How to Escape 'the Worst Possible Timeline'. Cultural pessimism is widespread. But there's a way out

[YorkRd]

How to Escape ‘the Worst Possible Timeline’

Cultural pessimism is widespread. But there’s a way out.

By Tara Isabella Burton

The government is paralyzed by toxic polarization. Our economic and social systems make the rich richer and keep the poor poorer. Marginalized groups continue to fight against centuries of systemic injustices. A pandemic has killed more than 1 million Americans. Meanwhile, preventable “deaths of despair”—including suicide and deaths related to substance abuse—are on the rise. Fewer and fewer people are choosing to have children, citing not only economic concerns but moral ones: How could anyone bring an infant into a world as benighted by cruelty and injustice as this one? The thinking goes like this: The inevitable march of climate change will probably wipe out humanity, anyway. At least, if artificial intelligence doesn’t get there first.

[link:https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/doom-pessimism-worst-possible-timeline/674441/|

[Aristus]

1. The billion-dollar media hate-machine has destroyed one of the best features of the

American character: our optimism. The idea that we are working together to build a better tomorrow for succeeding generations. The bellowing broadcasters have turned us into a country seemingly single-minded in determination to get more guns for the gun-crazed, more wealth for the already-wealthy, and more socio-political and economic cache for white people.

To be American nowadays is to be angry, bitter, exhausted, and without hope. (At least it seems that way to me.)

[Sympthsical]

2. The media are one of the single biggest problems in this country

Once mass communication became a thing, the media learned that fear and anxiety sell in all spaces. And so we've been receiving a steady stream of it nonstop for decades.

When it comes to politics, conflict sells. That Congress came together on a bipartisan measure is nice and all, but it doesn't sell papers or generate clicks. Making sure everyone is at everyone else's throat does. Cultural conflict. We seriously just spent weeks discussing two movies and a country song. Like, everywhere. Every time I opened CNN or the Washington Post, that shit was in there.

This kind of anxiety and conflict is corrosive of a culture. It's not just the pessimism or depression of it all. It's the anxiety, the fear, and how that alchemizes into hostility.

Politicians will go where they are lead, where the influence is, what will keep them seated in power. Look at Republican politicians. MTG and Boebert didn't fall out of a clear blue sky. They are the products not the causes. They found where the political gold for them was.

And if people say, "Well, Fox News . . ." It ain't just Fox News. Not by a long, long way. And anyone who thinks so isn't paying the slightest bit of attention.

It's all of it.

[LuckyCharms]

3. Well said. n/t

[FalloutShelter]

4. 100%

[YorkRd]

5. I see a huge political opportunity here. Reagan's optimism replaced by MAGA pessimism

So much of GOP messaging for a long time revolved around Reagan’s sunny optimism. The way MAGA is always looking backward to some golden age that never really existed instead of seeing a promising future that can exist. Cast Republicans as pessimists afraid for the future. The GOP is holding America back with their cultural fearmongering and negativity, that especially hurts the young, women, LGBT and non whites.