". . . . certain socio-economic changes, notably the decline of the middle class and the rising power of monopolistic capital, had a deep psychological effect. These effects were increased or systematized by a political ideology – as by religious ideologies in the sixteenth century – and the psychic forces thus aroused became effective in a direction [for the lower middle class] that was opposite to the original economic interests of that class. Nazism resurrected the lower middle class psychologically while participating in the destruction of its old socioeconomic position." --Erich Fromm, 1941.
B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front): No, Rash Boombox (d / b / a Rush Limbaugh) et al. notwithstanding, secessionism does not pose the threat of infection that the coronavirus contagion does. Yet, the country, our country, must face up to cultural divides too long exploited by demagogues. This split shall become even more apparent following the Supreme Court’s public repudiation of the premise and the argument underlying a recent law-suit from Tejas, effectively ending, at least, the bloodless phase of Trump’s attempted coup d’état.
INTRODUCTION
The COVID epidemic across the United States has not divided the United States
any more than the despicably racist occupant of the 0val Office has. Both have
brought divisions, dark divisions, into the public -political discourse. This
meticulously documented essay by liberal historian, Dr Heather
Cox Richardson, serves as a wake-up call to disentangle the two forces – the coronavirus contagion and Trump's attempted coup d'état – that bring
out in bold relief the underlying cultural divisions.
One may disagree with Dr Richardson, as I
frequently do, but her fine work is the source of perspective in a time of
clashing and confusing cross currents. Several of the links in this essay are
swiped, shamelessly I assure you, from her daily ‘sources’. Please note that, unless
I stipulate that some statement is attributable to Professor Richardson,
anything I say reflects solely my thinking, or lack thereof. As it is, the good political historian's influence will flow these thoughts.
THE DIVIDES
The source. Traditionally, one has seen a split in the “theories of life” among
and between regions and areas across the United States (e.g., the coastal
cities versus the great plains) as well as within them (Chicago versus
down-state Illinois). The most consequential, of course, is the central
division that led to secession one hundred sixty years ago followed by the
Great Civil War. These divisions go back to the Founders when the urbane Alexander
Hamilton clashed with President Jefferson and his vision of the ideal
democracy with the yeoman farmer. One saw it later with President Jackson’s
feud with Nicholas Biddle and the privately chartered central bank of the United States.
In the seven decades before the Civil War, slavery radicalized
this cultural wedge as a Southern planter plutocracy insinuated itself into
control of the Federal government and policy. Ironically, some of the greatest
minds of that era, arrayed on both sides of the divide, had strikingly similar
views that differed decisively in nuance. One such split was Jefferson’s
idealization of the yeoman farmer versus urban political organizations along
the East coast (e.g., New York and Philadelphia); later the Great Lakes; and,
ultimately the West Coast).
The similarities. President Lincoln’s initial views toward
slavery were those of non-extensionism so ‘free-soilers’ could make a living.
Free-soilers were white farmers homesteading in the Midwest, emerging as
America’s heartland. Many founding Republicans did not argue against slavery as much as having no
blacks at all, save a few freedmen, tragically and often unwelcome by their
white compatriots, in the terrirtories in great plains. Restricting the free-soil to free whites homesteading sounds
an awful like President Jefferson’s ideas about yeoman farmers, ¿doesn’t it?
The difference, of course, is that President Jefferson was a slave-holder, eventually addicted to that systematized and degrading exploitation. President Lincoln, himself a racist by cultural bias (as many of us are today; e.g., me) became a model of citizenship by growing while he was President and maturing his vision into a conviction of universal liberty, enfranchisement, and conciliation. Such growth by a President in office – recall that other favorite son of Illinois, President Obama – is hardly the norm.
The contemporary choice for those whites, imbued with a culture of racism, remains stark: ¿do I combat this racism within me or let it flourish? Another unsettling similarity between slavocrats and Lincolnian Republicans is a key tenet argued by Vice President John C. Calhoun and Dr Richardson’s view of President Lincoln’s view of innovation and progress. The big difference, again of course, was that Vice President Calhoun’s theories served infamously as an apology and indirect justification for his ‘peculiar institution’. Vice President Calhoun’s ‘March of Progress’ stipulated that upward social mobility among small farmers and merchants would pressure the slave-controlling élite out of any complacency and into accelerating progress as the leaders of Southern society.
Dr Richardson argues that President Lincoln introduced an
alternate idea of innovation and progress: that it was a bottom-up rather than
top-down process and that President Lincoln sought to empower the common man. (General
discussion minutes 31-42; definition
minutes 36:00-37:30.) That rings reminiscent with Calhoun’s thinking (minus
the racism), ¿doesn’t it? To be clear, Rash Boombox's mind will never rise to that of Vice President Calhoun. We are a point-of-pivot between the top down
individualism and bottom up communalism.
Boombox, an undeserving recipient of the President Medal of
Freedom from Trump – one demagogue anointing the other – is a durable but
ultimately historical ephemeron craving attention rather than wisdom. (Erich
Fromm nailed it with the Rush Limbaughs and other macho mouths of the world in 1941 by writing in his great work, Escape From
Freedom: “If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to
others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence
one's doubts.”)
The rub is that Trump uses the populism, as Michael Moore foresaw in October
2016, of the urban-rural divide as a cover story for his agenda of
business oligarchy and people like Rash Boombox and Congressmen Nunes,
McConnell, Paul, Cruz, Cotton, and Collins actively enable it while craven
quislings in the G.O.P. like Senators Ernst, Kennedy, et al. permit it. No,
conspiracy here, but a coincidence of interests of ten difficult to brake then break.
Undoubtedly, Vice President Calhoun despicably defended slavery yet,
paradoxically, he remains one of America’s foremost minds in political theory.
Even now, some of his political thinking lives on as producing some of the freshest ideas this crazy
republic has produced. His ideas on concurrent majorities remain applicable today. For example, instead of states enjoying a nullification right to protect
their own sordid rights, segments of the population would benefit from such a
right of concurrent majorities and ought to, in the case of women, be able to exercise it.
Practical example. Roe versus Wade should not be overturned and abortion rendered illegal without
a concurrent referendum among women in the United States eighteen years old or above
of any citizenship or status. Why? Because overturning Roe versus Wade and / or
passing legislation that inhibits abortions by those women choosing them
abridges their natural right to privacy with respect to personal sovereignty over their own bodies. In a
concurrent referendum, a super-majority of women (i.e., 60-75%, as stipulated)
would have to consent to the abridgement of a natural right before the state
could deprive them of it.
My knowledge of the industrial era of the United States is
limited. Suffice it to say that, since 1876, Party roles have switched and
today the Republican Party is the élite Party fronting for plutocrats who are not planters but profiteers. This process has accelerated demographically after
1968 and economically after 1980. These days, since the 1890s, the Democrats
are the bottom up Party seeking to empower the common man with Republicans having
made their ideas plain under Trump.
Summary view. So, in addition to the city-country gap, one sees a wider
gap between who fuels progress: people innovating from the bottom through
communal support or those at the top, the individuals charged with leading the
progress. The strands are clear from the Republic’s earliest days:
- top down personified by Messrs Hamilton, Biddle, Hoover, Reagan, G.W. Bush, and Trump;
- or bottom up with Messrs Jackson, Lincoln, La Folette, F.D. Roosevelt, and L.B. Johnson as well as Ms Chisolm; or,
- surfing on two boards featuring Messrs Washington, Cleveland, T. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Ford, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama as well as Ms Clinton.
The struggle for the country is to straddle these two
discordant themes so all can work together for the common good. President Biden
thus far appears to be intent on mastering the precarious and perilous art of
surfing on two boards by openly building a new and open coalition while
keeping its leadership moderate.
ALONG COMES COVID
The cultural divergence polarizing since the 1980s has featured right-wing intellectuals
like Patrick Buchanan calling for a kulturkampf. As a young man, I was
initially sympathetic to these conservative concerns against godless secularism
underlying this kulturkampf, principally with respect to being pro-life and supportive of school prayer. In the mid-1980s, Patrick Buchanan began to alienate me from
this right-wing push-back with his odious comparison between gays suffering
from A.I.D.S. and the punishment meted out by G-d against Sodom and Gomorrah.
This culture war has gradually crystallised into the direct
attack on our participatory democracy waged and perpetrated by Trump,
his ideologically irredentist allies, and too many craven quislings in the
G.O.P. These demagogues, racists, élitists, and cowards are mostly white men
over the age of fifty. A few lonely voices
in the G.O.P. have pushed back against Trump; those
in office have often paid a heavy price.
If my erstwhile Party of Lincoln is to survive, these
oldsters representing a dangerously opportunistic ideology of cupidity must be
cleaned away and room made for conservative intellectuals with fresh ideas without the years in power to make them crave job security over public service. In
the interim, the epidemic has wrought its havoc on the world, but most
particularly on the United States by laying these divisions bare with too many
of our compatriots falling through the ideological cracks. The rural-city split
has manifested with ‘red’ states (i.e., chronically Republican) being rurally
oriented and reflecting, often crassly, the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer.
At its best, this vision represents the core American values
of thrift, self-reliance, living in peace with one’s neighbor, and personal
integrity. At its worst, this vision represents darker core American values of racism, neglect for individuals, and blaming the victim in the name of assuming
personal responsibility. These values need to be promoted and pruned
selectively; they remain anterior to the assumed utility of capitalism in allocating scarce
economic resources efficiently. The urban side is more communal by virtue of
population density and argues that people should have the opportunity to make
money no matter who they are.
This vision reflects a different array of values. At its
best, the urban vision manifests in communal economic rights through
unionization of the work-force, providing universal access to education and
medicine, and pursuing distributive justice to expand the middle class. At its
worst, these alternate values include the excesses of wealth, the zero-sum reality of social Darwinism,
and institutional corruption. The poisonous paradox here is that the rural
states have rejected ‘tax-&-spend’ liberalism exemplified by Medicaid
extensions under the ‘Affordable Care Act’ (a / k / a ObamaCare).
In doing so, and in supporting elected officials sympathetic
to Trump’s élitist
power-grab, these people are heading toward catastrophe in the shadow of an
out-of-control epidemic in the remote areas as my writings on the coronavirus
contagion have warned repeatedly. In her ‘Letter of
an American’ for 10dec20, Dr Richardson summarizes this situation aptly, at
least from my particular perspective. The evidence of this unintended
self-immolation?
The seventeen state Attorneys General supporting the Texas
law-suit seeking to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (now joined by a majority of Republican House
members and, of course, Trump). With the
possible exceptions of Florida and Tennessee, these are rural states that
desperately need the largess of Medicaid assistance due to hosting fewer
doctors and facilities to combat COVID; a large majority of these states has
either rejected or implemented half-heartedly such health-care expansion.
Yes, this preference away from 'socialized' medicine may reflect rugged self-reliance, a
core and worthy value, but it short-changes the dignity of poorer Americans. The
influence of the other divide of – individually versus communally led – innovation
is more subtle. One touchstone for that split may be the focus on ‘shareholder
wealth’ maximization and rewarding individual achievement with enrichment
starting with the arguments of Ayn Rand in the mid-twentieth century.
President Biden, in seeking to surf on two boards, is
assembling an urban-based, politically progressive voting coalition while
remaining moderate on any progressivity in taxation. Which of the two boards
will assume paramountcy waits to be realized. The 2020 election and the
necessity of overcoming Trump’s evident neglect of the pandemic should augur
for a more communalist governance now that the Supreme Court has manifestly and
unanimously rejected the premise and, with the two dissenters, the logic of the Texas law-suit.
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