POLITICS

The Trump administration, now in its death throes, was a perfect signal of both American-ness and American decline. In a strange way, Americanization became visible, even inescapably so, at the exact moment it was most complete. We became able to see the horrible outlines of U.S.-led globalization as it cracked, and at the same moment that the internet made everyone on the planet inhabit American culture. Because of its apparent decadence, we can all start to feel what has happened to us.



Have you been to a bar or restaurant in North America lately? I mean, before we allowed this pandemic to kill hundreds of thousands of us. Very often, those spaces feel like this: there are ten to fifteen televisions on the wall. About half of them are silent, but the rest have the sound on, meaning that they roar above each other. Several football games are on at once. In one match, there is five to fifteen seconds of violent action, and then it stops for commentary. The two men, bursting out of their suits, are not speaking but actually yelling their comments: at each other, and at you. At halftime, literal warplanes soar above the field. Then another brief explosion of violence down below, and cut to a commercial. Some cloying brand is presenting some obviously inadequate solution to the country’s foundational racial problems. None of that has worked for sixty years, and this obviously isn’t going to work, either. Another brand screams at you to buy something, while insulting your intelligence, and pretending to be self-aware. Then the men crash into each other again. That is what the internet is like, wherever you are. It is loud; childish; desperately commercial; militaristic; incredibly rich but shockingly dysfunctional; and most of all, it is deeply annoying.