Dreaming of a Flat Earth: Disease and Insurrection in a Disconnected Age; The Political Sphere of the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Since the turn of the Millennium, it has become increasingly difficult to understand the socio-political landscape using the traditional models. Although this is a global phenomenon, it is particularly evident in the United States, which is where we will focus the majority of this article. The current era is dominated by a series of overlapping phenomena, rooted in a series of what we term “disconnections,” that bring into view a new “spherical” political reality. These disconnections describe situations where the empirical, or observable, world differs from the actual, but often hidden, reality. Deriving from these disconnections, the traditional “flat” understanding of political structures, focused on “traditional” axes of Liberal to Conservative and Libertarian to Authoritarian, ignores an important third dimension that we will examine. This third axis relates to issues of rural / nationalist / science-skeptical versus urban / globalist / science-positive. This article explores how this third axis informs, and is informed, by the three most significant issues facing the world at this moment: climate change, COVID-19, and the attempted coup of January 2021.