There’s no certain or complete explanation for the current
social and political dysfunction in the United States. A full analysis would
need to include psychology and whatever human nature might be, as well as
strands of history going as far back as history goes. Any such speculations
might be dangerous, and certainly inexact.
But human institutions arose to cope with various
manifestations of psychology and historical tendencies, to establish some sort
of common order and public good. It
occurs to me that people under the age of 50 or so wouldn’t remember that in
the decades after World War II, the United States reached a sometimes uneasy
but functioning consensus on organizing its institutions to foster a basically
stable society and political order, while providing the tools for the society
to improve.
In confronting the traumas of the Great Depression and World
War II, that consensus was forged, and it created the stability, growing
prosperity and progress of the 1950s through the 1970s, regardless of which
party had the White House or the majority in the houses of Congress. (By consensus, I don’t mean the lack of
spirited disagreement or even vicious conflict, or even consciously held convictions. I mean a functional consensus, an acceptance of core institutions and roles of government to foster the common good.)
Major political
institutions operated by rules and tradition, with the respect and consent of
the governed, even when some or many of whom were adamantly opposed to certain
policies and leaders. The sanctity of the vote was never questioned.
To this was added the new core of
the postwar consensus, which held that the government, particularly the federal
government, had the key responsibility to guard and improve those public
elements that benefited everyone. Just
as FDR realized that new power generation in the South would benefit the entire
region, Eisenhower saw that among those driving on a federal highway system
would be patricians and paupers; that it would convey freight for
everyone.
In order to pay for public projects, as well as the common
defense etc., income taxes were graduated based on ability to pay, with higher
brackets paying a higher percentage.
The top bracket during the Eisenhower years reached 90%.
The government was seen as the arbiter that leveled the
playing field, so that through regulations the costs of ensuring the health and
safety of Americans would fall equally on all competitors. Those institutions deemed vital to everyone
in the society, like electric and gas companies, and some hospitals, were
publicly or community owned, or highly regulated in exchange for virtual monopolies
in a given place. Everyone knew them as
“public utilities.”
It wasn't perfect. McCarthyism and rigid conformity poisoned the 1950s, and institutions could not respond fast enough to challenges of the 1960s and 70s. And though the era served a large proportion of white people, blacks and other races suffered institutional prejudice, and largely rural sections of the country didn't share in prosperity. But progress was being made, slowly and painfully, and largely within established political and social institutions (which included expressions of dissent.)
With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, all of this
began to change. The Reagan
administration began the series of deep cuts to the taxes paid by wealthy
individuals and corporations, depleting government funds which impoverished
programs and added to the federal deficit.
Over time, this was a prime factor in an income transfer from the middle
class to the very few most wealthy.
Other devastating Reagan era policies included de-regulation
and privatization. De-regulation
hampered or ended government’s ability to monitor and control vital aspects of
health and safety. At the same time,
government or public institutional functions were transferred to corporations,
on the theory that services would somehow improve when hefty profits were added
to claims on income.
Big changes take time to exhibit their full effects, but the
world we’re living in is largely a result of these and similar changes, many of
which have become the new orthodoxy, especially as fewer remember when they
were not so.
Apart from the near collapse of institutions that used to be
considered essential for the public good, resulting in a general cynicism and
sense of helplessness, the most conspicuous change is the extent of the gap
between the few obscenely wealthy and everyone else. It’s not just the proportion that’s the problem, but the lack of
security of what must be close to a majority of Americans. The usual example is that they are only a
few inflated medical bills away from financial disaster. This is a double failure—the income
transfer, and the lack of public support for a general and essential good,
medical care. Though it may seem that anger is the chief motivation of frenzied politics, beneath that it is fear.
Other factors play into this, such as the
de-industrialization and resulting collapse of labor unions in the 1970s and
80s. But the social insecurity that is roiling politics, making them more
extreme, can largely be traced to how the US responded: with Reaganomics.
At the same time, de-regulation began to extend to political
contributions, until the Supreme Court made them nearly boundless. Money is a huge factor in making our
politics crazy. Money plus television and Internet celebrity multiplies the insanity.
Just as both parties
participated in the postwar consensus, the responsibility for our current
condition resides also in both Republicans and Democrats. Republican policies laid the groundwork, and
Republican politics are wounding and challenging institutions of our very
republic. But Democrats have largely
failed to confront the basic problems.
Too many mollify wealthy interests for political gain. And to date no major Democratic leader has
plainly explained these problems, and proposed direct solutions as the core of an agenda.
What we are in part witnessing is a series of challenges to
core institutions, and the institutional responses. These are dramatic, and involve individuals, from federal judges
to county election clerks. The outcomes
of these battles themselves tell us whether our institutions will be able to
respond to both the usual and the unique challenges the world—and the
planet—present us. For the sense of selfishness and cynicism legitimized by the end of this consensus has given us so-called public servants who openly act with no responsibility to the public good, but only to their careers and the ideologies they believe they can ride to power and wealth.
The institutions of the world also face severe challenges,
even apart from the greatest challenge of all, the climate distortion
crisis. Right now warfare in the Middle
East is the latest. I had the eerie
experience of coincidentally reading an essay by Joseph Campbell just as the
first Hamas attack became news, detailing the “war mythologies” of this region,
copiously quoting both the Old Testament and the Koran on the divine
instructions for waging war without limit, with no cruelty too great.
Campbell
wrote this essay during the 1967 war, and commented: “These, then, are the two war mythologies that are even today
confronting each other in the highly contentious Near East and may yet explode
our planet.” But we are also witnessing
the efforts of established and ad hoc international institutions to limit and
end the violence, to maintain some sense of common humanity. International institutions also arose as
part of a post-war consensus, though they were never very strong. They too are being challenged now.