Welcome to the United States of Amnesia

We all remember the atrocious year 2020, when a global pandemic erupted and social and political protests in the U.S. spiked. Or… do we?

In many ways, 2020 already feels like it was eons ago — and amnesia has set in. Judging by (nonexistent) media coverage and news stories, you’d think that the pandemic — which ‘officially’ ended, yet in truth is still claiming countless lives — is just another stale bit of irrelevant ‘non-news.’

This is the same pandemic that killed over 1.15 million Americans in under two years: parents, spouses, sisters, brothers, friends, and co-workers. It also ensnared tens of thousands in the dreaded ‘long Covid.’ It was and IS deeply traumatic.

Yet no one wants to talk about it or deal with it. Nope. No way.

Americans are experts at denial

In 2022, I and several others wrote essays titled ‘The United States of Denial.” Since then, American denial and the accompanying amnesia have gotten much worse. People — especially conservatives and those on the far right — simply deny, deny, deny whenever it suits them. Then, as surely as night follows day, the forgetting and amnesia set in.

We deny the efficacy and safety of vaccines — and soon we totally forget their usefulness and how they helped save humanity from countless dangerous diseases.

We deny the severity and pain of the pandemic — and soon forget all about it and dive into frenzied consumption and manic ‘overdrive’ in both our social and economic worlds.

We deny the importance of truth in our lives; surrender to ubiquitous lying, manipulation, and deception; and soon forget there were ever such things as ‘truth,’ facts, and honest, good faith reporting.

We deny and refuse to acknowledge all the ways the U.S. is drifting — or speeding — toward outright fascism and authoritarianism. Meanwhile, we increasingly forget the lessons of WWII and the Holocaust — when the U.S. was revered as the savior of the Western world. We’ve even seen the rise of rabid ‘Holocaust deniers’ around the globe.

We deny that global warming and climate change are real and accelerating, despite mounting, overwhelming scientific and experiential evidence.

All told, it’s safe to say that human beings are truly experts at denial. And our susceptibility to widespread amnesia is not far behind.

Denial amplifies amnesia… and amnesia intensifies denial

Which comes first, though: denial or amnesia? Does either one ‘cause’ the other?

This is, most likely, a false dichotomy… or even an absurd question. Neither comes first, because they always and necessarily arise together and augment each other’s vile effects. Denial fits hand-in-glove with growing amnesia… while increased amnesia fuels increasing denial and fervent ‘nay-saying.’ Both are extremely negative and dangerous states of mind, and they need each other to grow, spread, and prosper. Denial and amnesia are like demented, evil Siamese twins that are joined at the hip and effectively inseparable.

Take our reaction to the pandemic. Our pain and suffering became intolerable, so we understandably wanted it all to just ‘go away.’ We wanted to forget it was even happening, so some of us started to deny it was real or was happening. Some escaped into weird conspiracy theories, while others insisted it was just a bad, overblown flu… and then started attacking ‘the authorities’ and their lockdowns. But the more we denied, the more details and memories we forgot — and the more we forgot, the deeper we plunged into denial… and the easier it became to keep denying.

Or, take vaccine denialism and the ‘anti-vaxx’ movement. Vaccines were SO effective that they essentially eradicated many diseases from our society — but then we gradually forgot how important they were in improving public health. Next, our forgetting fueled rampant vaccine skepticism and even outright denial of their efficacy… while our increasing denial led to even more amnesia and a weird partisan (right-wing) version of ‘induced memory loss.’

Denial inevitably leads to or amplifies amnesia — while our amnesia increasingly supports intense, irrational denial. If we don’t remember a thing or event — say, the effectiveness of vaccines — then of course we’re more likely to deny that they work or work safely.

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Moral amnesia is a crucial component of fascism

It gets worse. Our American amnesia has progressed so far and fast that many of us don’t remember what the U.S. is about, or what we once stood for. If we don’t even remember that ‘liberty and justice for all’ is a founding principle of our nation… or that full equality is our stated goal and ideal, or that verifiable elections and trust in our election systems are crucial to democracy — well, we’re not going to expend time and energy trying to preserve these crucial aspects of our society, are we?

These days, it seems that tens of millions of Americans have been led astray and force-fed a diet of right-wing propaganda that encourages widespread denial and social amnesia. This induced amnesia allows far-right demagogues, manipulators, and anti-democracy fanatics and fascists to gain the upper hand and replace true patriotic values with hateful, racist, and/or misogynist ‘values.’

This is exactly how democracy and freedom die. The rise of racist hate and fascism is totally dependent on creating mass amnesia in a vast segment of Americans. The haters, racists, and fascists need us all to forget what America once stood for, and are working feverishly to achieve this result. And scarily, horrifyingly, they are succeeding — because they have right-wing media, our president, his MAGA movement, and almost the entire GOP backing them up.

Their program of induced amnesia and dark, anti-democratic ‘counter-programming’ has been wildly successful. That’s why today’s U.S. is teetering on the edge of full-blown autocracy and fascism. (Some say we’ve already gone over that edge.)

In the lead-up to last November’s presidential election, many Americans completely forgot the horrors and abject failures of the first Trump administration, including his terrible pandemic response, ongoing refusal to accept verified 2020 election results, and incitement of the violent January 6 insurrection. The result? We willingly voted him into office yet again. We enabled another round — four more years! — of even worse horrors.

Once again, amnesia and denial trumped (sorry for the wordplay) reason, compassion, and true patriotism.

Can we save ourselves?

Is there anything that can reverse our grim downward spiral and ‘save us’ and our nation, at this point? Waking up from our profound amnesia would be a great start. Fully remembering what the U.S. once stood for and fought for — the freedom of ALL peoples and races — could jump-start our healing and lead us back to social and political sanity.

All it takes is remembering who we claim to be, as a nation, and what we and our constitution truly believe in and support— but these days, that’s a very tall order.

Can we still ‘get there’? Can or will enough of us ‘wake up’ and throw off the shackles of our induced amnesia? Will enough of us have the guts and wisdom to commit ourselves and actually do it?

The next few years will surely tell the tale. Right now, our miserable downward spiral just keeps accelerating.

America, wake the fuck up!

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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