Listening to American commentators “tsk, tsk” about what will become of Arab peoples after their successful removal of those dictators who kept them poor and repressed, is to learn again what the words hypocrisy and irony mean.
All American pundits express their concern that a powerful religious segment of this or that society might seize power through democratic elections. (Meanwhile, in America, a powerful religious segment of society, led in recent decades by Christian evangelicals, has captured American politics in the most profound and extensive ways.)
Most are apprehensive about the maintenance of secular government among the civic cultures of Arab states. (Meanwhile, in America, a large right-wing contingent wants all Americans to include a Christian God in their Pledge of Allegiance, and to bow their heads to that God in schools and all civic places and at all civic ceremonies and functions. Who is the last president of the U. S. to admit publicly that he did not believe in that God? Well, of course, the answer is: none.)
Many fear that institutions and special interest groups inside those Arab countries will manipulate democratically elected governments and the economies of these reformed states for their own particular and pecuniary interest and advantage. (Meanwhile, in America, it is estimated that there are at least 25,000 lobbyists plying their trade in Washington, D. C. Almost all national candidates for office take enormous sums of money from corporations to whom they are later beholden. When successfully elected, these self-same candidates make little effort to hide the fact that they will serve the interests of those who monetarily supported their candidacy. Some Americans even applaud the Citizens’ United case for allowing corporations to use their vast resources to influence elections in any way they wish [even if they are restrained in an inconsequential way from giving large sums directly to candidates]).
Others worry that a new strong leader will emerge in some of these states. (Meanwhile, in America, those on the political left and right and even middle, plead for “leadership” from someone strong enough to cut through legislative logjams and judicial constraints, and cure the economic and cultural ills of the nation. Pleading for strong leadership in a democracy is admitting that that democracy is not functioning.)
In fact, as the Occupy movement (if it can be called a movement) illustrates, Americans and others wish they could join in the Arab Spring party, at least a little. Occupiers and Tea Partiers alike feel, even when they do not understand, the malaise of their own nation. Why should they not? Including myself as an American citizen and culpable villain, I offer this long and discouraging list:
We have made a civil religion out of the U. S. Constitution and out of our own brand of free market capitalism. The constraints of these two civil religious impulses, all subsumed under a ubiquitous and mystical thing called “American exceptionalism,” leaves little wiggle room for practical reform based on “thinking-outside-the-box.”
For over a century, we have emptied our wallets and destroyed or wreaked permanent damage on tens of thousands of our fellow citizens through the prosecution of various wars -- some small, most not; some just, most not. From George Washington, who warned about “entangling alliances” (meaning being dragged into other people’s wars), through Dwight Eisenhower, who first publicized the nexus between corporate capitalism and a powerful military (the “military-industrial complex”), words of restraint have been ignored in favor of military adventures. These military adventures became worse in the past half century. Fictitious excuses (often known and understood by large numbers of Americans before hostilities even began) were paraded before us for fighting in Vietnam and expanding that war and for assaulting Iraq. Other military adventures were justified for the most pathetic and transparent reasons. And then, when attacked for the first time on their own soil since 1813, Americans allowed fear to overwhelm them, with the consequence of a “homeland security” culture that is nothing short of totalitarian.
We have pushed a political culture of democracy, and the institutions of democracy, to near collapse. A few young children may innocently proclaim their desire to be “President” some day, but none, in this winner-take-all culture, want to be a city councilwoman or a state representative, or even a member of Congress. So-called “citizens,” who can name at least 100 singing groups or 500 professional sports stars, cannot name more than 10 members of Congress. “Civics” as a high school course has largely disappeared. Saying you are “not political” is proffered as a moral virtue. It is no wonder that libertarian opposition to all government is seen as a legitimate democratic position.
We have allowed the “freedom” of the free market to supercede and cancel all other social considerations that may stand in the way of hyper-capitalism, and now especially investment capitalism. To quote the Populist Kansas politician, Mary Lease, “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.” (c. 1890).
We have stood by as the two most important institutions in a democratic society have been bought off or allowed to fail: education and a free press. Governmental lack of respect for education and teachers is no longer something that needs to be spoken in hushed tones. Private schools and home schooling are usually little more than religious proselytizing or narrow cultural propagandizing.
Our free press is anything but. It takes no wisdom whatsoever to know what Rupert Murdoch represents and promotes, or what U. S. A. Today is willing to engage or say, or why “The PBS Newshour” offsets moderate centrists with right-wing commentators from the Heritage Foundation. If you do not get your analysis and opinion from various political blogs (and there are many good ones), you go uninformed.
We have allowed ourselves to be “dumbed-down”; we have “amused ourselves to death” (as Neil Postman puts it). The “bread and circuses” of Rome has nothing on us (except for the fact that they at least kept the “bread” coming). We sit and passively watch cage-fighting, where someone is as sure to get mauled as a Christian in the ring with a lion. We applaud sports heroes who suffer brain injury after brain injury and never seem to live to the age of sixty. Life in America is “brutish and nasty” and many times, to fill out Thomas Hobbes’s famous quotation, “short” (usually short on reason and reflection). We watch “reality TV,” where self-proclaimed experts publicly belittle and abuse the many contestants they face while making clear that there can be only “one” winner. It is now a winner-take-all culture, which explains why 99% of the population might be concerned about the 1% who hold the wealth.
As healthy human beings, we must all have hope. Hope in the case of America today is that things are near the bottom: things can only get better. It is not impossible, as long as democratic political institutions are maintained, for all of the problems listed above to be improved or even righted. It is not likely to come from a populist movement like the one Mary Lease helped to lead, nor from a turn of the 20th century progressive movement.
We will likely have to look to leaders who will help us out of this, despite the fact that relying primarily on leaders is antithetical to real democracy. But if it is to be leaders, I have my own list of American leaders of the past. This list includes: Thomas Paine, Benjamin F. Bache, J. Q. Adams, Frederick Douglass, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. What did these people have in common? Several things. They all came to their larger world-view of things through education and long periods of reflection. They were all outraged at matters as they stood. (Mary Lease, for example, admonished poor farmers to “raise less corn and more hell.” All of my heroes above “raised hell”; will anyone do so today?) They were all tenacious in promoting revolutionary or reformist goals. They were all consistent in the things they supported and the things they opposed. Only one of those listed here – Frederick Douglass -- profited financially from his reformist prominence (OK, Jane Addams did accept posh speaking engagements as a kind of holiday to herself, so that she could briefly have some rest in a good hotel room and a couple of good meals). All of them grew intellectually and emotionally from their efforts.
We can all learn a valuable lesson in civics and humanity from the people listed above. And, if we all imitated their actions, we might move from our current condition of despair to one of real hope.
