CAN WE THINK AND CHEW GUM AT THE SAME TIME?

Adam Ellwanger suggests that in a multi-tasking world, monomania is still a thing, trending on social media.

There is no better evidence of the managed nature of what passes as “democratic deliberation” than the recent development of “Current Thingism.” Even if you aren’t familiar with the term, you know the phenomenon well. There are many crises unfolding in contemporary America, and the “Current Thing” is whichever one our elites insist should be the focus of our attention at the present moment.

For a while, the Current Thing was #MeToo. From 2016 until 2018, the Current Thing was Russian collusion. After that scheme unraveled, we moved through a series of Current Things, each of which was said to compound the grave threat Trump supposedly posed to Our Democracy: in March 2020, it was Covid-19; for a few months that summer, it was systemic racism; then, it was the Delta variant; finally, for a stretch of early 2021, it was the January 6th “insurrection.” And when Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine became the Current Thing. You knew it was the new Current Thing because all the smart people suddenly changed how they spelled and pronounced “Kiev.”

So, you know what the Current Thing is. What, then, is “Current Thingism”? Current Thingism is the default mindset of a certain segment of the American population: typically, the professional, liberal, educated, urban caste of society. Current Thingism is an enduring assumption that whatever the Current Thing happens to be, it should, in fact, be the Current Thing—the issue among issues.

I don't know: for my entire adult life, there has been a proliferation of non-crisis "crises," presumably because that generates ratings, or more recently, clicks and links; and it has always been possible to identify the communist sympathizers on the radio, public radio particularly, by the way they pronounce "Nicaragua." Kiew? Nicht neues im Osten.

The dynamics, though, might be those of reinforcing the Narratives of Our Intellectual Betters.

What we refer to as “the issues” have always reflected the preferences of an educated, urban elite, who exercise sole power in deciding what problems count as valid public concerns. Current Thingism is an advanced manifestation of this phenomenon, because it insists upon a monomaniacal focus on a particular issue. Counterintuitively, though, when a particular issue takes on the status of the Current Thing, it doesn’t intensify the debate on that topic. On the contrary: when a problem becomes the issue among issues, mainstream media and the liberal establishment enforce an artificial consensus on every question even peripherally relevant to that concern. Thus, whereas the defining of “the issues” was meant to narrow the focus of which topics need to be debated by the public, Current Thingism serves to narrow that focus to a single issue and to push it beyond the realm of debate entirely.

Consider the pandemic. When Covid-19 was the Current Thing, deliberation was actively suppressed. To doubt the efficacy of masks was considered stupidity. To question the necessity of lockdowns was deemed selfish. To press for the reopening of the schools was framed as a desire to kill teachers. To note the 99 percent survival rate was to be a callous, heartless person who wants to kill grandma. Reluctance to take a largely untested vaccine was to be “anti-science,” which is, of course, to be a moron. Despite the fact that there were a number of scientific debates regarding the virus, the public was simply commanded to “Follow the Science.” In other words, a consensus was invented where none existed. This is the very purpose of Current Thingism. It is rhetorical intimidation meant to disable public deliberation so that a false “consensus” can be imposed without resistance.

That might be, and that's the way the consensus used to emerge on the Sunday shows.  These days, though, judging by the fretting by People Who Used to Have Authority about people who bypass the gatekeepers and get their information from whatever sources make them comfortable with their priors, that rhetorical intimidation doesn't seem to be working so well.

Nor should it be.  "Hive mind" might work as a metaphor for people who share a consensus, but humans are free agents.