An Alternative History of the United States

        When Howard Zinn died in 2010, he had done what few American historians have been capable or willing to do:  he had written and published an influential, alternative history of the U. S., namely, A People’s History of the United States (1980). This may seem unremarkable. Are not all histories of the U. S., a “people’s” history? Well, no. Until very recently, most American history was heroic and elitist. Examples include, but are hardly limited to:  the exceptionalism of the American Revolution (unsullied by the bloodshed of the French Revolution, or so it is not quite accurately alleged); the energy of the westward movement (of which there were many “movements,” and most not very glamorous or praiseworthy, e. g., the removal of the Cherokees, the seizing of Mexican lands in the southwest, and the attempts by Brigham Young and the Mormons to isolate themselves in some alternate universe in Utah); and, the genius of the founding fathers (the many biographies that fawn praise on the “founders” are enough to form a new land bridge across the Bering Straits). In more recent times, some American historians have turned their attention to the maelstrom of popular culture. But here too, America is presented as the author, and often the ultimate arbiter, of all pop culture subjects.

            You might think that I am going to return to my “old saw” about American ethocentricism and exceptionalism. Well, it must be admitted that these elements are central to my proposal for a new American history – something radically beyond Zinn’s “people’s” history -- but recent events remind me that both of these prominent American characteristics might be subsumed in a new American history, under a different subject title. Maybe we need a “History of American Stupidity and Cupidity.” (Well, that will not work; most people do not own a dictionary to look up the word “cupidity.”) Maybe we need to call it: “Self-Isolation and Self-Congratulation: A History of America.” Or, maybe we need something called:  “Cultural Lag:  America as a Country Always One Step Behind Modern, Progressive Nation States.”

            Recent events suggest just how laughable the actions and “ideas” of Americans have become (if only these action and “ideas” did not have such important consequences for the rest of us). They also should encourage some brave soul to write a history of how laggardly Americans have proven to be in their history.

            Let me offer some historical reasons for this needed new history:

1. In 1696, a New England Puritan elite succumbed to a popular hysteria over “witches.” Although this “witch-hunt” was begun in the parochial confines of Salem township and Salem village, Massachusetts, many important Puritan “Divines” were implicated. Even the eminent theologian and scholar, Cotton Mather, was convinced (for a time) of the legitimacy of “spectral” evidence in court proceedings against accused person.

            All of this might be understandable historically if England and western Europe were of a like mind about the existence of witches. But they were not. They had moved on almost a half-century earlier, passively agreeing that the “witchcraft” threat was unreal, “spectral evidence” ridiculous, and real witches a thing of the “dead” past. But the Puritans knew better, and this would establish a long pattern of old world “wrongness” and new world “rightness” that never seems to have ended.

2. In the 1790s, right-wing Americans (yes, they have almost always been with us; maybe we should construct a statue to American right-wing lunatics on the National Mall, and then be done with them) believed there was a conspiracy of the “Illuminati” (a mysterious and almost entirely fictional European brotherhood) and of French revolutionaries to take over the new United States. Among the conspirators were new immigrants (from Ireland, in particular), anyone who was a friend of Benjamin Franklin, almost all journalists, Thomas Jefferson, and, oh yes, anyone who was not a Hamiltonian Federalist (John Adams’s Federalists, well, they probably were not enemies within, but they certainly were not any help either).

Two hysterias down, many to go. I will not trouble you with most of them.

3. In 1861, the United States and the Southern Confederacy engaged in a “GREAT CIVIL WAR.” The South, you see had gotten a truly idiotic 3/5ths clause into the U. S. Constitution in 1789 (which allowed the South to count the total slave population in any given state as 3/5ths of its total population for establishing the number of representatives that state could send to Congress, or for the apportionment of federal direct taxes in that state -- the latter of which never happened). In addition, the South had constructed a truly Willy Wonka version of its own culture, in which southern culture and manners were superior to culture and manners in the North. To top it off, they had convinced southern poor whites, whom they exploited openly and viciously, that the real problem was the threat of Black slaves. Former Congressman James Louis Petigru of South Carolina had it right when he said on the eve of the “GREAT CIVIL WAR”:  “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.” At least the latter half of his conclusion might be applicable to the current condition in the United States.

            “But,” you might protest, “wasn’t the Civil War a noble advance for African-Americans and for American national unity?” Only in the most parochial sense, and American history is nothing if not parochial. Without denigrating Abraham Lincoln and many other noble souls of that period, the fact is that any idea about the validity of chattel slavery had been abandoned by other modern western countries long before the American Civil War. Britain abolished slavery in 1772; Upper Canada abolished slavery in 1793; Lower Canada did so in 1803; and, slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833 (granted, it was grandfathered in by making free only those slaves who were six years of age or younger as of January 1, 1834). The new French Republic of France abolished slavery in 1794, and ten years later, taking the ideological lead of the “mother country,” Toussaint L’Ouverture led a slave uprising that declared Haitian independence and ended slavery in Saint Dominque.

            So, what is the point? The point is that the “idea” of slavery was dead long before American’s grandiosely defeated southern slavery. Oh, and by the way, Jim Crow laws and Southern repression kept African-Americans in a state of near bondage until, well, just yesterday.

American history is replete with new, modern ideas being implemented first elsewhere, and then later in the U. S., only to be superceded with great fanfare about American originality and leadership.

4. Take for instance, the matter of Workmen’s Compensation, a small but important part of the modern labor movement. Great Britain, Germany, and, yes, even the United States, had all developed the ideal of workmen’s compensation in the 1880s. But in the United States at that time -- a nation riven by partisan politics, with both parties to the right of many European political parties – the implementation was slow (partly because of highly politicized and often hostile courts). So, Great Britain introduced a real piece of legislation regarding this matter in 1880, and Otto von Bismarck implemented compulsory workmen’s compensation in Germany in 1884.  The province of Ontario followed soon after, in 1886, with its own version of workmen’s compensation. It took the U. S. a bit longer, with a few states near the worldwide vanguard, but most far behind.

            But to read American textbooks, one would think that the modern labor movement arose in the U. S., and that the U. S. then tutored the rest of the world on how to organize labor.

5. It hardly needs repeating that the U. S. has been most laggardly in regard to health care. To read American newspapers and magazines, one would think that the Obama administration -- in Star Trek fashion -- had ventured into territory that no one had dared enter before. But, of course, we all know this to be embarrassingly false. The Obama health plan guaranteed the profits of pharmaceutical companies and guaranteed a new pool of customers for health care insurers. In fact, if heath care insurers were less political and more practical, they would know that if they added in almost all Americans to private plans, the health of Americans would go up, and, and with fewer claims for chronic or emergency care, their profits would also go up.

            Alas, almost every modern country has national, universal health care of one type or another. But, one can be assured that when the U. S. finally implements such a program, they will have long forgotten the efforts of Harry Truman and Hillary Clinton, to introduce such a program, to say nothing of the long “socialistic” health care experience of almost every other country. They will OWN the invention of modern health care, and historians had better get that right.

            If anyone thinks I exaggerate in my observation of the American political and cultural landscape, I recommend that they read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. This is not a history of the United States, and it must be admitted that it contains the sometimes haughty, highly “constructed” observations of a twenty-something-year-old European aristocrat. But even discounting that, the rampant parochialism and stupidity of American politics as it was just emerging in the 1830s, is made undisputedly clear. (Doubters should read The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi, published around the same time as Democracy in America; and Flush Times  was written by an American!)

            In reality, it would be useful to have an American history positioned within the context of a larger world. American historians have been moving timidly toward “Atlantic civilization” history, but that is a movement begun long ago by a few Americans, some Canadians, and some British scholars. As it is now, we should have a candid history of American insularity, stupidity and laggardness. But, hey, try to find a publisher.

From Liberty to Libertarianism to Anarchy

I am as flabbergasted as anyone about the decision by the U. S. Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. Accompanied as it is by the probable death of any U. S. health care reform, the U. S. Senate victory by the Republicans in Massachusetts, and what appears to be the expulsion of the Obama administration to the political wilderness, everyone should be alarmed about the future that lies before us. Because I assume this blog is read by my Canadian friends primarily, I want to emphasize that the current of events in the U. S. is important to Canadians as well. As a student of U. S. Constitutional History, I can assure everyone that this is decision with monumental implications.

The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United reversed precedent set and expanded and repeated since 1907 regarding the prohibition of corporations involving themselves in financing campaigns for or against political candidates. It is impossible to conclude anything other than that ideology alone drove the majority of the court. Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion implies that it is too difficult in modern times, with a huge variety of ways of speaking and technologies to convey that speech, to discriminate among speakers. And, in a kind of wave of the hand, tossing aside lightly the enormous weight of precedent, Kennedy essentially comes down on the side of a fully libertarian vision of First Amendment rights. Remember, this is a country and a court that has and does limit speech in all sorts of ways if they think that speech inimical to the peaceful maintenance of the state, and often if they merely think that speech is radical. And, they have often restricted, by one means or another, not only who can be heard but who can speak as well.

Justice Stevens -- in a dissent made enormously long (90pgs.) because he had to repeat all of the weight of precedent, stare decisis, and old arguments -- put the real argument against this new ruling by the Court by emphasizing that the Court is giving corporations new stature under the idea of protecting speech for individuals. As he said,

“The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.

In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.”

In the 19^th century, corporations were given the standing of “persons” for legal purposes and for certain limited rights (e. g., the right to sue and be sued), but not because anyone seriously thought that a corporation was a person in body or mind. The corporation is a fiction, and it constitutes only a fictive “person” for legal convenience.

Stevens also attacks the effects of this decision. Although assumed effects have less argumentative weight in constitutional law than fundamental principles and precedent, in this case the evidence of what is going to happen is overwhelming. Corporations will have it in their power, through clever and careful manipulation and the means to control most public speech (aside from the internet and private correspondence), and to decide the outcome of elections – no matter how vigilant the electorate may be. “One cannot shout fire in a crowded theatre and cause a panic,” so said Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., but the majority of the current court is quite willing to let a corporation openly, or at arms–length or behind layers of third and fourth party front-organizations, spend millions of dollars to destroy any candidate they wish through powerful devices of propaganda expertly and precisely employed. Public lives will be ruined. Private lives will be ruined. An electoral panic for against candidates will ensue. Only the wealthy friends of corporations need apply for high public office. The greater part of the American democracy will shun politics even more than they do now. The consequences may be catastrophic.

The U. S. Supreme Court’s decision, however, is just part of a larger mudslide, a larger erosion around the very foundations of American society. This slide has its origins in leftist lifestyles as much as rightist politics. “Do your own thing” liberalism married to private profit-motive laissez-faire capitalism has produced a powerful libertarian offspring. That offspring is now well out of hand. Thomas Frank’s observations on Bill Moyer’s Journal last week (Jan. 15) are chilling in the context of the Citizens United case. I thought Frank a bit extravagant in his argument that the Right wants to destroy government altogether by crippling its authority and by placing advocates of radical libertarian principles into office (in short, sycophants or toadies who will destroy government). After this court decision, I am not so certain that he overstates things by much. Ironically, I do believe that the Right wants a powerful central state insofar as the military is concerned – a military that can force other countries to abandon their own free will.

Even more problematical is the heightened unreality about many things that has come to inhabit the minds of many people. The “birthers” are unwilling to believe birth records; Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are willing to bend facts to suit their larger “truths”; Canadians are told that they do not like the health care system they have despite the fact that all evidence is to the contrary. It gets worse. While Neil Postman may have been correct a few years ago in claiming that we were, as stated in his book title, Amusing Ourselves to Death, he has drastically undershot the mark. We have not just abandon thought and reflection through our attachment to instruments like television, we have become unable to discern truth from fiction. The two have begun to merge seamlessly, and as truth and fiction merge, we get the most outrageous claims about what is and what should be. Now we live two lives, our mundane existence (if we are indeed attached to that existence at all) and the life of our avatar. We are more than one step beyond the existentialist denial of “essences.” We now think we can shape and re-shape ourselves into many different persons. In the process, we are becoming “no person.” “No person” is quite willing to be shaped by the visual media into whatever is available, and “No Person” does not want anyone – family, society, or government – to spoil their delusion. “No Person” is quite eligible for the manipulations of corporate America in the political arena.

In our household (and I do mean that others in our family have arrived at their own independent opinions on American affairs), we used to sigh at what we saw as wrong-headed policies, grit our teeth at the election of bobble-heads, and shout at the TV over stupid decision-making. I cannot speak for others but I am now getting a little frightened, perhaps not for me, but for the future, for my family and my friends who must contend with this world for another half century or more.

Halve Everything

     By now it is obvious that the hope aroused by the candidacy and then the election of President Obama has not caused a sea-change in the hearts and minds of his countrymen/women. Historians may find, fifty years from now, some important change among some young people who were inspired by the President's appeal to pragmatism and decency and reform. Right now, no such transformation is apparent. Why has the rocket fizzled? First, because, although the Republican Party and most of its federal representatives appear insane at best, congressional Democrats appear little better -- a hopeless motley crew of partisan hacks, intellectual light-weights, and visionless place-holders. They simply have no clue about moving forward in a clear, uncompromising direction toward anything. They consider halving every piece of legislation as bold and courageous reform. Secondly, and even worse, President Obama, partly because Congress has forced him to do so,  has decided to halve everything as well:  half a stimulus program; half ownership of GM (actually more); assuming half the costs of an irresponsible banking industry; a half-assed health program that promises very little change; half-way measures in pursuing those responsible for instituting a widespread torture program into American "intelligence" work; a halved promise on closing the Guantanamo Bay "facility"; a half-and-half attitude toward the virtues of unregulated capitalism.

     But these are surface issues, ones that can be changed with the election of a better Congress, and the appointment of better justices to the federal courts, and perhaps evidence of more backbone in the current administration once some victories are posted. Deeper cultural currents and bigger problems cannot be so easily eradicated. Here are my seven deadly sins of American politics and society:

     1. The American public, as responsible citizens, continue to lag behind every democratic, or democratically developing country, in terms of their political acumen and activism. "I am not political" is a phrase worn as a badge of moral honor only in North America. When students began to use this "excuse" with me in Canada in the 1970s, I developed a standard response:  "If you are not political, you are immoral." By political, I mean something more than passively voting. I mean acquainting oneself with the political issues of the day; protesting policies one considers bad or wrong-headed through a variety of means; and, discussing politics with one's acquaintances. These are the minimums. Contributing to a political party or working for a campaign or signing petitions and supporting online political interest groups, is a step further in the right direction.

     2. American journalism is immoral in the news they choose to cover, in the manner in which they report the news, and in ways they choose to analyze the news. Failures of omission and of commission are replete throughout all branches of the media. If we are not being addressed by vacuous air-heads of both sexes, whose hairdos alone tell you where they place their priorities, we are being assaulted and insulted by a parade of right-wing "experts" and subdued moderates in what journalism considers "balance" in analysis. There is no balance, and even if all sides were represented equally in these "debates," halving the views of two extremes does not result in truth and sensibility.

     3. "We live in the grip of the most powerful ideology the world has ever known -- capitalism." These are the words I used for over twenty years in my first year history classes whenever the issue of ideologies of the past became a topic of the course. Most older students thought I was going to end that sentence with the word -- "communism." The rest shrugged this sentence off as irrelevant, set against the power of pop culture (which is itself a partner in maintaining the myth of capitalist inevitability). But the pervasive and destructive influence of capitalism as an ideology seems to continue. And, it has emerged from our financial crisis virtually unscathed -- a remarkable feat for a set of ideas that should have been badly damaged by its advocates and extreme enthusiasts. Indeed, journalists make no objection when commentators -- or the "punditocracy," as Michael Moore correctly calls it -- sweepingly proclaim that the free market system is sacrosanct and must not be impeded. What utter nonsense. Some things must be nationalized (health care, we say today; roads and public utilities, so said Adam Smith in 1776; and why, by the way, don't right-wing ideologists read and cite him). Some things need regulation (uh, savings-and-loans, as proven by the early 1990s fiasco under Bush I, and the banks, as proven today). And, some things need to be driven by the market (our choices in what foods we want in our restaurants and what clothes styles we want to put on our backs).

     4. Paul Krugman, in a recent NY Times opinion piece, identifies the beginning of the current state of economic crisis with the Reagan administration. This is true. I have recently come across a talk I gave when Reagan was re-elected in 1984, and was reminded again that I never could comprehend his election to either term. What were people thinking? He was not even the jolly person most people made him out to be. He was a vicious anti-communist, anti-unionist, and anti-government-activist. He presented himself as some kind of lollypop libertarian; maybe that's why people think he was sweet. And then, just like the New England Puritans of the 17th century, the Republican presidential leadership proceeded to decline. Bush I (a seemingly good hearted and courageous veteran), along with his country-club, pretty boy running mate -- Dan Quayle, stumbled through a term. Newt Gingrich then steered the Republicans of the 1990s into an Alice-in-Wonderland vision of politics and economics and the future. And, then there was Bush II, a man almost as shocked as William Henry Harrison to be inhabiting the White House. We know the rest about the worst president in American history; Bush II was kind of the "Secretariat" (to use a horse-racing analogy unflattering to that great race horse) of bad and evil politics. Thirty years of wrong ideas, of "spend a lot but don 't tax" policies, of anti-democratic politics, has left most of us with no memory of how politics might be practiced correctly.

     5. Only in the impoverished world, do we see a middle and lower class as dispirited as we find them in the U.S. They have been down so long that just keeping one's job, or keeping a pay check that does not rise with inflation, is seen as a victory to be celebrated. Marx was only partly right in calling "religion the opiate of the masses"; sports, pop culture diversions, and, hey, real opiates, are also part of the "opiate[s] of the masses." Some say that ordinary folk have been "dumbed down." It is worse than that; they have been thoroughly anesthetized against hope and planning for the future. No hope and no planning are emblematic of societies of the poor throughout the world.

     6. How long have we put up with fighting the brush fires of idiotic right-wing political and religious groups and advocates. OK, abortion is not a good thing; but given sex education in the U.S. (and many other places) it is at least a necessary "evil." Plus, as a man, I expect to have authority over my body; women should too.  Darwinian evolution is right, insofar as every credible scientific test has been applied against it. Schools are not places over which parents en masse should determine curriculum or how subjects should be taught. Parents must insist on the production of good teachers, and then get out of the way. Being "gay" or "lesbian" is natural; "homosexuality," for want of a better comprehensive word, has existed from ancient times to the present. The only debate is how many people are naturally gay or lesbian; and that, my friends, is a discussion just too, too boring for me to address. Stupid cultural and moral issues are exhausting and diverting from real issues regarding how millions of real people are to live their real lives well.

     7. No one, from teenagers to the enfeebled elderly, are "entitled" to all that they claim. Yes, the young should be educated and protected. Yes, the elderly should be cared for in a humane and caring way. After that, it is all a matter of how far a society wants to go to enhance these protections without extending false expectations. If you are a lazy and not very bright teenager, you should expect the consequences of those twin failings -- one outside your control, the other supposedly within it. If you are a cranky, contentious, and poor senior, you should expect something less than luxury and fawning attention from those around you. There is no historical imperative that any age group should lead a life of sybaritic ease, or that ennui is the correct and expected response to unfulfilled expectations.

    So, with these 7 Deadly Sins still in full play, I am not anticipating seeing anything like the changes to politics and society that, only a few months ago, I thought might be possible in my lifetime.

[For those who think I am being harsh regarding the Obama administration, please read Kevin Baker's article, "Barack Hoover Obama:  The Best and the Brightest Blow It Again," Harper's Magazine, July, 2009]