Permanent Disruption
I recently read an article by Walter Russell Meade in Foreign Affairs, “The Big Shift: How American Democracy Fails its Way to Success.” I usually like reading Meade, who is good at putting today’s problems in perspective. In this case he compares our politically impoverished, feels-like-we’re-puppets-of-our-corporate-masters present to the period after the Civil War, when the US was birthing massive new industries and government seemed unable to keep up. Meade thinks the information sector is playing this role today. His optimistic point is that in the first half of the 20th century government did catch up. The US generated laws and institutions to regulate big business, while deploying some of our new national wealth to help the old and the poor. We can do that again, Meade promises. Harvard polymath Stephen Pinker on a grander scale offers the same promise in his new book, Enlightenment Now, which argues that if we trust in the scientific method and build on the progress of the past several centuries, all our problems can be overcome.
This is a useful view, and has some truth to it. But when I read Meade and Pinker I get a sinking feeling. Their framework is reassuring, telling us we are in a temporary ‘period of transition’ and eventually we’ll get our feet under us and restore some kind of normalcy. Only that isn’t what seems to happen, and will probably never happen. Is there anyone who believes we are moving from a stable time when peasants worked the land under the thumb of rich autocrats to a new equally stable time characterized by…what? Factory workers marching off in the morning with their lunch pails and coming home at night on the trolley? Office workers driving in from the suburbs and returning to a nice martini? Twenty-somethings in remote workstations logging into their latest gig jobs?
No. The disruption from our capitalist system and constant scientific and technological advances is never-ending. Meade glosses over the slight 20th century hiccups of communism and fascism, both of them attempts to exploit the chronic insecurity and anxiety caused in normal human beings by this endless churn. Communism promised a new order, overseen by all-wise technocrats, that would permanently alter the distribution of economic and social rewards to the benefit of all. And part of the attraction was that it would be a one-off: once the world was cleansed (violently and irrevocably) of the old order, the new order would last forever. Fascism was to do the same: cleanse the world of the inferior races and put the world under the boot of its rightful rulers, and you have the 1000 year Reich. They failed, so good for us, but it was a near thing, and the underlying sources of fear and anxiety—the loss of control and predictability over our daily lives, the risk of losing everything from random economic or scientific changes, the upending of social and cultural norms—have not gone away.
I am generally sympathetic to the progressive response, which is to use an active government to smooth out the inevitable ups and downs of the modern world with a variety of programs to guarantee basics like healthcare, housing, education, and a respectable income. The United States can and should do a much better job in all these areas. I think this would help buffer us from the excesses of populism. Let’s go all the way and implement some form of Basic Minimum Income. But I am not Panglossian about this. European states that offer a lot more public support than the US are also being buffeted. This is because the sources of anxiety are as much cultural as economic. The threats posed by immigration and demography and technology cannot be fully overcome by more social programs. And there is no realistic prospect of a resting place; no one can promise that once we deal with the Dreamers, or take down all the Civil War statues, or get over it and offer universal healthcare, that disruptive change will be over. No, we all realize with more or less clarity that climate change is coming, that the robots are coming, that a multicultural (and much older) society is coming, that gene-splicing is coming, that sneaky new ways for corporations and politicians to manipulate us are coming , and on and on. And as these waves of disruption threaten to break over us, we become more anxious and more susceptible to the siren songs of thugs and bullies and clever power-mongers.
Meade and Pinker would tell us, and are right to tell us, that these challenges pale in comparison with what our ancestors faced every day. Thanks to economic and political advances we don’t generally have to worry about starving to death if it’s a bad winter, or dying from minor infections, or being raped and pillaged by invading Mongols. But most people are not reassured by being told they should stop complaining about today’s problems because it used to be worse. Their sense of well-being comes from their expectations for now, and their experience with other people more or less like themselves.
Our responses fall along a spectrum from full-blown reaction, digging in our heels to Make America Great Again; to embracing the Brave New World. The former leads to Trumpism and the rule of thugs and bullies, the latter to an equally obnoxious but so far unnamed syndrome that we might call Zuckerbergism: don’t fight the manipulation and exploitation of your identity by the gods of Silicon Valley. Just relax. Make more friends on Facebook.
As is often the case, the extremes meet and reinforce one another. The Cambridge Analytica fiasco has shown that using the most sophisticated technology tools in the service of reactionary politics is well-advanced.
Today we have a political divide that is incoherent from the perspective of managing the inevitable arrival of the new. There is a liberal/progressive movement that wants to do more to support families economically and limit the power of corporations and special interests, but also favors aggressive efforts to expand rights for minorities and women and immigrants. There is a conservative/reactionary movement that wants to slow or roll back the expansion of individual rights and the flow of immigrants, but favors leaving individuals at the mercy of the market and encouraging the continued rise in inequality and corporate rights.
Populism can be seen as an attempt to combine liberal economics with a conservative social agenda. As practiced by Trump and his supporters, however, it has been wholly captured on the economic front by Paul Ryan’s neoliberal orthodoxy, leaving its appeal to rest entirely on its resistance to cultural change. In other words, it is standard-issue modern conservatism, but with an ugly edge that often crosses the line into outright racism and xenophobia.
How should we think about this? If the progressive economic agenda is a good thing from the standpoint of managing economic change and enabling citizens to cope with the radical uncertainty of modern life, is there also a case to be made for a slower, more deliberate approach to cultural change? This is a difficult nut to crack, because any such call easily plays into the hands of people who want no change at all. On some issues, such as the status of African-Americans, I would argue there is no room for anything but maximum pressure. Racism has such a deep hold in America that it requires uncompromising straight talk and radical measures, like the new National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery.
Other issues, however, are less straightforward. Immigration is an area where I think the reluctance of political leaders to manage the flow of immigrants (the result of overlapping pressure from business and progressive activists) has led to an unnecessary crisis. There is no excuse for demonizing immigrants as people, but it is not incompatible with liberal values to agree that every society has some limits on the numbers and types of people it can accept without excessive strain. Anger over immigration is the number one driver of today’s dangerous populism in both the US and Europe—responsible politicians should have done more to prevent this from happening. More limits 20 years ago would have headed off today’s enthusiasm for a Wall.
Support for rural and small town America is another area where we have not done enough as a nation. Economic dislocation has combined with disdain from urban elites to create a burning sense of anger and frustration. Does everyone have to drink soy lattes and live in a downtown loft? There are signs that ambitious youth and new companies are leaving over-priced coastal cities and striking out for the heartland. Let’s encourage this.
While racism and xenophobia are front and center in motivating populist reactionaries, anger over women’s rights is close behind. Male resentment at the rising assertiveness of women is a major driver behind the alt-right, not to mention Hillary’s loss. At the risk of angry hate-mail, I think this is a problem we need to take seriously. Young men, especially the less-educated, are having a hard time finding their way in modern society and are angry when they see women getting ahead. Many women understandably think this is a non-problem. We don’t want to reinforce patriarchy. But disgruntled, alienated young men are easy recruits into the worst kind of political movements. We need public service and apprenticeship programs aimed at finding meaningful work for men who are falling through the cracks.
There is, in short, lots of room for new political movements that don’t oppose change per se, but focus on ways to soften the impact and spread the benefits widely. Dealing better with economic change is crucial. But we also need to recognize and address sympathetically new challenges to identity, meaning, and status.