Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ennui
We're all depressed. How else do you explain it? The most popular movie in theatres is about a suicidal schizophrenic dressing up as a bat to fight crime. Our national obsession for the week involves dissecting the romantic indiscretions of a certain young woman, who seems to have been very slightly scarred by her upbringing in the nurturing world of showbusiness. Another innocent little girl, America's musical sweetheart, just released her 147th single based around humiliating an ex-boyfriend. No, I take it back. We are not depressed. Narcissistic, invasive, cynical and unforgiving, but not depressed. More power to us.
Take paper and list decades, 1910's at the top and 2010's at the bottom where we belong. Next to each number, write a single word describing the national mood for those ten years. My list, in order: Forthright, Decadent, Terrified, Angry, Triumphant, Languid, Shaken, Industrious, Proud, Scarred, Profoundly and Utterly Fucked Up (technical term). You may not agree with my descriptions- and I'd love to see what other's come up with- but let's take it as a starting point. Notice the pattern. Good, bad, worse, rinse and repeat.
The secret of America: we're shitty frontrunners. Not at first, while the glow from the last great national triumph still backlights our gigantic shadow around the globe. Later, after the anger fades and we sit high atop the throne and think we've always been meant to rule. American exceptionalism has cost us more lives than terrorism. And yes, I remember that day in September when everything changed.
We're terrible frontrunners, but great underdogs. And these days, we're stuck under everyone. Punching bags. Mocked, and rightly so. People around the world listen to the cynicism in our music, watch the masturbatory chaos of our films, read our idolization and destruction of simple, flawed human beings and laugh openly. And I'm so sure I'm happy. The pattern has to hold. We've hit bottom, scraped, dug for a while. We'll get better. Won't we?
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