We live at a time in which apocalyptic visions have become normalized. Slow-motion catastrophes unfold as the planet experiences massive floods, storms, droughts, toxic air, poisonous water, wildfires, dust storms and other tragic disasters. The railroad disaster and massive toxic explosion in eastern Ohio is just the latest example. In the political realm, fast-moving crises portend nuclear war, ecological devastation and the rise of fascism across the globe.
Creeping calamities have become routine. They are matched only by a civic culture that is under siege by the apostles of neoliberalism promoting privatization, consumerism, anti-intellectualism and a brutal market ideology purposefully bereft of any sense of social responsibility. Americans now live in an age when historical consciousness no longer functions to inform the present and has become the target of white supremacists and a far-right Republican Party that is silent about the dark past that informs its authoritarian politics. As the violent terrors of the past tear into the present, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his political allies enact school policies that freeze history in an ideological straitjacket, claiming they are liberating history when in fact they are denying it.
