The year 2014 has been what people of previous empires—the British by way of the Romans—called an annus horribilis. The list of horrors spans the globe. Off the top of my head: the conquest of a third of Iraq by the so-called Islamic State, characterized by beheadings, widespread rape, the execution or expulsion of tens of thousands of Christians, Yazidis, and Shia, and America’s return to the fighting; Russia’s annexation of Crimea and subversion of eastern Ukraine, with the shooting down of a plane carrying nearly three hundred civilians; the collapse of the latest Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, followed by retaliatory murders and another war in Gaza, with more than five hundred children killed; the many thousands of West African lives destroyed by Ebola; the continued failure of the U.S. Congress to deal with anything in this country, whether climate change, immigration, gun violence, warrantless surveillance, taxes, or economic inequality. This account no doubt leaves out catastrophes that some readers consider as bad as or worse than anything I’ve included, but my personal list is enough to make me want to slip into a prolonged coma.
It’s always tempting to believe that things have never been worse than they are now—and it’s never true. In recent memory, the year 1979 gave us the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, beginning a war that still goes on today and appears endless; Saddam Hussein’s assumption of total power in Iraq; the Iranian revolution, with the elevation of Ayatollah Khomeini to Supreme Leader and the start of the hostage crisis; and soaring inflation, unemployment, and interest rates in America. Still, the sequence of bad news this year has been so relentless that lesser atrocities barely register, and chronic crises slip off the screen altogether (when was the last time you gave some thought to congressional Republican resistance to spending on infrastructure, an idea with wide public support?). The other psychological response to really bad news is to ignore any good news, as if it can’t be true. Horror is more attention-grabbing, more mesmerizing, than heroism, and in a perverse way we allow ourselves to wallow in it, as long as we’re at a safe distance. I’ve read every word of Rukmini Callimachi’s brilliant reporting in the Times on ISIS, kidnapping, and ransom payments with outrage and sympathy—but it also gives me a shameful sense of relief at being out of the terrorists’ cruel clutches. Riveted resignation is not a healthy mental state.
In fact, there has been some good news lately, and registering it helps combat the passivity and fatalism that accompany the drumbeat of tragedy. Some examples:
- A coalition of secularists won Monday’s parliamentary elections in Tunisia after two years of Islamist rule.
- Pro-Europe candidates won a large majority of seats in Ukraine’s parliamentary election on Sunday, while right-wing nationalists performed dismally and Communists were shut out.
- In crimson Kansas, where extreme tax cuts have damaged the economy, downgraded the state’s bond rating, and threatened core government functions, such as education, Governor Sam Brownback is struggling to win reëlection against Paul Davis, the minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives.
- Syrian Kurdish rebels of the People’s Protection Units, supported by U.S. air strikes, have held off far better armed ISIS militants in Kobani, on the Syrian-Turkish border, in a courageous stand that might be remembered as the Kurds’ Gettysburg or their Sarajevo.
- Craig Spencer, Kaci Hickox, and thousands of other health workers have volunteered to treat Ebola patients in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. One day, after we learn how to calibrate the danger of Ebola contagion here in the United States, these Americans will be recognized for the real risks they themselves faced rather than for the hypothetical risks they posed to the rest of us.
- While Washington remains polarized and paralyzed, states and localities are taking action to mitigate global warming and prevent the worst of its effects on the front lines around the country.
- The same is true of income inequality: minimum-wage increases have been enacted in cities from Seattle to New York.
The first three examples are studies in electoral wising up—in the educability of democratic publics subjected to bad ideological experiments. Tunisians, unlike most of those in the Arab world, have now had the experience of living under Islamist rule and then making a change at the polls. It turned out that the Islamists, for all their generous promises and organizing prowess, failed to solve some problems (such as unemployment) and made other problems worse (such as terrorism and political crime). All the more reason to lament the military coup that kept Egyptians from having the same chance—instead, in Egypt and elsewhere, the allure of the Islamists will continue to go unchallenged until they win and then have to run again, as failed incumbents. Ukrainians, having watched for months as Russia subverted the country’s independence and democratic will, chose to move closer to Europe and freedom, despite the Kiev government’s many shortcomings. Kansans were given a toxic dose of supply-side economics, and, whatever the results of next week’s election, the experiment has been a failure, politically and economically. Democracy, on its heels around the world these days, sometimes works pretty well.
The last three examples are cases of smaller decision units (individual volunteers, towns, cities, states) stepping into the breach and taking positive action where larger units (public-health systems, national governments, multinational businesses) have stumbled or fallen. Much of what encourages me these days amounts to people coming up with limited, improvised solutions to huge problems. These efforts show that the idealistic spirit of reform and self-government has not died in America, even if the big institutions seem moribund. Unfortunately, there are no systemic answers without a revival of that spirit in the centers of power.
The Kurds in Kobani are a simple case of physical and moral courage on behalf of common decency. Take inspiration—it’s in short supply.
