Mythos

We’ve covered postmodernist history. But what happens when postmodernism is applied to the present in a bad-faith argument -- or even a genuine one? Ideas like “the past is unknowable” can be used to argue that the present is unknowable, too, or at least the parts of it that we cannot directly experience. A distrust in modernist single-narrative history might expand into a similar distrust for mainstream news media. And cheeky stories about the past -- like Libra, which blends a factual retelling of JFK’s assassination with conspiracy theory -- become sinister when used to inform people of the present.

The postmodern idea that “all viewpoints must be respected” is especially insidious when used by bad actors today, who might employ it to argue that we should tolerate intolerance or flat-out lies. (For example, that coronavirus hoaxes are “valid points of view.”) Unfortunately, these arguments have led not to a utopian “marketplace of ideas,” but to a rather dystopian news ecosystem where nothing is counterfactual anymore. Conspiracy theories unsupported by fact carry as much weight as actual documented events, simply because people believe in them hard enough to make them politically real. This effect is the “post-truth era.” Once you pick an ideology to believe in, you don’t really have to stick to “the truth”; in fact, politics in the US have become so fragmented that we no longer operate under the assumption of one universal truth.

This story is not very postmodernist. It’s a story about postmodernism, set during the Great Recession, when conservative counterfactualism (and to a lesser extent, left-wing counterfactualism) really took off. I don’t agree with the narrator’s conclusions, though I can see where he’s coming from. Can you?

Mythos

My father thinks I should blame the government.

He says it was the government’s meddling in the free market that caused the crisis. He says the government is trying to expand its power as the national debt rises. He says the government is going to regulate him out of existence, that it’s going to pay lazy people more than his job pays him.

When I told my father I’d lost my contracting job, I could feel the fear beneath his anger. The anger was directed outwards at the Obama administration, but his fear was for me. Ever since the housing crisis hit headlines in ‘08, he’d been calling me every week “just to check in.” Every call, he’d turn his questioning towards my job, my savings, my rent. I was fine then, and his constant check-ins annoyed me. But before long, the jobs -- plumbing installation on new homes -- began to dry up.

I kept the news to myself for a week after I was laid off. I was worried about what it might do to him. Lately, he had started sending me links to increasingly alternative news outlets: from Fox reporting to Sean Hannity to Alex Jones. I didn’t want to make him even more paranoid. But when he sent me yet another article about welfare spending and the national debt, I felt that I had to tell him. 

“I had no idea,” he responded. “I’m so sorry. Are you looking for a new job?”

“Of course I am,” I said. “I’m looking everywhere I can on the Internet, and in the meantime, I’ll be doing odd jobs, whatever I can find. Even with the economy as bad as this, people can pay someone to fix a faucet or a leaky pipe.”

A pause. “That’s not exactly as stable as what you had before.”

“No.”

“Did you take my advice? Save up money? You know, when I was your age, I saved ten bucks out of each paycheck and that’s how I bought my --”

“I’ve heard the schtick, Dad. You were very responsible, but I keep telling you, it won’t work with my budget.”

“It’s not a schtick, I just think if you’d had the discipline to set aside --”

“Yes, I know. We’ve been over this. Listen, because I’ve been laid off, I’m offered unemployment benefits while I’m looking for a job, and I’m going to take them. I know you don’t like the way the government’s been handling unemployment insurance, but please, for once, just don’t let your politics take over. I need the money to live.”

“Of course you’ll draw unemployment! I mean, it’s not like you’re freeloading off the system, you’re looking for a job. I don’t know, I guess you thought I’d be mad at you or something. Was it the article I emailed you this morning?”

“Yeah, I mean, the article was all about how we shouldn’t increase unemployment checks.”

“Well, if you’d actually read the article, you’d know it doesn’t apply to people like you. It was about handouts to people who couldn’t be bothered to find a job. You’re a hard worker who can land a good position, and you’ll use unemployment to tide you over in the meantime. You’re the kind of American the funds were set up for!”

“I’m glad you think that, Dad,” I said, and hung up.

    His political emails got even more wild after that. They spanned a gamut between, as I saw it, factually grounded concerns and completely off-the-rails conspiracy theory. I understood his more mainstream right-of center views -- not that I shared them. He just wanted the best for his family. CNBC would cover protests and interview conservatives like him, showcasing their disillusionment in government and American politics. A return to American freedoms and values, that’s what every interviewee wanted. Though I didn’t agree with the Tea Party’s outlook on money or liberty, I had to admit that some of their arguments made sense.

On the other hand, there were the stories that I deemed conspiracy theories. I could not wrap my mind around how he believed that the Clintons, Anderson Cooper, Bill O’Reilly, Barack Obama, and James Cameron got together in a smoky room every month to plot the enslavement of the American people. He didn’t just think, but knew with terrified certainty that Obama was installed by the UN to control the minutiae of people’s lives and sell out Israel to Palestine. When I would show him reporting from a more mainstream source that contradicted his, he said that the reporting was part of the same big cover-up. I was so certain that he was wrong. But what was I to do?

The trouble was that I was terrified, too. As the weeks of “between jobs” stretched on, unemployment wasn’t enough to pay my rent. I fell behind. The utilities got shut off. When the first eviction notice arrived in the mail, I decided. My only viable option was to move in.

I reassured myself that my father would be fine with the idea. After all, his house was comfortably large even when our family of four had shared it. And now, after my brother and I had left and my mother had passed, he lived there all alone. He would be happy to have company. He would understand my situation. But despite how many times I told myself the truth, I couldn’t stop my voice from sounding a little strained when I greeted him on the phone. This time, before he could start talking about politics, I cut him off.

“Listen, Dad, remember when I told you I’d find a job right away?”

“Yes, of course, and I believe you will.”

“That was two months ago.”

“Just keep your head up. Look, the administration, they don’t want you to be secure, independent, employed. They want you to lose hope. As long as you’ve got hope left that you’ll find a job and make a living, they can’t hurt you. Keep calling around, keep doing odd jobs, and you’re bound to find something stable soon.”

“Dad, does moving out of my apartment qualify as ‘losing hope?’”

“Where would you be moving to?”

“I was wondering… I don’t have any savings left. It’s all gone to rent and food, and unemployment isn’t even enough to pay for the apartment. I was wondering if I could move back in with you.”

“Move back in.” His voice hardened. “Move back in with me. You’re an adult. You’re supposed to support yourself. We all are. I could understand drawing unemployment -- Lord knows the mill laid me off more than a few times -- but how is it responsible to live with a parent? How are you going to be independent, self-sufficient, if you live with me? No, this is just what the government wants. They want fear. They want weakness. That’s exactly what you’re showing them.”

“What the hell do you want me to do, then? Dad, they’re shutting off the utilities. You want me to live on the street while you’re sitting pretty on a retirement fund? Is that it? You want me to get evicted? Because I’m going to, whether you like it or not.”

“I didn’t -- I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t mean that. I just want you to be responsible with your money. I couldn’t stand to have a child free-loading off me when he could be earning an honest living.”

“Look, I’ll try and pay you rent. How about that? God knows where I’ll get the money, but if you want me to be responsible, I’ll pay you rent. Anything lower than the rent for my apartment.”

“Well… as long as you’re looking for a job, I suppose you could pay… how about $150 a month, and I’m not going any lower. You know, I don’t have it easy either. My savings I invested lost so much after 2008, I’m down to around ten thousand on those funds, and then there’s the CDs, half of those have…”

Truth be told, I wasn’t expecting that much of a low-ball offer, given that my current rent was around $600. But I also didn’t want to listen to another “poor me” speech from my father about how him only having a $50k-a-year retirement plan was the same as me not being able to afford my cost of living. I cut in. “Thank you so much.”

Dial tone.

My father lives a quiet life. He doesn’t travel much, hasn’t ever left the country. He used to work at one of the old steel mills in town, back when that kind of job got you full benefits, hazard pay, and a pension. Now he’s enjoying the fruits of his labors by watching cable. 

He gets ridiculously angry at the TV sometimes and it scares me. He’ll be day-drinking cheap Coors on the couch and I’ll hear him slam something -- usually a can -- on the table, loud. The first time, I thought he’d dropped something. I ran into the room and he beckoned me over towards the TV to watch a clip of Obama’s latest press conference. “How can they get away with that,” he said.

Sometimes I envy my father. His anger is directed. The TV hosts do a good job formatting it: a long, slow buildup; a sharp peak in response to government action; the promise of cathartic relief. He looks up to certain movements and certain lawmakers as though he’s watching a movie, and the villains are cartoonishly easy to hate.

I, on the other hand, am a reliable narrator. And as one, I can proudly declare that my knowledge of world events is not biased. The cable channels I watch? They’re reliable narrators, just like me. I can always trust their anchors to tell me what’s really going on, out there in the world, far away from home. Sure, some of their past reporting has been flawed, but those were honest mistakes. What matters is that most educated people and political insiders confirm that they’re accurate. The footage they show is real, and it’s never taken out of context. Their political endorsements and Opinion columns are common-sense insights that we can all trust to lead us forward. 

But:

I’m angry. Angry at my father for passive-aggressively “putting up with me,” but also angry at the government for bailing out banks while I’m struggling to make ends meet. Angry at banks for getting themselves into this mess, and angry at Bush for dragging them into it. Angry at potential employers for never calling me back, and angry at myself for being such a shitty applicant that I’m not worth their time. I’m angry at everyone, but all the sources I trust say my anger is dangerous. It’s a sign of radicalization, and someday soon I’ll find myself at a protest, waving a sign, chanting slogans, endorsing the far something. 

Now the news starts to bother me. It seems inconsistent. Different outlets run different, contradictory stories. Sometimes they double back several times before landing on something that approximates the truth. Any article I read today could be quietly retracted in fine print tomorrow. “We made a few errors in yesterday’s publication when we claimed that…” A throwaway line to cover their asses, and yet I fall asleep believing yesterday’s lie.

So many ways to explain the same facts, weaving them into different stories, picking the right evidence to back up your claims. And so many different sets of facts to run! Some agencies selectively ignore, others fabricate. When the stories fit with my opinions, I could gloss over any inconsistencies that arose. But then I started arguing with my father about his sources, and he turned my arguments back on me, and I didn’t really believe in CNN either, and now I don’t know who to trust.

How do I decide? There’s no unbiased third party to turn to, no real, accessible truth to measure distance from. I cannot feasibly go to Afghanistan and interview civilians there about the war, just as I cannot request a private audience with the President. There’s only my own emotion. Which ideology does it feel good to believe in? Which ideology lets me live out my anger? Which ideology is the easiest to understand? After I answer these questions, the facts can just slot into place, my very own half-consistent truth taken from sources I trust.

After six months of living with my father, I know I will have to take an ideological stand. Depending on which outlets I choose to trust, reality will change. Obama will be born in the United States or in Kenya. Welfare will be ruining the country, or remaking it, or ruining it in a different way. The government will or won’t be wiretapping my phone and listening in. News stories are stories. They are mythology. And now it’s up to me to decide which religion to believe in. 

Works Cited

Frameworthless. Performance by Greg Guevara, 2020. YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYhhUcYN4mw. Accessed 12 May 2020. This content is utter drivel but I feel the need to mention it as I basically accidentally stole all of its ideas and repackaged them into narrative. I swear, I wasn't even thinking of this video when I wrote the story, but now I'm rewatching it and feel a little nervous that I might receive allegations of plagiarism because of the extent to which I reused its story ideas. Mr Mitchell, if you're reading this, I promise I didn't mean to.

The Guardian. 5 Aug. 2011, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/05/tea-party-media.

Jones, Alex. "It's Not the 'Great Recession.' It's the Great BANK ROBBERY." InfoWars, Alex Jones, 12 Nov. 2010, www.infowars.com/its-not-the-great-recession-its-the-great-bank-robbery/. Accessed 12 May 2020.

Lott, John R. "Do the Math, Mr. Obama, You've Run Out of Excuses on Jobs." Fox News, 7 Sept. 2012, www.foxnews.com/opinion/do-the-math-mr-obama-youve-run-out-of-excuses-on-jobs. Accessed 12 May 2020.

Strain, Michael R. "Evaluating Evidence in the Debate over Unemployment Benefits." American Enterprise Institute, 27 Jan. 2014, www.aei.org/economics/evaluating-evidence-in-the-debate-over-unemployment-benefits/. Accessed 12 May 2020.

Williamson, Vanessa, et al. "The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism." Harvard University Press, vol. 9, no. 1, Mar. 2011, doi:10.1017/S153759271000407X. Accessed 12 May 2020.