March 3, 2016
I think that we are beyond the point of wondering whether there is something seriously wrong with contemporary American politics. Doing something about it might be facilitated by understanding the factors which make up the picture. An excellent history of political philosophy offered an analysis of the ills of a certain time and place. Because the time was a century ago, and the place Europe, it isn’t strictly relevant, but it may be suggestive nonetheless: "Several decisive elements came together in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . . . . They are racism, nationalism, irrationalism, and antiliberalism."[14]
Applied to the United States, those elements have had a mixed history. Irrationalism, in the sense of a refusal to respect facts and to think analytically, probably never is far below the surface in politics, but it is more prominent now than a few decades ago.
Racism, while it never disappeared, was exposed and weakened in the civil rights era, but has revived. One of its milder but obvious manifestations has been the attitude of many toward President Obama. Seattle has just contributed to the epidemic of killings of blacks by police; it’s difficult not to see racism in that pattern.
Antiliberalism — not true conservatism, but hostility to anything progressive or egalitarian — has been a focus of negativism and obstruction at least since the New Deal, but has swelled recently, aided by reactionary media and by the massive political spending by those whose interests would be threatened by liberal programs. The very words "liberal" and "progressive" have become pejoratives. "The liberal establishment" is a vehicle for blaming the condition of the country on liberals, even though Congress and most states are ruled by conservatives, and at least some of the problems are the result of their policies.
"Nationalism" is used in several ways. In the period to which the quotation above relates, it often referred to a desire for an independent homeland, defined ethnically or linguistically; various parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire fit that model. In that sense, it also implies fragmentation, the breaking away of parts of the Empire. At the present day, a different sort of fragmentation, the resistance of some members of the European Union to common measures, also has been labeled nationalism. Thomas Piketty, in a recent New York Review of Books, refers to "the hateful nationalistic impulses that now threaten all Europe."
In this country, nationalism is a confused concept. It has had aggressive aspects, amounting to imperialism, economic or military. In that sense it may be, manipulatively, uniting at home. Although exceptionalism is a core concept in American nationalism, and would seem to be a unifying idea, those who boast of it often, ironically, also complain of the country’s dire condition. The way around is to speak of the country’s basic or former exceptionalism, corrupted by, of course, liberalism.
However, "nationalism" may as easily imply fragmentation here as well. "White nationalism" is the label for racial and ethnic separatism; according to one source, "Whites may need to create a separate nation [within the U.S.] as a means of defending themselves."[15] Fragmentation also is envisioned by secessionist groups such as the League of the South, which "advocates the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic."[16] It does this in the name of "Southern Nationalism." It defines the Southern People as the "the descendants of European, Christian peoples who settled the Southern region of North America in the 17th and 18th centuries,"[17] thereby working in racism.
The condition of the Republican Party illustrates the growth of irrationalism: Ronald Reagan looks good in retrospect, as do Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and even Richard Nixon and George W. Bush in their better moments. Dwight Eisenhower looks like a saint. Donald Trump, very possibly the Republican nominee, bloviates a mixture of arrogance, resentment, bias and sheer nonsense. Only a suspension of thinking, a burst of irrationalism, could make people follow him, but they do.
The Trump campaign may do a service by shining a light on that factor, as well as on the others. Racism certainly is present in the anti-Mexican rhetoric, and he has attracted support from white nationalists such as David Duke. His "Make America Great Again" slogan is an appeal to nationalism. His antiliberalism, though, is selective, so that he is accused by the other Republican candidates of being a liberal, which illustrates how that has become a term of derision.
What can be done? The Supreme Court has pushed things in the wrong direction: Citizens United facilitated the flood of political spending, and Shelby County maimed the Voting Rights Act and encouraged a flood of voter-suppression laws. The replacement of Justice Scalia is a critical factor which means, if the Senate has its way this year, that a good outcome depends on electing a Democratic president.
Irrationalism will remain a major problem so long as the GOP panders to it, but it would be comforting to think that a Democratic president would have a positive influence on the other three tendencies. Part of the problem is that the likely Democratic nominee is not terribly liberal, so we may have a rerun of the Obama administration, accusations of liberalism with little of the substance. Mrs. Clinton does have strong black support, which bodes well for issues involving race, but she’s too fond of military intervention to be comforting as to nationalism.
I hate to put down my generation, but the best hope for solving these problems lies in younger voters whom Bernie Sanders has inspired. I hope that, assuming their candidate loses in the primaries, they will turn their attention to Congress and the state legislatures.
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16. http://dixienet.org/rights/2013/core_beliefs_statement.php
17. http://leagueofthesouth.com/why-southern-nationalism/
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