this is getting mocked a lot but this is the kind of thing prosperous, dynamic countries do, and the fact that this is unthinkable says something about what we've come to accept https://t.co/7CWk6hzBFz

— Christopher Hooks (@cd_hooks) January 14, 2022

This is true. In many areas, I’ve seen so many Americans comment on undertakings that other countries do as a matter of course — and that we ourselves have done in the past — and declare it “impossible.” They do not mean “impossible” in the purely political sense, either. It’s more that they cannot imagine a large project can be done at all, by anyone. It’s as if they are incapable of engaging with reality at all, and appear to not really believe that other places exist.

I’m having trouble conveying what I mean here. I’m referring not to just the physical fact of achieving some large project, or the political machinations necessary to put it into place, nor even the financial arrangements required. The dysfunction is something larger, far more deeply sociocultural than these relatively-superficial concerns. It’s what I call in my lighter moments “wallowing in loserdom,” though surely there must be a better word or phrase to capture it. Perhaps “anticipatory defeatism?”

This defeatism can be seen in many places in the American psyche, such as the Fat Acceptance movement’s conviction that it’s impossible to weigh less than a small car, and that attempting to do anything else is utterly futile. It’s present everywhere, in other words. I don’t know how to combat it because a large majority of people do in fact truly and completely believe that projects undertaken routinely elsewhere are impossible in a way that’s deeper than the physical or financial aspects of them.