That there has been a plumet in expectations in the lives of most Americans is hardly a secret. Income/wealth inequality has never been worse and is still rising, with the top 1% in wealth owning more than half of all US wealth. Upward mobility no longer exists, and few younger Americans believe that they will live as well as, and most certainly not as well as, their parents. Post-secondary education costs have soared into the “unaffordable” range, with staggering resulting student debt, joining housing costs to downgrade lifestyles everywhere. Inflation is terrifying even as unemployment falls and wages rise significantly. Health insurance is costing more, and in many states that have refused to open doors to their most economically disadvantaged, the number of uninsured Americans is rising again. Childcare has become impossible for many working mothers. Add climate change and global conflict everywhere.
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist, David Leonhardt, writes for The Morning segment (October 24th) to explain this dissatisfaction and the rise of an angry populist movement: “Many Americans have come to see the political system as rigged. They worry that grass-roots political movements are powerless to overcome entrenched interests, whether those interests are self-serving politicians, large employers or dominant social media platforms. And I understand why this cynicism exists…
“The clearest sign of our problems is this statistic: In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country. Today, we have the lowest such life expectancy, worse than those of Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Japan or South Korea, as well as some less rich countries, like China or Chile. The main reason is the stagnation of life expectancy for working-class people...
“For all the cynicism about politics today, it is worth remembering how often grass-roots political movements in the U.S. have managed to succeed. In the 1920s and 1930s, the country had a highly unequal economy and a Supreme Court that threw out most policies to reduce inequality. But activists — like A. Philip Randolph, a preacher’s son from Jacksonville, Fla., who took on a powerful railroad company — didn’t respond by giving up on the system as hopelessly rigged.
“They instead used the tools of democracy to create mass prosperity. They spent decades building a labor movement that, despite many short-term defeats, ultimately changed public opinion, won elections and remade federal policy to put workers and corporations on a more equal footing. The rise of the labor movement from the 1930s through the 1950s led to incomes rising even more rapidly for the poor and middle class than for the rich, and to the white-Black wage gap shrinking… One big lesson I took from my research was the unparalleled role of labor unions in combating inequality (a role that more Americans seem to have recognized recently)…
“[Yet in] the 1950s and 1960s, a group of conservatives, including Milton Friedman and Robert Bork, began trying to sell the country on the virtues of a low-tax, light-regulation economy. For years, they struggled to do so and were frustrated by their failures. Friedman kept a list of newspapers and magazines that did not even review his first major book.
“But the conservatives kept trying — and the oil crisis that began 50 years ago last week eventually helped them succeed. A politician who embraced their ideas, Ronald Reagan, won the presidency and moved the U.S. closer to the laissez-faire ideal than almost any other country… The conservatives who sold this vision promised it would lead to a new prosperity for all. They were wrong about that, of course. Since 1980, the U.S. has become a grim outlier on many indicators of human well-being. But the conservatives were right that overhauling the country’s economic policy was possible.” It just got overhauled in the wrong direction based on mythologies that just would not die. A rising tide never did float all boats, ever… just yachts.
What a platform for wannabe right wing autocrats. This rich class clearly did not want to give up wealth and untaxed income, so a white Christian nationalist movement was an easier social direction to encourage, finding blame in gender, racial and ethnic minorities, taking the focus off the real cause of the malaise: reinforcing the schism between the haves and the have nots. Religion has played a disproportionate role in creating a class of economic underperformers, actually supporting the top economic class in policies that only reinforce that great divide.
A huge rising movement, anchored in Christian nationalism and QAnon theories, is forming formal groups, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers plus other well-armed MAGA militia and other organizations, with less of a military structure, dedicated to returning Donald Trump to power. One such expanding group, calling themselves ReAwaken America under the leadership of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, believes, as Los Angeles Times writer, Sarah Wire states (October 24th) “that the country will be destroyed if Donald Trump doesn’t become president again…
“God wants him to win in 2024, speakers proclaimed to their audience, and as Christians they have been called upon to ensure he does… ‘We know the one in charge up above, and I can tell you that I believe that he has his hand now on Donald Trump, that no weapon formed against him shall prosper,’ Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, told the crowd. ‘God is a part of this race. I’m telling you guys this. I feel it deep down inside.’
“Thousands have attended ReAwaken America on its dozens of stops across the country. [Clay] Clark began the tour in 2021 to protest COVID-19 public health restrictions, and with Flynn’s help it has gained a reputation for promoting Christian nationalist beliefs alongside right-wing conspiracy theories… The tour stopped [in October] at the Trump National Doral resort in Miami for the second time this year. In December, the tour heads to Tulare in the Central Valley, hometown of former California Rep. Devin Nunes, a Trump supporter who now serves as chief executive of his media company.
“Over the last year, the tour has become increasingly focused on reelecting Trump. In North Las Vegas, several speakers referred to him as the ‘rightful president.’ Self-described prophets spoke of Trump as God’s ‘anointed one,’ and presenters told the crowd that his reelection is necessary to save the country from evil… ‘Just as Jesus Christ our heavenly father saved me, I am absolutely convinced that he will deliver Donald Trump and save this nation in our greatest moment of peril,’ former Trump political advisor Roger Stone told the crowd.” A very, very large crowd. Red alert!
I’m Peter Dekom, and if a distorted political movement is based on faith and religious zeal, riling up anger and passion, facts really do not matter.
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