Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
October 7th, 2020
When this was pitched to me, I jumped at the chance: It seemed to me that ranting about American decadence might get it off my chest and improve morale, which was low. And then when I learned that Om Malik was on the other side I was really excited. I have long thought that Om was great. That he was willing to take the non-decline side made me confident there were much stronger arguments for it than I had recognized. I looked forward to ending this debate heartened, encouraged, and much more than half-convinced.
But after reading Om's response, I find myself worried that his heart is not in it. My précis of it would be: We must imagine that America is not in decline. Why? Because if we recognize that it is in decline we will lose all hope of being able to turn things around.
It is an argument along the lines of Camus's "we must imagine Sisyphus happy". Why must we imagine Sisyphus happy? Because we are in his situation, and if we cannot imagine—i.e., "imagine" in the sense of "pretend", not in the sense of entering into his thought-processes—Sisyphus happy, we despair and cannot do our own work, pointless and futile as that own work may be. It is an argument along the lines of Antonio Gramsci, dying of mistreatment in Mussolini's jails, recognizing that the intellect told him to be pessimistic, but that he needed to overcome that with "optimism of the will".
Om's message is that America is not in decline because we might still "take a hard look at [our]sel[ves]... not like what [we] saw... ma[ke] a commitment to turn things around—and... follow... through". Perhaps we will.
This is not helping my morale.
The facts that America has astonishing land, abundant natural resources, and a long history of welcoming immigrants who feel cramped and constrained and unappreciated elsewhere—all these should make America's greatness a slam-dunk and America's future bright. But right now, in the world in which we live, I read my friend Dan Wang writing "I’ve spent the past month in Shanghai, which I think is the best place in the world right now: It’s always been the most fun and livable city in China; and there has been no transmission of the virus since April, with restaurants, bars, and museums all open for months..." I think that America has 150,000 new coronavirus cases and 1,000 deaths a day, that that amount of virus risk puts a serious crimp in day-to-day activities, that there is no plan for dealing with it, and that at this caseload we are still... three years from likely herd immunity, which we will reach after 1,000,000 more deaths.
It is certainly true we have a long way to fall. Things can still be very comfortable on the way down for a long time. "There is", Adam Smith said in 1776, "much ruin in a nation".
But I had hoped Om would change my mind.
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