Today, in the sixth essay about the loss of America’s sense of common good, I want to summarize where we’ve come by focusing on one of the worst consequences of the loss: The emergence of Trumpism, and of the despair that has led so many Americans to give up on democracy.
Starting next week, in the seventh essay of this series, I’ll talk about what I believe we can and should do to resurrect the common good.
It is easy for many of us to condemn fellow Americans who have succumbed to the lies and thuggery of Donald Trump. It’s convenient for us to assume they’re ignorant, or racist, or gullible fools.
But what if their willingness to believe and support Trump is understandable, given what has happened to them? I’m not suggesting it’s justifiable, only that it may be explicable.
As we have seen, many of the key political and economic institutions of our society have abandoned their commitments to the common good — and along the way, abandoned the bottom half of the adult population, especially those without […]
An excellent article, documenting the touchpoints of America’s decline. As the article states: “All of this has taken a profound toll on public trust. Much of the public no longer believes that the major institutions of America are working for the many; they are vessels for the few.” Not to be too pedantic, this is not an issue of religion, of whether one believes or does not believe. It is a just a cold hard fact that public institutions are not operating in the public interest, and this is documented thoroughly in the literature on regulatory capture.
As the article further states: “When the game is widely seen as rigged in favor of those at the top, society shifts from a system of mutual obligations to a system of private deals. Rather than be founded in the common good, political and social relationships increasingly are viewed as contracts whose participants seek to do as well as possible, often at the expense of others (workers, consumers, the community, the public) who are not at the table.” Again, this is just a fact. This has nothing to do with feelings, and it is the result of decades of bipartisan efforts in favor of the wealthy. When the population is stuck in an non-representative republic where true choice is forestalled to voting “for the lesser of two evils” the only outcome will be evil, and we are seeing the results.
Lastly: ” Donald Trump proclaimed that “the system is rigged against the citizens.” Trump added that he was the only candidate “who cannot be bought”— a refrain he repeated all the way to the White House. And in his inaugural speech in January 2017, he charged:
The author is correct in that it is far too easy to maintain that Trump supporters are racist and ignorant, and that is why they vote as the have. To maintain this is a cop-out for the Democratic establishment as it facilitates a lack of introspection for fielding poor candidates, as well as for past and current policy failures.