The crisis in America today has the structure of Insomnia

Some insomnia (and I am writing only about this category of insomnia) seems to arise purely in a neurotic fashion.

Quoting Colin Espie, Professor of sleep medicine at Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience

“Think of insomnia as a kind of sleep preoccupation syndrome,” says Espie, who warns that tracking devices may do the opposite of good. “People get caught up in monitoring: ‘Am I asleep? What time is it?’ This turning of something meant to happen automatically into an issue can result in a vicious cycle.

Let me elaborate. The sleeper transforms a relaxing state, that of lying in bed, into a stressful one. This, in turn, becomes a continued source of stress, which eventually requires a therapeutic intervention.

The initial events need not be cause for concern in themselves: A noise at night, excess gas, worrying about something, etc. But the person, who is at that moment a normal sleeper, for whatever reason becomes concerned in that moment about their lack of sleep. By the very nature of sleep, this concern makes the problem worse. Thus, over time they fixate on these things, and on their sleep pattern, and this fixation leads to less sleep. In this sleep deprived state, the person's life deteriorates, as it leads to performance issues at work or less energy to see friends. The person therefore fails to lead the full and vibrant life which they otherwise could have.

What are the key features of this model?

(1) Trivial Event
(2) Response which exacerbates the problem
(3) Decline
(4) Revision of expectations for future

This sequence almost perfectly describes how certain political movements have brought about the decline of the American Empire. For example:

(1) Economic recession
(2) Cut taxes and government services
(3) Economy becomes even worse
(4) Young people today should be happy to work part time at Amazon

Or

(1) Students from Singapore are outscoring our students on math exams
(2) No Child Left Behind act, etc.
(3) Education gets worse
(4) Young people are dumb as bricks and spend all day on tik-tok and 4chan

Or

(1) Our candidate lost the election
(2) Must have been fraud. Let's storm the capitol to "save" Democracy
(3) Democracy is now seriously under threat
(4) We start practicing our Mandarin Chinese

Now, this kind of thing is probably inevitable in any country. But as these bad responses accumulate it can lead to real and persistent social problems. The normal counterbalance to such effects is a steady politics of social progress which ideally should be somewhat stronger than the retrograde effects of this political neurosis.

Unfortunately, it is apparent that this country has reached such a point of decline that an intervention of some type actually IS necessary now. But considering how the accumulated policy changes occurred, the nature of this intervention does not necessarily need to change the political system itself. A large piece of legislation that simply reverses the bad policies and implements a certain level of Economic relief is all that is necessary. We know, for instance, that what drives reactionary populism is the declining Economic conditions of poor and middle class whites. Like insomniacs, the members of these popular movements are trapped in the delusion that they are fighting against what is causing their suffering when in actuality they are fighting for those very forces.

On Saturday, I met (online of course) with some Marxists and Communists to discuss some essays by Lenin. I was shocked by the reckless naivete that some of them expressed when talking about the possibilities of revolution here in America. To be sure, we must stop the emerging plots of reactionaries, but that does not yet necessitate that we radicalize ourselves. Our problems might not be as structural as they appear.