Max Nowalk

March 9, 2021

When I woke up on the morning of January 6^th, 2021, the Democrats were set to win both seats of the Georgia runoff elections for the US Senate. I stayed up late the night before fretting about what I would hear in the morning and was thrilled to see the prospects looked so good for the candidates I wanted to win. Mainstream news outlets were predicting as much the night before, but in my mind, nothing was over until it was over. Seeing one of the races declared for Raphael Warnock as the projected winner and Jon Ossoff gaining a steady lead over incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue was a welcome relief as I turned on the TV again. The future was surprisingly promising for once.

Then around 3pm I wondered how much drinking it would take to forget what was happening on my TV screen.

Maybe it wasn’t that bad, but by 4pm it suggested an existential threat of violence across the United States. I cancelled all my meeting plans and ideas of doing constructive things because a more pressing matter had arisen: an unabashed assault on the rule of American democracy by its own citizens not seen since the Civil War. Arguably, as some pundits pointed out, perhaps an assault not seen since the War of 1812 seeing as the Confederacy never got around to invading the Capitol building. It is difficult to overstate, rather than understate, the importance of this moment since it has never been preceded by a similar event in American history.

Saying the assault was the end of democracy altogether is an overstatement, though. America is not the sole arbiter of all that is good in the world and the US Capitol is not its shrine to republican politics. But to any American, the riot was a defeat that defies easy comparison. I heard several remarks about the day’s resemblance to 9/11 with the cultural and political shock it was delivering to the nation. Consider, for instance, the eyes-glued-to-the-screen news phenomenon that dominated the rest of the afternoon, evening, and following days of coverage. Thank goodness the loss of life was nowhere near the atrocities of 9/11 – but even that statement is a loss in and of itself. We lost 5 Americans in total, one of whom was Officer Brian Sicknick, killed as he stood guard at the Capitol.^[1] Over 140 officers were reportedly injured,^[2] and authorities have concluded that many of the rioters coordinated their plans before the day of Jan. 6, indicating this was a premeditated assault.^[3]

Chilling footage shows rioters ransacking congressional offices; using weapons like bear spray, wooden clubs, and knives; stealing Capitol officers’ plastic handcuffs; calling out Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s name as they paraded the hallways; calling to hang Vice President Pence, ostensibly with makeshift gallows erected outside; and attempting to storm the chambers where they knew US Congressmen and women were hiding.^[4],[5] Authorities also found two pipe bombs around the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters.

There is a lot that can be said about all this. In my last Forum piece—which I had begun writing before Jan. 6—I wondered what the worldview of a generation numbed by the crises we face today would look like. One might consult ideas or political figures who have won popular support from young voters to characterize what young people desire from their politicians and future. However, no one knows the future or whether the next generation-defining historical event is right around the corner. It would also be impossible to survey our cultural moment in its entirety since we don’t yet have the distance to make any conclusive judgements.

Yet it is hard not to notice the seemingly decades- if not century-defining historical moment we are witness to. I mean “we” here not so much for all people alive today, but rather the generation that was born between the mid-nineties to the mid-two-thousands. The generation who has experienced such a tumultuous decline in America’s standing and image since birth and during their formative years. That is, my generation. If you were born in the late nineties like me, for example, you were raised in the shadow of 9/11. Less conspicuously, but perhaps even more significantly, the internet had started its takeover of our everyday activities in earnest by the turn of the century. Simultaneously came news headlines that compromised the pristine American image we were being taught in elementary school as the nation embarrassed itself through scandal after scandal: the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the 2007/2008 housing and financial crisis, and the subsequent “Great Recession”.

You could say we enjoyed a brief period of uneventful history during the first term of the Obama administration. Highpoints included the rollout of the Affordable Care Act (2010) and later the federal legalization of gay marriage (2015). But it was also the start of a mass shooting epidemic that only recently escaped our attention.^[6] Furthermore, the more pernicious effects of widespread social media usage were starting to upset the state of political discourse even as it inspired organizing for causes that otherwise would not have received lasting media coverage. The first Black Lives Matter protests began in response to the deaths of Trayvon Martin (2012), Michael Brown (2014), and Eric Garner (2014), for instance. Without the movement having social media as a vehicle to raise awareness, mainstream news outlets could easily have continued to ignore the reality of American life that had been painfully all too real for too long. The more recent #MeToo movement likewise changed the culture around sexual assault by starting a new conversation through the democratic power of social media.

Then with the 2016 election we were reminded how the dysfunctional nature of American politics becomes toxic when polarized to the extreme, and this time social media was the prime suspect. Four years of bitter partisanship—with a scandal-ridden ringleader who reveled in the spotlight of 24/7 news coverage, gleefully gutting essential services as we watched his administration’s caustic incompetence in horror—ended with our government’s utter failure in the face of disaster. We still cannot say how long the era of Trumpian politics will continue to reign, though we certainly saw its culmination in the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6. Not to mention the culmination of a broken healthcare system, already rife with systemic inequities, resulting in untold preventable deaths – a slow-motion car crash over twenty years in the making.^[7]

Add the still-unanswered cry for racial justice and the cynicism of being too late to stop the existential threat of climate change onto the pile of 2020 breaking points, and you have the up-to-date biography of our generation. Other generations had plenty of their own crises over the years, and I don’t mean to say we’ve been dealt the worst of them. The Great Depression and radical political chaos of the 1960s both come to mind as enormous historical sea changes that seem to overshadow our moment’s severity. At least, that is, when they’re isolated. Clearly the pandemic caught us at a time when we were already suffering from unsustainable economic inequality; plus we’ve got our own share of partisan division to the point where disinformation puts lives at risk. So it seems to me we’re dealing with an amalgamation of Great Depression-era economic upset with ‘60s social/political turmoil and an ongoing 21^st century-style climate crisis to top it off. What a time to be alive!

The prospect of our generation’s worldview being shaped by these challenges is worrying to say the least. I have spent a lot of time ruminating on a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte: “To understand the man, you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.” When I was twenty-years old, my government didn’t bat an eye at crony capitalism run amok even as it manifested in devastating disparities – like a student loan crisis that was concomitant with lower standards of living compared to past generations.^[8] Two years later those problems still exist, and they seem to be the least of our worries.

I realize lingering on these topics is a huge downer, and I have no answer for how we collectively might try to fix things. Anyone who thinks they have the cure-all is missing the enormity of the challenges set before us. However, if there is anything to take away from an important reflection like this, it is the surety of clarity. We cannot begin to tackle the jobs of living together or helping ourselves without knowing what we’re up against. So I believe we must do our due diligence in recognizing the moment we find ourselves in.

In our politics, that means contextualizing the big problems and understanding the tools at our disposal to solve them. Take, for instance, the new administration’s own framing of the role government needs to play during this moment. President Biden and his staff are reportedly taking inspiration from FDR’s first hundred days battling the Great Depression as guidance.^[9] There seems to be a clear connection between that overarching vision and, more concretely, the administration’s goal to bring the US into the 21^st century energy market by investing in electric cars (simultaneously resisting climate change).^[10] Biden is also trying to make good on his campaign promise to fight climate change for the secondary goal of creating more jobs and modernizing infrastructure – a desperately needed opportunity to help a downtrodden labor market with renewed manufacturing.^[11] And on the global scale, the international community is moving ambitiously towards new treaties against nuclear weapon proliferation, though a de-weaponized future remains an uphill battle.^[12]

There is also cause for some cautionary optimism that we can innovate our way out of the climate crisis in time. A 2020 UN climate report notes the blip in decreased greenhouse gas emissions from the staggered global economy shows dramatic change is possible, and more importantly that we have an opportunity to be aggressive in redesigning our energy needs away from fossil fuels as we rebound in the post-COVID economy.^[13]

That is a small snippet of the moment we find ourselves in, and a few tools we find ourselves with. Another key tool we need to remember is the power to demand awareness and change through public demonstration: by one count, the Black Lives Matter protests turned out 26 million people in June.^[14] That sort of public reckoning is going to count in the long term even more than it’s challenging long-held thinking now. I’d be remiss not to profess at least some faith in our ability to create new technology for problems like climate change, as well. Most of all, we have to take it seriously. That includes reorienting our basic attitude towards politics so the goal is solving problems instead of feeling more entitled to self-righteousness than the other side. It’s a long-term goal, to be sure, and it will be easier the more we acknowledge our problems for what they are. Personally I think the best way of approaching that level of critical self-awareness involves being sincere, which is why being a little pessimistic and avoiding contrived optimism was necessary for this essay. So, sincerely: we are screwed at the moment, but there is virtue in appreciating our generation’s challenge with open eyes.

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^[1] Associated Press NBC Washington Staff, “Capitol Riot Death Toll Rises to 5; Police Hunt for Suspects,” NBC4 Washington (NBC4 Washington, January 8, 2021), https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/capitol-riot-death-toll-rises-to-5-police-hunt-for-suspects/2534406/. 

^[2] Tom Jackman, “Police Union Says 140 Officers Injured in Capitol Riot,” The Washington Post (WP Company, January 28, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/police-union-says-140-officers-injured-in-capitol-riot/2021/01/27/60743642-60e2-11eb-9430-e7c77b5b0297_story.html. 

^[3] Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu, and Aaron C. Davis, “’Be Ready to Fight’: FBI Probe of U.S. Capitol Riot Finds Evidence Detailing Coordination of an Assault,” The Washington Post (WP Company, February 15, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/fbi-capitol-riot-coordination-planning/2021/01/30/c5ef346e-6258-11eb-9430-e7c77b5b0297_story.html.  

^[4] WaPo 1/30.

^[5] Source: US Senate Reuters/AP, “Trump Impeachment: New Footage Shows Mike Pence and Mitt Romney Fleeing Capitol Attack – Video,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, February 11, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2021/feb/10/impeachment-video-shows-mike-pence-and-mitt-romney-fleeing-capitol-attack-video. 

^[6] “Ten Years of Mass Shootings in the United States,” Everytown Research (Everytown Research and Policy, November 21, 2019), https://maps.everytownresearch.org/massshootingsreports/mass-shootings-in-america-2009-2019/. 

^[7] Amanda Holpuch, “US Could Have Averted 40% of Covid Deaths, Says Panel Examining Trump’s Policies,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, February 11, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/10/us-coronavirus-response-donald-trump-health-policy?fbclid=IwAR0hNo2CzURhuYzihqe_50XlL3GwxsSFqLg_f8ws2L6u9cY48tAnNlEHkwc. 

^[8] Benjamin Fearnow, “Millennials Have 4 Times Less Wealth than Baby Boomers Did by Age 34, Control Just 4.2% of All U.S. Wealth,” October 19, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/millennials-control-just-42-percent-us-wealth-4-times-poorer-baby-boomers-were-age-34-1537638?fbclid=IwAR0GaMYrC2LYEmEa_Hgm_Txl57FwUu0tkK_Mbt_8An1BfNOXXhcgELZMDj8. Also see: Marilynn Marchione, “US Life Expectancy Drops a Year in Pandemic, Most since WWII,” AP NEWS (Associated Press, February 17, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/us-life-expectancy-huge-decline-f4caaf4555563d09e927f1798136a869. 

^[9] Peter Baker, “Copying Roosevelt, Biden Wanted a Fast Start. Now Comes the Hard Part.,” The New York Times (The New York Times, January 30, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/us/politics/biden-administration-early-goals.html?searchResultPosition=1. 

^[10] Joann Muller, “Biden’s Electric Vehicle Push Puts New Focus on Jobs,” Axios, January 22, 2021, https://www.axios.com/what-bidens-ev-push-could-mean-for-jobs-ff4e0bb8-1121-4cba-84e0-5b069c7ef8a5.html. 

^[11] Carol Graham and Sergio Pinto, “Despair Is Hurting America’s Labor Markets,” Brookings (Brookings, December 31, 2020), https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/12/19/despair-is-hurting-americas-labor-markets/?fbclid=IwAR0hu_eZwbErrmXJemB43KujNI3VVH5GuB5RGu2rbn-D65zjKMCIxCB34oU. 

^[12] Bill Chappell, “U.N. Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Takes Effect, Without The U.S. And Other Powers,” NPR (NPR, January 22, 2021), https://www.npr.org/2021/01/22/959583731/u-n-treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons-takes-effect-without-the-u-s-and-others. 

^[13] UNEP DTU Partnership and UNEP, “Emissions Gap Report 2020” (UN Environment Programme, n.d.). https://www.unep.org/emissions-gap-report-2020. 

^[14] Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times (The New York Times, July 3, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

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