Denial
Our most potent American export ...
“How are you?”
“I’m good! … How are youuuuuuu?”
“Great!”
<weak smiles slowly fade>
“Been busy?”
“So busy. <insert story about family, travel, sporting events> How about you guys?”
“Really busy! <insert parallel story>”
<Silence for a few seconds.>
“Well, it was great seeing you.”
“You too!”
***
By a certain age, in certain neighborhoods all over America, you learn a certain language, a patois.
I think at one time these exchanges may have been more common in the Midwest, where we bury our feelings under layers of fleece and emotional impermeability, but, as sitcoms once based in anonymous suburban neighborhoods (but all shot in the Valley), a brand of supposedly middle-class, predominately white culture has exported itself across the United States, thriving on 2-car garages, uniformly green grass, and surface-level politeness, to the point where we all know the unwritten rules of plausible deniability.
In an age of an increasingly anxious and depressed populace, with rates of anxiety and depression at their highest ever among young adults, you might think that our language, our conversations, might change a little bit.
Maybe they have; maybe they are — at least online, where Reddit forums and Facebook groups and Twitter threads have provided a place for online confessionals rarely spoken aloud “IRL.”
But despite the rise in memoirs and honesty about therapy appointments or the use of anti-depressants, American culture still runs on a powerful undercurrent of one thing above all else:
DENIAL.
***
For decades now, our economy has been powered by a sort of willful denialism, with prominent economic theorists, encouraged on by venture capitalists and nihilists in Silicon Valley, subscribing to wild theories that suggest we can eat our cake and have it, too.
Those theories have worked well for our country’s most affluent, in theory at least. For decades they have been eating their cake and having it, too, running up massive credit card bills that they never intend to pay; their credit underwritten by a mysterious set of interlocking investments and properties and “theoretical wealth,” with any real losses made up for by tax breaks and benefits. For them, and this includes most American politicians and leaders, money has long ceased to be “real.” It’s only an idea, a theory. So they extend themselves further and further into the future, and govern upon the idea that the that the pot will never run out. They can’t lose. As some have said, it’s a “rigged” game.
Finally in 2022, though, denial has run hard aground against some incontrovertible facts. Global inflation has been on the rise, a result of this wishful economic thinking, and finally, in Britain, the new Conservative government under PM Liz Truss was forced to backtrack on its idea to eliminate the top tax bracket.
It’s a bit ironic that in America, President Joe Biden and Democrats have earned much of the blame for rising inflation, even as the free-market policies and tax breaks skewed toward the highest-earners, championed by the GOP as “trickle-down economics” are most to blame for rises in inflation, rather than the much smaller policies to benefit larger swaths of Americans, like the short-lived child tax credit checks, or limited student loan forgiveness, which is already being challenged and further limited in courts.
Still, none of it works without denial. More than easy cash, credit cards, or social media — denial is the fuel powering American influence, and it’s killing us.
***
If you’ve tried it, even once, you know that denial is a highly addictive drug, leading to euphoric highs and perilous crashes. If you regularly engage in denial and attempt to quit cold turkey, you’ll suffer withdrawal effects and social consequences, similar to those suffered by those who try to quit drinking alcohol.
Just try telling the truth about your life or about America to a group of people you know socially but not intimately. Seriously, try it. Good luck.
As a child of the late 80s and 90s, I was brought up on denial. Everyone gets a participation trophy! Everyone can and should go to college! Take out student loans! Major in whatever you want! Build those campus swimming pools and lazy rivers! Take out credit cards! Another credit card offer! Here’s your free gift! Do more! Do more! Do more!
You can be whatever you want to be. Everything you want to be. Be a parent. Have your dream career. Buy a home. Marry the one you love.
Our parents passed on these hopes and dreams to us without realizing that by sharing them, they too were hopped up on a heavy dose of denial. Their mortgages became propped up on shady and unsustainable loans. The processed and frozen food they were told would make parenting and two-working-parent households manageable led to health consequences down the road. Credit cards weren’t actually easy cash. The new family SUVs polluted our air beyond repair. Our new cheap clothing was being manufactured in foreign warehouses by oppressed and abused workers who sometimes died in factory fires.
Pass the pipe. Inhale. Smells like Teen Spirit and denial.
I was thinking about all this today while attempting a bike ride in the pollen-filled air of an unseasonably warm autumn day in the Midwest, while my legs ached and my lungs gasped for air.
I was thinking about how I should be better at this: I shouldn’t be tired; I shouldn’t still be sick from a COVID infection more than a month ago. I should be able to bike faster. And this morning I got out of bed way too late, and my oldest son forgot what he was supposed to do before school, and there was so much more I should have done.
No matter how fast you pedal, you can’t keep up with denial.
As I did so, panting unattractively, lyrics from a 1993 song by 2 Unlimited came to mind. Remember this? Maybe they played it on your warm-up music before high school events:
No no limits, we’ll reach for the sky
No valley too deep, no mountain too high
No no limits, won’t give up the fight
We do what we want and we do it with pride
…
No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there’s no limit
No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there’s no limit
Whew. The beat pounds in my head, and just thinking these lyrics I’m already exhausted. And yet there’s perhaps no better soundtrack for the way we’ve collectively approached our lives for far too long now, comparing ourselves to the airbrushed and edited and filtered images and tall tales we see on social media and watch on reality TV.
We lie to each other and we lie to ourselves about how things are actually going.
“Good, how are you?”
A throwaway response. A paean to the god of Denial.
If we complain, we do it in the short-term, without considering the ways that what ails us and what ails our world are inextricably connected, requiring deep analysis and comprehensive solutions, not the short-term fix that the drug of denial has accustomed us to.
“Gas prices are too high.”
“The weather is too hot.”
“It hasn’t rained enough.”
“My last dr appointment cost me $500.”
“I can’t get health insurance.”
“My lungs hurt.”
“My body aches.”
“I can’t afford the food I want to eat.”
“My childcare is more expensive than my rent.”
To be honest, it’s hard to even write about denial without engaging in it. And what’s the point? If we admit we are all in denial then what? Collective lament and tearing sackcloth? Community mourning? A day of rest? Sabbath?
Maybe all of that would not be a bad start.
Still, weaning ourselves from the collective drug of denial provides oppportunity to engage with the only thing that will ultimately set us free: the Truth. Telling the truth in conversation and in politics and yes, even in churches, makes it possible to see the real problems, and only then, to contemplate the real solutions.
Denial promises a sweetness that says no one ever has to lose. But we know by experience that just isn’t true, especially in the short term. Life is marked by a series of losses. If we deny them, as those of you who’ve wandered in the valley of the shadow of the death of a loved one know intimately, we are stuck in that grief. We cannot go on. Denial, and subsequent acknowledgement of the truth, is just the first step in healing and recovery.
But we’re stuck there. We’ve been stuck for far too long, telling ourselves lies about the ways that the American Dream has been made unattainable for most of us, by real policies and legislation that sold radical redistribution of wealth upward, and placated us with cheap generic drugs of denial, and the constant selling of “aspiration” on one side and hatred on the other.
We’ve exported denial, to a Europe that now too staggers under inflation and a thoughtless reliance on Russian gas; to Palestinians who relied on Arab nations who paid them lip service but instead lined their own coffers, allying themselves with all those who’d deny human rights; to Brazilians who fell in line behind destruction of the Amazon, which made a few wealthy and many impoverished and now on the frontlines of climate change; to Ukrainians, whose bravery has inspired the world but whose massive loss of life and liberty will add its trauma to generations of Ukrainian children to come.
We’ve repeated the lie that we are not victims - that being a “victim” is a bad thing to be - when in truth we have all been made victims to denial itself. Our relationships and love are bankrupted by denial and its lies. Denial promises us the world and leaves us broke and exhausted, telling the truth to ourselves only in waking moments in the middle of the night, with racing hearts.
As I come to the end of this essay, I find myself hungry - as always - for truth and hope, two things that denial tells us do not fit together. I wondered, as we detox from denial, what we can turn to instead. What is the opposite of denial?
I found my answer in a haunting and powerful essay about the Armenian genocide, written in June 2021 by Elise Youssoufian. Drawing upon the work of Roshi Bernie Glassman, she suggests that the opposite of denial is bearing witness.
I like this framing. To bear witness suggests much more than simply “telling the truth.” Bearing witness suggests responsibility and consideration of those to whom you bear witness. It dispenses with the idea that “truth-telling” must be brash and “politically incorrect” to be true, or that “truth-telling” is a permission slip to spout hatred and threaten violence.
Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do here, in this newsletter I’ve titled I’m Listening. Because one thing I’m hearing is a lot of denial from a lot of good and kind people. And I’m hearing the results of that denial: stress, injury, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, broken relationships and communication impasses. So I want to bear witness to one thing that I know is ailing us. Denial has been powerful for far too long; it tells us it’s setting us free when in truth it has kept us in thrall to itself.
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