Three Flavors of American Doomerism

Doomerism is alive and well in America. Many news stories have that special hint of doom. Thing X happened, so America is clearly in decline.

Written by Peter Clarke.

Doomerism is alive and well in America. Many news stories have that special hint of doom. Thing X happened, so America is clearly in decline. 

Silicon Valley Bank goes bust? America is in decline. Riots at the capitol? America is in decline. Wokeism at the Oscars? America is in decline. Fentanyl crisis in the Midwest? America is in decline. Homelessness in San Francisco? America is in decline.

“Doomer” is a broad term for anyone overly pessimistic about the future. Climate change is a significant driver of doomerism among young people. Others are concerned about overpopulation, peak oil, nuclear war, food shortages, etc. In America, doomers often align on a particular consequence of these concerns: the coming fall of America. According to Pew, even the general public “sees an America in decline on many fronts.”

Putting aside partisan doomerism (where the right blames everything on the left and vice versa), it’s possible to pinpoint three distinct flavors of American doomerism: the literary flavor, the conspiratorial flavor, and the hard-data flavor. Drawing this distinction is helpful to appreciate how and why doomers may be in discord. If the conspiracists are wildly out of line with the literary narrative or the hard data, they’re likely spooked by ghosts. At the same time, in those instances where all three flavors align, there’s a real sense that the doomers have tapped into the zeitgeist and are describing something real.

Morris Berman champions the literary (or historical narrative) brand of doomerism. Berman is an historian, social critic, and academic well-known for his pessimistic views on America and Western culture. In 2000, he came out with his American doomer manifesto: “The Twilight of American Culture.” Since then, he’s written numerous cheery follow-ups on America’s decline, including “Dark Ages America” (2006) and “Why America Failed” (2011). He peppers his analysis with references from history and quotes from literature. His broad appeal is undoubtedly due in part to a literary flair of his own, which can be found in any number of his popular quotes. For instance:

We live in a collective adrenaline rush, a world of endless promotional/commercial bullshit, that masks a deep systemic emptiness, the spiritual equivalent of asthma.

Berman-style literary doomerism is also at the heart of The Dark Mountain Manifesto, a project that encourages turning away from modernism, urbanism, and technology, and going back to a simple existence where we fit in with (rather than fight against) nature. Even more so than Berman’s works, the manifesto leans heavily on poetry and literature. The manifesto opens with a poem by Robinson Jeffers: “I would burn my right hand in a slow fire / To change the future.” And Part I opens with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”

Berman and The Dark Mountain are foundational in literary doomerism, but they’re the tip of the iceberg in an ever-growing movement. As “Wired” noted in 2020, doomer lit is “the hottest new literary genre.” It’s unsurprising, given that the genre encompasses anyone writing creatively about climate change and future catastrophes.

The conspiratorial flavor of doomerism has the broadest appeal. Conspiracism channels the fear that elites are manipulating the levers of the economy and society to keep you down. “The mainstream media is lying to you,” a typical conspiracist doomer will insist. The deeper you go in this direction, the goofier the claims: “The markets are manipulated. The vaccines are poison. The global elite worship Satan and eat babies. They’re all conspiring to create the New World Order.” Etc.

Since this generates such an enticing narrative, the figureheads of conspiratorial doomerism are much bigger names than the literary doomers. You’ll find Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Eric and Bret Weinstein, and Maajid Nawaz in this camp. Eric Weinstein is perhaps the most interesting of this camp because he focuses on hard data (e.g., data on global markets) but frames his analysis in conspiratorial terms. 

It’s easy to dismiss conspiracist doomers, but sometimes conspiracies are, in fact, true. Thus this group also serves as a voice of reason when the mainstream has adopted a socially convenient narrative that strays from incontrovertible facts. When Scientific American goes woke or when The New York Times claims it’s racist to look into the Covid lab leak theory, rest assured the conspiracy-minded commentariat (many of them doomers) will rise to cry foul.

The final flavor of American doomerism is defined by a focus on charts, numbers, data—just the facts. Take away flowery quotes from history and literature, take away any overly eager concerns about the elites and the globalists, and you end up with a doomer like Peter Zeihan. The author of the 2022 best-seller “The End of the World Is Just the Beginning,” Zeihan is a global analyst with a savant-level knack for summarizing complex data. His outlook for the future—which is bleak—is primarily informed by demographic data. When the developed (and developing) world stopped having many children in the 1980s, he writes that “Most of the developed world faces imminent, simultaneous consumption, production, and financial collapses.” Get ready for massive disruptions to global supply chains and the end of globalization as we know it. And that’s before factoring in the effects of climate change.

In broad strokes, doomers of all stripes agree with Zeihan about the collapse of globalism and the coming end of the modern world as we know it. Literary doomers wax poetic:

It is the story of an empire corroding from within. It is the story of a people who believed, for a long time, that their actions did not have consequences. It is the story of how that people will cope with the crumbling of their own myth. It is our story.

– The Dark Mountain Manifesto

The conspiracists wax apocalyptic:

I’m talking about Armageddon, an obvious Armageddon, and this is the problem of Putin and Ukraine, and Xi [Jinping] reacting to Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan, and the EcoHealth Alliance really needing to get their grants in China to save us from the viruses that they intend to humanize to make them more deadly.

– Eric Weinstein 

Disagreement only appears between the doomers about the details. The literary types (particularly Berman) are downright gleeful about America’s coming collapse. Same with the conspiracists, who tend to view America as the center of the universe, so of course, it will be hit the hardest by the doom to come. Peter Zeihan also warns of challenging decades ahead for America, but he maintains that, comparatively, America will be doing well a few decades out.

America looks at a demographic problem as the Boomers retire, but unlike other developed nations, demographic outlook isn’t terminal. And we’re relatively welcoming to immigrants from nations with younger demographics. In the long term (several decades out), Zeihan paints a surprisingly optimistic picture:

In the coming age, the gap between North America and the bulk of the world will be, if anything, starker. Never before in human history has the premier power from the previous era emerged so unassailably dominant at the beginning of the next.

Even small hints of optimism are refreshing in an environment where doomers and normies alike have become increasingly enthralled with America’s impending decline. Meanwhile, there are counter-movements focusing on optimism. As with the doomers, the optimists come in multiple flavors, from the literary solarpunk movement to Stephen Pinker-style just-the-facts optimists. Anti-doomers usually share a common belief that technology and human ingenuity will save the day, even in the face of significant, global threats. Care to join the doomer resistance with the “Bright Mirror warriors,” anyone?

Peter Clarke is a Sacramento-based writer whose work has appeared in Quillette, Areo Magazine, The American Spectator, Merion West, and elsewhere.

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