America Fatigue Syndrome
I couldn't have said it better.
I suffer from America Fatigue Syndrome, do you?
America Fatigue Syndrome
is not the figment of a neurotic imagination. The upset, weariness and
recurring bouts of déjà vu it triggers are real.
Al Jazeera columnist
Published On 6 May 20226
May 2022
A woman holds up a sign during a protest in Foley Square, after the leak
of a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito preparing for a
majority of the court to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade abortion rights
decision later this year, in New York City, New York, US, May 3, 2022 [Jeenah
Moon/Reuters]
I am so tired of the United States of
America.
Perhaps you are tired of America, too.
You may be an American who has – like many of us outside of America – become
exhausted by and with America.
If it is any consolation, exhaustion
is one of the telltale symptoms of America Fatigue Syndrome, a condition that,
I suspect, much of the sentient world is suffering from – consciously or
unconsciously. The other signs include a near chronic agitation, bewilderment
and sense of déjà vu.
Sadly, there is, as far as I know, no
cure.
America Fatigue Syndrome is not the figment of a
neurotic imagination. The upset, weariness and recurring bouts of déjà vu it
triggers are real.
I feel it all the time. I feel it in my bones and mind. It is a
weight. An albatross. A constant. A drain. Pushing down, down. Do you feel it?
A few countries can do that to you. America is one them. America
is exceptional in this regard, you might say.
Lately, more than ever, I have wanted America to go away, and, for
once, be still or quiet – just for a moment. I need, perhaps like you, to come
up for a gulp of air and enjoy a tiny respite from the ubiquitous presence and
bane of America.
What a tonic and pleasure it would be not to have to consider or
write, however briefly, about America.
It is, of course, impossible. We cannot turn America off or change
the dial. The sad, infuriating, and debilitating cacophony of America is
inescapable. America is everywhere, around the clock.
America invades us all.
Still, it appears to me at least that
America’s grip on our psyches and attention is even more acute these days.
America dominates in the familiar ways: money, power, and the 24-hour news
cycle.
And the news is bad, bad, bad. One
convulsion after another. Repeated over and over in a loop, until a new
convulsion arrives. Each one reverberates like an earthquake, damaging people
and places in visible and invisible ways.
It has been like this for a while.
From 9/11 on, in particular. Year after year. President after president. A war,
then another. Death. Lost hope and homes. Secret dungeons. Torture and other
violations – big and small. Explosions of hate, violence and ignorance.
Twenty-six children massacred at school. Their murders “a hoax.” A 100 percent
proof fascist riding an escalator into the presidency. More explosions of hate,
violence and ignorance. A white police officer kneeling on a Black man’s neck
for eight minutes and 46 seconds. Disinfectants and other fantastical potions
to tame a plague. An insurrection in defence of a lie.
It never ends.
The latest convulsion occurred earlier
this week. Five men and one woman in black robes have apparently decided to do
what they once promised, under oath, not to do: overturn a Supreme Court ruling
delivered 49 years ago that guaranteed a woman’s provenance over her body.
Precedent erased. Rights erased.
Progress erased. Replaced by religious extremism masquerading as jurisprudence
and a kind of authoritarianism that, unsurprisingly, has men dictating to women
who has agency over their destiny.
In erasing Roe v Wade, Justice Samuel
Alito and his rancid, right-wing confederates have revealed the other “big lie”
about America – that it is a nation governed by the rule of law and not
parochial passions.
Alito and evangelical company have
also made this plain: The Supreme Court, like the other institutions that
represent the “pillars” of democracy, is a sober-sounding farce, populated, in
the main, by reactionary zealots who treat the law and constitution with
contempt and who call a preening demagogue their patron saint.
More madness in a country addicted to
madness.
The country – if America can be called
that – is unmoored from reason. It is, instead, mired in a perpetual state of
madness. Not all of it, mind you. Enlightened Americans have been made exiles
inside America, watching as the rest of America goes mad.
America is fraying from the centre out
– not at the edges, otherwise known as the “fringes”. When, as Yeats wrote:
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”
The cuckoo “fringe” is now mainstream.
This, combined with the relentless
fury that is such a defining aspect of much of America, makes for a toxic and
corrosive brew, eroding America’s already mythic foundations.
A black hole is devouring America. It
is growing bigger and darker. Every day, more Americans – mostly, but not only,
Republicans – are being sucked into a disfiguring vortex of fury that
inevitably translates into lunacy.
The lunatics and their made-in-America
brand of lunacy are on regular display. You know the lunatics’ names. They are
invited onto TV and radio by charlatans to share their synapse-draining musings
to gin up more lunacy because lunacy plays and pays well in America.
Despite their impressive credentials
and scholarly pretentiousness, Alito, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Thomas and
Coney Barrett probably watch and listen and nod approvingly along – confirming,
yet again, that the smart fanatics are the most dangerous of all.
Stupidly, I had hoped that given his
persuasive loss in early November 2020, the lunatic-in-chief’s appeal would
fade like the embers of a dying fire.
I was wrong.
The calm I longed for never came.
Today, looming beyond the
not-so-distant horizon, the lunatic-in-chief waits, dangles coveted
endorsements and conspires at Mar-a-Lago, ready to reclaim the title of
commander-in-chief.
He taunts us still. The prospect of
four more years of convulsions is as harrowing as it is all too possible.
At this point in a column, a writer is
obliged to offer a fix, a prescription, or a remedy. I am at a loss.
I do not know if there is a fix, a
prescription or a remedy for the madness that courses its malevolent way
through America.
It may be too late.
The views expressed in this article
are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial
stance.
Al Jazeera columnist
Andrew Mitrovica is an
Al Jazeera columnist based in Toronto.
Comments
Post a Comment