Doubt

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had an increasing number of conversations with people who are more convinced than ever that the United States is on the precipice—not just of a constitutional breakdown, but of the end of democracy as we know it. I’ve been to parties where the mood has turned grim, where dark visions of silenced speech and the erosion of fundamental rights are widely anticipated. The arrest and detention of green-card holder Muhammad Khalil has been especially prominent in these discussions. The assault on university science funding, along with the Trump administration’s threat to defund universities for supposedly insufficient efforts to combat anti-Semitism, the escalating attacks on Democrat-appointed federal judges who have blocked various White House actions, and the move to withhold allocated federal funds from cities and states the administration dislikes have all added more fuel to this particular fire.

We all live in social communities, and we are all influenced by them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my particular New York community more pessimistic about the state of the country and the world—or more certain that we are in dark days. It’s reached the point where questioning the certainty of how bad things are makes people genuinely angry. Suggesting that things might not be as dire as they seem is akin to being a toxic ostrich, head in the sand while the world crumbles. Now, they say, is the time to double down and fight. And I have to admit that for the first time in a long while, I’ve started to doubt my own conviction that most of our fears are overblown.

So, what to do about that doubt? First, doubt is a vital and healthy mechanism for checking one’s assumptions and beliefs. It forces us to examine what we think and believe with a more critical eye, as uncomfortable as that may be. It makes us hold up a belief or conviction and ask whether it is true and accurate.

For me, that leads to the question: what if this time, it really is different? What if Trumplandia isn’t just a disturbance in the force but the beginning of a long dark chapter in American—and potentially global—history? It’s a legitimate question. Societies have, time and again, gone off the rails.

The only other time I truly believed everything had changed was exactly five years ago, barely a week into the mass Covid lockdowns—when the streets of our cities fell silent, save for the blare of ambulances carrying the sick to hospitals, where many in that first wave would die. As I jokingly and not so jokingly said to my kids then, after years as a historian, I suddenly realized: “It’s a lot better to write about history’s turning points than it is to live through them.”

But Covid did not, as it seemed for a few months then, presage a new turning point in either human history or American society. Contrary to how it felt in those days, it proved to be a crisis that passed—leaving anger, pain, and death in its wake, the effects of which are still felt today, particularly in the political backlash against the established powers that orchestrated and enforced the lockdowns while silencing questions. But the world did not fundamentally change, however much it was profoundly shaken.

No Matter How Dire the Coronavirus Threat, Fear is Not the Way Out Written by Zachary Karabell (2020)

That memory—the certainty that everything had changed, juxtaposed with the reality that it had not—has stayed with me as doubt has crept in. Today, so much of what I hear from those around me and so much of the news that inundates us speaks with certainty that darkness is descending. Yes, that is my community, and yes, the news does reflect an urban liberal skew. But polls suggest that about 47% of Americans support the current administration and believe Trump is making positive changes. And while only about 43% think the country is on the right track, that is higher than it has been in recent years.

The fact that a significant percentage of Americans do not view the world through the same prism as my cohort and community is one counterweight to my doubt. I do not believe that large swaths of the United States are jingoistic, racist, misogynistic, or cruel. Some certainly are—just as has always been true in every society, to greater or lesser degrees. But we should take seriously the fact that many people see the changes underway as necessary, even if they believe those changes could be handled better, with more care, or with less destruction.

The miasma of the moment should also give us pause. Covid seemed as if it would change the world forever. It didn’t. The present political maelstrom feels as if it will change the world forever as well. Some of that may be true—at least in the sense that it reveals what was already happening. The United States was already retreating from its post-1945 position of global leadership, focusing more selfishly on its own interests. That was evident under Biden, particularly in his China policy, but in other ways as well. The wreckage of parts of the executive branch and the administrative state is certainly something new and will have consequences, as will tariffs and trade wars. But consequences are not the same as complete and permanent upheaval.

In the face of doubt, in the face of the possibility that those who are most fearful are right, I am reminded of the last time—the Covid time—we collectively felt this way. And my doubt extends to the conviction that the destruction being wrought on certain government structures and norms will have the lasting effects that the Trump administration—and many others—anticipate. It seems as though the sledgehammer is having its intended effect because all we see right now is the wreckage. But that does not mean the effects will be as lasting or permanent as both the most fearful among us believe and the most ardent supporters insist.

The answer to doubt isn’t certainty that things will go right. Rather, it is the humility to acknowledge that outcomes are unclear—that none of us know the future, despite how many of us act as though we do. We are so immersed in the noise of today’s political chaos that we often fail to recognize a simple truth: for the vast majority of us, life is no different today than it was in mid-October of last year. Spring is upon us; people are emerging from winter; lives are being lived much as they always have, with the same mix of joy and pain, hope and despair—moving to rhythms that Washington and global politics do not determine and barely affect. That is a fact. Everything else remains to be seen.