mind, but a lot seemingly just to tear things down and jump around with no thought at all not one bit about what comes after. And what real destruction they may leave behind the havoc they wreak, which they’re doing sometimes just for fun, or so they say.
Like how did we wind up in a world where the main lesson many learned from the GameStop turmoil last week on Wall Street is not that cheating is wrong and needs to be fixed at the highest levels, but instead, everybody should be cheating?
So when Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) MA Tweeted:
She got attacked. From the left and right. From a lot of small investors who finally felt they’d found the tools that allowed them to manipulate markets and she was already trying to take that away from them. Which she’s not. And she’s completely right.
So is this Instagram post I came across from a comedian:
Not exactly the same as what I’m talking about, but it also is.
This isn’t “Trumpism” or even radicalism, except in the sense that it’s very nihilistic.
It’s some kind of movement that is growing from the fact that—post Trump—people seem to be growing either way further Right or way further Left. If you thought after the divisiveness of the Trump years that couldn’t possibly be possible: yes, it is. Trump’s no longer the lightning rod day in and day out, nor the thing to rally around, depending on where you’re coming from. So everybody’s finding a million other little people and things.
Even to the point where it gets so jumbled they even strangely sometimes coverage, though at other times could not be further apart. And behind that is a given that people are a lot more angry and depressed and feeling less in control because a virus isn’t doing what we want.
So everything seems to be more action or reaction focused, without a lot of time or any spent on problem-solving, or improving anything in the wake of what may or may not be necessary disruption.
So if we can get out of this mess, we might have some place to go. But now that: the idea you might actually have to repair the drywall, seems like less than an afterthought.
To me, the only reason to think that way is if you think we’re never going to get out of this mess, and everything’s already in ashes, so why not hasten it, especially if it means possibly having some fun? And if it’s at someone else’s expense, it’s easy to figure out a reason they “deserve it”.
Most of the time, all this stuff ends up being a lot of noise. But every once in a while by luck, or chance connections made possible by platforms that are actively connecting us every day, or the shrewd machinations of very clever people here and there, it turns into something. Could be uplifting. But so far, usually destructive.
I’ve said that one of the biggest takeaways from Trump’s term in office is you no longer need to feel compelled to even try to “love thy neighbor”. In fact, it became OK to hate them, and say so. As loud as you want. And accuse them of whatever the hell you want, even if it isn’t true.
Now that seems to be broadened to just take random shots at whomever and whatever. And if you hit something, you do a little victory dance and let the flames rise higher.