How did we get here

Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Ap
La Jornada Maya

Martes 3 de julio, 2018

An old friend and former Canadian diplomatic colleague, Gordon Whitehead, asked me what has become of the country that elected Obama? What has happened to American optimism and American openness? When did the “American Dream” turn into the toxic cocktail of hatred and fear focused on the foreigner that we see today?

I responded by saying that the problem began in the seventies after forty years of socially activist government that began with the Great Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” that ushered in the era of big government on the one hand, and social and racial policies designed to re-engineer American society.

Roosvelt's innovative approach to the Great Depression went contrary to the libertarian and individualistic values held by most Americans. He introduced the concept of an activist government set upon transforming the country’s and political culture.

In the sixties, the sexual revolution alienated many U.S. conservatives who felt marginalized from the evolving culture in their own country, as did the almost unanimous adoption by U.S. mainstream media and the political and social elites of liberal attitudes.

The massive civil Rights bills of the sixties sought to reengineer the racial complexion of the country a hundred years after the Civil War – again affecting the cultural values of many conservative and traditionally racist citizens.

The great society introduced by President Lyndon Johnson created a feeling that only the government could resolve the economic challenges faced by the poor and underprivileged in the country – anathema to those who had believed for three hundred years in the value of empowering individuals to assume responsibility for their destiny.

In 1964, republicans elected a right-wing candidate for the presidency. Barry Goldwater was roundly defeated by the liberal forces of the day, but that presidential convention saw the birth of Ronald Reagan as the torch-bearer of the conservative right.

In the seventies, a major development led to the solidification of the Christian Right. When the Supreme Court legalized abortion, Christian opponents coalesced around a few key religious leaders, mostly from the South. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority – a movement that was to become the standard-bearer for the Christian right.

Improveds in radio technology led music stations to migrate to the FM band, leaving the AM band open at relatively lower prices for assimilation by talk radio which quickly became the base for right-wing media. This began to bear fruit in the nineties when right wing radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh took over the airwaves and provided a strong media presence that gave voice to the hitherto voiceless. The right finally had a media voice with which to drum up support and share its ideas without dealing with mainstream media.

Hence, a transformation of mentalities took root in the United States, buttressed in 1996 with the appearance of FOX News as the definitive medium of the conservative right.

Finally, there was an alternative to the liberal media that had held sway in the country since the forties.

This set up the communications networks catering to the conservative right. This was followed by the election in 2010 of Tea Party senators and representatives that began the strong commitment to reject consensus and adopt absolutist lines.

The election of Barack Obama was a watershed moment for the progressive end of the political spectrum, the culmination of a great experiment in social engineering. At the other end of the social and political spectrum, it brought to the surface much of the latent racism and frustration that poor white voters had hitherto suppressed. No longer were they afraid to show their hatred and prejudice, and all that was needed was the right leader to take them to the promised land.

Donald Trump came along in 2015 and legitimized the latent hatred, resentment, racism, and bigotry that he saw had always existed among the ignorant classes and gave them a political base hitherto lacking.

With his huckster's ability for salesmanship and employing many of the communications techniques learned his own experience. Mimicking that of other propagandists like Josef Goebbels in the twenties and thirties, he understood that a lie repeated often enough becomes truth in the eyes of many. In his case, if you lie incessantly, people no longer know what is truth and what is not. And if you speak to voters in ways that connect with their innermost fears and prejudices, you can win votes.

Trump has [i]Fox News[/i] in his pocket, and social media has given him the possibility of reaching directly and instantly millions of Twitter followers.

He also discovered that the Republican Party, weakened from years of internecine fighting between moderates and Tea Party adherents, is more concerned with power than values.

Easily defeating a hapless crown of Republican primary candidates and an equally hapless Democratic candidate, who failed to attack him successfully and campaign for Electoral college votes, he proceeded to campaign strategically to win that same Electoral College.

He did so, and here we are.

Like nazism in the twenties and thirties, Trump was not an overnight phenomenon. It was long in the making, as two competing and fundamentally opposing visions of governance struggled, for primacy.

Trump was the right candidate in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the frustrations of this core group of right-wing voters and had the luck to fight a weakened Democratic Party with its own competing visions of the future and a candidate that did not campaign strategically in key electoral college states.

In addition, Hilary Clinton never connected with the broad mass of voters as had her Democratic adversary Bernie Sanders, and many Democrats stayed at home rather than vote for her.

Today Trump's core constitutes some 40 percent of the electorate and he enjoys the approval of 90 percent of Republicans. All is not smooth sailing for him, however, if one sees how the House of Representatives recently rejected a key immigration bill that he undersigned.

But he has put the fear of the Lord in Republican candidates and, electorally, they are falling into line with his views and avoiding criticizing his excesses at the risk of losing their own electoral base.

So, this is the Trump phenomenon – the culmination of a struggle between two competing political and social philosophies that will continue to dominate the United States for many years to come.

It is not a flash in the pan. It the culmination of a strong historical process that has evolved over many years. It underscores the institutional fragility of U.S. democracy.

The era of consensus and dialogue is over, and the era of zero-sum politics has replaced it.

Does this mark the end of liberalism in the United States?

Time will tell.

But the road ahead is messy and dangerous, and brute force rather than reason appears to be the order of the day.

In this case, Donald Trump may well be, unfortunately, the most transformative president since Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately, in a very negative sense!

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