Fractured America: Is it Too Late? Or is the U.S. Spiraling Into the Abyss?
Martin Luther King encouragingly said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The progress he envisioned was not straight-line, containing peaks and valleys. We are in one of those valleys, and many thinkers suggest we are fragile and traumatized, irreconcilably fractured, and our democratic republic could fall in our lifetime, thus breaking MLK’s arc towards justice. Others believe we are in a decades-old phase of both societal crisis and cultural awakening. The coming presidential election will have significant impact on how we choose to bend King’s arc, to crisis or awakening.
Regarding societal crisis and cultural awakening, research has found that societies go through periods of community and individual ascendency, the ups and downs of movement on the arc toward justice.The community time is marked by future orientation, asceticism, concern for responsibility and a duty to others. These are shown to be the traditional values of the U.S. Times of individual ascendency are characterized by a present orientation, hedonism, a concern for rights, and duty to self. As an example, work done in the 1980s found college freshmen students endorsed their number one value as “being well off financially,” up to 70% from 40% fifteen years earlier. The earlier study showed the number one value was “developing a meaningful philosophy of life,” which ranked eighth in the 1980s. Such individual ascendency has continued and grown over the years (see below).
In his 2016 book, Colin Woodard confirmed that America’s political character oscillates between seeking the common good and individuality. He finds that, “Today, America is pretty solidly divided along partisan lines,” with Democrats controlling regions that historically lean towards the common good, and Republicans controlling regions that historically lean towards individualism, an individualism he calls “enormously unequal and racist.”
The divisions noted caused the billionaire, Nick Hanauer, to warn his “fellow zillionaires”, that “a revolution a la France 1789 is coming to the United States of America if its wealthiest don’t take drastic steps to reduce inequality.” It appears they have not heeded Mr. Hanauer, rather taking drastic steps to increase their wealth at the expense of the middle and lower classes.
In his 2015 book, “Saving Capitalism: For the many, not the few,” former Secretary of Labor, Robert B. Reich says, “The threat to capitalism is no longer communism or racism but a steady undermining of the trust modern societies need for growth and stability.” And why shouldn’t Americans feel undermined, as shown by Reich who lays out the five building blocks of capitalism (property, monopoly, contract, bankruptcy, and enforcement) and then proceeds to show how the power of money has allowed the government to be bought to the advantage of the rich. His book is full of examples, I offer one that blew my mind. He notes, “Drug companies pay the makers of generic drugs to delay their cheaper versions,” and we’ve long known they also pay doctors to prescribe their drugs. And this and much more is all due to legislators, judges, and executives at all levels of government writing rules that make such actions legal. We are told we are free, but without power (money) we are chattel slaves.
The arc toward justice is wound tight with the idea of freedom. Cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff tackles the idea of freedom in his 2006 book, “Whose Freedom? The battle over America’s most important idea.” He shows how the right has changed the traditional American definition of freedom from the communitarian outlook to the individualistic outlook. How Limbaugh, Bush, Hannity, Beck, Cruz, Ryan, etc., and now Trump promote a siege mentality, pitting whites against all else, Christianity against Islam, straights agains gays, pro-life against pro-choice, and on and on. Always couched in a war language and with those in power made to be the “victims.” There are plenty of real problems to worry about honestly, but to deal with in the spirit of Robert F. Kennedy, who said, “What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer in our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.” One of our oldest values is, E pluribus unum, Out of many, one.
Elected officials, from local to state to federal governments are the ones who legislate for the rich and corporations, shortchange public education, disavow science, create and legitimize racial, ethnic, and class tensions, create laws that produce major incarceration and privatize prisons, drive prescription and other health care up. These are all parts of our justice and freedom.
I’ll pull no punches here, the major problems have been created by the Republican party, and the evangelical right wing. Variously attributed to Huey Long or Sinclair Lewis, there is a saying that when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag carrying a cross. It’s nearly here. Vote for the fear and hate of the demagogue Donald Trump and his Republican lackeys and it will be a vote for the destruction of America and what we stand for