America On the Precipice Section I

I. Introduction

The Deterioration of America's Economic, Political and Social Cohesion, and What to Do About It - An Overview 

In “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway limns a feckless character's path to bankruptcy: “Gradually and then suddenly.” That American democracy teeters on the precipice of “suddenly” should be clear to anyone who cares.

 

Once more, Donald Trump is our president. Our existential challenge is to stem the tide of history - first, by understanding why  millions of Americans embraced such a man, and the authoritarian desires he embodies.

 

This means avoiding comforting but empty nostrums like “the guardrails will hold,” or "we survived the Civil War” or "America is different.” To love our country means facing the truth, not hiding from it - as civilizations before us have learned, for better or worse. Ostriches lose democracies.

Even as we celebrated the millennium  –  capping the "American Century” -  the onset of “gradually" did not require a Cassandra. Key indicia of societal mettle suggested that, like seminal civilizations before us, we had commenced a dangerous diminution in national virtue: A lack of social cohesion and a sense of common citizenship. An economy wherein a prospering stock market barely cloaked growing economic inequality and insecurity. Our deteriorating public finances. Our increasingly dysfunctional political institutions.

 

A widening polarization rooted in demographic sorting and mutual distrust. The metastasizing disinformation ecosystem. A narcissistic mass culture which elevated celebrity over achievement. The systematic degradation of judicial independence.

 

But in the last decade, this coalescence of ills has brought us to the abyss: an accelerating national ennui that no legislation or public policy, of itself, can cure – and that now, inevitably, erodes the social foundation necessary to maintaining our constitutional design History teaches us that a healthy democracy must be rooted in a widely shared sense of economic security, identity and values.Our first imperative is to address the widening income, wealth and class disparities which divide us from each other - and promote the rise of demagogues who offer themselves as the instant solution.

 

Over four-plus decades, our tax and fiscal policy has favored corporations and the wealthy, precipitating a massive wealth transfer to the most fortunate which reversed the widely shared prosperity which distinguished America after World War II – replacing it with an increasingly ossified class system which diminishes  opportunity for ever more Americans. Concurrently, these retrograde policies perpetuated our foundational economic gulf between whites and non-whites, while fueling a deficit in our public finances which, sooner or later, will plunge us into an incapacitating fiscal crisis.

 

The "shareholder capitalism" popularized by Milton Freedman has force-fed our dangerous  maldistribution of prosperity. By reducing the obligations of American corporations to the singular aim of shareholder enrichment, this dogma empowers business to exploit workers, gut unions, reduce benefits, suffocate antitrust enforcement and hamstring environmental regulation .

 

This supposedly "free market” cossets a  crony capitalism wherein government insures Wall Street against the consequences of irresponsible speculations  - that, in 2008, decimated the finances of ordinary people. Freed from the restraining power of campaign finance laws by a politicized Supreme Court, corporations and the wealthy use unlimited campaign contributions to purchase politicians and co-opt public policy – licensing the pursuit of state-sanctioned economic predation. In the era of the mega-merger, profits rise whilewages stagnate.

 

This helps further concentrate economic and political power in the fortunate few who populate the top 10% and who, thereby, monopolize America's social capital.

Satisfaction with life rises among the affluent, and declines among ordinary Americans worried about the cost of food, housing, education and healthcare and childcare.

 

The loss of economic and social standing over the last 4+ decades has left millions of Americans with a sense of economic and social displacement. The middle class dog paddles as the poor founder. Death by class - from suicide, substance abuse or neglected health – is all too common. This pervasive sense of losing ground roils an electorate alienated from a governmentthey do not truly understand, and for whom  constitutional democracy has become an abstraction.

 

As our economic divisions widen, so does our estrangement by geography, culture, race, ethnicity class and sources of information. Lacking any common experience of national service – military or otherwise – which engages those from different backgrounds in the larger enterprise of America, too many of us distrust fellow citizens we will never know  or, worse, believe we owe our country nothing more than to satisfy ourselves.

 

Despite its revolutionary wonders, the Internet has metastasized our mass alienation. Twitter, now X, is a fount of right-wing virulence. Facebook and its peers not only cheapen the concept of friendship, but channel a divisive tsunami of hatred, racism,paranoia, mendacity, propaganda, misinformation and outright lies. Too many other sources of “information” - websites, talk radio, social media and cable news - are carefully curated to inflame instead of inform. In this environment, our political discourse makes Americans each other’s antagonists, rather than fellow citizens in a democracy.

America is further riven by one of our two major political parties - which, lacking any program to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, traffics in racial and cultural resentment . Too often evangelical religion has become partisan warfare rooted in a Manichaean absolutism. All this spreadsauthoritarianism among the party’s base - including those most battered by economic change.

 

Among this party’s candidates, a dismissal of expertise and science not only poses as a virtue but becomes a political weapon. Graduates of Harvard and Yale, seeking election, eschew Charles Darwin and the evidence of climate change. Equally, they embrace a contempt for the truth of our history,seeking to erase the 400+ years of corrosive racism woven into our society.

 

In this stew of disbelief and disinformation too many Americans, mired in their chosen religious and political beliefs, have become their own all-purpose experts. This stokes a dangerous disdain for the indispensable agents of progress - including government, science, expertise, and knowledge itself - in favor of the simplistic solipsism which helps breed authoritarian thinking.

 

This sanctification of know-nothingness reached its apotheosis when America elected as president its pluperfect avatar: a bankruptcy-prone real estate hustler with a profound and disabling personality disorder which deprived him of conscience or any feeling for others, leaving him awash in blinding narcissism and delusions of persecution - only to be transformed by television into a celebrity pseudo-tycoon, whose stupefying ignorance was exceeded only by a self-involvement so cosmic that he reimagined himself as an omniscient colossus, a would-be strong man free of constraints and bestriding the globe as no one in history. These are the elements of a classic authoritarian personality. In elevating this exceedingly dangerous man to do as he will whenever he can, a plurality of the electorate signaled that its disinterest in expertise or even sanity now extended to matters of governance – indeed to government itself.

 

His public behavior reflected his toxic inner landscape – making him the human accelerant of America's pre-existing ills. His public statements were rooted in grandiosity; mendacity; perpetual reinventions of reality; a poisonous exploitation of racial and cultural grievances; a suffocating need for our constant attention; an infinite sense of persecution; and a bottomless desire to exercise his power for retribution against real or imagined enemies -  all of which inspired his own version of the "Big Lie”: the insistence that the 2020 election had been stolen from him which, its groundlessness notwithstanding, was embraced by millions of voters.

 

His megalomaniacal assertions of his own limitless capacity fed the desire of economically and culturally threatened Americans for an autocrat who, in their imaginings, could resolve all their anxieties through his exercise of unbridled will. He provided his followers with a domestic enemy of their own - immigrants, many undocumented, who he vilified with hyper-inflated accusations of lawlessness, dependency, and job theft. Concurrently, he embraced murderous and venal foreignautocrats – especially Vladimir Putin, whose interests Trump served so consistently that it raised inescapable questions of loyalty.

 

He was further abetted by the myopia of business leaders so focused on narrow self-interest that they missed the obvious: that, given enough power, a president this unstable could destabilize everything – including the economy at home and abroad. The destructive actions which followed, in America and the world, reflected no plan beyond his day-to-day responses to whatever stimuli arouses his needs.

 

The first months of his second term were marked by his autocratic pathology: Vengefulness towards his perceived opponents. Unprecedented abuses of  power. Viciousness toward non-white immigrants. Unvarnished racism. Cruelty toward the unfortunate at home and abroad. Contempt for our friends and allies. Subservience to Russia.

 

The enshrinement of oligarchy and corruption. Economic policies so reckless that they threatened  a global recession. The dismantling of our public health capacity. The drive to subordinate  media, educational and legal institutions at will.Bogus emergencies contrived to expand his power. A lawless disregard for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law. The domestic misuse of the military to spread fear.A relentless effort to transform our organs of democratic governance into tools of authoritarian rule. None of this was a surprise; all was predestined by who he has always shown himself to be.

 

Trump’s reach for autocracy was abetted by an ongoing political sclerosis in which the executive arrogated unbounded power,and a partisan Supreme Court which issued unprincipled rulings destructive of representative democracy. Equally damaging, the unrepresentative presidency and Senate embedded in our Constitution  – combined with a gerrymandered House of Representatives – made the votes of most Americans meaningless in determining their leaders.

 

Particularly devastating was a Supreme Court decision which effectively placed Trump above the law; an overtly politicized Justice Department which served Trump's authoritarian desires; a supine Congress which allowed him to and essentially rule by fiat; and a political party whose desire for power suffocated its respect for democracy. As Trump trampled our Constitution, hispartisans  sat silent. 

 

That our democracy was increasingly fragile had already been revealed by that party's attempt to set aside the presidential election of 2020, climaxed by the president's effort to arouse his most fanatical supporters to overthrow that election by force. For the first time, Americans had reason to fear for the survivalof free and fair elections.

 

In the meanwhile, our second major party - increasingly isolated from the larger populace by geography, education and relative affluence – failed to adequately address the many millions of America who, buffeted by inflation, felt the economic groundcrumbling beneath them. Equally bewildering, the partysloughed off legitimate concerns with lax border enforcement.

 

Ignoring issues of economics and culture, they imagined that - regardless of their personal circumstances - people of color would always vote as most had before. Isolated by their ownhigh-mindedness, too many of that party's intellectual elite never understood the fellow citizens for whom DEI was not a tool meant to deal with America's persistent and ongoing racial injustices, but a surreal maze of reverse discrimination dreamed up by commissars of intolerance.  

 

Similarly, they failed to comprehend those who believed that gender was a given, not an option, and that pronouns were descriptive rather than a means of expression - thereby diminishing the public sympathy deserved by that minuscule percentage of people genuinely tormented by their personal perplexities of biology and identity. And so that party, too,became their opponents' unintentional enablers.

 

Lest this litany of pathologies still fail to resonate, it may be because many have become so embedded as to transcend common notice - or simply too painful to contemplate. Nor have we learned the lessons of prior democracies lost. So, at this late hour, we must  acknowledge the truth: early in Donald Trump's second term we crossed the line between democracy and what political scientists call competitive authoritarianism – governance by an increasingly corrupt and arbitrary executive.

 

But to face our converging problems squarely is the first stepdemocratic renewal. Much of this narrative will set them out in greater detail. Thereafter it will turn to how the Democratic Party - realistically, our last electoral vehicle - must partner with citizens at large to restore our faith in the future.

 

That process starts with vigorous re-engagement by Americans themselves - doing whatever we can, individually and collectively, to resurrect our country’s better values. Without that, the pronouncements of any party are political flotsam.

 

As for the Democrats, they must address the root causes of America's crisis – starting with our unacceptable wealth and income disparities. The first imperative is a comprehensive action plan to revive economic opportunity and security for Americans at large, whether white, non-white, working class, middle class, or poor. Without that essential betterment of national well-being, we cannot truly hope to restore American democracy.

 

That means decent healthcare for all. A  commitment to relieving child poverty and providing affordable childcare. Agrowth agenda which removes barriers to the construction of new housing. A vigorous federal guardianship of public health rooted in respect for science.

 

Education programs which support schools offering pre-K education, childcare, wraparound services and year-round classes. Inexpensive community college. More vocational education. Concern for the rights and safety of workers.

 

A program of immigration reform which secures our borders, addresses the dysfunction of our current system, and promotesthe flow of immigrants who reinvigorate America. A renewedregulatory regime which encourages free enterprise while shielding consumers and combating financial predation.

 

A broad-based initiative to improve infrastructure, spur innovation and encourage the domestic production essential to national security. A forward-looking environmental policywhich combats climate change and encourages renewable energy. A fiscal and tax system which actually pays for the governance we need.

 

But renewing democracy also means revitalizing our institutions: Restoring the rule of law. Protecting minority rights.Reforming the Supreme Court. Combating partisan gerrymandering. Renewing appreciation of the federal government and its employees. Reinvesting in our publiccapacities in science and public health. Enforcing laws against corrupt and unethical behavior by government officials.

 

Finally, we must tend  to other important elements of our communal well-being . Encouraging a common sense of citizenship. Pursuing a more reasoned and public dialogue.Creating more national service opportunities for young people.Providing civics education about our institutions of democratic governance. Promoting nonprofit journalism. Holding social media platforms to the standards of responsibility which governother media.  Taking a measured approach to cultural issues which respects differences of belief without catering to bigotry or bias.

 

We have done such things before. If we can accomplish them -  at least, enough of them -  we can begin to write a new and nobler chapter in the idea of American exceptionalism. Then, perhaps, a critical mass of Americans will again believe in America's future – and in its democracy.

Richard’s Substack is free today