Conclusion: Addressing a World of Rhizomatic Crises

Abstract

As I prepared a final draft of this manuscript, four issues dominated the airwaves: the Muslim who attempted to bomb Times Square, the BP oil eruption, the draconian anti-immigrant agenda symbolized by Arizona’s legislative initiatives, and an increasingly urgent push to cut government budgets and restore balanced budgets. Though media generally treated these as separate issues, I could not fail to be struck by the ways they intermeshed and intensified a general sense of apocalyptic distress and an exclusionary, self-defeating politics. Anti-immigrant groups and terror warriors often had different targets, but fears that built on each other. And both climate change deniers and ardent environmentalists spoke with intense levels of fear, albeit at different targets. Fears and intensities connected even as the targets and programmatic agendas varied.