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    Why Education Is Democracy’s Best Bet

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    Joyce Appleby, a renowned historian of the Founding Fathers and Republican ideology, wrote in her 2001 book “Inheriting the Revolution” that the first generation of Americans (1790-1830) believed a good education was a requirement for every responsible citizen. The majority of men, and notably a wide cross-section of women, in the early days of the republic viewed education as a “critical bridge to responsible citizenship,” according to Appleby. They admired the intellect of our Founding Fathers and felt a patriotic duty to elevate their knowledge so they could better understand the leaders and politics of the day, and thus become better citizens.

    In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville captured his enthusiasm for America and its enlightened citizens in his famous book, “Democracy in America,” proclaiming that in the future, “all the world will be America.” How times have changed.

    Soul-Searching for America’s Broken Ethics

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    Following Boris Yeltsin appointment of Vladimir Putin as his successor to the Russian presidency in 1999, after the death of China’s Deng Xiaoping in 1997 and, finally, at the end of the Arab Spring in 2012, the world has seen a reversal of democratic government and the rise of authoritarianism. More than a few Americans would say that had President Donald Trump been reelected to a second term, it is likely that many of our institutions and norms built to protect democracy would have suffered a similar fate. Many were already under assault in his first term, like the politicized Department of Justice.

    For the first time in our history, we are witnessing something other than a peaceful, orderly transition of presidential power that was enshrined in our American memory beginning with Washington’s “Farewell Address” in 1796. We have never seen anything like Trump’s assault on the facts, the electoral process and the sacred nature of a free and fair vote for all Americans. How in the world can more than half of Republicans believe the election was rigged?

    Disinformation and Lies

    The answer — a campaign of relentless disinformation and lies, spread by social media and irresponsible cable TV and talk radio journalists, believed to be true by a large swath of the population, who apparently received little or no instruction in civics and US history. If this debacle teaches us anything it is that civics and history deserve a much bigger role in our primary and secondary education curricula, even at the expense of a reduced STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) curricula that has been over-emphasized for too long.

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    Look at the voting process. Several recent surveys of Republican voters indicate that anywhere from 50% to 80% of them believe the 2020 presidential election was not free and fair. This despite the fact that Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure and Security Agency and a former Microsoft cybersecurity expert, stated that the recent election was “the most secure in US history.” Every state and every Republican and Democratic governor has certified their results with only negligible, immaterial changes in vote counts. 

    Yet we are witnessing a horrific display of threats against state officials — of both parties — who have certified the election results by those who do not trust the voting process. Why? Because they do not understand the voting process and how it is protected. Many do not understand the Electoral College either. This unacceptable in America. We are looking a lot more like a banana republic than the beacon of democracy to the rest of the world. Clearly America’s reputation has suffered terribly around the globe. 

    The vitriol and emotion, amplified and reinforced on cable TV and social media, builds continuously until it drowns out rational thought. These conditions — extreme ideologies, absence of compromise and bipartisanship and the threat of domestic terrorism created as a result — are a major threat to our republic. Left unchecked, the situation will worsen and could destroy us if we don’t act immediately. Let’s hope and pray that nobody gets hurt as a result of these mindless protests dangerously getting close to becoming violent.

    There are some short-term political and economic solutions to mitigate our divisions. Not the focus of this essay, but initiatives like publicly-financed campaigns to take “dark money” out of politics will go a long way to bringing the parties together. Economic policies to rebuild the middle class and reverse the growth of inequality will foster a shared prosperity to reduce fear and anxiety amongst a large portion of our population. 

    However, these political and economic solutions will not take hold unless we begin to restore the health of our underlying culture and start to remember who we were as Americans, and who we need to be going forward. It starts and ends with an informed electorate. In times of crisis, we look to history — and those who made it into history books for all the right reasons — to instruct us in a time of need.

    A Time of Need

    The 19th-century thinker Horace Mann often called the founding father of public education in America called out the importance of an educated public to the health of a democratic government: “A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.” Even before Mann, Thomas Jefferson offered similar wisdom: “Ignorance and despotism seem made for each other, [but if the new nation could] enlighten the people generally … tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of the day.”

    Regarding the importance of a strong civics curriculum in our schools, we have George Washington stating, on the one bookend of US history: “A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”

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    Echoing similar opinions some 244 years later as the world’s longest-enduring democratic, self-governing republic, is Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts: “But in the ensuing years [following the ratification of the Constitution], we have come to take democracy for granted, and civic education has fallen by the wayside. In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital.”

    This is quite a commentary on the importance of education generally, and civics specifically, to the health and continued survival of “American exceptionalism.” Beyond the voting process and the Electoral College, how well does the public understand how government is structured, how it works? The Annenberg Public Policy Center reported the results of a broad survey of Americans and found that only one in four Americans could name all three branches of the federal government. This an astounding discovery. The same survey found that fewer than 15% of the same cohort could name more than one First Amendment right, with only 37% of respondents able to name a single First Amendment right — their response, by and large, was freedom of speech.

    How beneficial would it be to society if everyone knew that our federal government does not sanction any religion, nor prevent anyone from practicing their own beliefs, or not? Freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble and the right to petition the government round out all the First Amendment rights.

    How are we doing in terms of education outcomes in this age of information overload, hyper-partisanship and emotion crowding out reason and thoughtful reflection? Not so great. According to DoSomething.org — a youth nonprofit whose corporate sponsors include 3M, Ford Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, Google and General Motors among many others — in 1985, the quantity and quality of high school graduates in the US as a group was ranked number one in the world. But by 2015, our high school population was ranked 36 in the world. 

    Michael Porter at the Harvard Business School has been conducting expansive and thorough surveys since 2011 of more than 2,000 senior-level business leaders, across a wide spectrum of industries in the US, regarding the competitiveness of the US economy. The conclusions of the study team strongly align with the findings of DoSomething.org noted above. Porter has concluded that shared prosperity is a key component of an economy’s competitiveness and that the US economy is failing to deliver shared prosperity to an ever-shrinking middle class.

    More importantly, Porter has tied this economic failure to political and cultural failures. To find solutions to our political failures — climate change, inequality, health care and immigration — we must focus on revising election and campaign financing laws. To find answers to our cultural failures — systemic racism, increased polarization, domestic terrorism and crime — we must improve outcomes in K-12 public education as the most critical solution.

    Restoring Trust

    There is nothing more important to the long-term survival of our democracy than a large investment in education as well as in our defense and military capability. Turns out, that as a nation, we invest about the same amount annually in each, which is surprising to most people. The 2020 defense budget is projected to be about $750 billion, and total spending on public education — elementary plus secondary — in 2015 across the country, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, was $706 billion. The problem is that education is funded and administered locally and, as a result, there is a wide variation in the quality of its delivery as the DoSomething.org and the Harvard studies both demonstrate.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The current noise and disinformation around election fraud — a president asking state legislators to overturn a popular vote in choosing electors to the Electoral College and how presidents can lose the popular vote of the nation and still be elected — threaten our democracy. How? In short, even more people begin to lose trust in our government to be fair, and “for the People.” Trust in Congress is already at an historical low point according to Pew Research.

    How do we restore this trust? A strong civics education is a good start. Why is this so important? Here’s the deal: The 2016 presidential election came down to fewer than 80,000 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Even though Trump lost the popular vote among over 125 million total voters, his narrow wins in these three battleground states gave him an Electoral College majority of 306 over Hillary Clinton’s 232.

    This means that just 0.06% of all the voters in America determined the outcome of the 2016 election. In the 2000 presidential election, it came down to 537 votes in Florida. It is frightening to consider that so few voters could make such a difference, and how easily it might be to corrupt such a small number of voters. If that doesn’t argue for a strong civics curriculum in our schools, what does?

    Education is the single most important component of the common good for maintaining the long-term health of our democracy. Why? Because we will not meaningfully transform our political and economic models until we begin to transform our culture. And you do not transform culture by screaming at people. You transform culture by educating people and celebrating rational discourse among all citizens.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      What the Democrats Need to Understand About America

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      The most-watched election in the world is over, and the United States will have a new president. Democrats succeeded in removing Donald Trump from office — the first one-term president in nearly 30 years and the fourth in the last century — but the Republican Party won this election. Joe Biden will begin his presidency …
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      America’s Moment of National Reckoning

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      America has just concluded a cataclysmic Election Day and its immediate aftermath. What was supposed to be our quadrennial celebration of democratic institutions is instead a reflection of what happens when unprincipled and corrupt leaders are given access to the national stage to promote disorder, distrust and chaos. It seems likely that the outcome of the vote will be finalized in the days ahead and that Joe Biden will have won the election. But until Trump is chained in his White House bunker without public access, the peaceful transfer of power remains at risk.

      Add to the equation that there is a deep sense among progressive activists, people of color, the underprivileged and the under-represented that over 71.5 million votes for Trump was a direct repudiation of their demands for a dynamic push forward for social, economic and racial justice in America. And this doesn’t even get to the immediacy of confronting a rampaging pandemic at home and an abundance of global challenges.

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      Amid the chaos, let me be clear that I hope an armed confrontation can be avoided and that there will be enough leadership and institutional integrity to force an orderly transfer of power. However, the election results make clear that many more people voted for Trump this time than last time. Targeted right-wing messaging works, and there is no apparent antidote. Those 71.5 million votes for Trump are a terrible outcome for a nation at war with itself and in which only the right-wingers have the guns.

      As Biden’s victory sets in, there will be those who cheered on Trump and his toxic message who will not rest until they try to blow something up along with the country itself. As that unfolds, there is likely to be the first foundational test of America’s political and military institutions since the Civil War. I am not sure those institutions will hold. It is certainly not clear that those institutions can ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

      Healing the Nation

      At some point, something will have to give. At that point, a crippled America will harvest the rancid fruit of decades of delusion about how “exceptional” the nation was as it grew intellectually lazy, willed its future to greedy and corrupt capitalists, and utterly failed to invest in a sustainable system of governance that could meet the challenges of an evolving world. Picking up the pieces will not be easy.

      The 50-state solution so beloved by those wallowing in the 19th century simply must be discarded, and some new foundation for national governance must be designed and implemented. Unfortunately, with the coronavirus pandemic ripping its way through the populace and a court system packed with those 19th-century wannabes, the time for wishful thinking will have to wait. The 50-state solution will have to be urgently junked to address the pandemic with a national plan and national mandates. Maybe afterward, America can study the results of the coordinated national response and find the way to a new, vibrant, 21st-century federal system.

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      Meanwhile, there will be an enormous amount of focus on how America got to this point, but I want to get out front that years of “false equivalency” disguised as “balance” or “fairness” has poisoned the nation’s well of fact-based knowledge from which any democratic nation would hope that its citizens could draw. Much has been said about willful ignorance, but not enough about the fountains of falsehoods that feed those unwilling to learn much of anything that requires factual focus. Repetition of belief is no substitute for acquisition of knowledge.

      The impending national convulsion has just begun. A reckoning with collective ignorance and the arrogance of ignorance is essential as the starting point for a meaningful national dialog about how America so completely lost its way. The responsible mainstream media and social media outlets have to stop honoring falsehood with repetition and that most ludicrous of questions — “What’s your response?” And to try to rebuild lost credibility, real and transparent sourcing of news reporting has to again become the rule.

      Then, if government institutions are to be resurrected and strengthened, there must be some measure of accountability for those who worked so diligently to undermine governance, often to enhance their own wealth and power. Today’s list of the corrupt is really long. Trump is a sick symptom, a tool used by so many others to achieve corrupt ends. But he is also symbolic of so much of what is so wrong that his accountability is an essential component of any national reckoning.

      It is important that Trump be charged with the crimes he has committed both in office and in his corrupt life that led to his election in the first place in 2016. It is equally important that those in his inner circle, including his family, his enabling aides, his attorney general and his secretary of state, all find themselves under criminal investigative scrutiny.

      This will surely further divide the nation. But it will be impossible to begin the healing if there is no accountability for the intentional wrongdoing that has led to so much suffering and dysfunction. Those who corruptly profited from the past should have to pay in the present if there is to be a future with the rule of law restored to its proper place in the national pantheon of virtues.

      Joe Biden’s Inauguration

      However, the critical first task ahead is to ensure Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. Unfortunately, that date is over 10 weeks away. Ten weeks of an angry and “victimized” Trump still empowered to “govern” will bleed so much more blood from the nation. He will have to be thwarted at every turn each and every day, so the hard work of restoration can begin now.

      This must start with a national plan to confront the coronavirus pandemic that is raging across America and much of the globe. This cannot wait 10 more weeks. There is no need for a “balanced” discussion because we have no choice. We have seen how a venal leader can lead so many to their demise and so many more to a participatory march to more death and disease.

      Biden must try hard to convince those participatory marchers to turn around, look at those they care about and start protecting themselves and others. This will be a hard sell, and those of us who have already seen this light will have to step up our game as well. It is no longer fine for corporate sloths and all those endangered small businesses to wink at their “no mask, no entry” signs. It is time for local governments to publicly out those businesses that do not enforce mask mandates and social distancing in their community and publicly support those that do.

      I am hardly certain where any of this will end. But I am certain that the false narrative of a caring, giving and committed people has now finally been ripped from our delusional midst. America is not now, nor has it often been, much of anything to be proud of.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      America Is No Longer One Nation

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      Another American election has come and gone. And, once again, enlightened pundits on both sides of the Atlantic are scratching their heads. How is it possible that some 70 million American voters would cast their vote for a boorish, incompetent, lying buffoon, a misogynist racist hypocrite, devoid of the most basic human emotions such as empathy and compassion? How is it possible that a president who not only has demonstrated a fundamental lack of concern for the safety and well-being of even his own entourage but even ridiculed those who do would be considered worthy of a second term in office? Yet millions of voters across the United States did, and are proud of it.

      360˚ Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      What is surprising is not the outcome of this election, but the surprise of those surprised by it. After all, over the past four years, dozens of books, articles, papers and blog posts have been written purporting to explain why Trump won in 2016 and why he continued to hold on to his constituency, despite everything. Yet four years later, few seem to have taken the findings to heart.

      Simple Explanations

      Unfortunately enough, in today’s world, simple explanations no longer suffice to get to the heart of things. Social scientists like simple, monocausal explanations. Rational choice theories maintain that what counts for voters is their pocketbook. As a famous adage has it, It’s the economy, stupid. Yet as Thomas Frank, in his well-known book “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” maintained in 2004, over the past few decades, among ordinary people, cultural issues have increasingly outweighed economics as a matter of public concern. To be sure, Frank’s conclusions encountered considerable opposition, but recent developments appear to substantiate his interpretation.

      Take the story of West Virginia’s coal mining community. In 2016, Trump promised to resurrect coal, that “clean beautiful coal” that had guaranteed well-paying jobs in one of America’s most depressed regions, the Appalachians. But after four years in office, Trump had done nothing to halt the closing of coal mines. And yet, coal mining communities continued to support Trump. Why? Partly because of his “America First” slogan, but also because of his anti-abortion stance and, last but not least, because he appeared to be the “only one standing in the way of the entire industry closing down.”

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      Nationalist pride mixed with cultural concerns and economic wishful thinking — this is the ideational brew that has appealed to substantial parts of the American electorate and, apparently, continues to do so. Voters in the state of Michigan are a case in point. Michigan was once the hub of America’s automotive industry, providing well-paying jobs to thousands of American workers. Detroit’s well-deserved moniker was Motor City. For a while, Detroit was also known for a new sound in music, Motown. Motown moved, the automotive industry collapsed, people fled the city. In 1950, Detroit boasted a population of 1.8 million, the fifth-largest city in the United States. By 2019, its population had declined to a bit more than 670,000, the city a shadow of its former self. In 2016, Trump promised that the automotive industry would come back to Michigan. It didn’t. Trump 2020 claimed otherwise: “We brought you a lot of car plants, Michigan! We brought you a lot of car plants. You know that, right?” His enthusiastic supporters knew it. Why? Because Trump told them so.

      No matter that reality was the opposite. In fact, not only since the “coming of Trump” had not one auto plant been built in Michigan, but, as Mark Danner writes in The New York Review of Books, “since his ascension not less than three thousand Michiganders had lost jobs in the vital auto sector.” Apparently, the power of make-belief trumps anything, even facts. But then, facts are nothing but the machinations of the lamestream media, out there to discredit the wonderful work of the Great Leader.

      Reality No Longer Counts

      If reality no longer counts in politics, what is left? It has been suggested that contemporary American politics is “close to a religion.” Religions tend to have a Manichean bent, centered upon a fundamental struggle between the forces of good and of evil, between light and darkness, God and Satan. Ironically enough, the notion of political religion entered the social sciences in the context of totalitarianism — fascism, Nazism and Stalinism. This obviously is not intended to conflate Trump with any of these regimes. Trump, as I have stated before, is a populist, and populism must not be mixed up with totalitarianism.

      Modern populism, as exemplified in its crudest form by Donald Trump, follows the logic introduced by the German political theorist Carl Schmitt. Central to Schmitt’s thinking is the notion that politics is above all grounded in the distinction between friend and enemy. A number of recent surveys suggest that this antagonism, popularly known as polarization, has become central to understanding contemporary American politics. Donald Trump has been a master in evoking and fueling a range of emotions, from disgust to resentment, from anxiety to rage, that have contributed to and have exacerbated existing political animosities, widening, in the process, the existing partisan divide.

      Surveys reveal that the Schmittian spirit has deeply penetrated American society and the electorate. In December last year, for instance, in a comprehensive Pew study on partisanship, 55% of Republicans said that Democrats, and 47% percent of Democrats said that Republicans, were “more immoral” when compared with other Americans. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this spirit, with its quasi-religious overtones, has even reached into American families.

      Held Together With String, Can America Hold?

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      A recent article in The Jesuit Review recounts the story of a Catholic Trump supporter whose four children, all of them working in science-related fields, “hate Donald Trump” and think “he is evil.” The father obviously disagrees, reflected, for instance, in his refusal to wear a protective mask when in public. In response, one of his sons told him that if he should ever have children, he would not want his father around since he was a “bad influence.” That, the father is quoted as saying, “just broke my heart.”

      A recent New York Times article tells the story of a twin who no longer feels close to her brother because of his views on Trump, with which she does not merely disagree but which she finds “unfathomable.” Any attempt to discuss the divide separating the two siblings end in anger and mutual acrimony, putting a severe strain on their relationship.

      Over the past years, there has been a number of accounts of Americans canceling participation in family Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings in order to avoid having to deal with relatives from the other side of the political chasm. A New York Times article from late 2016,  “Political Divide Splits Relationships — and Thanksgiving, Too,” recounts the particularly poignant case of a software designer who decided “to move her wedding so that her fiancé’s grandmother and aunt, strong Trump supporters from Florida, could not attend.”

      Two Visions

      To be sure, anecdotal evidence is what it is, anecdotal evidence. But in conjunction with representative surveys, it provides further support for the deep chasm that divides contemporary American society. The motto of the American seal is E pluribus unum — Out of many, one. The past few years have clearly shown — and the result of the recent election has reconfirmed it — that the motto should be modified, at least for the time being, from E pluribus unum to E pluribus duum. What we are seeing today even more so than four years ago is a territorial entity with a population not only living in two diametrically opposed realities, but with two diametrically opposed views on reality.

      In the European literature on radical right-wing populism, one of the more prominent interpretative frames of analysis is the notion of two visions informing electoral support for or against the radical populist right — visions of either an open or of a closed society. In today’s world, a better characterization of these radically divergent visions might be cosmopolitanism versus parochialism. Sociologically, cosmopolitan dispositions are particularly prevalent in metropolitan areas and global cities, parochial dispositions in rural, small-town areas. A cursory glance at the American electoral map provides an almost perfect illustration of these dynamics. Anecdotal evidence fills in the details.

      Take, for instance, a recent New York Times exposé on farmers in Nebraska, most of them ardent Trump supporters. They were thrilled when Trump claimed in 2016 that he would stick up for the “forgotten men and women of our country,” who, he promised would “be forgotten no longer.” Four years later, Trump supporters in “places like rural Nebraska say they feel remembered. To them, these four years have brought a sense of belonging in a country led by someone who sticks up for, and understands, their most cherished beliefs.”

      This sense of regained dignity and respect, and a renewed sense of belonging among large parts of what has come to be known as flyover country — the vast landmass between the two coasts, home to all those Americans who in recent decades have increasingly felt not only ignored but like “strangers in their own land” — explains to a large extent why they have continued to stick with Trump. The fact that he has largely failed to deliver? Not important. But Trump’s tariff war with China hurt Midwestern farmers in particular, forcing the Trump administration to come up with a multi-billion rescue package — at the expense of the American taxpayer.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Religion is based on faith, not facts. You have to believe that God created the world some 10,000 years ago, even if science tells you that 250 million years ago, a cataclysmic event wiped out much of life on this planet. You have to believe that global warming is nothing but a hoax, another one of these liberal ploys to prevent you from pursuing the American dream. This year, roughly two-thirds of Democrats thought that climate change was an important issue; among Republicans, less than 15%.

      Political religion is a zero sum game. There is no compromise between those who believe that life starts with conception and those who think that women should have a choice on whether or not to bring their pregnancy to full term. There is no middle ground between those for whom Black Lives Matter is a fundamental civil rights issue and those for whom it is nothing but an excuse for large-scale violence. There is nothing that those who believe women are at a systematic disadvantage and those who believe that the most discriminated person in today’s world is the white male.

      No matter the ultimate outcome of this election, it is not going to change the fundamental political crisis that way precedes the advent of Donald Trump. As has often been noted, Trump is not its cause but its expression. As I have written before, Trump is nothing but an empty signifier, which allows all those who have been disenchanted with the trajectory of American history and politics over the past decades to project their disenchantment and rage, their frustrations and ressentiment, their disgust and fears onto one man.

      The ultimate outcome of this election is going to change nothing with regard to the deep-seated problems that have sundered apart the fabric of what once was, for all of its faults and blemishes, a dynamic democracy. In a recent poll, a two-thirds majority of respondents said they feared that democracy in the United States was in grave peril. Regardless of who is ultimately going to lead America come next year, it will take considerably more than mere rhetoric to restore confidence in the workings of what, after all, is one of the world’s most established democracies.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      “All I Want Is For My Vote to Count”

      by

      Citizens of the United States of America have finished exercising their right to vote in what is likely to be an election with the highest turnout in more than 100 years. Taking advantage of in-person early voting and by mail, nearly 100 million Americans had cast their ballots even before the polls opened on November 3. That staggering number adds up to nearly three-quarters of the total votes cast in the 2016 presidential election.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

      READ MORE

      Another 60 million or so voted on Election Day, making the total number of citizens who voted reach nearly 160 million, according to CNBC estimates. This works out to a historic 66.8% of the 239.2 million Americans eligible to vote in 2020.

      These people had one reason to participate in the democratic process. They wanted their vote to count. They wanted their ballot to be counted. Intellectually, it is easy to rationalize the logic that a person exercising their franchise wants their voice heard. That rationale took a far more significant meaning when I got a chance to observe the face, the countenance and emotions of a person when they showed up at a vote center and said, “I would like to vote.”

      Listening to Voters

      I worked as an election officer in my local county for the 2020 elections and had the opportunity to observe first-hand nearly 1,500 people who stopped by at my vote center. What I experienced when I directly interacted with many of them made my usual intellectual rationale pale in significance, allowing me to viscerally appreciate the importance of every single vote.

      It was heartwarming to observe a nonagenarian lady and her septuagenarian daughter come in together to cast their vote — the daughter assisting her mother with the process.

      There was an elderly lady who required the assistance of her husband, a mobility walking aid device and a portable oxygen tank in order for her to come to the vote center and drop off her vote-by-mail envelope. She could have dropped it in one of the 100 ballot boxes the county had set up. Yet for this lady, it was important to come to a vote center — even if it meant taking one small step at a time from the parking lot — and be assured that her vote would count by an election official before dropping her envelope in the proper bag.

      Embed from Getty Images

      There was an octogenarian man who was not comfortable coming into the vote center due to COVID-19. We assisted him by setting up a polling station out in the open so he could exercise his right to vote. Despite being worried about his health and the pandemic, this old man decided to come in person and ensure that his voice was heard.

      Worried that using the United States Postal Service may not get their ballot to their county in time, an older couple was willing to drive more than 400 miles in order to drop off their ballot in their county of residence. Thankfully, we were able to assure them that dropping their vote-by-mail envelope in our vote center would ensure their ballot would reach the appropriate county and their vote counted.

      Another person who was concerned that the vote-by-mail envelope she had mailed had not been recorded in the system made several phone calls to various people — including Senator Kamala Harris’ office — before deciding to come to a vote center to understand what had happened. In her conversation with me, she kept repeating, “All I want is for my vote to count.” Thankfully, we were also able to assist her and allay her fears that her voice would not be heard in what she felt was “the most important election she has ever voted in.”

      Yet another person who works for the city but registered to vote in a neighboring county that was a couple of hours drive away accosted me when I was taking a break to get some fresh air. Explaining his special circumstances, he clarified with me exactly how he could vote. Once he understood the process, I could hear him talking to his manager asking for time off on Election Day so he could drive to his county and exercise his franchise.

      Living in one of the most diverse counties in America, we were also able to assist several monolingual voters with the process. One of our bilingual aides spent nearly an hour assisting a first-time voter who only spoke Spanish. Another aide assisted a Vietnamese family who were somewhat overwhelmed by the voting process.

      Every Vote Counts

      These are only a handful of the many instances when I could sense the palpable concern of the voter who needed to be assured that despite efforts by the sitting president to discredit the democratic process, their voice would be heard.

      I am just one average citizen, living in one corner of America, but one who actively participated in the elections this year. My eyes misted over on more than one occasion when I interacted with people who braved many personal challenges, be it physical, emotional or a linguistic one, in order to exercise their democratic right. I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of people across the length and breadth of the country had to overcome their own personal obstacles in order to cast their vote in this election.

      As I cleared my thoughts and got back to my job after each moving interaction I experienced, one aspect became crystal clear: that every vote matters. And every vote that has been cast must be counted. Whether it is in a blue state or a red state. Whether it is in a battleground state where the incumbent is leading or the challenger is leading. Even if it takes several days, in order to uphold the fundamentals of democracy, every vote that has been cast must be counted.

      As that one voter put it, “All I want is for my vote to count.”

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      What Will a Post-Trump America Look Like?

      by

      Americans are still anxiously waiting to find out who will be the 46th president of the United States. But while the results of the 2020 race may still be murky, what this election has made clear is that whoever succeeds President Donald Trump — whether in 2021 or 2025 — will face an uphill battle of governing a post-Trump America.

      What will this look like in practice? One only needs to look as far as one of the United States’ closest allies in the hemisphere, Colombia, for a glimpse of the challenges that await Trump’s successor.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      Colombian politics has its own Trump-like figure. His name is Alvaro Uribe Velez. Elected in 2002, Uribe governed for eight years as a tough conservative politician. His aggressive military campaigns against the country’s guerilla groups brought long-sought stability and security to much of the country and transformed him into a national hero for many Colombians. But his presidency was also marred by controversy. He has been accused of facilitating widespread human rights abuses, corruption and drug trafficking.

      Despite — or perhaps because of — this dual legacy, Uribe has remained a central figure in Colombian politics since leaving the presidential palace. He continues to serve as the leader of the country’s ruling political party, the Democratic Center, and sat as a senator until summer 2020 when he resigned pending the results of a criminal investigation against him.

      The influence Uribe continues to wield on the Colombian political scene should serve as a warning to whoever succeeds Trump in the Oval Office. In Colombia, Uribe’s willingness and ability to mobilize broad swaths of the population to support his interests has proved a challenge for governance by opposing politicians.

      Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos experienced this firsthand in 2016 as he tried to sell the people a peace deal to end the country’s 60-year-long civil war with a guerrilla group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC). As the most visible and vocal opponent of the deal, Uribe consistently belittled both Santos as a politician and the peace he negotiated with the FARC. “Peace yes, but not like this” became his rallying cry in public speeches, interviews and perhaps his — and Trump’s — favorite platform, Twitter. His vitriolic attacks played a part in Colombians’ surprise rejection of the peace deal in a national referendum, a humiliating defeat for Santos.

      Trump May Still Influence US Politics

      The small margins of this year’s US presidential election suggest that a Democratic successor to Trump will have to confront a former president with a similarly devoted following as the one Uribe has maintained in Colombia. Trump is unlikely to bow graciously out of politics. With a large base that continues to support him, he could still influence politics informally, by calling on his followers to engage in (possibly violent) protests.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The president’s continued popularity among Republican voters may also force the GOP to maintain its current far-right policy positions to retain voters in future elections. The election of a QAnon conspiracy theorist to the House of Representatives confirms that Trump’s influence reaches beyond the presidency.

      Indeed, Democrats are not the only ones who should be worried about Trump’s continued influence after leaving office. Uribe’s handpicked successor in the 2018 presidential election, President Ivan Duque, has struggled to govern under the shadow of the former leader. Like the US, Colombia today is deeply polarized. Though Duque and his allies hold a majority in the Senate, distrust and frustration with the government sent nearly 200,000 Colombians to the streets of the country’s major cities in protest last year.  

      But Duque’s reliance on support from Uribe’s hardline followers has effectively precluded him from building bridges with his opponents, lest he be seen as abandoning Uribe’s legacy. Unable to fully satisfy either camp, Duque’s approval rating has languished far below 50% for most of his presidency.

      Confronting the Legacy

      Republicans will face a similar challenge if they wish to maintain Trump’s base while also trying to repair the deep divisions that he has sown among US society.

      It may seem extreme to compare the United States to Colombia, a country that has teetered on the edge of collapse and conflict for over 60 years. But the reality is that the US is also a post-conflict country. Our civil war may have ended in 1865, but events in 2020 — the partisan reactions to the coronavirus pandemic, racial tensions following the extrajudicial killings of black Americans, and a presidential vote that remains too close to call three days after the election — have proved that the legacy of the violence and the polarization it sowed persist today.

      Whoever succeeds Donald Trump must confront this legacy head-on. But as Colombia shows, doing so with Trump in the background will be far from easy.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      How Do You Fix the Soul of the Nation?

      by

      Nearly every commentator knew that the one certain thing about this presidential election was that everything that followed the date of voting would be uncertain. Inspired by polls that had consistently given Joe Biden a significant lead over the past two or three months, some predicted a Democratic landslide. But in that eventuality, the same commentators felt uncertain about how the transition would play out and, more seriously, how the nation might be governed. Some pundits even wondered whether it could be governed.

      On Monday, The New York Times published an article with the title “Undeterred by Pandemic, Americans Prepare to Deliver Verdict on Trump.” The author, Shane Goldmacher, summed up the atmosphere of the final phase of the campaign in these terms: “As Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. raced across the most important battleground states in a frenzied final push for votes, the 2020 election was unfolding in a country with urgent problems: an uncontrolled public health crisis, a battered economy, deep ideological divisions, a national reckoning on race and uncertainty about whether the outcome of the vote will be disputed.”

      After the US Election, Will Civil War Become the Fashion?

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      The Times’ columnist Lisa Lerer, who had consistently manifested her preference for Biden throughout the campaign, published an article on election eve with the title: “Win or Lose, Trump and Biden’s Parties Will Plunge Into Uncertainty.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Uncertainty:

      The permanent state of democracy in the United States since the beginning of the 21st century, likely to continue for decades to come.

      Contextual Note

      On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump predictably claimed victory, well before all the votes had been counted. More realistically, Business Insider summed up the continuing uncertainty. Publishing their live results, Grace Panetta and Madison Hall concluded — with what Democrats will see as a ray of hope — that “it remains unclear how the race will go, and there are more scenarios in which Biden ultimately wins than Trump.” 

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      The one thing most Americans were not hoping for in this age of ever-deepening uncertainty was “more scenarios.” In a nation that has become accustomed over the past four years to living through a screenplay scripted by a former reality TV host, polls leading up to the election appeared to reflect a desire for some sort of stability. Citing pre-election polling, Emily Badger in another Times article noted that “voters on the left and right say they’re concerned about the stability of American democracy.” She quotes a Biden supporter in Ohio, a state Trump appears now to have won, who expressed her fears in these terms: “We’re just teetering, and it’s scary as all get-out.”

      During a bitter and confused primary campaign, the Democratic Party claimed to have identified the personality who best represented stability and electability: Joe Biden. Whether the former vice president eventually makes it past the Electoral College by the December deadline remains to be seen. If he wins, the Democrats will tout his victory as a triumph for stability, but the nation may not agree. As the Democrats congratulate themselves on their good judgment, the rest of the country, and especially its youth, may instead see the future as “scary as all get-out.”

      Goldmacher’s article in The Times paints a grim picture of the immediate future. “Much of the country felt on edge,” he writes, before quoting a construction worker in Los Angeles whom he describes as busily boarding up a storefront in anticipation of serious civil unrest: “Everyone is starting to panic,” the worker explains.

      Even after we know the initial result sometime in the coming days, there is no way we can anticipate the aftermath. Will there be lawsuits, protests, recounts, further manipulations, proposals for constitutional amendments or outright civil war? Will the millions of lethal weapons people have been stocking in preparation for conflict be put to use?

      In contrast, David Dayan makes the astonishing claim that “Donald Trump Has Been Good for Democracy.” The basis of his claim is that millions of Americans formerly indifferent have become politically engaged, and not just in voting, though on that score the statistics do tell the story of record voter turnout. Most commentators thought high turnout would be an advantage for Biden. It appears not to have been the case.

      Historical Note

      On the eve of the election, in an article on the fragility of the American nation, Fair Observer’s founder Atul Singh riffed on a pair of metaphors for the current state not just of US politics, but of the country as a whole. The first was the idea of a nation held together with string. The second was the slogan Joe Biden repeatedly used as a drumbeat since the beginning of his campaign, his oft-repeated claim that the election was a “fight for the soul of the nation.” Upon close examination, these two metaphors appear to be antinomic to the point of tragic contradiction. Their antinomy sums up the existential quandary that this election has revealed.

      In the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition of philosophy, the idea of the soul was synonymous with essence. It designated the metaphysical principle that accounted for the identity of any entity, animate or inanimate. The essence or soul defined and united all of an entity’s diverse constituents. An essence thus signifies the presence of an active force — the soul — that ensures the integrity of a thing or a person.

      Even a chair or a shoe, or any other human artifact, can have a soul or essence, though in contrast with living things, their integrity is imposed and ensured from the outside — from the mind of the designer or manufacturer — rather than materialized by the action of dynamic organic principles within the object itself. The DNA of a chair, or a nation for that matter, lies in the mind of those who gave its identity and who are committed to maintaining it.

      Embed from Getty Images

      If we describe something that needs to be held together with string — a chair for example — it indicates that its essence is no longer present, at least as a sufficient active force to maintain its integrity and fulfill its purpose. At some point, we can decide to dismantle the chair and use it as firewood. At best the string may prolong its useful life span, but that in itself is an admission of the absence of its “soul.”

      Joe Biden clearly would not agree with Atul Singh’s description of a nation being held together with string. Were he interested in framing his opposition in philosophical terms, he might appeal to a form of Cartesian dualism and claim that an essence that has fled may return or perhaps may be reinjected because the soul and the body are distinct and autonomous. But the source of Biden’s rhetoric is more likely the popular moral dualism children learn in Catechism of angels and devils fighting for the control of everyman’s (or every child’s) soul.

      As a politician, Biden quite logically sees every issue as one of deciding who is in control. If he is effectively declared president by the Electoral College — and if that election is not overturned by Donald Trump’s Supreme Court — the problem he will face when he takes office will be how to control an omnipresent entity that politicians like Biden prefer to deny: uncertainty. Emily Badger concluded her article with a quote from Yale historian Beverly Gage: “If people have actually lost faith in the idea that you can fix things and make them better, then that’s not a great political moment to be in.” Especially when the thing you most want to fix is “the soul of the nation.”

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer. Editor’s Note: At the time of publication, the US election is still too close to call.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      America in the Mid-70s and 2020

      by

      It was summer almost half a century ago when I got into that Volkswagen van and began my trip across America with Peter, a photographer friend. I was officially doing so as a reporter for a small San Francisco news service, having been sent out to tap the mood of the nation in a politically fraught moment. The Vietnam War, with all its domestic protests and disturbances, was just ending. North Vietnamese troops would soon enough enter Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital; the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, was then trapped in an escalating scandal called “Watergate.”

      And here was the odd thing. I felt trapped, too. In some way, I felt lost. As I put it then — and this should have a familiar ring to it, even if, in 1973, I was only referring to the TV version of the news — “That screen haunted my life. Somehow I wanted to shatter it and discover new, more human reference points, a true center of gravity.” I had the urge to break out of that world of mine and do the all-American thing, the Jack Kerouac thing: go “on the road.”

      Held Together With String, Can America Hold?

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      So, Peter and I set out on that famed American road, traveling from campgrounds to fast-food restaurants, carnival midways to Old Faithful, only to find ourselves trapped in what I called “the increasing corporate control not just of people on the job, but on their vacations, in their leisure hours.” I found myself interviewing, and him photographing, what I came to think of as a “population of disoriented nomads” — mostly lower-middle-class and working-class Americans, confused and angry, “pushed aside,” as I wrote then, by “forces they feel are beyond their control.” We were, it turned out, on someone else’s road entirely.

      In Milwaukee, we would be joined by Nancy, who later became my wife, and then would spend weeks following those all-too-unromantic highways (without a Jack Kerouac in sight), interviewing anyone who would talk to us. In the end, that attempt of a 29-year-old to break free from his own life, to figure out “where (or whether) I fit into American society” became my first book, “Beyond Our Control: America in the Mid Seventies.” In retrospect, that book about our strange journey into a country being reorganized for eternal consumption and the wellbeing of giant corporations became my own — as I would then call it — “dream-document excavated from our recent past.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      And yes, even so long ago, it was already a troubled moment in a troubled land. I must admit, though, that I hadn’t looked at “Beyond Our Control” in years, not until a friend recently found a copy, read it and emailed, quoting my own ancient text back to me to point out how eerily relevant it still was, how — in a sense — Trumpian parts of that 1973 America already were.

      He highlighted, in particular, an interview near the end of that book with “Frank Nelson” — I changed all the names, so who knows now what his real one was — about which more in a moment. That missive startled me. I had forgotten all those Frank Nelsons and perhaps as well the Tom Engelhardt who interviewed them so long ago.

      So, curious about that long-lost self of mine and the world I then inhabited, I picked up that old book and reread it in order to meet the young Tom Engelhardt on the road in another American universe. And how strange that journey back into my own — and our — past proved to be.

      The Right Wind Sweeping In Off the Plain

      So, if you have the patience for a little time travel, return with me to July 1973 and let me tell you about Frank Nelson, whom I met at a trailhead in Yellowstone National Park with his wife and three children. He was “a responsible, likeable family man” with — regardless of how hard I pressed him — “no vision of a better future.” A plumber and union shop steward from Cleveland, as well as the chairman of the union bargaining committee in his factory, he proudly told me, “I have really dedicated myself to the labor movement all my life and I believe in it.”

      Yet he was already talking back then about the growing “conservative approach” of the trade union movement and the possibility that it would be destroyed, he believed, by “the race issue.” He was clearly both anti-Semitic and racist. (“Being white, I would prefer the continued supremacy of the white race instead of this homogenization that’s coming.”) And while discussing what he felt was a growing American crisis with me, he also told me that “your liberals believe in one world government … and your conservatives” — which he clearly believed himself to be — “believe in America first, American domination.” And remember, this was July 1973, not July 2019. It was Nixon’s America, not Trump’s.

      Frank and his wife Helen were open, chatty and so pleased with the interview experience that she gave me their address and asked me to send them a copy of anything I wrote. In other words, he said nothing he felt was out of the range of propriety. My reaction, on leaving him, was: “For me, this interview seemed like the crescendo towards which the bits and pieces of our trip have been building.”

      As I had discovered in those weeks of interviewing, Nelson, like so many others on that vacation loop, was filled to the brim with half-spoken and unspoken fears about a future in which, as I put it then, “the [corporate] pushers will survive, maybe even profit. It’s these people we’ve talked with, the vast mass of middle people who have barely eked out a toehold in the system, who will be cut off at the knees. And, being hooked [on that system], they don’t know what to do.”

      Then, thinking about Nelson (and others like him we had met), I added:

      “The next step for Frank Nelson, however, may be out of this passivity and into the streets … The motivation, the frustration, the anger is there. Even a new ideology, the ideology of race and nationalism is emerging. All that’s missing is the right wind sweeping in off the plain, a combination of forces at the top of the society willing to mobilize Frank Nelson.

      … Sinking people don’t usually have a trenchant analysis of reality. All they require is the promise that their hard-won sense of status will not go down the drain; and an explanation, any explanation, on which to hang their hopes. American society leaves people so confused and reality so disjointed that almost any formula which pretends to put the pieces together and appeals to what people think of as their self-interest may prove acceptable.”
      In those pages, I had already brought up Weimar-era Germany — the moment, that is, before Adolf Hitler rose to power — and then I added:

      “In Germany in the thirties, the formula that worked was anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and a rabid nationalism combined with full employment and a return to domestic stability. If Frank Nelson’s any criterion, the formula may not be that much different here … Nationalism could well be the banner under which the struggle and the inevitable sacrifices will come, and race the bogeyman just as Jews were in Germany. The identifiable (Black) poor are the symbol for Frank Nelson of what he has to lose, what could be ripped out of his hands. And he’ll defend himself against that even if he has to ally himself with ‘the Jews and rich Gentiles’ to do it.

      Frank Nelson and millions of other Americans are set up for the picking, if a group at the top sees profit in the crop.”
      Welcome to a More Extreme World

      In the age of Donald Trump, the Proud Boys, and the Wolverine Watchmen, much of this should feel strangely familiar. If, however, my reporting was in any way prophetic, I have to admit that I didn’t realize it all these years — not until my friend wrote me. Still, it should be obvious, in retrospect, that, bizarre as the present moment may seem, it didn’t come out of the blue, not faintly. How could it have?

      For that matter, Trump didn’t exactly arrive out of the blue either. As a start, just a couple of months after I got back to San Francisco from that cross-country jaunt of ours, he made his first appearance on the front page of The New York Times. He was 27, two years younger than me, and already the president of the Trump Management Corporation. The headline, shades of the future Donald and the white nationalism that’s accompanied him, was: “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City.”

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      The Justice Department was then charging Trump’s father Fred and him with refusing “to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color’” in the buildings they then owned and managed. And his first words quoted in that paper about those charges were, appropriately enough: “They are absolutely ridiculous … We never have discriminated and we never would.” Of course not! And what hasn’t been increasingly, ridiculously Trumpian about our all-American world ever since?

      When you think about it, with that moment in 1973 in mind, Trump himself might be reimagined as some extreme combination of Richard Nixon (a man with his own revealing tapes just like The Donald) and George Wallace. The racist governor of Alabama and a third party candidate the year Nixon slipped by Democrat Hubert Humphrey to first win the White House, Wallace was a man best known for the formulation “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

      Nixon took the presidency in 1968 and again in 1972 with his own form of racism, the “southern strategy,” first pioneered by Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 (and then called, far more redolently, “Operation Dixie”). In a racially coded and distinctly nationalist fashion, Nixon brought southern whites in the formerly Democratic bastions of the South definitively into the Republican fold.

      By 1980, Ronald Reagan wouldn’t think twice about launching his own presidential election campaign with a “states’ rights” speech (then still a code phrase for segregation) near Philadelphia, Mississippi, just miles from the earthen dam where three murdered civil rights workers had been found buried in 1964. And in the intervening years, the Republican Party, too, has gone south (so to speak) big time and into a form of illiberality that was, even in the Nixon era, striking enough. By 2016, of course, that southern strategy had become something more like a national strategy in the (pussy-grabbing) hands of Donald Trump.

      Meanwhile, the corporatization — I might, then, have thought of it as the fast-foodization — of the country that Peter, Nancy and I were traveling across was already well underway. At the same time, a new kind of all-American inequality was, in those years, just beginning to make itself felt. Today, with the first billionaire in the White House and other billionaires, even in the midst of a pandemic, continuing to make an absolute mint while so many Americans suffer, the inequality that left Frank Nelson and his peers so desperately uneasy has never stopped rising to truly staggering levels. 

      Believe me, even if Trump has to leave the Oval Office on January 20, 2021, we’ll still be in his America. And 47 years after my long, strange trip, I think I can guarantee you one thing: If it weren’t for the pandemic that has this country in its grasp and has swept so many of us off any path whatsoever, some young reporter, stir crazy and unhappy, would still be able to head out onto a 21st-century “road” and find updated versions of Frank Nelson galore (a surprising number of whom might be well-armed and angry).

      Welcome to America! There’s no question that, so long after Peter, Nancy and I traveled that not-so-open road, our lives and this country are way beyond our control.

      Writing about the people I had interviewed then (about whom, with the single inspirational exception of a museum director I met in Twin Falls, Idaho, I knew nothing more), I said: “I don’t doubt that they, like me, are still heading reluctantly toward a future that will make the summer of 1973 seem truly unreal and leave us all wondering: Could life ever have really been that way?”

      In COVID-19 America, with the West Coast still burning, Colorado in historic flames, a record 11 storms hitting the Gulf Coast and elsewhere this hurricane season, and heat of every sort rising everywhere, don’t for a second believe that the phrase “beyond our control” couldn’t gain new meaning in the decades to come.

      Welcome to a more extreme version of the world Frank Nelson and I already inhabited in 1973.

      *[This article was originally published by TomDispatch.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Held Together With String, Can America Hold?

      by

      In December 2007, Mwai Kibaki beat Raila Odinga in the Kenyan general election and all hell broke loose. Odinga’s supporters took to the streets, alleging Kibaki had “stolen” the election. Police fired on demonstrators and some died. In retaliation, the targeted ethnic cleansing of Kikuyus, Kibaki’s community, began. 

      The Kikuyus themselves responded by targeting other communities. A bloodbath ensued. The New York Times observed that “ethnic violence, fueled by political passions” was threatening to ruin the reputation of a country regarded as one of the most promising in Africa. It turns out that this promise was illusory. Rival ethnic groups within arbitrary colonial borders were held loosely together by self-interest and little national identity. The country was held together with string.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

      READ MORE

      About 20 years ago, Stephen Heiniger, then a British policeman, visited a dear friend in New York. Like my view of Kenya, he observed that New York was held together with string. The Guatemalan who worked in a restaurant’s kitchen had little in common with the owner. He did not really identify with New York or even the US. The immigrant was slaving away to make money to send back to his family, socializing largely with people from his part of the world.

      What Heiniger observed about New York 20 years ago is increasingly true for America today. The country is full of such loose groups held together by self-interest. This is largely defined in terms of success, which in turn is mainly measured by money. A strong social, regional or national identity and common purpose in a large, diverse and unequal land is increasingly lacking.

      In the 2020 presidential election, America might be about to emulate Kenya. Political passions run so strong that the threat of violence looms high. Not since the Civil War ended in 1865 has America been so divided. The reputation of a country long considered the most promising in the world faces damage, if not ruin.

      The Mother of All Elections

      Michael Hirsh, the deputy news editor of Foreign Policy, thinks this is the most important election ever. It is more important than the seminal elections of 1800, 1860 and 1932. These led to the triumphs of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt respectively, changing the course of history. In each of these elections, America was divided but managed to hold together and move forward.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Hirsh argues that the 2020 election is the most significant because President Donald Trump has damaged institutions of American democracy to such a degree that the future of “the 244-year-old American experiment of a republic of laws” is at stake.” He blames Trump for openly encouraging racial violence, stoking division and failing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

      Hirsh reflects the unease of many members of the American elite. For a long time, they have self-consciously thought of themselves as a modern-day Rome. Now, they fear that America could end up “as just another abject discard on the ash heap of failed republics going back to ancient Rome and Greece.”

      As during the times of the Cold War, Americans fear an enemy. This time it is another communist country, a former ally named the People’s Republic of China. Hirsh believes the US is stumbling precisely at “a moment when [it] has lost its material preponderance” to China. Its “central place in stabilizing the global system” is on the ballot.

      The Economist shares Hirsh’s view. It makes a case for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in a breezy editorial that seems to have been penned in the Oxford Union. It declares Biden not to be the miracle cure for what is ailing America but a good man needed to “restore steadiness and civility to the White House.”

      Media organizations from The New York Times to The Times of India agree upon the importance of the 2020 election. They have published millions of words on the subject and sought out pollsters to predict the election outcome. As the day of reckoning draws nigh, campaigning has reached fever pitch. Candidates for the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House are all summing up their final arguments to Americans who have not voted yet. Even as citizens go to the polls on November 3, the Senate has confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority over liberals. Everything is on the ballot in 2020, including and especially the courts.

      To understand the presidential election, it might be useful to cast our eyes to an event 30 years ago. In August 1990, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein “invaded and annexed Kuwait.” The US swung into action to liberate an oil-rich country that its cash-poor neighbor had gobbled. Hussein threatened “the mother of all battles” but suffered abject defeat. This was a heady time for the US. The Berlin Wall had fallen. George H.W. Bush had come to the White House promising “a kinder and gentler nation” and “no new taxes.” Ronald Reagan’s revolution of getting the government off people’s backs and bringing the Soviet Union to its knees seemed to have succeeded. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had collapsed.

      President Bush had presided over the ultimate triumph of America. The dreaded Cold War with its specter of nuclear destruction was finally over. America’s liberal democracy and free market economy were deemed the only way forward. Francis Fukuyama waxed lyrical about the end of history and humanity was supposed to enter the gates of paradise, with all earthlings securing unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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      After a spectacular victory in the Gulf and the glorious subjugation of the Soviet Union, Bush should have romped to victory in the 1992 election. Instead, he lost. The economy had been slowing and deficits had been growing, forcing Bush to raise taxes. Many Americans went apoplectic. They could not forgive the president for breaking his promise. There was unease even then with the new era of globalization that Bush kicked off.

      In that election, Texan billionaire Ross Perot made a dash for the White House campaigning against this brave new world. He warned against “shipping millions of jobs overseas” because of “one-way trade agreements.” Perot argued that countries with lower wages, lesser health care or retirement benefits and laxer environmental laws would attract factories away from American shores. With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the cards, Perot famously predicted “there will be a giant sucking sound going south.” Perot did not win, but he took enough votes away from Bush to pave Bill Clinton’s primrose path to the White House.

      In 2020, Trump is running for a second term as Perot’s angry child. He has jettisoned “bad” trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Biden is the successor to Bush and Clinton. He was vice president when the US negotiated the TPP. The die is cast for a clash between two radically different visions for the future.

      Who Will Win?

      In 2016, I had an uncanny feeling that both Brexit and Trump’s triumph were not only possible but probable. In February that year, I examined the UK’s troubled marriage with Europe and argued that British Prime Minister David Cameron had promised more than he delivered, which would cause him problems later. In July, I posited that we could soon be living in the age of Trump because of increasing inequality and rising rage against entrenched elites.

      I followed the two articles with a talk at Google in August on the global rise of the far right. Aggrieved by the superciliousness of journalists based in New York and Washington, I resonated deeply with the “left-behind” voters. They believed that American elites had turned rapaciously parasitic and sanctimoniously hypocritical. It seemed inevitable that some Pied Piper would lead a populist reaction.

      In 2020, I do not have my finger on the pulse in the same way as in 2016. Social distancing and limited travel in the era of COVID-19 has made it difficult to estimate what really is going on. Besides, Americans say radically different things depending on which candidate they support. Often, they are very guarded or say little, making it hard to judge what is truly happening.

      Democrats seem convinced that the nation is horrified by four years of a Trump presidency. They see him as crass, racist, misogynist, dishonest and deeply dangerous. Democrats believe that Americans will punish Trump for damaging institutions, spreading hatred and lowering the dignity of his office. Opinion polls give the Democratic Party a handsome lead even in some key battleground swing states. Pollsters were wrong in 2016, but they might have improved their methods since. Therefore, Democrats believe that they could retain their majority in the House of Representatives, flip the Senate and win back the White House.

      Republicans do not seem to have much faith in these polls. Many are confident of another close victory. They predict losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College. Republican strategists are banking on the silent white vote to turn out in their favor. Many voters are uncomfortable with the Black Lives Matter movement, calls to “defund the police” and prospects of higher taxes. They fear Biden to be a Trojan horse for the culture warriors of the far left led by Kamala Harris, his running mate. They worry about identity politics and the strains it places on the social fabric. Republicans also hope to pick up minority support from Hispanics who oppose abortion, Indians who back Trump’s good friend Narendra Modi, Taiwanese who hate China and others.

      Making Sense of Donald Trump

      When I speak to Americans, one thing is clear. This election is a referendum on President Trump. His manifest flaws have been chronicled by numerous publications and innumerable late-night comedy shows. Yet Trump still retains the trust of many Americans. Why?

      The best answer came from some militia members I spoke to in West Virginia. They conceded that Trump lies but gave him credit for telling one big truth: Things had turned much too ugly for far too many people like them. 

      Some of these militia members were veterans who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were filled with a burning sense of injustice. These gentlemen had withering contempt for the likes of Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton who served President George W. Bush. They viewed wars abroad as a criminal waste of American blood and treasure. These war veterans pointed out that Bremer, Wolfowitz and Bolton had been courtiers who climbed up the Washington greasy pole without ever serving in uniform. They remarked that Bush himself was a draft dodger who wriggled out of serving in Vietnam because of his father but sent others to die on foreign shores.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These West Virginians went on to say that their children had few prospects. Since 1991, working-class jobs have left for China. So, their children need a good education to compete for the few decent jobs in the services sector. However, they study in schools with few resources and overstretched teachers.

      The militia members’ argument is simple but powerful. Only children who study in private schools or state schools in districts where houses cost a million dollars or more get into top universities, which cost a mere $300,000 or so for an undergraduate degree. Affluent foreign students also make a beeline for America after high school. Such is the competition that most parents hire expensive admissions consultants for their children. So, those who come from hardworking ordinary American families are simply outgunned.

      The celebrated entrepreneurs of the US might be dropouts, but top corporates hire largely, if not exclusively, from top universities. The West Virginians pointed out that, before Barrett’s nomination, “all nine justices of the nation’s highest court would have attended law school at either Yale or Harvard universities.” Those who go to posh schools and top universities effortlessly enter the cushy salaried class. They can walk in and buy a million-dollar home with a tiny down payment. All they need apart from their job is a good credit score. In contrast, ordinary Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

      One militia member went on to discuss the bailout in some detail. He told me he had voted for change twice but got more of the same instead. This gentleman blamed President Barack Obama for caving in to Wall Street. He said veterans struggled to get by while bankers got big bonuses from taxpayer money. For him, this showed that Democrats had sold out to Wall Street. He declared that fortunes of the new feudal superclass have been made through the serfdom of an ever-increasing underclass. In his memorable words, the system has “f**ked us over. Now, we will f**k it up.”

      The West Virginians brought to life many arguments I have made over the last decade. In July 2013, I argued that increasing inequality, lack of access to quality education and an erosion of liberty were chipping away at the very basis of the American dream. Over the years, I have cited many studies that chronicled how America was becoming more unequal. In fact, inequality of both income and wealth has worsened even more during the COVID-19 pandemic. Note the economy has tanked but stock markets have stayed high. Social mobility continues to plummet. Poverty is shooting up dramatically. So is hunger. Surviving the terrible American nightmare has become more of a reality than achieving the great American dream.

      Such developments have led to much anger. In an eloquent interview, Trump supporter-turned-opponent Anthony Scaramucci explained why the president won the support of the white working class in places like West Virginia, Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016. For this class, the television celebrity was “an avatar to express their anger.” In rural and suburban areas, blighted factory towns and rundown neighborhoods, Trump was the “orange wrecking ball” to “disrupt and change the system.”

      Another interview by Trump’s former strategist, Steve Bannon, is equally instructive. He rightly says that the American economy is no longer based on capitalism but on neo-feudalism. This former Goldman Sachs highflier argues that the underclass and the superclass don’t pay for anything. The working and middle class are left taking the tab. Quantitative easing (QE) might have saved the economy from collapse but has largely benefited the wealthy. In a clever turn of phrase, Bannon calls QE the bailing out of the guilty who had crashed the system itself. Trump is a “very imperfect instrument” for this populist revolt.

      Likable Uncle Joe and Dancing Kamala

      Many Republicans tell me that they like Biden. They think he is a good and likable man. These folks have reservations about his son Hunter but admire his late son Beau who served in the US Army. However, Republicans fear Biden could be turning senile and Harris would be the real power behind the throne. They reserve their special ire for Harris who they damn for practicing identity politics. Even many Democrats are uncomfortable about her cozy relationships with the Silicon Valley mafia who Americans feel care more about India than Indiana. 

      For many Republicans, Harris is a disingenuous elitist who plays the race card to win votes and sympathy. She had no compunctions putting young black men into jail for minor crimes as a prosecutor to further her political career. They detest the fact that Harris played the race card against Biden during the Democratic presidential primaries. She made a big deal about his opposition to mandatory busing of colored children to largely white schools. Now, Harris is merrily dancing her way to the White House on a presidential ticket with the same man she excoriated not too long ago. Politics is a bloodsport, but some find Harris a bit too canny and bloodthirsty.

      Biden’s supporters take a different view. They think he is still in good health and has good judgment. As per The Economist, the former vice president is “a centrist, an institutionalist, a consensus-builder.” He is exactly what the doctor ordered for a deeply-traumatized nation. Biden will not only steer the Democratic Party forward but also get rid of the scourge of Trump for the Republicans. Decency and civility will return to public life and the White House. Many point to Biden’s impassioned 1986 speech against the Reagan administration’s support for the South African apartheid regime as evidence of his deep commitment to equality and justice.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Democrats see reservations against Harris as evidence of America’s deep-seated sexism and racism. With Indian and Jamaican parents, Harris is multiracial like Obama. For many, she is the future of America. She could be the first woman vice president, breaking the key glass ceiling. Immigrants like her parents provide America the talent to stay top dog. As long as Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk and John Oliver make a beeline for America, Uncle Sam will triumph over the Middle Kingdom.

      Democrats make good arguments for the Biden-Harris ticket, but they lack the passion Trump supporters displayed. The fervor of the 2008 Barack Obama or the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaigns is distinctly missing. Democrats are not offering a clear vision or a program for the future. They are running on kicking out Trump and restoring American democracy. It remains to be seen if this will enthuse working-class voters to switch their support to the party of Roosevelt.

      Another Battle in a Long War

      Both Biden and Trump have declared they are fighting for America’s soul. It is the mother of all battles in what could prove to be a protracted war. The country is now economically, educationally, socially, culturally and virtually divided. The division that cable news networks exacerbated a few decades ago is now on steroids thanks to social media. Algorithms have created filter bubbles and echo chambers. People see more and more of the same. In the post-truth world of fake news, people cannot even agree upon basic facts.

      In this unequal and polarized world, institutions are falling short. Congressmen who face reelection every two years are constantly fundraising. They have little time to write laws or hold the executive accountable. Senators often stick around forever, some until they die. Partisanship is so intense that little gets done. Judges are increasingly appointed on partisan grounds and this is damaging their legitimacy.

      At the heart of the matter is a simple question: What holds America together? Bannon has a point when he says that immigration and trade benefit the affluent by lowering costs and raising profits. If hedge funds in Greenwich, Connecticut and internet oligopolies in Silicon Valley, California invest globally and move money through complex legal structures in different countries, what do they have in common with a plumber in Hattiesburg, Mississippi or a carpenter in Great Falls, Montana?

      After the ethnic cleansing in 2007-08, Kenyan leaders signed a power-sharing agreement and the country drifted back to normalcy. As Kenya gears up for elections in 2022, fear and loathing are in the air again. The dormant divisions in this former colony threaten to erupt. The same is true for America. Young black men suffer violent policing and mass incarceration in America’s unjust criminal justice system. The white working class feels betrayed. The woke generation wants to upend the old social order. Feminists want to burn down the patriarchy. Catholics and evangelicals aim to outlaw abortion. With America’s different tribes pulling in different directions, things are truly held together with string.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More