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HyperNormalisation - Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More [1]
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Date: 2025-01-18
Alexei Yurchak coined the term HyperNormalisation to describe what was happening towards the end of the Soviet Union. “It had never even occurred to me that in the Soviet Union anything could ever change. Let alone that it could disappear. No one expected it. Neither children, nor adults. There was a complete impression that everything was forever.”
Everyone knew, on some level, that things were not how people pretended they were. Things were not how the news said they were, business and politics were not how there were presented to the public. But with no viable alternative everyone continued acting like everything was normal — hyper normal — until it suddenly wasn’t.
This scenario has real parallels to the current situation in America. We’re told the country is a certain way and everyone just keeps moving forward as if that’s true. But a quick look at any economic charts will tell out that they current course is unsustainable. Costs for food, shelter and healthcare continue to rise while wages do not match them and the Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25 and has been for 15 years. But The American Dream-tm is to work hard and get ahead so we’re told to continue forward like everything is fine and no corrections are needed - this is the American form of HyperNormalisation.
Outside the economic realm which easy to display with numbers nothing seems to point at the discrepancies like the shooting of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione. The media immediately labelled the shooting an “assassination” as if being a CEO is suddenly equivalent to being an important high ranking political figure which he is not. The expressed shock and outrage on the media stood in stark contrast to the general public that either shrugged or celebrated the shooting as “someone finally doing something”. The question “Objectively who has killed more people and caused more suffering — Brian Thompson or Luigi Mangione?” will not be asked or debated in the corporate media. Instead they followed the manhunt for this one particular murder victim differently than all other while many people rooted for him to get away.
And the FBI immediately jumped into action — unlike any of the murders in NYC before or after this one — because this victim was clearly more important than all the others. And after a women used the same “Deny, Delay, Depose” language while arguing with her insurance provider she was arrested. But many women who have reported credible and repeated threats to police have been told “There’s nothing we can do.”
And then Luigi Mangione is marched with a televised phalanx of law enforcement and was quickly charged with terrorism at the urging of CEOs. Compare this with Dylann Roof who killed nine black people in a church in an act of terror with the intention of starting a race war. He was transferred by two plain clothed police officers and while he was charged with murder and hate crimes he was not charged with terrorism.
The corporate influence on media and law enforcement result in only a certain narrative being told and wildly different levels of effort and effectiveness depending on the wealth and class of the victim. And while this isn’t a surprise to most people it is rarely this blatantly obvious.
Many people under 40 who, probably rightly, never believe they will never be able to own a home.
People who get told get condescendingly told to “stop buying lattes” and who are actually on Reddit discussing how to make their own detergent and bread rather than having to buy it. Each successive generation after the baby boomers has less than the one before it at the same age. Millennials have very little accumulated wealth and older Gen Z — approaching 30 — are expecting less or even none.
So there is a large section of the American public that doesn’t feel connected toThe American Dream-tm and “the economy” as portrayed on the constant stream of corporately controlled business and political news. I’ve seen a bunch of “Why didn’t voters show up for Harris/Democrats in 2024 when Trump is objectively awful?” analysis and I say it was because to these voters Harris and Dems represented just a slightly different version of the continued HyperNormalisated America. Trump at least talked about class and anger and frustration which is clearly present while Dems did not address it all.
Biden and Harris did really hard for work for the working class — cancelling student debt, standing with and strengthening unions, passing infrastructure bills — but all of these are old ideas of what working people need and assume a functioning economy that they have a stake in. When push came to shove Democrats held both houses of Congress and still could not pass a $15 Federal Minimum wage. Does that party inspire confidence that they can tackle corporate interests and make the drastic fundamental changes needed to reform the economy into something that actually works for anyone not already rich? it clearly didn’t for enough young voters to show up. And since then the election of 74 year old Rep. Gerry Connolly over AOC as the leading dem on the House Oversight Committee doesn’t either.
If Democrats want to be part of the future I think they need to pledge and then prove that they can effectively change the underlying dynamic that has caused costs for everything vital to continue to outpace wages for necessities and health. I think tackling single payer healthcare is the single most important issue and both prove that real change is possible and that they can make it happen.
Single payer healthcare is the obvious solution that only every other industrialized nation has figured out but the “healthcare industry” in this country has managed to double costs with the only added value of producing worse outcomes and reduced life expectancy. When an entire community cheers the killing of a Healthcare CEO I think the ruling class should pay attention past pressuring to get the shooter charged with terrorism.
America’s de facto two party system has kept the HyperNormalised narrative alive in the government with 35 Senators aged 70 or older and a supermajority of 69 aged 60 or older. I think the potential for a sudden and previously unthinkable transformation of American society — like happened to Soviet society — is brewing under the continued facade every being completely normal.
Donald Trump is going to try and burn everything down and wreck the system in ways we can’t probably even imagine right now. Rather than pledging to fix it back to “what it was” we need to start envisioning the future we want to build from the ashes. If the current Democratic party wants to stay relevant in this future they champion a newer, better future that actually does work for the next generations or they can get swept away with the rest or old dinosaur institutions.
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More.
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