The choice of featured image for this post might surprise our more attentive readers. I am on the record as disliking comic book movies almost as much as Martin Scorsese. At the risk of dating myself, I stopped buying comic books when the price rose from 12 to 15 cents. But I retain a soft spot for the Fantastic Four and their fantastical foe, Doctor Doom.
You’re probably wondering what Doctor Doom has to do with First Draft co-founder Allison Hantschel AKA Athenae. Here’s what: she wrote a quotable column for Dame Magazine last month about doomerism, The Media Is Bumming People Out. That’s Intentional.
It’s a great piece that has stuck with me as has the tagline: “Legacy media’s new favorite beat is doomerism, driving outrage clicks on the defeatist idea that none of us can do anything to improve the state of the world.”
I thought of A’s column yesterday while watching Nicolle Wallace melt down again over the Indicted Impeached Insult Comedian’s violent language. There was so much tut-tutting and bedwetting from the host and her panel that I turned the teevee off. It struck me that I had just witnessed the center-left’s version of doomerism, which leads to our quote of the day:
“The world is on fire. Our system of governing is broken. Covid is on the rise again. Poverty is skyrocketing. Coral reefs are collapsing, the Earth is quaking, and flood waters are rising in arid climates. Librarians are fielding bomb threats over children’s books. Migrants are dying on razor wire hidden in rivers. People are being murdered by police who laugh about their deaths on camera.
And there’s nothing that can be done about any of it.
That’s the core message of a new cottage industry: Doomerism.
In newspaper and magazine commentary, in the words of TV pundits and the jibes of late-night comedians, the chatter of talk-radio hosts and the video snippets of influencers, the guiding principle of How Things Are is that they are terrible and will never change.”
Doomerism plays into the hands of neo-Fascists and Trumpers by presenting the nihilistic notion that everything sucks and nothing can change. Doomerism works best with people who are ignorant of history and think this is the worst time ever and that everyone’s gonna die.
Climate change is the focus of Athenae’s piece. Its explosion this summer has inspired hand wringing and doomerism from the usual suspects in the legacy media. They think it’s too hard so we should just give up and surf the web and watch trash teevee. They are so full of shit that their eyes are brown as my 12-year-old self would surely say at this point.
Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. Doing easy things is, well, easy. It’s easier to listen to the doomerists and sit on one’s hands after wringing them. Don’t take the bait and fall into their trap.
Doomerism isn’t new. FDR had to deal with doomerist isolationists who warned that Hitler’s triumph was inevitable. Repeat after me: Nothing is inevitable.
Back to climate change, it was caused by human activity so the only way to roll it back is by human activity. Human inactivity simply won’t do. It will be hard and require some sacrifices but so did defeating German and Japanese Fascism.
Doctor Doom isn’t real, but climate change is. It’s never too late to fight back. That concludes this anti-doomerist pep talk. Doomerists bum me out.
Repeat after me: Doomerism is a bummer.
The last word goes to The 13th Floor Elevators: