“[Today’s reality reflects] a political culture that spurs conflict, rewards intransigence and empowers the loud and adversarial, even if polls show most voters would rather their lawmakers give in some if it means getting things done… The system disproportionately empowers a rowdy minority and helps drive lawmakers toward the extremes.”
LA Times Editorial writer, Mark Barabak, June 18th
There is so much revisionist rhetoric in any nationalist/populist movement focused on returning a nation to the “halcyon days of yesteryear.” Looking at that movement in the United States, powerful enough to have elected a nationalist president on the platform of “Make America Great Again” in 2016 and to have captured virtually the entire body of elected officials from one of the two major parties in the land, one has to ask exactly what “going back” really means. Back to an era where blue-collar workers, with powerful unions and great healthcare plans, made enough money to live a middle-class lifestyle? Where working with your hands paid well? Where most workers had only a high school education, perhaps with trade school or an apprenticeship program? Where college tuition was vastly more affordable? Where the dollar and the US economy dwarfed the buying power of any other nation on earth? Where buying a house was just expected? Where getting a new car every two years was normal?
Or where “Negroes” and “coloreds” knew their place, enforced by a very specific parallel “separate but equal” reality and Jim Crow laws? Where were powerful slave owners and Confederate leaders were revered with abundant statues and celebratory building names that proclaimed their honor? Where taxes were low (they were exceptionally high, for the record) and government regulation was minimal? Where people took care of themselves, believed in a conservative Bible, and where the state simply kept out of their way? Where inane theories like “global warming” were not used to change our industrial priorities and economic direction? Where the mass of voters were blue collar, white Christian voters, whose earnings gave them a quality lifestyle, but where the elites were few, specialized and contained? Where Japanese goods were cheap imitations of American supremely high-quality manufactures?
For foreigners looking at the assault of nationalist populism on the great American experiment with democracy, it all seems so strange. BBC journalist, Nick Bryant, penned a piece for the BBC on June 17th, entitled Once the future, US now captive to its past. Here are some excerpts from that editorial:
“When the pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol on January 6th, some of its members chanted ‘1776’, believing they were acting in the same insurrectionary spirit as the revolutionaries who overwhelmed the British… The gun lobby here continually invokes the Second Amendment, even though it was only in 2008 that the Supreme Court affirmed the individual's constitutional right to bear arms… Nostalgic nationalism explained much of the appeal of Donald Trump's ringing slogan Make America Great Again, even though he rarely specified what halcyon era he was harking back to. That partly explained its genius: voters were left to conjure up American dreamscapes in the minds.” And so they did. Conspiracy theories were treated as truth. White supremacy was legitimized. Educated elites were denigrated as out-of-touch, even as folks pushed their children to contemplate college. A presidential loser claimed a constitutional right to continue in office, rejecting the vote that took him out of office.
Like so many in our purported allied nations in Europe, Bryant was aghast at the populist forces tearing at the very foundation of American democracy, seemingly accelerated by an election-losing Donald Trump and the vast majority of elected Republicans: “One of Trump's final acts as president was to release the 1776 Report, which sought to overturn what the presidential commission behind it called ‘the radicalised view of American history’. It was a rejoinder to the 1619 Project from the New York Times, a series of articles and talks which emphasised the African-American experience and endurance of white supremacy in the American story. 1619, of course, was the year when 20 enslaved Africans first arrived on these shores.
“The Black Lives Matter campaign has its roots in that story, and also segregation and the unfinished business of the civil rights era. Many statues memorialising the Confederacy have now been toppled and torn down. Younger Democrats especially are driven by a galvanising idea, that historical wrongs need urgently to be righted, especially when it comes to race.
“Thus, in modern-day America, there is no such thing as a bygone era. The battlefields of yesteryear are also combat zones of today. The political geography of America is increasingly being shaped by a politicised historiography. The past is viewed through a partisan prism.
“Polling conducted by the American Historical Association has shown, for instance, that Democrats believe that people of colour and women do not receive sufficient attention… Republicans think that the military, religious groups and the Founding Fathers have been neglected. And at the root of these conflicting views lies a fundamental divide. Republicans overwhelmingly believe that American history should be celebrated, while Democrats think that history has to be reckoned with and atoned for.
“Conservatives accuse liberals of promoting what they call a woke interpretation, heavy on self-flagellation and light on self-congratulation. Liberals often dismiss conservative takes as chest-thumping cartoons or out-dated movies, like Gone with the Wind.
“Rather than agreeing on a collective national story, the trend has been towards separate narratives. Black History Month. LGBT History Month. Italian-American History Month. Native-American Heritage Month. History has become hyphenated. But it's also more complete. And it's no longer written solely by the winners. Marginalised voices are telling stories that need to be heard.” Look at the red state legislation aimed at disenfranchising minority voters, their banning criticizing racial injustice in our classrooms and their desire to worship the slave trade by arguing anything to the contrary is simply “cancel culture.” Culture? Worst of all, we are now living in a failed interpretation of a post-WWII past.
Until the late 1960s, most the rest of the developed world – having been decimated by WWII – was mired in rebuilding war torn nations. Turning to consumer goods without that rebuild was sheer folly. However, the United States, relatively unscathed by that conflict, could turn to research and development driven by scientific excellence, it could send an entire generation to college if they chose, subsidize housing and encourage new consumer driven industries. We had an abundance of electric power, a rising and skilled workforce with union pay to support the required consumer demand. The world caught up. We had real competition at last. Yet we allowed infrastructure to decay. We fought continuous wars while cutting taxes. We failed to support displaced workers as foreign competition pushed their jobs overseas. And our federal deficits climbed. Automation and income inequality soared. Tuition climbed at a multiple of the rising cost of living.
Instead of addressing reality – for example, that fighting wars without austerity, choosing to cut taxes at the same time, was idiotic – we lived on the investments of past generations, failing to invest in our own future beyond spending 41% of the entire planet’s military budget. To a significant socially conservative and populist constituency, global climate change was cast as a temporary cyclical weather pattern, the pandemic ranged from being a minor inconvenience, perhaps even a hoax, to a problem that required affixing blame rather than confront the disease.
We lived in our vision of a “better” past, survived on institutions and infrastructure from that past without upkeep, but found solace in blame, dividing into separate constituencies, each sounding like the cacophonous seagulls in Finding Nemo: “mine, mine, mine!” The notion of unity, working together as Americans to solve problems and build a solid future, had simply left the building.
I’m Peter Dekom, and does anyone really believe that our bitter dissonance left to fester has the slightest chance to create a better future for anybody?
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