Studies in Desperation

the themes of loss, longing, and despair. We talked to curator Tom Norris about how everts prints are potent reminders that what ails us humans today has changed a little from nineteen sixty three, and it it may not be pretty to look at, but it's fair and it's a reality. The editor of Military History Now, Nathan Mallett, walks us through a few desperate times in history. They're sort of traditional way of fighting war suddenly was coming up short. So it was, you know, it was really let's get

creative here and see if we can. You know what's gonna work, Let's try We'll try anything. And we talked to Dr ed Day from Chapman University about the two thousand and sixteen results of the Survey of American Fears and the story these fears paint about the current national mood. We are a very suspicious nation. But first a few other desperate times in history. In ninety three was a big year Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beatles, the year the

first Beatles album came out. Dylan's second album, which had Blowing in the Wind, came out that year, UM, and it was also the year the Mona Lisa traveled to the National Gallery in d c Um. But at the same time, the Cuba Embargo was continuing, the Cold War was on, and um somewhat of a nuclear arms race was happening, and our involvement in the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and then at the end of nineteen three the assassination of JFK. Ryan Guide in our newsroom.

There has been an attempt, as perhaps you know now, on the life of President of kendidate. He was wounded in an automobile driving from Bela Airport. So there were there was this sort of a transition, a duality of

sorts going happening. In nineteen sixty three that's curatorial associate Tom Norris at Norton Simon Museum, which exhibited Studies and Desperation, a suite by the late artist Connor Everts, honoring the fiftieth anniversary of nine lithographs Everts created in nineteen sixty three, the year that ushered in a sea change for the

United States. In a two thousand three interview, Everts reflected on his Studies and Desperation series, and what he said was, I was thinking about the state of the world and the view of the world from the womb. What if someone looked out from the womb and decided not to be born until it was a better world? To capture

the unraveling of society. The first lithograph depicts two figures, at first entwined, but as the series progresses unraveling and breaking down, and in the end they sort of find themselves in this circular sort of womb like feature, and there's bones and teeth and and phalluses and and fingers, and it's just kind of a jumble of um of parts, so to speak. And it brings it back to his quote about wanting to sort of go back into the womb in some way. Waiting it out until the world

is a better place. With time and distance, it's easy to forget just how jarring John F. Kennedy's assassination was, Just how much Americans reeled in response to the cutting down of someone who represented all the ideals of a democracy that, in theory, should have prevented such a tragedy from happening in the first place, and by extension, would keep all sorts of random acts of violence at bay for everyone else. The assassination tore a hole in reality

and efforts peered through it. It's the breaking down of these forms, these bodies is somewhat of an allegory for just however, it's his feeling the world is breaking down, with everything going on in the world around him, was sort of dissolving in his eyes, something that we can all relate to. Studies, I think would point to the idea that we're all finding our way and figuring it out. No one knows the correct path, and we're all studying

to try and find that. One path to finding our way is to examine our past, something history professor and editor Nathan Mallett does on his site Military History. Now. There's so much of military history when you read it is about you know, this well known general in this well known battle, and you know or this well known you know, tank or airplane or something. Everyone knows that stuff. These are the things that people might have missed. And

that's really the objective of this. Here's some things you never really thought of before. Here's the story you know you've never encountered, or kind of the footnotes do it and some of them are just really intriguing. Once story, in particular is what's known as the Business Plot. In November, the following rather chilling article appeared in the New York Times. It concerns the discovery of a plan coup that could have altered the course of American history, yet today hardly

anyone knows anything about it. In the Military History Now article the Business Plot did American billionaire's plan a fascist coup? Nathan writes about wealthy Wall streeters, in corporate big wigs the one per centers of their time. They were worried about the victory of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. They felt

his New Deal programs would usher in communism. The idea of the Business Plot was to overthrow FDR and install as Nathan described in his article quote an ultra nationalist and business friendly regime modeled after Lussolini's Italy plot of Wall Street interest to overthrow President Roosevelt and establish a

fascist dictatorship backed by a private army. You have half a million ex soldiers and others appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Unamerican Activities, which began hearings on the charges. Fast forward eighty years later to the year two thousand and twelve, right after the reelection of Barack Obama, similar sentiments were brewing about Obama ushering in an era of communism with a loss of liberties to follow, and one of today's most famous one per centers tweeted, quote,

we can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty, and we should have a revolution in this country. The author of the two thousand and twelve tweets Donald Trump, any chance we have the sort of shine delight on something that's a little different that you might have missed, and also if we can link it to um, to thing that's happening currently. Why is this important, Why does this story matter, and why does

the story matter? Now? As we know saber rattling can become concrete policy, and concrete policy based on desperation tends to fail. Like one infamous US military conflict, the Vietnam War, other types of sort of unconventional counterinsurgency tactics being used in Vietnam would be uh. I would say that the efforts to wipe out or knock out the ho Chi

Min Trail. Nathan's referring to a specific point in the Vietnam War when the US tried to close down a main artery of supplies and munitions, the Ho Chi Min Trail. This north south running route was of such tactical importance that from seven to nineteen seventy two, the US military ran a secret weather manipulation program called Operation Popeye, meant to extend the monsoon season and flood the ho Chi Min Trail by seating class silver iodide and lead iodide

inducing rainfall. And that is just one of several extreme attempts to move the needle of war to wipe out the trail itself. Um, they came up with some interesting ideas. Uh. They were very effective, but they were interesting. One of them was to drop industrial strength soap flakes onto the ho Chiman Trail during the rainy season, so that the soap would interact with the water and then foam up and it would literally wash the trail away, or would make it sort of a very sort of a soupy,

sticky mass that nobody could pass through. Stories like this matter now, because you could argue we'd live in a time or hope is in short supply. There's handwringing over the economy of culture, over climate and resources. There's a palpable desperation, and we can learn from our past, and more importantly, we can study our present. And one of the ways to do that is to examine the underlying

fears that drive our thoughts and actions. In two thousand and fourteen, I interviewed Dr ed Day of Chapman University about Wave one of the survey they had just conducted, the American Survey of Fears. I asked him what his fear was. I am absolutely petrified of heights. Put me on one of those swinging foot bridges and I get vertigo immediately, and there's no there's no rationale behind that.

I had a chance to follow up with Ed on what is now Wave three of the study, released in October of and I asked him if his own fears have changed since two thousand and fourteen. Now, when I look good things like the how people react to conspiracy theories, um, how suspicious they are of a government that they themselves elected, I worry about the state of democracy. We'll get to the conspiracy theories in a minute, which, by the way, is a new and very important data point to the survey.

But first a quick explanation of how the survey works. First, it's a weighted random sample of the American population over the age of eighteen. We're talking about people of all walks of life. This is something that appeals to science geeks.

I don't know if it appeals to anyone else. Um. But when we did the original survey, um as we were piloting ideas, as we were doing sort of more qualitative textual interviews to find out what people would be afraid of and what we should be putting on the survey. We we used the natural language that people used, UM and and that really boiled down to some things were few.

It's like, uh, you know, crime related stuff, things where people said they weren't afraid, but they were concerned, or they were worried, so we used that language in the question. We had a bunch of questions about what are you you know, are you afraid of this? Other questions would that are you concerned of this? Other questions which said are you worried about this? And we thought that gave

us our best initial shot. But at the same time, we couldn't directly compare questions where we asked are you afraid with questions where we asked are you concerned? Um and And starting with Wave two, we said, okay, we've got that snapshot with the natural language. Now let's rephrase the questions so we're asking how afraid are you of everything?

And then we can do direct comparison. In two thousand and fourteen, the top five years were number one walking alone at night to becoming a victim of identity theft, three safety on the internet for mass shootings, and five five public speaking. In contrast, Top five is fully stocked with a number of despair fueled fears. The first is government corruption, the second, terrorist attacks, three not having enough money for general terrorism, in five restriction on firearms and ammunition.

This feels a little paranoid and a little desperate. I do think You're right that it reflects a sort of of desperation among people. And yes, I think it's definitely media driven um but concerned with corruption officials popping up in that's right when the primary season, you know, we

do the survey in the spring. It was right when the primary season was cranking up, and then we did it was in full swing, and you basically had our national leaders telling our population that our government is corrupt and no good. Probably not a surprise that Americans have believed them. One of the starkest examples of this is the number ten fear on this survey. It was not the Affordable Care Act that wrote number ten, It was Obamacare.

We asked the question about Obamacare. People respond differently to when you ask them about the Affordable Care Act and when you ask them about Obamacare, they don't realize that they are the same thing. And that's where you can

really see the media effect. As Obamacare, you know, that term being a pejorative term that was applied across many media that has affected people, and so if you ask them about that term, you will see that they're more afraid of it than they would be about the Affordable

Care Act. Even though that's the exact same thing, And in January broadcast of Jimmy Kimmel Live on the Street, interviews illustrate that many people are still confused or misinformed about the a c A. We decided to ask this question again to see if Americans have learned any thing over the last three years. And well, let's see if we have. We're talking to people about healthcare today. Do you support Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act Affordable Care Act?

And why is that? Well, I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of Obama, so I don't support him in the Obama things that he's got going on him. I'm actually really excited for President elect Donald Trump's tom right, So you don't like anyth Obama does, and you prefer the Affordable Care Act? Absolutely? Do you support Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act? I support Obamacare. So if you were a Senator and you could vote today, you would vote to keep Obamacare instead of the Affordable Care Act. Yes.

Do you support Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act? I guess affordabacare Affordable Care Act? And why do you prefer the Affordable Care Act over Obamacare? I'm not really sure. My girlfriend that supports Trump, so I go with whatever she goes, whatever she says. What is the main difference between Obamacare and the affordable when is you you you pay, and then the other one is Obama pays. The survey of American fears bears out consequences of this kind of

half baked knowledge being flouted is fact. And this is

where the survey on conspiracy theories comes in. We asked about what we thought were the nine most common conspiracies, you know, and we just asked whether people believe the government was concealing information about's well in order nine eleven, the jfk assassination, alien encounters, global warming, plans for a one world government, Obama's birth certificate, the origin of the age virus, the depth of Supreme Court justice scalia, because that had happened and been in the news a lot

in the moon landing. What we found is that out of those nine, roughly three out of four Americains think the government's concealing information about some at least one of those things. One out of ten people believe the government's concealing information about all of that. We distrust the government and grasp for explanations about things that seem mystical or scary on some level is unfortunate, but the study reveals something far more treacherous about how paranoia and desperation affect

our ability to think clearly. Example, one, almost of Americans believe that the government's concealing information about alien encounters. But then when we go back and we look at our paranormal belief questions, we see that, uh, it's only about of people that believe aliens have recently visited the earth.

So people are more you know, they're more willing to believe that the government is hiding information about aliens than actually believe lands have been here, And that to me really points to the level of dysfunction we now have as citizens versus our government, that that we believe they're hiding things about things that we don't believe actually happened.

Here's another example. We wanted to know just how likely people are to believe in conspiracies period, So we also asked about one that doesn't exist that we made up. We called it the North Dakota Crash, and we said, you know, do you believe the government is hiding information about the North Dakota Crash? And we had almost one out of three saying that, yes, the government is hiding

information about this thing that never happened. So it just shows that right now a huge part of the population is willing to believe anything that gets offered up as a conspiracy theory because we have that much distrust of our government. And if you think that this kind of paranoia isn't being exploited, think again. Counselor to the President in Conway yesterday used false information to defend the President's executive order on immigration. I bet there was very little coverage.

I bet. I bet it's brand new information to people that President Obama had a six month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and there were the master masterminds behind the Bowl and Green massacred, when most people don't know that because I didn't get covered. There is no Bowling Green massacre. What Kelling in Conway is tapping into is not just a distrust of our government, but a deep distrust of

each other. If we asked about selected social groups together, the sense of where Muslims would fall into this distrust of the other. So we asked about, yeah, how trustful are you regarding strangers, Muslims, Atheists, people in general, police officers, and Christians, And it was in that order. Muslims were second only to strangers in terms of who Americans tend to distrust. When you're looking at islamophobia, I think you

see a clear impact of the media. Because the fact is less than one percent of the US population is Muslim. They tend to be located in urban areas. When you look at how Islamophobia is distributed in America, you see that it's more like, you know, people who are more suspicious of muslim They're older, they're white, they're less educated, and their rural and these are the people who are least likely to have met a Musliment of their opinion

is coming from media portrayals of them. People are willing to bite onto you know, this is another. This is another we don't know. They tend to be portrayed as people who are dangerous. They must be dangerous. You could say, this kind of deep distrust is being reflect did back to the public and amplified, particularly with a newly established

immigrant crime hotline. President Trump set up the Voice hotline that is for victims of immigration crime Engagement here's what he said in his joint addressed to Congress, announcing voice and we must support the victims of crime. I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American victims. The office is called Voice Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by a media and silenced

by special interests. In the midst of all of this, Ed wants to remind you of something. Well. The first thing is, I'd like to reassure people you're living in the safest time in history, in the safest place, So take a deep breath. And I also remind people that levels of fear matter. A little bit of fear is good. It can motivate you. Too much fear and you freeze and you don't do anything. If people are failing powerless,

use the power that you have. In his book Consolations, The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, poet David White writes about despair, the underlying condition for desperation.

The antidote to despair, he writes, quote, is not to be found in the brave attempt to cheer ourselves up with happy abstracts, but in paying a profound and courageous attention to the body and the breath, independent of our imprisoning thoughts and stories, even strangely, in paying attention to despair itself and the way we hold it, and which we realize was never ours to own and to hold in the first place. The question then is can we allow despair to move through us without being warped by

the paranoia inherent in it? And can we look past the grotesquery of our times and move forward? To find out, we'll need to take a trip through the haunted halls of our imaginations, and in the next episode we do just that, replicating one of the oldest stories we humans have been telling, the hero's journey. There's a lot of elements tied to going into a haunted house. In many ways, it's a rite of passage. It's the hero's journey, very

primal um. There's something very exciting to go into a scary environment, to almost be struggling with the savage beast in a way, to have that adrenaline surge, but yet to know that you're safe. We'd like to thank Dr Ed Day from Chapman University for his insights into the American psyche, and we'd like to thank Nathan Mallett of

Military History Now linking our past with our present. And finally thanks to Tom Norris at Norton Simon Museum for Walking is through the mind of an artist desperate to change the world. The Stuff of Life is written and executive produced by me Julie Douglas and co produced by Noel Brown. Editorial oversight is provided by contributing producer Dylan Fagan and Head of Production Jerry Rowland. This episode also featured music by Dylan Fagan, Tristan McNeil, Aaron Grubs, and

Josh Boardman. You can find more of Josh's music at battle Tapes band dot com. Additional music is by the band Breathers. You can find more of their music at Breathers dot band camp. This episode also features the songs that Hopeful Future is All I've Ever Known, Stories About the World That Once Was, and Cylinder Eight. The songs are by Chris Zabrievsky and you can find more of

his work at Chris Zabrievsky dot com. Find The Stuff of Life on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email us at the Stuff of Life at how staff works dot com, m