As noted in a recent post, the COVID-19 pandemic added some new words and phrases to our vocabulary in 2020. Some words were invented, but other words that we had rarely used or had used in a different context before the pandemic enjoyed a marked increase in usage and acquired a new meaning. “Social distancing” would have made little sense to you in 2019, and in 2020 was a frequently used and much-debated strategy. One word that I had never encountered before hearing about the “word of the year” report from Oxford Languages, the publisher of the Oxford dictionary, was “doomscrolling.” Doomscrolling was not the final choice of Oxford, but it got the equivalent of “honorable mention.” Apparently, it was even more popular in New Zealand where is was chosen as “word of the year.”
In case you’ve been out of circulation or involved in a continual succession of Zoom encounters during 2020 and have not encountered “doomscrolling,” let me define it for you. Wikipedia describes it as:
Doomscrolling can be defined as “an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of dystopian news.”…The word gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, the George Floyd protests, and the 2020 US presidential election, as these events have been noted to have exacerbated the practice of doomscrolling.
Though the word doomscrolling is not found in their dictionary itself, Merriam-Webster is “watching” the term—a designation for words receiving increased use in society that do not yet meet their criteria for inclusion. Dictionary.com chose it as the top monthly trend in August 2020. The Macquarie Dictionary named doomscrolling as the 2020 Committee’s Choice Word of the Year.
Any regular reader of these notes might think of me as a “doomscroller.” My doomscrolling is part of my process of writing these notes. Since Donald Trump was banned from social media and the subsequent inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris there just hasn’t been nearly as much doom to scroll as there was before. I must admit that now when there is not nearly as much doom to scroll as there were a few weeks ago, I am having symptoms of doomscrolling withdrawal.
Perhaps I will get a little relief, by that I mean a little extra doomscrolling, over the next two weeks as we crescendo toward Donald Trump’s second trial in the Senate. Another substitute to diminish my symptoms of withdrawal could be the upcoming Super Bowl. I ask myself, “Will the Super Bowl match-up between Tom Brady, the greatest QB of all time, and Patrick Mahomes whom some believe is the best QB of these times, be enough to mitigate my lingering symptoms of doomscrolling withdrawal? I doubt it. I am interested in Super Bowl LV, but it does not seem like such a big deal to me. The greatest fascination for me in Super Bowl LV is that I can easily recall Super Bowl I that was played in Los Angeles on January 15, 1967, during my senior year in college and six months before I moved to Boston to begin my medical education. After more than a half-century of practice, I have developed the ability to pay no attention to the hype that builds over the two weeks running up to Super Bowl Sunday, our national holiday.
After the wonderfully exhilarating experience of the inauguration, we were treated to the ho-hum demonstration of competent but boring government as our new president sat down to sign the first of many executive orders that would begin to reverse the damage that has accumulated one doomscrolling event after another during the last four years. As I watched the video of him sitting at the “Resolute Desk” and listened to his words, as he began signing the first dozen or so of the executive orders that during the campaign he had promised that he would sign, I wondered about the progress that could be made in the journey toward the Triple Aim through executive orders. It’s an important question to ask since the lack of a commanding majority in the Senate makes legislative progress very difficult even if seven or eight Republican senators were willing to join in a bipartisan process.
I really appreciated what the president was mumbling to the press as he was signing his executive orders. C-Span offered a cryptic and partial transcript of his words, all in capital letters.
“First of many” is an understatement. President Biden signed 30 executive orders in his first three days in office, and there are more to come. This morning’s Washington Post announced that the president would be signing executive orders that would open up the enrollment on the exchanges of the ACA so that many people who had lost their employer-provided health insurance during the pandemic could get coverage. The move is what one would expect from an empathetic president. The article suggests that the idea was presented to Donald Trump, but to no one’s surprise, he rejected the plan.
It is time to give serious consideration to what Joe Biden will be able to do with executive orders on all of the items of most importance to the country: the roll-out of the COVID vaccine, economic relief from the COVID pandemic, the environment, the social determinants of health, moving toward equal justice for minorities, the resolution of our longstanding immigration problem, and developing a combination of mechanisms and programs that give access to healthcare to everyone. Some improvements in access to care may be possible but will require much strategic coordination and expansion of existing programs through executive orders and administrative actions since he has said that he does not favor a single-payer approach at this time. It appears that he and his advisers will do as much as they can using executive orders, but executive orders have their limitations and are vulnerable to reversal when a president who does not agree with the policy comes into office. We have seen both the utility and the vulnerability of executive orders when President Trump reversed as much as possible of President Obama’s healthcare accomplishments when he could not pass legislation to “repeal and replace” the ACA.
The ACA squeaked through to passage after Ted Kennedy died by a crafty use of the rules of the House and Senate. With the narrow control of the Senate that exists for Democrats now, it is likely that any of the transformative legislation that President Biden would like to pass will fail unless ten to fifteen Republicans agree. The Democrats have never had the control over the votes of Senators that Mitch McConnel has enjoyed. This reality makes Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia, the “most powerful” senator. Another conservative Democrat, Krysten Sinema of Arizona is also likely to see the world differently than most Democrats on many of the issues of consequence.
In an article last October, Ezra Klein, formally of Vox which he cofounded, and now a New York Times columnist laid out beautifully why we need to do away with the filibuster. Another article written by Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institue makes many of the same points. In a poorly titled article in today’s New York Times, “Live Updates: Democrats Win Filibuster Battle for Now,” we learn that Mitch McConnel has dropped his objections to the reorganization of Senate committees because he has confidence that the Democrats don’t have the votes now to end the long and frustrating history of the filibuster. That’s a good news/bad news story. It will allow a speedier process of conforming cabinet positions, and simultaneously it means that substantive, durable legislation will require a miracle of bipartisan support never seen before.
If I had my way the death of the filibuster would have occurred years ago. The filibuster is the single biggest obstacle to the resolution of inequities in our society. I am convinced that someday it will die. Until the day when we can sing “free at last” in reference to the misery that the filibuster has perpetuated I fear that I will have many more relapses of event-driven doomscrolling and will be happy to see President Biden vigorously use the alternative tool of the executive order.
In the long run, executive orders can put a little salve on open wounds, but they lack the permanence to be considered a cure. Stay tuned and stay hopeful that things will eventually work out. Much of this may change if there were a real conversion away from “trumpism” and the fear his base induces on the part of congressional Republicans. It seems way too early to begin the conversion, but the challenge of the midterm elections will be to preserve the gains of 2020 and move a little closer to a functioning Senate majority while increasing the Democratic majority in the House. A midterm loss of control of Congress for Democrats would be another disaster if progress on the social determinants of health and universal access to healthcare is what you desire. A loss of congressional control would probably cause me to have a serious relapse of my doomscrolling. Enjoy the moment. Executive orders do restore some of the progress that was made between 2009 and 2017 toward better health for all, but we are still a long way from solutions that have the respect and durability of social security. Some day maybe, not yet today. It is no time to either rest or give up.
