Aug 14, 2023 3 min read

I believe we’re living in a police state. I don’t mean that law enforcement is out of control. Rather, I’m convinced that we exist in the world foreseen in 1980 by Sting, bass player of the rock band the Police. In a song whose title also happens to be the words of its chorus, he sings, “When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around.” That’s what I’m trying to do. But it’s becoming increasingly harder as I age.

Maybe you’ll say that I’m pessimistic. Or you might accuse me of being paranoid; it wouldn’t be the first time people have hung these labels on me. But I don’t think I match the traditional definitions of these terms. I’m not unreasonably or obsessively anxious, suspicious, or mistrustful. I’m a realist: I don’t expect the worst to happen; I’m just not surprised when it does.

That’s because I learned long ago that things can go south at the drop of a hat. In the 1990s I attended a rock concert with a friend. Our seats would have been good – if the two women directly in front of us hadn’t been standing on their chairs. I’m non-confrontational by nature, so I was willing to wait until their legs tired. But my friend tapped one of the women on her back and asked, politely, “Will you please sit down?” She turned, shook her fist at us and let fly a string of Watergate-era Nixonian expletives. Then she offered up her skewed version of a rationale for her behavior, “I paid for this seat and I’m standing on it!” Fast forward 30 years.

Moviegoers who attended screenings of “Barbie” last week reported bizarre incidents among their fellow patrons: talking loudly during the film, laughing at inappropriate moments and traipsing in and out of their seats as they refilled popcorn and drinks. All these might have occurred at any time during the 100-year history of film. But we live in a technological age, so patrons also made phone calls and used cellphone cameras to take flash pictures of the screen. At one screening, five security guards had to be called to remove a naked man from the audience. In New York, a group of “visibly drunk” women danced and engaged in shouted conversations with the characters. Well, it was meant to be a fun film, right?

But moviegoers at screenings of “Oppenheimer” – a sobering biopic about the man who helped to invent the atomic bomb – also said the experience was ruined by multiple patrons who, lacking the attention span required to sit through a three-hour film that doesn’t feature superheroes, scrolled through Instagram and Facebook posts using cellphones set to maximum brightness.

Predictably, social scientists try to explain such behavior by blaming the “collective trauma” the world has been through since 2016. These include two contentious presidential elections, the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated intrusions on everyday life, the war in Ukraine, soaring prices of consumer goods and terrifying weather events. Part of me supposes that these explanations are correct to some extent. But the larger part believes that we’re just nuts.

As the world is running down, we lack the ability to make the best of what’s still around.