I don’t agree with everything in Edward Luce’s characterization of the present moment in America in Financial Times but I agree with a lot of it. There is a very apocalyptic tone in a lot of the political discourse and nearly all of it is overblown or “fake news” as we’re saying these days. And a lot of it is a completely logical outcome of a loss of confidence:
It is easy to forget that a country founded on the creed of self-belief — not the customary blood, soil and messy evolution of the rest — can turn dark when its self-confidence goes. Doom is the flip side to the hope of US exceptionalism. Just as the American upside is overdone — and highly selective in its self-image — so the darkness can become a self-soothing cult.
I have characterized it as a drawn out national nervous breakdown, beginning with the attacks on September 11, 2001, further fueled by the financial crisis, and then stoked by COVID-19. It does not help that some have seen fit to attack the very foundations of that confidence with nothing substantial with which to replace it.
I think he sugar-coats the situation in which the Biden Administration finds itself a bit. Its conundrum is not the “wildly unrealistic expectations” of Biden’s supporters but the wildly unrealistic expectations that President Biden has set up for himself. He was narrowly elected through a longing for normalcy not through revolutionary fervor. Attempting to revolutionize our entire system system with only the narrowest of Congressional majorities in essence is providing his supporters with precisely the opposite of what they wanted. It would be enough were he to simply do his job without striving to be the reincarnation of Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson but as weak as his political performance has been his performance on the day-to-day activities of government is even worse.
I think this passage is worthy of some consideration:
Liberal America’s chief worry, which is not a figment of its imagination, is over the future of US democracy. The fact that Biden is unable to pass his election reform bills, and that the system has so far been unable to hold the plotters of last year’s January 6 failed putsch to account, is the deepest source of angst. Yet there is an underrated distinction between the next presidential election and last year’s one — the people occupying the White House.
Whatever happens, between now and January 2025 no other American will come close to wielding Biden’s power as commander-in-chief. An electoral coup requires federal connivance, which it will not get in 2024. The doomscrollers might pause briefly on that fact. It was Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s vice-president, who refused to go along with last year’s plot to reject the result of the electoral college. No such courage will be required of Kamala Harris in 2024.
I would have said that the notion that U. S. democracy was dangling by a thread was a paranoid fantasy. Our institutions held. We should take the steps necessary to ensure they continue to hold rather than responding as though they’d already failed. Maybe it looks different from Old Blighty. I don’t think so because I think his conclusion is about right:
The maths of America’s media habits are oddly reassuring. Most Americans have switched off. The most demagogic Fox News anchor gets about 3.5m viewers a night. Betting on an apathetic majority may sound odd. But they still greatly outnumber the fanatics.
It isn’t just or even mostly Fox News that has seen a decline in viewership:
Americans are tuning out the news generally. The media have lost the confidence of their viewership and the louder they shriek the worse that loss of confidence becomes.
I think September 11th as the start of the confidence problem is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps the response, when WMD were not produced and the mil/industrial complex was exposed, along with our foreign policy stance is a better starting point.
But let’s go from there. Government sanctioned housing issues, an FBI where those at the top participated in an election dirty trick for the benefit of the Democrat candidate, two presidents engaging in bald face influence peddling, and a covid public policy response closer to the Martians are Coming! than sober reality. The costs of that are coming home to roost in spades. Self inflicted wounds all.
And now we have two major issues that cannot be propagandized away by a broken media: inflation and the crap being taught in schools. Inflation is real, not transitory and has real wages in negative territory. Jen Psaki and Joe Biden can tell fairy tales, but they can’t fix broken wallets. And in what I believe is a very underestimated issue the covid hyteria-mongers never saw coming: zoom school exposed a comatose parent population to just how awful the school curricula have become. I think a sleeping giant has been wakened. The progressives screwed with money and the kids. Bad move.
And now we
“unable to hold the plotters of last year’s January 6 failed putsch to account”
Therein lies the real problem. To many of us who watched, 1/6 was a rowdy demonstration, but it did not rise to the level of a riot, and labelling a putsch or insurrection is an outright lie, and inexcusable lie.
We do have ongoing insurrections in Portland and Seattle and parts of Minneapolis where armed insurgents have in fact seized control of sections of those cities. And they have done so with the full support and connivance of local politicians. Those insurrections rise fully to the level of Ft. Sumter, but Luce willfully refuses to recognize that publicly, although he is fully aware of it in private.
The only real threat to American representative democracy is the radicals in the Democrat Party. Until those radicals are suppressed, the possibility of an actual civil war persists. One remember that part of the runup to the Civil War was the violence depredations, including mass murders, by John Brown, and the willful refusal by New England abolitionists to recognize his violence and the violence of his supporters. Harper’s Ferry was merely a coda to a rampage that lasted years.
In my view, a lot of what is going on is catastrophizing stuff that is mostly normal. Most of this is happening online and isn’t being matched by actual actions on the ground. Although crime has increased, we are still nowhere near the level of political violence that we had in the 60’s and at previous points in US history.
My major concern is that the online hysterics will eventually translate into more action. I think some of that is happening, especially with respect to the legitimacy of a number of public and private institutions.
IMO 9/11 was a stepping-stone, not a beginning. I have two alternatives for the beginning – the end of the Cold War in the early 1990’s, and the rise of democratic primaries in the 1970’s, which eventually turned the political parties into brands.
We are not taking the steps to hold democracy. The GOP has punished those who certified elections and took them out of the position to be able to do so again. They have changed county level decisions to ones determined by supervisors assingned by a state board, coincidentally dominated by Republicans. They tried but did not succeed in passing laws that would let state legislature negate election results and send their own electors (Arizona).
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dozen-state-laws-shift-power-elections-partisan-entities/story?id=79408455
More broadly I agree that things have been worse in the past and a lot of this is stuff we have seen before, but the response to the last election is unique as far as I can tell.
Steve
The main stream media has lost it’s viewership because it has lost it’s credibility, and luster of being an honest broker of the facts and unbiased information. Not only do more people today not trust social or corporate media, but they have also lost faith in their politicians, the integrity of elections, intelligence agencies, public health & justice departments, and even medical institutions.
A press release for tomorrow’s DC rally against the COVID mandates addresses the sentiments of those who have become disillusioned with the medical establishment, handcuffing them to rigidly follow untested treatments they believe are unsafe.
“Many other doctors who have spoken out against the corruption, censorship and hypocrisy by authorities have been threatened, fired, censured, lied about, intimidated, and harassed – all while saving patients’ lives daily. Never has the public been forced to become lab rats, for a vaccine 5 years away from adequate testing, violating basic principles of informed consent. Moreover, the medical and scientific evidence on the efficacy and safety of the COVID- 19 vaccine do not support mandating its use for anyone, especially healthy children.â€
I don’t think there will be a revolution. However, people are waking up to what they want out of government (freedom of choice) versus what they don’t want (authoritarian overreach).
Jan –
I think the dirty little secret people don’t want to acknowledge is that the left are the authoritarians.
The Clinton’s perfected this. Whatever they were up to blame the other side to put them on the defensive. Then pull their shenanigans. The left are the authoritarians in spades. Its indisputable.
I think there’s cognitive dissonance on this subject exemplified by “Government hands off my Medicare!”
Projection is a real political phenomenon. It also extends to foreign affairs. Yuri Bronfenbrenner pointed that out 60 years ago.
” The left are the authoritarians in spades. Its indisputable.”
Someone has given up drinking and taken up peyote instead.
“a vaccine 5 years away from adequate testing”
Name a vaccine that had problems after 5 years of use. You cant.
You never did answer Dave’s question. If you get sick will you go to a hospital? Why would you since we all lie anyway?
Steve
The far left is viciously authoritarian.
What vaccine has been mandated to be universally given, after less than a year of clinical trials, no formal FDA approval, being distributed under EUAs, having substantial push back from people, and over a million adverse reactions reported in VAERS?
The last time I was a hospitalized patient was when I was 10, with an appendectomy. Most of my experience with hospitals has been as an RN. If I get Covid I will stay home and seek alternative treatments. If an acute medical problem presents itself, other than COVID, then hospitalization is on the table when warranted.
Is that clear enough Steve?
Not really. We are a bunch of liars out to kill you. Why are you gong to the hospital for other issues?
So you concede there has been no vaccine with issues reported at 5 years?
Steve