The Deep Roots of the Divisions in 2021 America

After the American Century

The year 2020 was one of explosive tensions in the United States. An already polarized society confronted the COVID-19 pandemic, the massive unemployment that came with it, and widespread social protest in response to violence against unarmed Black men and women. It also was an election year, where billions of dollars were spent on advertising, much of it negative. What kind of America has emerged from this turbulence? 

To answer this question, I have written a book divided into three parts. The first three chapters examine different ways in which the United States is divided. I begin by examining the historical experience of the six generations of Americans alive in 2020. Each has faced different childhoods, defining moments, economic conditions, and international tensions. Those who grew up with the Cold War have a different perspective from those born before or  afterwards. People who listened to Frank Sinatra when young are not the same as those who grew up with the Beatles or with rap music.  

After surveying the generations, I turn to the gaps between social classes, which have widened since c. 1974. For 35 years before then (from 1939 until 1974) both the middle class and the working class experienced rising real incomes. This meant that more people owned houses that increased in value, and these homes were filled with an ever wider range of consumer goods.  But after that wages barely managed to keep up with inflation, while housing prices soared.   

The rising inequality was not evenly distributed. Some cities, notably Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington DC, have boomed, while other cities have struggled, as their industries declined. Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, and many other cities lost jobs and population. In regional terms, the Pacific Coast, the South and Southwest grew, while much of the Middle West and the Northeast stagnated or declined. In all of the regions, moreover, rural areas lost population, and drifted toward the right-wing of the Republican Party, while urban areas became more Democratic. By 2016, this meant that Hillary Clinton won almost every urban county, while Donald Trump won in almost every rural county.

At the same time, tensions between races increased, because Black and Brown Americans were not willing to remain second-class citizens. Nor were gays willing to accept being defined as deviants or mentally ill. Through the courts they successfully fought for the right to be married and enjoy all the privileges that come with officially recognized family status, such as pensions and the rights of inheritance. Women likewise fought to gain full equality. All of these struggles upset conservative Americans who wanted to retain the racial and gender roles they knew from their childhood, and which they felt were the natural order of society. Evangelicals in particular resisted new gender roles, equality for racial minorities, and a multicultural society. These religious groups, as well as those who felt the pinch of economic inequality, embraced Donald Trump as their savior. 

The second section looks at the ways Americans traditionally have been united, notably through business, the media, religion, and civil religion. Yet all of these institutions have been weakened or riven with conflict in recent decades, undermining consensus. In the old industrial economy, steel mills, automobile plants, and oil companies remained dominant for most of the twentieth century. But by the 1990s this economy began to give way to an emerging digital economy. From c. 1920 until 2000 the largest corporations supplied oil, built automobiles, made home appliances, etc. But these companies stagnated or declined compared to Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google, and biotech firms. The old analogue economy still exists, but the smart money is not invested in oil, steel, gasoline cars, or anything merely physical like coal, sand, cement, or wood. In the new economy, capital is invested in knowledge, as embodied in computer chips, software, data, algorithms, security codes, cyber currency, new drugs, vaccines, patented DNA, formulas, virtual reality and other almost intangible goods. Apple is worth more than General Motors; Amazon is bigger than any oil company. This new digital economy bewilders many older Americans but seems natural to the young. Moreover, this new economy only works for those with education beyond high school. There are fewer jobs on assembly lines and more behind computer screens. As late as the 1970s the semiskilled could earn a good living, but their wages declined after that. 

Religious differences are also pronounced in the United States. On the one side are the highly educated; on the other side are Americans whose ideas seem to be from c. 1875. Polls reveal that a majority of Americans believe in miracles (73%), in the virgin birth of Jesus (57%) and in the existence of the Devil (58%). Less than half believe in the theory of evolution (47%). Indeed, Darwin’s theory seems to have even less support than this number suggests, because only three in ten Americans definitely reject the idea that God created men and women in their present form, as described in the Bible. This belief in “creationism” is often accompanied by the idea that the earth is only 10,000 years old. No less than 69% of Americans say they either believe in creationism or they are “not sure.” These are people ready to vote for a populist like Donald Trump.

The polarization of Americans is just as evident in American civil religion.  Americans long had an honor-roll of sacred texts, battlefields, natural sites, and buildings that represented the nation. Some of these, such as the Statue of Liberty still play this role. But increasingly Americans cannot agree about which statues should stand in public squares or what texts should be honored. 

Likewise, some Americans, many of them in the South, cherish the Confederate flag carried by the rebels in the Civil War. After defeat, that flag of rebellion was seldom flown in public. However, it was revived and became a symbol of resistance to racial integration during the Civil Rights Movement. In South Carolina, the Confederate flag was raised over the state capitol in 1961 to commemorate the centennial of the first battle of the Civil War, which began in Charleston. It remained in use until 2000, when it was ceremoniously moved to a monument for Confederate soldiers. 

The Confederate flag came to symbolize states’ rights, resistance to the Federal government, and White supremacy. It was often sewn on clothing and worn as a badge of honor. It was prominently displayed by right-wing organizations, and it was seen at stock car races until 2020, when it was banned. Those who display the Confederate flag in 2020 are usually Trump supporters, and it was even raised again in South Carolina’s capital. Trump defended flying that flag as a form of free speech, saying that it represents not White supremacy but love for the South. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State under George W. Bush, strongly disagreed, arguing that the Confederate States of America “were not part of us and this is not the time to keep demonstrating who they were and what they were back then.” Powell, who is Black, concluded, “We have one flag and one flag only.” But when a mob attacked the Congress of the United States in January, 2021, many of them carried Confederate flags.

The third section of the book examines the institutional problems of the American political system, the divisive election of 2020, and the state of the nation in 2021. 

For more on the topics discussed in this column, see 

End of the World?

After the American Century

I think we can now say it is official: the world did not come to an end on May 21. This was announced as a certainty in full page advertisements in many American newspapers, including USA Today, which I get slipped under my door every day in the hotel where I am staying.

This apocalyptic vision is nothing new, of course. The Puritans were certain that the end of the world was close at hand, and the first best-seller in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a "The Day of Doom" a long poem about the Last Judgement. In case you did not see the now expired prediction, it was worked out as part of a larger chronology of the history of the earth that Charles Darwin would find rather silly. It goes as follows (according to eBible fellowship)

TIMING OF IMPORTANT EVENTS IN HISTORY 

(My students should  take note, I do not endorse this chronology as a study aid for the final exam in US history)

11,013 BC—Creation. God created the world and man (Adam and Eve).  

What about the mosquito. Was it also created in 11,013 BC? And why did God not begin at number 1 and count forwards?In any case, note that on this date, too, were created all the geologic strata that apparently falsely suggest that the earth is millions of years older. No doubt these were laid down as a snare to trap godless scientists and the unredeemed of little faith.

4990 BC—The flood of Noah’s day. All perished in a worldwide flood. Only Noah, his wife, and his 3 sons and their wives survived in the ark (6023 years from creation). 

I have always wondered about the whales and the fishes (the Bible usually speaks not of fish but fishes) which should have been able to survive the flood rather easily. Also the octopi and the sharks. And what about ducks, which can paddle about quite comfortably in water?

7 BC—The year Jesus Christ was born (11,006 years from creation).  

This seems rather strange, this 7 BC. How could Christ be born 7 years before Christ (the meaning of BC)?

33 AD—The year Jesus Christ was crucified and the church age began (11,045 years from creation; 5023 calendar years from the flood).  

I am rather surprised that they think Christ was 40 years old when he died, as I had learned when preparing for confirmation that he did not live that long.

Remarkably, nothing much of note then happened for a long time!

1988 AD—This year ended the church age and began the great tribulation period of 23 years (13,000 years from creation).  

Why 1988? Because it was the end of Reagan's presidency? Because the Soviet Union was falling apart? And there seems a mistake here. Surely 1988 + 11013 would be 13,001. So the end of the "church age" should have been 1987, right? Maybe that accounted for the big drop in the stock market that year.

1994 AD—On September 7^th, the first 2300-day period of the great tribulation came to an end and the latter rain began, commencing God’s plan to save a great multitude of people outside of the churches (13,006 years from creation). 

Suddenly, we get a very specific date - September 7. Where does this come from? It seems quite arbitrary. I think it may have been Labor Day weekend. But surely the salient fact there is that the first Miss America pageant ever was held on September 7, 1921. That would be precisely 73 years before.

2011 AD—On May 21^st, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation. On October 21^st, the world will be destroyed by fire (7000 years from the flood; 13,023 years from creation)  Again, I am confused here, as 1998 + 23 does indeed equal 2011, but where did the number 23 come from? It seems to be plucked out of the air.

I suppose there is still a chance that the final consumption of the world by fire could take place on October 21. However, I want to register a complaint: the World Series of baseball is scheduled to begin on October 19, and even a four game sweep will take at least five days, with one day for travel. How can you destroy the world in the middle of the World Series? This makes no sense. It strikes me as downright un-American. [It turns out that October 21 has passed without the world being consumed by fire, which suggests a heavenlyk interest in the World Series, after all.]

I do note that October 21 (1833) is the birthday of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Peace Prize. Ending the world in fire on that particular day looks decidedly unpeaceful, and might be an unnecessarily spectacular advertisement for Nobel's explosives.  If it has to be done, though, then I propose we wait until 2033, which is the bicentennial of his birth.

But that does not solve the problem of a forever incomplete World Series.

Before 9/11 Moslems Prayed Inside the World Trade Center Every Day

After the American Century

On the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, it is important to remember that people of many faiths worked and died there, including many Muslims. They had their own prayer room on floor 17 of the South Tower. The current anger on the American Right is only possible because they have erased this information from their consciousness. They want to see the World Trade Center in religious terms that are historically incorrect and dangerously misleading. It was not a building for Christians only, and some of those who died were Muslims, some Jews, some Christians, and some not religious as well. If people from a religion died at a certain place, surely they have every right to hold religious services at or near the place.

Before September 11, 2001, the WTC was an ecumenical work place. Those who want to rewrite history pretend that only Christians suffered when the buildings came down and that Muslims have no business anywhere near the site. In fact, the WTC was a place of business for Muslims, and therefore it was a place of prayer for them as well. The American politicians and supposed religious leaders who deny these facts and stir up religious hatred shame themselves. The Muslim families who lost someone on 9/11 deserve the same respect and sympathy as all other families who were robbed of a loved one on that day.

It is estimated that 60 Muslims died in the attacks of 9/11, and in many cases their remains were never recovered. The site is their graveyard, too. Every religion should be welcome to sanctify the WTC site in remembrance of the victims.

For more on the Muslims who worked at the WTC, see the New York Times story on this.

If you burn the Koran, you are attacking Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

After the American Century

The question posed in the headline is prompted by the plan of one pastor of a small church in Florida to burn a copy of the Koran on September 11. This is base publicity seeking of the worst sort, stirring up the passions of the religious right and angering anyone who knows that it says in the American Constitution about religious freedom. 

I am not going to name this "leader" or his church, as he already has gotten so much of the publicity  he so clearly wants. In Afghanistan a crowd burned him in effigy. The American military has asked the minister to stop, because burning the Koran angers our allies and drives them into the arms of the enemy.

An ecumenical meeting in Washington of leaders from the Catholic Church, the Jewish faith, and the National Council of Churches joined Muslim leaders in condemning these attempts to fuel religious hatred. 

Thomas Jefferson thought religious freedom was so important that he drafted a law of religious freedom for the State of Virginia in 1777, in the midst of the Revolution. although it was not passed until after the victory over the British.   The law states, in part.

"WE, the General Assembly of Virginia, do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

My countrymen might contemplate these words of President Jefferson, along with the Bill of Rights, and then ask themselves: Are not Jefferson and the legislators of Virginia dishonored by the proposal to burn the scripture of any religion?

The Founders felt strongly about religious freedom. The same Virginia law concludes "the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right." 

The American Revolution was fought to preserve and protect the natural rights of American citizens. If a misguided clergyman thinks that by burning the Koran he is proclaiming his loyalty to the United States, he is sadly mistaken. He is as good as throwing into the fire Jefferson's law of religious freedom, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. Religious hatred and bigotry find no justification in American law and they insult the vision of the founders.

McCain, Yesterday's Man

After the American Century

As predicted in this Blog on 7 February, Obama won all three contests against Clinton yesterday. Taking Washington State, Nebraska, and Louisiana – all by wide margins – he has made the race even tighter. Without super delegate support, Hillary would now be behind. I will return to that race in my next Blog.

On the Republican side, the race is not quite over. Huckabee not only refuses to drop out, he won two contests yesterday. Compared to this evangelical Baptist minister with his extreme views, McCain can appear to be a centrist candidate. Indeed, a number of European newspapers are mistakenly reporting that Senator John McCain is a moderate. This is dangerous nonsense. McCain presents himself as a straight-talking maverick, and he refuses to embrace some of the issues of the rabid right. Huckabee would ban homosexual marriage, replace the Internal Revenue System with a flat tax, abolish abortion, and in general return to the United States of c. 1910, or perhaps 1880. Huckabee is so far to the right on these issues that he makes McCain look moderate by comparison. Furthermore, McCain does not want to deport all the illegal immigrants, but find a way for them to become lawful citizens. This is a sensible position. But forget about these issues. Realistically, there is little chance of the US adopting the flat tax, banning gay marriage, abolishing abortion, or evicting millions of illegal immigrants. This is the rhetorical grandstanding of the religious right that Reagan and Bush II would encourage in an election year and then pragmatically ignore afterwards.

But on other issues dear to the right wing, McCain is quite conservative. He would extend the so-called "Patriot Act" and continue the extensive use of wire-tapping. The NAACP gives him only a 7% rating on affirmative action. He believes that school prayer at the start of each day should be allowed, and also thinks religious symbols are acceptable in schools. He has given strong support to the voucher system, which would undermine public education, and would give state money to private (typically religious) schools. He strongly supports the death penalty, and he would limit the number of appeals a prisoner can make, to speed up executions. Many of his Senate votes have tried to reduce the availability of abortion and to cut funding for sex education. McCain can hardly be considered a moderate on any of these issues.

Likewise, to see the real McCain look at the war and the economy. He has voted for just about every free trade agreement, making him a strong proponent of economic globalization. He now wants to retain Bush's tax cuts for the rich, though he once voted against them. He is not about to put billions of dollars into welfare, and he would continue Bush's programs of directing welfare aid through "faith based organizations" – in effect forcing the poor into the arms of the religious right. At times McCain has been a critic of the conduct of the Iraq war, but he has never been a critic of the war itself. To the contrary, McCain embraced the war from the beginning. He saw Saddam Hussein as "a threat of the first order," and he asserted that the UN program of weapon inspection had not worked. He voted to give Bush the power to go to war, and he championed the fallacious idea that a war would bring democracy to the Middle East. Two weeks before the invasion began, he declared that that the people of Iraq would welcome it as their liberation. [Speech to the Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2/13/03] 

While he had some differences with the Bush Administration over the conduct of the war, he embraced the neo-conservative idea that the invasion would "send the message throughout the Middle East that democracy can take hold in the Middle East." He also long supported Donald Rumsfeld. After the Abu Ghraib scandal he was asked if Rumsfeld should continue as Secretary of Defence. He replied, "I believe he's done a fine job. He's an honorable man." In Derry, New Hampshire (3 January 2008) McCain declared that the occupation of Iraq will continue, if necessary, for "100 years." McCain is an officer, however, and he has not always supported the veterans as much as the Administration. In 2006 he was one of 13 senators who voted against appropriating $430 million for inpatient and outpatient veteran care.

If McCain becomes president, the world can expect a leader who seeks military solutions to political problems, including those rooted in religious differences. His worldview is mostly black and white, with few shades of gray. Born in the middle of the 1920s, he came to adulthood during World War II and the McCarthy years. He embraced the military at the height of the Cold War. This Manichean worldview was further hardened when he was held as a prisoner of war during Vietnam. To his credit, this experience also made him a forceful critic of the Bush Administration's use of secret prisons and torture.

If McCain has been shaped by the military, at least it is a proud and principled military tradition. His grandfather, his father, and his son, like McCain himself, all attended the Naval Academy at Annapolis. For two reasons it is rare in the United States for four generations in a single family to send a son there. First, it is just as difficult to get into that elite school as it is to go to the army's West Point. Second, it is rare for one family to have sons for that many generations who want to that career. This puts McCain in the super-patriot class of true believers in the United States. Attending Annapolis is like going to boot camp for four years, followed immediately by an obligatory four years of military service. Each graduate begins as a junior officer, and a preponderance of the generals and admirals come from West Point and Annapolis. Electing McCain would put the military establishment in the West House. He would raise military pay and appropriate more money to defence, while at the same time closing some bases to rationalize the use of funds.

Huckabee would go back a century, while McCain would go back "only" fifty years. Such a leader is more appropriate to the either/or psychology of Cold War than to the complexities of today's world. But he is ill-suited to world where the US will decline as the world's most powerful nation, both economically and militarily. In the next twenty-five years, China and India each will rival or surpass the American economy in size. Even now, the Bush legacy is a weak economy, a weak dollar, and a huge imbalance of payments. As the global balance of power shifts, the United States will be best served by a leader who can maximize what Harvard's Professor Joseph Nye has called "soft power." The go-it-alone arrogance of the Bush years has eroded that soft power, which builds upon international respect for a nation's values, behavior, and culture.

During the Bush Administration the rest of the world instead has endured lies, bluster, arrogance, and ignorance. Recall Rumsfeld's nasty remarks about "old Europe," or Powell's speech at the United Nations justifying a war with Iraq, which turned out to be full of misinformation and lies. Recall Bush's refusal to sign many international treaties, notably that banning land mines. Recall the hubris of the neo-conservatives, certain that Iraq would quickly become a model democracy. Remember that for years Bush refused to believe that global warming even existed, and tried to silence government scientists who disagreed. The Bush team has damaged the nation's credibility.

The next president needs to restore faith in the good intentions and the honesty of the United States, primarily by exercising soft power and serving as a useful leader. McCain might well be a more effective commander in chief, and let us assume he would be honest. But he will always be yesterday's man.

Republicans Struggle to Find a Candidate

Here in Boston, where I had my hair cut this morning, Mitt Romney does not seem popular. He once was governor of the state, and he also ran the Olympics, and normally such things make one respected. But my barber assured me that Romney was "a two-faced liar" who told every audience whatever they wanted to hear, and who did not stand for anything. This was the most direct expression of what many others also have said to me. Furthermore, rumors float about that some Democrats dislike Romney so much that they have changed their voter registration to "Independent." This will give them the right to vote in the Republican primary in Massachusetts - voting against Romney in his home state. In other words, they want to embarrass him. It may be that few people are actually going to do this, but the rumor itself suggests an unusually active dislike.

Nevertheless, on the national scene, Romney has begun to look like McCain's most serious Republican rival. Fred Thompson has dropped out of the campaign, and Huckabee is so short of money that he cannot afford to give journalists free transportation. He has decided to cut back his appearances in Florida and concentrate on more evangelical places, notably Georgia, where polls put him in first place. Still, cutting back on travel for the press is one of the last things any contender will do, because the press are vital to keeping your name and opinions before the public. In Florida's primary, coming up on Saturday, that leaves McCain and Romney as the main contenders, which Giuliani a potential spoiler. At the moment Romney is leading in the Rasmussen polls, with 27%. McCain is close behind at 23%, and the former Mayor of New York at 20%. [Update Friday 25th: since writing this I have seen several other polls that put McCain slightly ahead, but the margin of error is 5%, which means they are in a tie. But these polls also show Giuliani falling back to about 15%, in a tie with Huckabee.] Since Giuliani has spent far more time and money in Florida than the other two men combined, he seems to be fading out of the race. But note that slightly more than one third of the Republicans say they have not entirely made up their minds yet. In other words, "undecided" is winning just at the moment.

And what the Republicans cannot decide upon is not just which candidate to support, but what policies they stand for. Each of these men stands for something quite different. McCain comes from a military family, in which four generations have now gone to the Naval Academy. He is a maverick on social issues, and does not appeal to the Huckabee backers. The religious Right only likes Huckabee, in fact, as Giuliani has been married too many times and does not get angry about abortion or praise Jesus. Worse yet is Romney, whom the largely Southern Evangelicals do not like because he is a Mormon and in any case a Northerner. So this numerically important, if intellectually stunted fundamentalist rump of the Republican Party is in a crisis. There is even talk of running a third party candidate if an unacceptable candidate wins the nomination. For more sensible Republicans, Romney represents the business wing of the party, the employer class. Before serving as governor he was a successful capitalist.

For those readers who know their Protestant theology, the differences between these candidates can be explained in the theological terms. Ever since European Protestants came to the New World, they have struggled with two incompatible ideas about how one achieves salvation: the doctrine of grace vs. the doctrine of works. Huckabee is all about grace, the word of God, and the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit. There are millions of people in the United States who believe in the reality of Angels, who refuse to accept the theory of evolution, and who see nothing wrong with "speaking in tongues" in a church service. Huckabee is their man, and he represents the idea that the only way to salvation is through grace raining down on the unworhty sinner. Romney may be a Mormon, but his career is all about hard work and achievement, or the doctrine of works. A man earns his way into heaven. By prospering in this world he shows that he will be one of "the elect" in the next world. Ever since the seventeenth century, Protestants have disagreed about whether grace or works is the correct doctrine. Churches have broken into warring sects over these matters.

For those immersed in the doctrine of grace, Giuliani, with his Italian background, is the worst thing imaginable. For he is a very secular man. He is not just a Catholic, which for several hundred years was thought a terrible thing. He appears to be something even worse, he is a lapsed Catholic, with three divorces and liberal positions on abortion and other family value issues. A man like that, to the religious right is Godless, liberal, and clearly untrustworthy.

McCain is another matter, representing the warrior class. A potential slayer of infidels and defender of the American faith, he is more acceptable to the religious right in the sense that he stands for some moral absolutes. They respect that. But McCain has also been a maverick on social issues. He too seems secular, certainly neither a Creationist nor Bible-thumper. So the religious right is uncomfortable with all the candidates except Huckabee. However, the non-evangelical Republicans, the ones who went to real universities, gag when they hear Huckabee pontificate.

To sum it up, not only is the Republican Party struggling to find a candidate, it is struggling with its own identity. Bush could win over Evangelicals with a bit of coded rhetoric now and again - which was also the old Reagan tactic. Both gave fundamentalists the sense that their values were honored in the White House. Reagan and Bush II were mostly rhetoric, however, and they did not use too much political capital actually trying to stop the spread of gay marriage, prevent the teaching of evolution, or get prayer back into the classroom. It seems that neither Romney nor McCain nor Giuliani will play that game. The Reagan coalition seems to be dead.

Yet politics makes strange bedfellows. What if Huckabee became the vice-presidential nominee? Surely not Giuliani and Huckabee. But Romney and Huckabee? McCain and Huckabee? Then the Evangelicals would rejoice in their temples, gird up their loins, and march out on the campaign trail to do the Lord's work. It is a frightening prospect.