"'What might happen to our humanity?'"

Our culture of ennui.

Materialized man. Ford’s assembly line, 1913. (Wikimedia Commons.)

BERKELEY, 14 MARCH—Here are a few headlines published in The New York Times and other influential American newspapers in the months following Russia’s U.S.– provoked intervention against the Ukrainian regime in February 2022:

“Life Is Better with a Great Garden Hose.”

“How a Taxidermist Spends Her Sundays.”

“How a Food Stylist and Housewares Designer Spends Her Sundays.”

“How a Neurodiverse Musical Theater Artist Spends Her Sundays.”

“Do these shoes make me look like a tourist?”

“Is it bad to wash your hair every day?”

And here are some headlines published in these same newspapers since last October, when Israel began its barbarous siege against the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza:

“Will Taylor Swift Visit the White House?”

“Tuxedos Stole the Show at This Year’s Oscars.”

“Jeremy Strong Isn’t Sure Who He Is.”

“Is Cabbage the New Bacon?

“Kate Middleton’s Story Is About So Much More Than Kate Middleton.’

“We Don’t Know Where Kate Is But She Knows Where We’re Headed.”

“Leave Kate Middleton Alone!”

As a former correspondent abroad, I have taken up the peculiar habit of collecting headlines that reflect on the commonly shared preoccupations of Americans, their thoughts and feelings—the American zeitgeist, this is to say. These are drawn from a large inventory stored in my computer. What do they tell us?

With Russia’s intervention in Ukraine—a military operation I consider regrettable but inevitable given the Western alliance’s incessant efforts to subvert the Russian Federation—the U.S. brought us as close to “nuclear Armageddon,” Biden’s phrase, as we have been at least since the Cuban missile crisis 62 years ago. In the case of Gaza, the U.S. fully supports Israel as it bombs, shoots, and now starves Palestinians in the cause of an ethnic-cleansing genocide that begs comparisons with the diabolic viciousness of the Reich in the 1930s and 1940s.

There is something quite “off,” even indecent about Americans’ fascination with Taylor Swift and garden hoses in these circumstances. Among most people—not all, by any means—one finds little grasp of the gravity of our moment or of our obligation to respond to it. Not even the threat of a nuclear war or the mass murder of innocent children, women, and men stirs most of us. It suggests a collective pathology, a shared psychological disturbance. How can we account for this—this culture of ennui, I will call it?