What does it mean to be facing a Bernie Sanders revolution among Democrats and a Trump revolution among Republicans?
American culture has always stood on what amounts to an illusion. It's a child's view of who we are as a country and a people. But like a child's self understanding, what we believed to be American doesn't exactly comport to reality. We're the land of the free and home of the brave who committed systematic genocide to get that land and built an economy on the backs of slaves so we could claim that freedom. We're the country of laws without nobility or king that has structured financial influence into politics that creates defacto kingmakers and an acknowledged nobility of wealth and power who are all but required allies to get elected. We are a land of market opportunity for the aspiring individual with self determination and ambition, but that opportunity is not only upwards: It's downwards too. Unlike other first world countries, the downward mobility of the United States is unprecedented - you can fall further here than you can anywhere else in the first world.
This illusion has other layers. Part of it is very white, the Normal Rockwell vision of what it is to be a good American where minorities are sprinkled in for color and texture but little else. Part of it is very Christian, our holidays, money, pledge, and even cultural understanding of what it is to be American takes being Christian entirely for granted. Part of it is very wealthy, a vision held up that most of Americans live in the suburbs in a reasonable house with a couple cars working 9-5 jobs and moving kids around to various hobbies.
This was America. This was the illusion we bought into, perhaps not entirely, but when I think back to what I understood my country to be about not that long ago, much of the above, at least the first part of every sentence was what I thought was true.
Illusions are like dreams.
They retain their magic and power, their comfort and control when they're not scrutinized very closely. So in the realm where newspapers and the nightly network news had to pick and choose what to say in an hour or less to retain their broadcasting rights, the illusion was rarely challenged. World events and major national issues caught center stage.
But then something profound happened. The rise of the Internet and social media, personal data technology and satellite communications pulled the curtain back on exactly what the cost and reality was to welcome 'all your huddled masses yearning to breathe free'. We saw the first rumblings of it in the late 60's, but it hit a tidal wave starting around the turn of the century.
As it turns out, we have a lot of huddled masses and they don't comport very well with our illusion. Suddenly we become aware of how many desperate people are working for slave wages to provide us our Walmart. Suddenly we see how many different religions, minorities, cultures, and lifestyles make up our melting pot. Suddenly we realize that what we've been told about our opportunities isn't entirely true, and the average American isn't living a Norman Rockwell life. In panic as the body we knew fades into the one we're becoming, we turn to our politicians, and start holding them accountable not for the results of their policy and deal-making, but for the consequences of each and every vote that doesn't directly benefit us. We watch them on aps, and in twitter and on facebook and on cable TV where commentators tell us every single time our congressman farts.
Those politicians, now watched in real time, lose their ability to compromise. They can't trade a liberal position for a later conservative advantage because the conservatives who voted them in will NOT abide a liberal vote, much less a liberal policy. Every single day becomes another webcam broadcast where the politician must put on a show to assure voters they are champions, minute by minute, of their constituents interests and the long term be damned. Congressmen start voting futilely to repeal hot button laws over and over despite zero chance of success to maintain that show.
And like a pre-teen, we blame them for it.
Meanwhile, the American illusion falls to pieces under unprecedented scrutiny and with it the classic ability to govern. All the dealing and negotiation and coalition building that was the norm before the shutter got thrown back is now seen as corruption and pollution in a process that becomes ever more weighed by ideological purity - a desperate attempt to return to the dream.
The result of all this is a population in a state of high functioning social panic. They crave the illusion they once had, and want, on some level, to put the curtain back. They want to kill the light shined into the corners of their country showing them the truth about who is pulling the levers and moving the pretty landscapes around. They want it to go away so they can feel safe and in control again.
And so in craving that illusion, the start to find themselves drawn to people who advertise a dream. Donald Trump lacks consistency, integrity, and substance and regularly spouts what amounts to nonsense when asked questions, but he's boisterous, charismatic, strong, and self assured in his ignorance, and this illusion is intoxicating and familiar, an American of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Bernie Sanders holds a position that the current government would never abide and no matter what he believes, his power to enact what he says in the current machinery is a twenty year uninterrupted project at the least, not a four year reform. But he has integrity and vision and consistency and so voters chase the illusion of the world he describes as if it's imminent and a matter of just getting enough votes to beat Hillary to the nomination, denying the titanic battle that would ensue.
It all points to the same thing: America is having an identity crisis.
We are trying to figure out who we are and what we want to be in light of the truth left exposed by our own ingenuity and heightened awareness. As is true with any mismatched expectations, we are angry and we feel a little foolish for having believed the dream. We're embarrassed and upset that what we thought was happening, really isn't. We're scared, like a child going through puberty - there's hair in strange places and our society has some funky smells we've never really wanted to face might be us.
We're all aware the political system is broken, but we're also coming to realize that it may be broken because of us; Our demand for immediate accountability and ideological purity may have destroyed what had, for the most part, worked prior to the last twenty years.
So we talk of political revolution and reform. We point to a broken congress or president that we helped break and try externalize the truth: We're not comfortable with ourselves. We don't feel good in our skins as we're changing to accommodate the truth of who we are. Therefore, part of the revolution to fix our nation and politics will merely be surviving the breakdown of our childhood illusions. Like puberty, we have to weather it out. We have to let it happen and accept the changes and strangeness that comes with becoming an adult country complete with all it's flaws, limitations, weaknesses and differences. The core illusion of childhood purity is gone and we now face an more mature understanding of who we are and what we face as a country.
But until it's over...there will be times like this: Where we're crying for a new illusion to replace the old, and looking for anything that makes us feel less awkward and self conscious no matter how irrational or improbable that illusion might be.
American culture has always stood on what amounts to an illusion. It's a child's view of who we are as a country and a people. But like a child's self understanding, what we believed to be American doesn't exactly comport to reality. We're the land of the free and home of the brave who committed systematic genocide to get that land and built an economy on the backs of slaves so we could claim that freedom. We're the country of laws without nobility or king that has structured financial influence into politics that creates defacto kingmakers and an acknowledged nobility of wealth and power who are all but required allies to get elected. We are a land of market opportunity for the aspiring individual with self determination and ambition, but that opportunity is not only upwards: It's downwards too. Unlike other first world countries, the downward mobility of the United States is unprecedented - you can fall further here than you can anywhere else in the first world.
This illusion has other layers. Part of it is very white, the Normal Rockwell vision of what it is to be a good American where minorities are sprinkled in for color and texture but little else. Part of it is very Christian, our holidays, money, pledge, and even cultural understanding of what it is to be American takes being Christian entirely for granted. Part of it is very wealthy, a vision held up that most of Americans live in the suburbs in a reasonable house with a couple cars working 9-5 jobs and moving kids around to various hobbies.
This was America. This was the illusion we bought into, perhaps not entirely, but when I think back to what I understood my country to be about not that long ago, much of the above, at least the first part of every sentence was what I thought was true.
Illusions are like dreams.
They retain their magic and power, their comfort and control when they're not scrutinized very closely. So in the realm where newspapers and the nightly network news had to pick and choose what to say in an hour or less to retain their broadcasting rights, the illusion was rarely challenged. World events and major national issues caught center stage.
But then something profound happened. The rise of the Internet and social media, personal data technology and satellite communications pulled the curtain back on exactly what the cost and reality was to welcome 'all your huddled masses yearning to breathe free'. We saw the first rumblings of it in the late 60's, but it hit a tidal wave starting around the turn of the century.
As it turns out, we have a lot of huddled masses and they don't comport very well with our illusion. Suddenly we become aware of how many desperate people are working for slave wages to provide us our Walmart. Suddenly we see how many different religions, minorities, cultures, and lifestyles make up our melting pot. Suddenly we realize that what we've been told about our opportunities isn't entirely true, and the average American isn't living a Norman Rockwell life. In panic as the body we knew fades into the one we're becoming, we turn to our politicians, and start holding them accountable not for the results of their policy and deal-making, but for the consequences of each and every vote that doesn't directly benefit us. We watch them on aps, and in twitter and on facebook and on cable TV where commentators tell us every single time our congressman farts.
Those politicians, now watched in real time, lose their ability to compromise. They can't trade a liberal position for a later conservative advantage because the conservatives who voted them in will NOT abide a liberal vote, much less a liberal policy. Every single day becomes another webcam broadcast where the politician must put on a show to assure voters they are champions, minute by minute, of their constituents interests and the long term be damned. Congressmen start voting futilely to repeal hot button laws over and over despite zero chance of success to maintain that show.
And like a pre-teen, we blame them for it.
Meanwhile, the American illusion falls to pieces under unprecedented scrutiny and with it the classic ability to govern. All the dealing and negotiation and coalition building that was the norm before the shutter got thrown back is now seen as corruption and pollution in a process that becomes ever more weighed by ideological purity - a desperate attempt to return to the dream.
The result of all this is a population in a state of high functioning social panic. They crave the illusion they once had, and want, on some level, to put the curtain back. They want to kill the light shined into the corners of their country showing them the truth about who is pulling the levers and moving the pretty landscapes around. They want it to go away so they can feel safe and in control again.
And so in craving that illusion, the start to find themselves drawn to people who advertise a dream. Donald Trump lacks consistency, integrity, and substance and regularly spouts what amounts to nonsense when asked questions, but he's boisterous, charismatic, strong, and self assured in his ignorance, and this illusion is intoxicating and familiar, an American of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Bernie Sanders holds a position that the current government would never abide and no matter what he believes, his power to enact what he says in the current machinery is a twenty year uninterrupted project at the least, not a four year reform. But he has integrity and vision and consistency and so voters chase the illusion of the world he describes as if it's imminent and a matter of just getting enough votes to beat Hillary to the nomination, denying the titanic battle that would ensue.
It all points to the same thing: America is having an identity crisis.
We are trying to figure out who we are and what we want to be in light of the truth left exposed by our own ingenuity and heightened awareness. As is true with any mismatched expectations, we are angry and we feel a little foolish for having believed the dream. We're embarrassed and upset that what we thought was happening, really isn't. We're scared, like a child going through puberty - there's hair in strange places and our society has some funky smells we've never really wanted to face might be us.
We're all aware the political system is broken, but we're also coming to realize that it may be broken because of us; Our demand for immediate accountability and ideological purity may have destroyed what had, for the most part, worked prior to the last twenty years.
So we talk of political revolution and reform. We point to a broken congress or president that we helped break and try externalize the truth: We're not comfortable with ourselves. We don't feel good in our skins as we're changing to accommodate the truth of who we are. Therefore, part of the revolution to fix our nation and politics will merely be surviving the breakdown of our childhood illusions. Like puberty, we have to weather it out. We have to let it happen and accept the changes and strangeness that comes with becoming an adult country complete with all it's flaws, limitations, weaknesses and differences. The core illusion of childhood purity is gone and we now face an more mature understanding of who we are and what we face as a country.
But until it's over...there will be times like this: Where we're crying for a new illusion to replace the old, and looking for anything that makes us feel less awkward and self conscious no matter how irrational or improbable that illusion might be.
Comments
Post a Comment