Keep Calm and Carry On

We've already entered 2019 and all I can do is look back and wonder where the time has gone. I mean, that's what we do at this time of year--reflect on what's passed and make plans to make a fresh start in the year to come.

So as part of my looking back in the last several weeks of 2018 I had several plans. I planned to do a post about the Christmas market attack in Strasbourg this past year and my experience there in 2017. 

I planned to do a post about the continuing snowball effect of "dieselgate" and how it flies under the radar in the face of all of the other late-2018 activities. 

Then, there was the Der Spiegel scandal as the ultimate irony in fake news. It, too, became yet another thing I would end up pondering offline, it seemed, until I saw a headline talking about the scandal and how it was related to the seduction of storytelling. 

It's something I understand all too well. And not just in my fiction, where it took me years to learn to let the stories tell themselves rather than try to force them along my preconceived path. 

When I was writing freelance magazine articles, I definitely kept my story's "angle" top of mind: from the interview questions I crafted right down to the modifiers I carefully selected to evoke the atmosphere I wanted to create.

For a writer it's so easy to fall in love with your idea, your words, your sense that your view is the right one--it's the kind of trap that journalist Claas-Hendrik Relotius says he fell into. He's not the first, and most likely won't be the last. 

So the MAGAs and conspiracy theorists will likely hold this up as an example of enemies outside the U.S. trying to influence American thought (and yes, the irony of this does not escape me). And though it would seem to further the idea that we can only trust ourselves and everyone else is out to get us, the truth is it will all wash away in the wake of something new. We'll shrug and move on to the next jaw-dropper, and the one after that, and so on.

Relotius doesn't cite a political agenda as his primary driver, but if he had, it would be understandable. In the past couple of years I have alternated between anger and isolation to keep my sanity. But as an attempt to be more productive I plan to embrace the madness. To talk about it, write about it, question why we think it's okay to say and behave in a way we would have never done just a few years ago.

Because even though it seems like humanity is sucking the life out of itself without regard for anything but the quick hit, I have to believe that eventually cooler heads will prevail. These last couple of years have been a series of battles, testing the limits of how disgusting we're willing to be to each other in the interests of a handful of horrible people. 

But part of my belief has to do with winning the larger war. I think people are starting to wake up and--even if it's only out of a realization of how they themselves are not cashing in on the chaos--a change is coming. A change for the better. 

We just have to hold on. For everyone's sake.