by FrankThomas
A question that haunts me is: What is basically at the core of our nation's incapacity to rise above the destructive infighting fissions and divisive pressures now prevailing in our political system? It's about money and power, questioning the myth whether capitalism improves the quality of life for everyone. It's about a new politics of online disinformation, provocative lies, conspiracy theories. However, I sense something much deeper is happening while we have been puting forward shoebox-size solutions taking us nowhere; I believe it's essentially about the erosion of common purpose in America serving the common good.
We are afflicted by a social-political disease that's poisoning a constructive, creative, reasonable degree of rationality and compromise in solving serious societal problems. A disease that's led to an ugly political tribal divide where +-60 million Americans prefer an irredeemable, sociopath as president. An authoritarian guile leader who enjoys exploiting our impregnated political polarization and a resentful population ripe for manipulation, shredding constitutional principles while egging on his angry rank and file full of nationalistic white rage and a vile dislike of immigrants and contempt for those who disagree with them.
Our deep social divisiveness is nurturing instability and attracting many people who hate government. Historical precedent shows that before an empire collapses, it first erodes from within. As Will Durant prophetically said:
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
Rather than reveling in an economic system that extols greed as a virtue, why not replace it with an economic system that has democratic checks and balances to contain people's greed. Why not more democracy and control over our lives instead of leaving those decisions in the hands of the rich and powerful who buy politicians. Creating healthier communities and institutions comes best via widespread engagement in Bottom-Up collective, direct socio-political activities - a process working well in most of Europe's multi-party, coalition-governing systems.
One observer noted: "The entire premise of a self-ruling democracy rests on some reasonable degree of rationality and a reasonable degree of an ability to discriminate between real information and falsehoods. And it goes deeper than that still. The entire premise of any society - democracy or not - is that it possesses a certain degree of shared community, a 'we-ness' that transcends narrower tribalisms and self-interest in critical ways and at critical moments."
That social-democratic dynamic was in good health in the U.S. after WWII through the 1970s, but since then has been unraveling step-by-step. Now, we should redistribute power much more equally and widely, as well as nurture more sustainable and equitable ways to arrange the social and economic relations in our society. Both the Republican and Democrat party machines have obviously failed miserably over recent decades in creating adaptable change that benefits all working classes fairly. We have an ineffective, inefficient two-party political system that controls and drives change largely beneficial to the few. We are now nearing the peak in system fragility where a social implosion could occur.
We're now stuck in an 'alienated rut' as a society. I think the nature of the disease is primarily social and capitalism is a disease of social relations. Top income/wealth class concentrations are very close to 1929 pre-Great Depression levels. Thomas Piketty’s extensive research found and proved that capital and the money it produces accumulates faster than economic growth in capital societies. He solidly documents how capitalism tends to concentrate more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and there’s no reason to believe it can ever solve the problem of inequality. The class income divide is toxic and fast becoming unbridgeable. The monied elite through their powers of political influence end up with more lavish income and wealth - leaving the middle and working classes more and more cumulatively far behind qua decent incomes, job growth prospects, job training; qua affordable healthcare, education, housing, general well-being.
What is critically needed is a much more engaging 'Bottom-Up' governing process - where parties and government cooperate with, rely significantly on and trust a process where communities identify and collaborate on their own needs and policy decisions to solve problems. Having worked and lived in the Netherlands for almost four decades, I've seen a broadly representative social democracy in operation that strikes a healthy societal balance of social protections and a thriving market capitalism that serves ALL citizens well (similar to what we had up to the late 1970s). And the Netherlands is certainly NOT 'a socialist' nation nor a 'socialist haven' as the U.S. conservative right loves to dogmatically repeat about EU countries.
Encouraging better socializing, better socialization and better relating will help local people and marginal groups come together to make serious improvements in local life. By working together in common cause, people can empower themselves to make a project succeed in the best interests of ALL, not just the rich. U.S. government decisions made with poor feedback from and interaction with the Bottom 90% - decisions dominated by vested interests and wealthy elites - will generally be intrinsically inequitable, marginal, unsound, and doomed to fail. History shows that Empires collapse when there is little feedback from the real world, an eroded accountability, no purpose other than profit/wealth gain, and little common good being fairly served. In this situation, the incorruptible and competent are obstructed or ignored, while the self-serving, corrupt and incompetent become con artists at gaming the system for generous financial benefits.
A core U.S. cultural problem we do nothing about is that BIG MONEY has long permeated and corrupted our political system. Our democratic governance is drowning in lobbying money, election money, billionaire influence and project money, etc. Sadly, MONEY has so entrenched political powers inside and outside the system that meaningful reforms to our rather complex social-economic-political structures are extremely difficult to achieve.
And money titans like Trump and Putin are blinded by 'hubris,' wealth and power. The sin of 'hubris' is a Greek word that means 'outrageous arrogance', i.e., imposition of yourself, at all costs. Trump's followers obsequiously bow to his 'hubris' of bottomless lying and psychopathic narcissism. The Greeks believed that 'hubris' was preceded by moral blinders that make you believe you can do anything you want to, and there will be no consequences from either Gods, judges or men. Welcome to the immoral autocratic world of Trumpism - whose administration's 2017 tax cuts went mainly to the rich and corporations, worsening our nation’s egregious inequality.
SUMMARY
Not helping matters is capitalism's inability to address the BIG problems facing us where time is not on our side. Capitalism is poorly equipped to handle long-range problems, social needs or national tragedies. That's where a government "of, by, and for the people" comes in. I'm not prophesying doom. If our nation can rise above its divisive tribalism and come together in a mind-opened, balanced, common sense manner - a very BIG IF - we have the human brains, energy, and means to achieve planetary sustainability and reasonably long cycles of healthy economic progress all Americans can equitably share in.
Here are some cogent words from Matthew Stewart in his writing, "The 9.9% Is the New American Aristocracy:"
"The American idea has always been a guide star, not a policy program, much less a reality. The rights of human beings never have been and never could be permanently established in a handful of phrases or old declarations. They are always rushing to catch up to the world that we inhabit. In our world, now, we need to understand that access to the means of sustaining good health, the opportunity to learn from the wisdom accumulated in our culture, and the expectation that one may do so in a decent home and neighbourhood are not privileges to be reserved for a few who have learned to game the system. They are rights that follow from the same source as those that an earlier generation called life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yes, the kind of change that really matters is going to require action from the federal government (in close cooperation with change at state and local levels). That which creates monopoly power can also destroy it; that which allows money into politics can also take it out; that which has transferred power from labour to capital can transfer it back."
It may be too late to deal optimally with the following crushing problems simultaneously facing us and humanity; problems that will be magnifying dramatically from an expected population of 10 billion by 2060:
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rapidly depleting or eroding resources necessary for all life, e.g., phosphorus, potassium, soil erosion, and running out of hydrocarbons around 2075
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the existential threat of a coming environmental devastation if C02 atmospheric concentrations aren't at least at 300 ppm, preferably lower, to avoid a catastrophic planet temperature rise of 3-4 Celsius by 2050
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exceptionally high healthcare costs for minimum medical coverage
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poor pre-college education and job training systems, exceptionally high student debt and college costs
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an already obscenely massive and still growing income/wealth gap
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an obsolete 3rd-world infrastructure
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an extraordinarily costly in human lives, destruction and money global warring culture that's sucking up government attention and financial reserves needed for addressing major internal problems noted above
Despite the challenges, it's never too late to greatly mitigate the damage. We must understand what we are facing, and the new strategies required to resist and eliminate it. I agree with others who say that to achieve meaningful progress on these critical problems will require an extraordinarily broad re-engagement in Top Down and especially Bottom-Up politics at local levels in towns, country sides, cities, and among the young, the marginalized average and middle class workers.
The nature of the disease afflicting everyone is primarily social. It’s about our common humanity, our collective needs, justice and equality. Piketty exposed how wealth and super-wealth is working to increase the inequality gap – the speed at which the gap is growing is getting faster and faster, accelerating at a dangerous pace beyond the economy. The cure for the alienated rut we are in is to force ourselves to socialize more in the form of political action for the purposes of transforming our culture and capitalistic model in ways more in balance and compatible for the long-term survival of our species and ecological system.
In this renewal process of deep, collaborative discussions to find and implement timely solutions to the crushing problems before us, people should mutually try not dismiss, ignore, misrepresent, belittle, attack, ridicule others who disagree with them ... a significant intractable American problem that kills strong, constructive, creative, pragmatic, give-and-take political discussions and sensible compromise.
Frank Thomas
The Netherlands
December 31, 2019
Reference: A suggested read is Joseph A. Tainter's book, "The Collapse of Complex Societies," by Cambridge University Press. Tainter outlines 24 examples of societal collapse to clarify the common processes of disintegration. His main theme is that societal responses to the problems and challenges it faces lead to increased complexity in structure(s). New problems demand more complex solutions, until eventually the society becomes too complex and requires too many resources to maintain (itself), and it then begins to disintegrate. He identifies a key underlying force causing the rise and inevitable decline of Empires (i.e., superpowers) – compounded complexity in efforts to solve problems over time makes a society vulnerable to collapse when it eats up what Tainter calls, the ‘reserve capacity to solve problems.’ That is what people must be very alert about. It requires a long-term perspective on how one’s society evolved and what kinds of problems it is likely to face in the future. But political leaders and politicians generally do not have a long-term perspective. So a nation jumps step-by-step from crisis to crisis, intensifying complexity and ultimately less reserve capacity to solve fundamental problems.
