It's (Un)Believable

But that does not make it inevitable

A friend ended a recent text—about yet another outrageous example of the Republican Party’s craven capitulation to a tyrannical toddler (although that’s really not fair to toddlers)—with a phrase I think we’ve all been wrestling with for a decade: “It’s really unbelievable.”

On the one hand, when you consider what we’re being forced to endure, it is completely unbelievable by any frame of reference that once defined our democratic norms. Or at least it damn well should be.

And yet we find ourselves in an era where the unbelievable has become sadly all too believable. We are forced to recalibrate our expectations while we also recognize the danger of normalizing the once unimaginable.

This is an time of chaotic disruptions. Wherever we look, we can see accelerating change across society, and the scale and speed of this collective upheaval are inextricably tied to notions of unbelievability. 

It’s essential to note that not everything unbelievable is negative; far from it. The FDA just approved a twice-a-year HIV prevention shot—which, for those of us who lived through the 1980s and ’90s and witnessed the horrific human cost of this disease, feels wonderfully unbelievable. So does other progress we’ve seen: from the widespread acceptance of gay marriage, to the plummeting costs of alternative energy, to the surging popularity of women’s sports.

History teaches us that, over time, what was once unbelievable has a way of becoming commonplace. Think of the automobile, the airplane, the internet.

I see it in real time when new visitors to San Francisco point in disbelief at the fleets of self-driving cars ferrying passengers around the city. I can vaguely remember my own sense of wonder—how I sent pictures and texts to friends and family, calling it unbelievable.

But now I don’t give them a second look—unless I’m hopping in one myself.

This instinct of acceptance is one of the deepest fears many of us carry about this regime: that the threats—and increasingly, the actions—that once shocked our collective system now arrive with such volume and shamelessness that they’ve begun to overload the very neural pathways of our democracy. What once triggered fear or outrage now barely registers. Our democratic beliefs are being numbed by corrosive repetition.

Running roughshod over the law. Massive corruption and open conflicts of interest. A war on science, education, and truth. A compliant Congress. An enabling Supreme Court. A morally bankrupt leader. The stoking of hate. It’s a list of outrages that we must keep firmly in the category of unacceptable—if we have any hope of preserving our democracy.

But unacceptable and unbelievable are two very different things. And here is where I find some hope.

Over the years, the critics of this regime who were most imaginative in their warnings—those who dared to describe outcomes the more “sober-minded” political and journalistic gatekeepers dismissed as unbelievable or hysterical—have, more often than not, been proven right. There can be no hiding from the believability of what this regime and its cynical enablers are doing to this country and the larger world. We all can see it. 

But we also know that you can’t begin to fix a problem until you fully grasp the extent of the damage. Just because what we’re witnessing has become believable doesn’t mean we have to accept it. And the polls show that a majority of this country does not.

We may no longer react with the same level of shock—but we can still be just as outraged.

I don’t believe the American people, as a whole, will grow accustomed to a Gestapo-style force yanking people off the streets, or to rampant corruption, or to the systematic dismantling of our democracy.

We must remember that just because it’s believable doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. And we have both the power and the responsibility to make something better believable—a more just, empathetic, and resilient United States.