July 18, 2011 7:29 AM

It's always darkest just before things REALLY suck

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.

  • Ashleigh Brilliant

We’re in such a slump that even the ones that are drinking aren’t hitting.

  • Casey Stengel

Famine. Pestilence. War. Epic, seemingly never-ending flooding. Global climate change. The Packers winning the Super Bowl. Yes, these truly are the times that test the souls and the constitutions of men. Just when you might reasonably begin to think that things couldn’t POSSIBLY get any worse…they prove you wrong and achieve as yet unplumbed depths of epic suckage. The recession to end all recessions wasn’t enough. Greece (and Ireland, Iceland, Spain, and California) teetering on the brink of default wasn’t enough. Even the Pittsburgh Pirates being in first place in the NL Central wasn’t enough. Actually, there’s no telling what will be enough, and when things will hit bottom and begin to trend upwards.

I’m not trying to pee in anyone’s sandbox here, but in case you haven’t noticed, things aren’t going so well…unless you happen to be one of the wealthy oligarchs who walk among the unwashed masses seemingly unaffected by whatever travails happen to befall lesser mortals. Yes, I’ve been around the bend a few times, and I can say with some confidence that the global suckage index (which, in case you were wondering, I just now made up out of whole cloth) has hit levels never before seen since Neanderthals discovered that clubbing their rivals to death was a killer way to settle arguments.

Yeah, I know; not much has changed, right? Still, you might ask, what makes for such epic suckage? Well, funny that you should ask that. I don’t necessarily have and answers, but here’s my (not necessarily exhaustive and/or comprehensive) list that I’m offering only for purposes of illustration:

I could go on, of course, but I think this list, such as it is, illustrates my point quite nicely. The question, I suppose is why now, and why seemingly all at once? Could it be that far too many years of kicking the can down the road on a global scale is finally catching up with us? Have we simply forestalled dealing with the truly unpleasant, difficult, and thorny questions for far too long…and now the bill for our procrastination is coming due? Looking at the world around me, it’s difficult to find an answer other than, “Hell, yes!”

Big structural problems like these — from how goverments and economic institutions are set up and managed, to writing and enforcing laws that actually work, to establishing transparent processes that make companies, financial markets and political systems more accountable and more efficient — are notoriously difficult to tackle.

And that’s true from Washington, to Brussels, Beijing, Tokyo, Tunis and beyond.

So expect a long, hot and uncomfortable summer around the world. And probably a frightening fall, a worrisome winter, and an uncertain spring to follow.

I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade early on a Monday morning, but let’s think about what those of us in (something resembling) functional democracies do. We elect those who pontificate, who present easy solutions to complex problems, and who validate our already closely-held prejudices (et tu, Herman Cain??). Thinkers- people who truly understand that the problems we face are difficult (but not impossible) to solve and may well require difficult choices- often don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell of being elected. We want simple. We want easy. We refuse to understand, much less accept, that the world we live in is bedeviled by problems that are neither simple nor easy to address and resolve.

This would, I suppose, explain American politicians like Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Louie Gohmert…none of whom ever met an issue they couldn’t pander to their knuckle-dragging base about. Meanwhile here in the fact- and evidence-based world, those smart and honest enough to look for real solutions to very real problems are marginalized and treated as eggheads (come on down, Paul Krugman!!). Evidently, and sadly, this is not a purely and exclusively American phenomenon. On a global scale, we’ve put off dealing with intractable structural problems which, if they’d be dealt with early on, might have been simpler to resolve had only the will to do so existed.

There’s a theory I’ve heard espoused that holds that our world must pass through this cycle of chaos in order to get to a place where things will be better. The problem with that theory, of course, is that it presupposes that people will be smarter and more intellectually and philosophically honest. As much as I’d like to believe that, it’s hard to look around me and think that things will really be any different, because our world is increasingly beginning to resemble the set from Idiocracy. The optimist in me wants to believe that things will be different, that we’ll wake up one morning and realize the error of our ways. Unfortunately, the realist in me understands that as long as we’re dealing with human beings, greed, self-interest, and propaganda will tend to carry the day.

So, yeah, things do tend to look the blackest before they really, really suck….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on July 18, 2011 7:29 AM.

It's all fun and games until someone goes all Danton and Robespierre on you was the previous entry in this blog.

You know you've exited the realm of the ridiculous for the sublime when.... is the next entry in this blog.

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