Just a few quick thoughts for today as I navigate life with a newborn. My book is now out. You can order it here and use the code 08SALE250 to get 50 percent off. You can also hear me discuss the book, much of the American decline and violence it covers, as well as my time as a local newspaper reporter in small Midwestern towns at KAXE in Bemidji, MN. I also sat down to discuss the book with my hometown paper back in Peoria. You can read that story here.
For as long as the internet has been around, there have been people willing to say terrible things online. It used to be that many who expressed racist beliefs and other markers of societal regression did so anonymously, and that’s certainly still the case. But take a scroll through the Facebook feed of just about anything these days — including, most certainly, your local TV news station — and you’ll see members of your own community openly espousing racism and hate.
Many of our friends, neighbors and co-workers no longer feel pressured to keep these beliefs under wraps. They are open with it, and clearly feel there are no consequences. Increasingly, they’re right.
As I’ve gone about talking to people about my book, which has now been published, people have asked me variations of a question: what’s different about America now compared to when I began my career as a newspaper reporter more than a decade ago? If I had to pick a single word to describe a driving factor of the widespread decline the book covers, it would be shamelessness.
Many of our friends, neighbors and co-workers have been emboldened over the last two decades to openly espouse beliefs that many of us grew up believing were in the past. They do not feel shame in displaying their ignorance and racism. I don’t know about you, but I grew up in an era where things like the Civil Rights movement were generally viewed as good things. The people who believed otherwise, I was led to believe, were on the margins of our society. I don’t know if I can say that anymore.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson does an admirable job combatting the hate and racism that fills the comment sections of his Facebook posts on any given day. Like a lot of us, he might be better off ignoring those comments more often, but I understand why he feels the need to confront them head-on.
His feed — plus that of hundreds of local news outlets across the country — is inundated every single day with people saying things that should result in getting them ousted from polite society. But they’re not doing so anonymously — they’re doing it under their own names, often proudly linking themselves and their racist comments back to their employers.
Maybe some of these folks get a talking-to by their boss at the local car dealership where they work. Maybe some of them even get fired for saying obviously racist shit on the Facebook page of their town’s mayor, where their profile lists them as being employed at businesses whose bottom lines rely on, you know, not being openly racist. But many more of them face no consequences. And why should they? Over the last 10 years, we’ve watched as some of the most powerful and influential people in American life have expressed racist beliefs on a daily basis.
In this type of society, why should anyone be fearful that such comments will have consequences in their own lives? Many of the things that many of us were led to believe would result in dire consequences no longer apparently do so, especially for those at the top, like Donald Trump. Wanton corruption, open racism, abject ignorance — all of these things have led to more success and power for Trump and his vast network of Americans who support these degrading behaviors or are profiting from them.
How do you turn around a society where such behavior is rewarded? That’s the underlying question that will be answered by November’s elections.
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