Americans have the proverbial angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. The angel speaks for democracy, human rights, and equity. The devil urges authoritarianism and the hateful narrow self-interest of the empowered. Both evoke latent values among Americans.
Virulent racism coupled with out-for-you-selfism competes with decency and a strong sense of social responsibility for the public’s identification.
Which values will prevail and guide consequential legislative and judicial action? Which will win most public allegiance. If history is any guide, it depends on who organizes most effectively to capture the on-my-side confidence, attention, and energy of voters who then pressure elected officials to act. Keep in mind that politicians don’t lead. They follow. To be sure, the voices of struggling working people compete with the powerful influence of campaign contributions of the empowered. In response, elected officials will make decisions or fail to act at all.
A determining variable is that we all crave security and abhor its opposite. Whoever seems to offer the best promise of security wins our allegiance. We are certainly living through a sustained rough period of insecurity without a clear end in sight. Frankly, on a day-to-day basis, between worrying about the latest ever more infectious Covid-19 variant and paying the bills, it’s been destabilizing for too many of us. The triple plagues of pandemic fear, economic insecurity, and climate disruption leave us with little if any solid ground. Throw in mob violence, mass shootings, the judicial and legislative threats to abortion, voting rights, and environmental regulation, and we feel under siege.
This is not new. It just has gotten way worse. The forces that ensure inequity and precariousness for everyone except the wealthy have been with us for a very long time. Persistently, historically denied minorities continue to be hit the hardest. That leaves some of us identifying with the most vulnerable and others resenting whatever paltry help is available to a few but not the rest of us. It is up to local organizing and the political response whether the public turns toward a unifying we are in this together or the divisive blame of available scapegoats. So far, the overwhelming Democratic response to support the former has been underwhelming whereas Republican activism toward the latter is alarmingly consistent and strong.
So, let’s recall what over the years brought us some measure of comfort from the pressures of economic and social dislocation amidst barely restrained corporate power and globalization. Going back to the Great Depression in the 1930s, it was local, national, and union organizing and subsequent progressive power to pressure on politicians that gave us financial regulation, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the right to organize unions and collective bargaining protections of the National Labor Relations Act. In response to the rise of fascism and depression, President Roosevelt declared four freedoms, including speech and religion, as well as freedom from fear and want. This was not just a policy declaration. It was a firm values assertion at the highest level of government. Response to public pressure was what put people to work during the Great Depression through federally supported programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corp and the Works Progress Administration.
Similarly, in the 1960s civil rights legislation, federal funding for housing, food stamps, education, and Medicare and Medicaid were also a result of organized pressure on politicians. These victories for human rights depended on the assertion of a set of ideas and values: Scarcity and inequity are the results of decisions not the nature of human relations. They are not inevitable. When we take responsibility for one another’s wellbeing we all benefit.
Let's also remember that Republicans have always opposed the enactment of policies that shift power from the wealthy to the rest of us. That's why they fought the New Deal and the 1960s social and economic advances of the Great Society, its War on Poverty, any subsequent efforts at environmental regulation, or controlling the use of fossil fuel to combat climate change. It is why they are consistently anti-union and always oppose any worker protections.
Most folks identify with the common good. Alternatively, the only good that Republican leadership consistently support is what is good for the wealthy. As a result, their opposition to measures that help people requires the subterfuge of deflecting blame for insecurity to undermine the idea that government can act on behalf of the common good.
A substantial shift in the thinking of many Americans following World War II and the Holocaust presented Republicans with a dilemma. Nazi genocide delegitimized virulent inequity and brutal national aggression. Worldwide anti-colonial movements for national independence, civil rights, and democracy gained broad acceptance. However, these movements and protests against the Vietnam war threatened entrenched power, while globalization and automation undermined the security of working-class Americans. Republicans chose to exacerbate, stir, and benefit from that insecurity.
Beginning with the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, the Republican electoral strategy strove to activate and draw votes from the true believers: Christian religious zealots bent on imposing their beliefs on everyone; white superiority believers and resenters, determined to protect their privileges as long as possible; and, free-market ideologues committed to maximum advantage for “them that’s got” and to eliminate as much public investment in general wellbeing as will be tolerated. However, the bulk of the Republican leaders are not true believers. Like Trump, McConnell, and their corporate supporters, they are instrumentalists. Their only unshakable principle is increasing the wealth and power of the few. For them, democracy is not just expendable. It is now an obstacle because the demographics and the values of most Americans are not on their side. In response, Republicans increasingly lie without a hint of shame. Pandering to the true believers–for whom they have contempt–is their tool. As a result, of all that playing to the believers, they are now joined at the hip, because protecting the instrumentalists’ wealth and power agenda is not what most Americans want. If Republicans stop pandering to the true believers, they’d have too few supporters to get elected.
Core conservative ideas are not naturally popular ideas with most folks, leaving entrenched power with three alternatives: Limit the voting power of those inclined to vote against wealth-friendly candidates, promote disunity among potential opposition groups through fear and racism, and most important, influence normative ideas and values. Those animating ideas include: Inequity and scarcity are inevitable; Government has no business limiting inequity or unrestrained wealth accumulation; and, Don’t concern yourself with anyone else’s wellbeing.
We cannot permit those values to prevail. So, I need to cling, however desperately, to the hope that somehow, we can rekindle a unified multiracial struggle centered on enacting measures that will benefit us all. That, I am convinced, is the only way forward. A substantial tax on wealth to pay for it is already popular. Organizing for a robust government response to the housing and healthcare affordability crises, fighting to ensure a real living wage for all workers, restraining the precariousness of the gig economy, stopping the draining of funding for high-quality public education and the attacks on educator professionalism, all seem prime targets for struggles that pull people together across differences.
As the song goes, freedom is a constant struggle.
Arthur H. Camins is a lifelong educator. He writes about education and social justice. He works part-time with curriculum developers at UC Berkeley as an assessment specialist. He has taught and been an administrator in New York City, Massachusetts, and Louisville, Kentucky. The ideas expressed in this article are his alone.
Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/arthurcamins
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