Dumpster Fire

 

In a string of texts with a friend, this morning, following the news of the death of filmmaker David Lynch, I mused that what I had read of national and world affairs, via news and social media, was a Lynchian experience. It is the difficulty I (we) seem to have establishing credibility; how unchecked suspicions are projected as sinister expressions onto media-represented entities, whether they be bland bureaucrat or billionaire. For instance, a Reddit comment thread I scanned, this morning, on the Supreme Court's decision to allow banning Tik Tok, was full of competing arguments featuring a discordant cast of malicious actors intent on political realignment or global ruin for personal gain.

 

My friend texted back "fever dreams and dumpster fires." I knew what he meant —the chaotic mess in which our world appears to be. Had the phrase been spoken I may not have lingered on it, but in textual form, I stared at it, my mind wandering to whether or not my sense of the phrase was the same as his. Whatever the intent, I suspect that he and I would agree that "dumpster fire," its moving image, would have felt at home in a David Lynch production to the extent that my memory could have inserted it, falsely, into any one of his films. 

Image: Ben Watts from Ottawa, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

"Dumpster fire" is one of those terms, as NPR pointed out, that may only be understood when you see one. It is the act of "seeing" that grabs my attention, because seeing requires a degree of emotional distance, a level of safety or, at minimum, comfortable disengagement from the dangers of fire. Aware that this may induce eye-rolling from any casual user of the phrase, still, try to follow my disambiguation of the dumpster from "dumpster fire."

Dumpster is a trade name turned colloquial term —like Kleenex, Brillo or Coke. My image of a dumpster is what those in the trade would call a "roll-off." A roll-off comes on a large truck and is temporarily placed at a construction or demolition site. The container is slid down a rail and, as its rear-end wheels make contact with the ground, is rolled off as the truck slowly pulls forward. This dumpster, or roll-off, is taken away when the cleanup is complete.

 

For some, a dumpster's image is a lidded bin, like this trash container, often on wheels, covered with a steel or plastic, single or double lid. This dumpster collects refuse at institutions, campgrounds, apartment complexes, and behind commercial strip malls. It is "tipped" with a side or rear-mounted pickup mechanism on a truck that makes rounds, on a regular schedule, collecting mostly bagged, non construction trash. 

 

Two blue common institutional trash bins, aka dumpsters

Are these differences significant to the meaning of dumpster fire? Both share the concept: containers that hold trash. Although, as a large, heavy plate steel container, welded all around with steel reinforcements along its sides, and a wide swinging gate requiring multiple maneuvers to open, the roll-off is the better visual to support the phrase. It is a solid, rectilinear volume that acts not only to contain trash, but also to frame the fire. Significantly, the roll-off dumpster holds the trash of a single entity, whereas the rolling, lidded bin of apartment complexes and campgrounds holds the trash of many. So, whose trash is this, that burns? Mine, yours, or our collective trash?

 

"whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime."  –Edmund Burke, 1757

 

To call something a dumpster fire is another way of saying "there is a hot mess." The dumpster fire isn't mine —it is always someone else's burning trash. If it were mine, calling out dumpster fire would be of emergency, but it can't be because the phrase is always sardonic. Any fire can be threatening, but this fire isn't, after all, it is so well-contained by that heavy steel roll-off, that it is merely entertaining. Fire, framed this way, is an aesthetic experience with some root in the sublime. Viewed from a position of safety, the terror is experienced comfortably; the threat is close enough to trigger emotions, yet comes without serious risk, enabling the intellect to overcome the emotional. Like the sublime, then, the dumpster fire idea has a way of inhabiting sophisticated spaces. 

An example could be found in the 2016 election cycle. A Democrat who followed the Republican primary might have said that it was a dumpster fire, proclaiming that Trump could never win. However, a Democrat commenting on the results of the November, 2016 election might not, and probably shouldn't, have said that it was a dumpster fire. This is simply because the results of the Republican primary belonged to the Republican party, but the 2016 election belonged to all Americans, regardless of any deployment of "not my president."

 

Somewhere over the last decade, "dumpster fire" broadened from its plausible, original intent of stinky but insignificant, to unmitigated disaster or out of control. Stinky (burning plastic), but insignificant (because it is not mine and contained), fits well enough with my analysis. Still, in 2025, a Swiss diplomat might say, all too self-assuredly, that the U.S.A. is a political dumpster fire. But we know all too well, now, depending on what is burning and the conditions under which they burn, that fires (and phrases) begin insignificantly and have a way of getting out of hand.