Chaos and Immobility: The Danger of 'Returning To Normal'
On July 15th, 1979, President Jimmy Carter delivered what he called “The Crisis of Confidence” speech, but history has come to know it as “The Malaise Speech.” In it, Carter addressed a festering frustration in the country brought on by a stagnant economy and growing societal issues. Carter had asked for advice from the country and the feedback he aired that day urged him to be a leader.
And so Carter led. His speech outlined what he believed was the problem with America. That Americans had become preeminently obsessed with accruing wealth and power and material things, and those pursuits had effectively atomized society and left people bereft of personal meaning and worth. “We’ve learned,” Carter would say, “that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”
Carter rolled out an energy policy within the speech, but the point was clear. By the time he signed off he had diagnosed the American problem and warned that Americans must move past cold, hard ambition and find a sense of spiritually in their communities and relationships. If we failed, the poison of “fragmentation and self-interest” might doom the nation to a “mistaken idea of freedom” and, eventually, tragically, a fate of “chaos and immobility.”
That speech was lambasted by even those closest to Carter. He was criticized for lecturing America instead of supplying patriotic rhetoric that Americans had come to expect. That rhetoric is exactly what Ronald Reagan was happy to give them.
In his closing argument for the presidential election, former California governor Ronald Reagan answered Carter’s Crisis in Confidence speech by telling Americans there was nothing wrong with them or the country. The problem, he argued, was with politicians like Carter who didn’t understand the greatness of America and held the country back. As president, Reagan would rectify that and sing the country’s praises from shore to shore.
Carter didn’t stand a chance. He had come to the country and talked with it seriously and honestly about its problems. He diagnosed the American disease of narcissism and greed. He tried to talk mature, honest sense to it, and was crushed because what the country wanted was meaningless patriotic tripe.
Of course, Reagan’s flag-waving was a Trojan Horse for economic upheaval that would change the face of the world forever. He used patriotic rhetoric to further the looting of the economy by the powerful and wealthy, flipping the entire economic world upside down and allowing corporations to grow so powerful and large that they became nations unto themselves. In doing so, corporations began discounting human life over profits and found a willing accomplice in the Republican Party, which worked hand-in-hand with these wealthy interests to block any reform having to do with healthcare or wages.
Meanwhile, Carter’s warnings came true. The conspicuous consumption and sociopathic pursuit of wealth and power atomized American society. It replaced the idea of actual freedom with a perverted idea of freedom through conquering. And it has, unfortunately, led us to a place of chaos and immobility.
Donald Trump is the embodiment of both the chaos and the immobility. Watching his response to the coronavirus pandemic, a societal and political crisis both created and exacerbated by the destructive work of corporations and the Republican Party, has been infuriating and terrifying as it has shifted unpredictably from unpredictable to absurd. On Sunday, while admitting 200,000 Americans might die from the virus, Trump lauded his own failures and then bragged that his emergency press briefings were “a ratings hit” and that more people were tuning in to watch him than the finale of The Bachelor or Monday Night Football.
Trump is a postmodern nightmare. A hell of our own invention that could have never happened had we not fulfilled the worst fears of Jimmy Carter. Decades of greed and narcissism have left us with a reality show president who is not only incapable of leading but is incapable of doing anything but making this situation much, much worse. Even the most inept politicians would listen to experts. Even the worst men would manage to show actual fear and empathy in such a time. Trump’s inability isn’t just his nature, it’s proof of just how diseased this country has become.
The performance is what is most disturbing. The disgusting self-reverence. The vapid bragging. The obsession with public perception and ratings. It turns the stomach. But what we have to understand is that we did not get to Trump by accident. This isn’t an aberration. This storm has been brewing for years and years. Any country that elected Donald Trump president is a sick and malfunctioning country. For this to have happened there had to have been a series of calamitous mistakes that either went unnoticed or were never learned from. His broken nature will doom thousands, if not millions, of Americans to desperate, agonizing deaths.
Trump is the living, breathing embodiment of both the chaos and immobility.
Now, with everyone seeking a “return to normal,” we have to reject that notion. This crisis can’t be solved by waving a flag, by touting American exceptionalism, or rallying around the notion of patriotism. Normal was never normal. Normal was a hidden nightmare that decayed our notions of personal worth, our notions of civic society, our notions of democracy and basic human decency. Normal helped destroy the American healthcare system and led to millions of Americans developing preventable illnesses and a distrust for experts and objective fact. Normal has killed us and it will continuing killing us until there’s nothing left of the human species.
We cannot afford a return to normal. We have to reject normal and find a real and better way of living, of organizing society, of finding self-worth and worth in our relationships and communities. Though Jimmy Carter’s “Malaise Speech” might not have inspired a delirious patriotism, it was delivering a necessary warning we’ve failed to heed. He told us we were sick. He told us we needed help. And now, in the time of a pandemic, perhaps we can start to listen.
Jared Yates Sexton is an author and political analyst whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, and elsewhere. He is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People forthcoming from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. He is currently an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.