Has America’s fever broken?
An optimist could make a case. Donald Trump, the
central figure in America’s febrile ailment, was further tarnished this past
week, including by the conviction of his company for fraud. Trump was not
personally in the dock, but his reputation was — and the fraud involved checks
he personally signed.
اضافة اعلان
Meanwhile, the Senate Republican candidate whom
Trump anointed in Georgia was defeated Tuesday. That came after a midterm
election in which some prominent Trump-backed candidates were trounced.
Trump’s willingness to socialize with Nazi
sympathizers and his calls for a suspension of the Constitution also suggest
that he is marching into extremist territory in a way that may leave him
marginalized and less of a threat to the country. My own bet is that in the
next presidential term from 2025 to 2029, there is more chance that Trump’s
federal housing will involve a prison than the White House.
But I may be wrong — and I worry that it is
premature to argue that the national fever has broken. We as a nation still
face arguably the greatest peril since the end of Reconstruction, for three
reasons.
First, remember that this extremism goes beyond
Trump and even beyond the US. Italy has just installed a far-right prime
minister whose party has its roots in neo-fascism, a reminder that the fever
persists globally.
Second, even when Trump broke bread with Holocaust
deniers and then urged a suspension of the constitution, congressional
Republicans mostly looked the other way. When leaders of one of our major
political parties struggle to defend the constitution or condemn neo-Nazis, America
still feels feverish.
Third and most fundamentally, our political
dysfunction is driven in complex ways by a broader economic and social
dysfunction and despair, one that we fail to grapple with effectively.
A few metrics of our national crisis:
— We are now losing roughly 300,000 Americans a year
to drugs, alcohol and suicide in “deaths of despair”. The social fabric of
innumerable families and countless communities (including my own) has been
unraveling.
— About 1 in 7 prime-age men (ages 25 to 54), historically
the pillar of the US labor force, are not working today. We do not fully
understand why, but it’s not because jobs don’t exist; there are 1.7 job
openings for each unemployed worker.
— Life expectancy for a newborn boy in Mississippi
appears to be shorter than for a newborn boy in Bangladesh.
— When so many adults are struggling, the problems
are transmitted to the next generation. Every 19 minutes, a child is born with
a dependence on opioids, and 1 in 8 American children is growing up with a parent
with a substance use disorder.
The coronavirus pandemic also seems to have
aggravated loneliness and mental health problems, even as it has led to
shortages of front-line workers to help them. Children suffering mental health
crises are sometimes housed for days or weeks in hospital emergency rooms
because there are no other beds available.
One doctor told me of a troubled 15-year-old boy in
Oregon who was kept for two months in emergency rooms and then finally shipped
to New Jersey when a bed opened up there.
Life expectancy for a newborn boy in Mississippi appears to be shorter than for a newborn boy in Bangladesh.
The problems are far from hidden, even if we do not
fully understand the connections or pathologies. Walk by a homeless encampment
in Portland, Oregon, or San Francisco; or visit a neonatal ward in West
Virginia where newborn babies are crying because of a dependency on opioids; or
chat with Idahoans who believe that leading Democrats are part of a Satanic
cult trafficking in babies.
We may not full understand how socioeconomic crises
build support for conspiracy theories and for authoritarian leaders, but the
linkage is not new. That is part of the story of the rise of fascism in
Germany, Italy and Spain between the world wars. The great social philosopher
Erich Fromm described in his masterwork, “Escape from Freedom”, how a people
buffeted by insecurity and social isolation may turn to authoritarianism, with
the promise of greatness and a path of certainty.
We in journalism pay close attention to politics.
But I do not think we pay sufficient attention to the larger social problems
that shape ideology or, as today, drive authoritarianism and extremism. While
support for authoritarian candidates is particularly pronounced in the white
working class, it has also gained ground among working-class people of color.
People have agency, of course, and none of this is
to excuse either the extremism or the bigotry that often escorts it. But if we
want to solve problems in the political world, it may help to recognize that in
the US, in Italy, in Britain, the problems begin upstream from politics. They
begin upstream even from Trump. And unless we tackle them more seriously — I
would suggest investments in early childhood, in education, in mental health,
in fighting addiction — I fear we will not resolve either our social mess or
our political one.
So I would like to say that the fever is broken, but that
seems premature. We cannot confidently heal America’s body politic unless we do
a better job treating our nation’s broader social and economic dysfunction.
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