America Disunited

There has been a flurry of articles in the past few days with varying analyses trying to get at the root of the ferocity displayed by the extremists. As we battle through yet another crisis, with this being the most difficult fight yet, the reality of America’s disunity is finally sinking into the minds of our elite. Thomas Edsall has an excellent article in today’s New York Times capturing much of the detail.

There are a few points I want to note along these lines.

• I was vehemently opposed to Obama’s conciliatory approach from the beginning. I thought, and continue to think, that no amount of outreach will satisfy the extremists. All he achieved, especially during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations, was to demonstrate his weakness. The extremists believed he could be bullied. This helps explain their current confusion as they run up against a less compliant president.
• I think a great part of our elite, especially in big business and the media, totally underestimated the emotion of the right wingers. They continued to talk about them as if they could be slotted neatly into a more traditional bi-party rough and tumble model of politics. This meant they missed the extraordinary and radical extent of the disaffection. And it is that disaffection that drives the extremists more than party affiliation. The elite was slow to realize the nature of our political moment. It had no answer for the radicalization of the Republicans, and saw it – many still do – in terms of a balance between two ideologically committed parties. This was lazy, incompetent, and led to a false security in the face of rising hatred. Above all else the elite didn’t want to accept the racial nature of that hatred. America, they said, had just proved it had moved on to a post-racial world. The election of Obama was evidence of this newer, more diverse, and heterogeneous America. The glow of Obama’s election hid the darkness of the counter movement that would rise up in the South and allied areas. Race is difficult for the elite to deal with because it is supposed to be part of history, not the present.
• The intellectual wing of the elite has suffered a resounding defeat. It’s theoretical constructs – which I loosely refer to as Reaganism – ended up on the rocks of the 20078/2008 crisis. Those ideas are debunked, but they linger on in the corridors of elitist universities and corporate boardrooms. The free market economics/big corporate complex dominated policy making through successive administrations from both parties and still dominates conversation today even though it failed, and even though it has created a society riven through with inequality. The dissonance produced by the contrast between expected and actual outcomes from this failed complex has frozen the elite. It cannot respond intellectually to our current crisis because it has no new ideas – it keeps pushing the same policy buttons, albeit with variations, but has no impact.
• Coupled with this intellectual failure is a moral failure. Our elite morphed towards plutocracy and largely abandoned its post-war sense of social responsibility. This is the moral corruption component of Reaganism I find most objectionable. Profit for profit’s sake became the driver of the elite. Greed aligned with a depleted sense of ethics drove a whole host of rent-seeking adventures. The elite reaped rewards as never before and overlooked the stagnation down below. This deliberate separation ebbs and flows historically, but when the elite abandons society, or worse, demeans it a la Thatcher or Reagan, it sows the seeds for eventual extremism. It undermines itself by ignoring the link between its ability to profit and the wellbeing of society as a whole.
• So we arrive at a demographic and social tipping point – the emergence of a more diverse America – just as our elite is both intellectually and morally disabled and self-absorbed. This means we lack leadership from above despite all the fancy globe trotting, conferences, seminars and other fashionable retreats the elite likes to indulge itself in.
• That tipping point was not unnoticed by the elite: it is a source of profit. Big business is highly pragmatic and responsive to trends that provide cash flows. Hence the subtle changes in advertising product development and marketing. The elite saw the tipping point coming, but evaluated it simply through the prism of corporatism. It failed to detect the disaffection infesting the ranks of those who faced the change most directly – those amongst the old white middle class who felt the nation changing in ways they disliked. It is possible that if the elite had introduced policies to protect the middle class from the impact of Reaganism the current wave of extremism could have been mitigated, but the duo of intellectual and moral failure prevented it from acting until too late. Even now our elite fails to sense the full fury of the resentment of the extremists, and the consequent rage filled willingness to destroy hallowed institutions in an attempt to salvage the past.
• The elite, now driven by profit, needs to move on and ride the new demographic wave, but this splits it from its Reaganite allegiances, and especially from the Republican party that now harbors the extremists. So we, collectively, have lost a potential calming influence on the extremists – the elite has lost its leverage over the Republicans who are now too volatile and disruptive economically to provide the elite with the quiet essential for profiteering. So the corporate/GOP link is weaker than it has been for decades. Indeed many extremists decry big business as much as their leftist opponents. Big business is, after all, the epicenter of the middle class decline, stripped, as it now is, of those old blue collar and middle management ranks. Many old loyalties are now severed, new ones have yet to be forged.
• The demographic tipping point, the negligence of the elite, its moral and intellectual failure, and the steady decay of the old Republican center combined to create an opening for the rise of extremist right wing politics. Now decoupled from big business, highly concentrated geographically, and motivated by rising righteous anger, a new Republican party arose. One less committed to ideology than to the past, and certainly less committed to governance, stability, or even democracy. This new force is a party of opposition. Pure opposition, not alternative government. It feels it has no allegiance to our institutions because they are associated with the new America. It sees its “America” as having been destroyed by the changes and is therefore willing to destroy in turn. It has no commitment to the future unless that future is a replica of the past. Above all else it feels betrayed by the elite that “allowed this to happen”.
• And this is the key. Betrayal. Mass immigration went unchecked because business could profit. Old, solid, jobs were trashed because business could profit. Non-white folk started to attain power. Mass government programs were perceived to help only minorities. The reward for “hard work” no longer provided a safe retirement. And so on. Anger. Resentment. Fear. The traditional brew of extremist politics festered deep in America and no one paid too much attention.
• Those who did fanned its flames for their own benefit. Reagan announced his run for the presidency deep in the heart of the old white south in a craven attempt to attract beleaguered white racist voters. The die was then cast. His portrayal of government as the patron of moochers everywhere was riven through with racial undertones. As recently as last November Romney’s infamous 47% comments played to the same audience. Divisive class/race driven politics, which the elite thought was simply a marketing ploy, became embedded as a part of our system.  What some saw as clever politics has become our collective nightmare. Reaganism unleashed what Reaganism cannot solve.

So here we are.

Some analysts see parallels with the secessionists of the old Confederacy. I think that’s apt. These latter day extremists have no commitment to an America that they see as not “theirs”. So they have no qualms about destruction. Those of us who are so committed must choose whether to accommodate the extremists or to resist them. We have no choice. Demographics and the failure of Reaganism represent too great an obstacle to a reconstruction of some supposedly happier past. What we have to do is build the post-Reagan intellectual structures – that includes economics – that allow a more ethnically and socially diverse America to prosper. If that implies short term chaos then so be it.

It is always difficult to confront an opponent who is not afraid of self-destruction or who sees the world in apocalyptic terms. But one things is sure: you don’t negotiate with them, you encourage their self-destruction.