I am watching America self-immolate during the presidential election primaries from the vantage point of the UK, where I live. What I most thank Donald Trump for is that he is inadvertently exposing everything that is most odious and unworkable about the US political process and, in doing so, just may force that conversation to change.
I am watching America self-immolate during the presidential election primaries from the vantage point of the UK, where I live. What I most thank Donald Trump for is that he is inadvertently exposing everything that is most odious and unworkable about the US political process and, in doing so, just may force that conversation to change.
This week, the second of a four-part BBC documentary analyzing the Obama presidency focused on how Obama managed to pass Obamacare, his health-insurance-for-all bill, which passed the two houses by just a few votes.
Taken over by sound bites
In the run up to the vote on the bill, Republicans who opposed the bill didn’t do so with reasonable debate. Instead, they looked to Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, who held focus groups among citizens, searching for just the right sound bite that would stick to Obama’s bill and kill it.
Frank held focus group after focus group, listening to all sorts of ordinary citizens hold forth about their notions of the bill until he found exactly the right phrase, which turned out to be ‘government takeover.’
That concept is utter anathema to most Americans, and congressmen like John Boehner made sure to pepper every future utterance about the bill with that highly charged phrase.
Before long, people were taking to the streets in protest that Obama and his bill were going to represent a siege against ordinary Americans and their life savings.
At London’s Heathrow, I stood in line next to an American woman, who informed me, with utter certainty, that Obama was now taking calls directly from the poor while sitting in the Oval Office and was opening up his checkbook, right there and then.
This is not an argument on behalf of the Democrats or Republicans, or even on behalf of Obamacare.
This is an argument against the crass and deceitful way in which the Republicans tried to kill the bill, which is the crass and deceitful way that all politics is carried out in America.
And now those tactics are being employed against both parties, largely through the person of Donald Trump. Trump is willing to use every last dirty tactic that politicians have long used against the other side, and neither party likes this one little bit.
Another Occupy
Strangely, Trump’s popularity, can be seen as a continuation of the Occupy movement, both social movements that have grown out of fact that America is no longer a society in any sense of the word.
Several years ago I predicted on these pages that America was ripe for revolution like the Arab Spring because it had become of the most unfair societies in the West. As I write in The Bond, fairness is so fundamental to the human experience, so much a part of our hardwiring, that when situations are manifestly unfair, as they are right now in America, everyone loses, rich and poor.
And things will only get worse, unless the whole of American society begins to reframe itself and make a contract to start working together for the common good.
At the time, I put forward my wish list of positive suggestions for the street warriors to rally behind in order to recover the soul of America.
I think it’s worth offering them again. With conventional candidates are having to fight for every last vote, ordinary politicos are likely to start listening to the people. Here’s your best shot at getting your voice heard.
10 ways to reclaim America
1. Demand a month-long hiatus from Republican-Democratic politicking in Congress. Insist that for at least that period of time, Democrats and Republicans declare a moratorium on name-calling, demonizing, and president-bashing, and instead spend their time learning to speak and listen deeply from the heart, with the kind of ideals that compelled them to enter politics in the first place. Demand that whole of Congress agree on at least one large goal that will help each and every American and act as a rallying cry to unify our polarized population. The evidence shows that working for a larger ‘we’re all in this together’ goal is a highly successful way to end prejudice and bring people together.
2. Listen to the party you oppose. Everyone, from the Sanders supporters to members of the Tea Party, agrees that America is going to the dogs; they simply disagree on the solutions. In a recent study carried out by Harvard Business School, when asked to design their ideal society for wealth distribution, both Republicans and Democrats came up with a markedly similar picture for a just society.
Guess which country it resembled? ‘Socialist’ Sweden, where there is far less division between rich and poor than there is in America. Although we may be polarized in many areas, all of us — rich, poor, Democrat, Republican — broadly agree on what is fair. Out of what both groups dream in common, we can fashion one goal to work on together.
3. Learn to be more politically sophisticated in your thinking and stop thinking in black and white/either-or dichotomies. Societies aren’t either free-rein capitalism or full-on communism. There are endless shades of grey in between. Stop applying the term ‘socialism’ to any kind of initiative that attempts to provide basic rights to society. Working together as a community and providing for the community is not socialism. It does not require redistribution of income or across-the-board sameness.
4. Don’t confuse liberty with exclusive self-interest or freedom from responsibility to the whole. Do you really want to live in a place resembling the post-apocalyptic America of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – where it is you and your gun against the world? Or would you rather have a place where your neighbor and their neighbors are watching your back, too? If so, we need to band together as a society, with aspects that are good for the whole, not simply good for number 1, on every front. That may require some individual sacrifice in time and money, but not your life’s savings. And you’ll reap the benefits, too.
5. Fully understand our founding principles. Actually read The Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Gettysburg address, and other iconic statements of American principles. From there you will learn that America was founded on a platform of fairness, not simply liberty. We severed British sovereignty over the American colonies because we believed that we were victim of a litany of unfair laws and practices.
Our rationale for this insurrection, as we announced in the Declaration of Independence, was the ‘self-evident’ truth of the most fundamental type of fairness. Much is made of our individual inalienable right to equal ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ but the real point of the argument is the need for justice and equality. Our founding fathers mainly envisioned a fair society of responsibility ¬¬– one to the other.
6. Stop creating external bogeymen. We storm around the world acting like global policemen when our own house is not in order. Most of the time, we – with our blinkered vision about what’s best for everyone else and our sense of entitlement to the world’s resources - are the problem. I travel the world, and I’m sad to say that a good deal of the world can’t stand us. Ask why. It’s not jealousy, believe me.
7. Begin a huge re-think of our emphasis on profits over social responsibility. Have you listened to an American-made rock song or watched a rock video lately? Most are pornographically explicit, and being continuously played to young children and teenagers, with no monitoring whatsoever on content. Just who is this serving besides the shareholders? Ditto on pharmaceutical company advertising, to cite just two examples.
8. Only read or watch a media free from corporate influence. The media is largely the puppet of corporate America right now. Stick with online alternatives. There are still a few left.
9. Don’t wait for the people in charge to ‘fix’ things. Get your neighbors together. Look together around your neighborhood and community. How are your schools? Your hospitals? What needs doing? How can you make use of the people around you to fix what needs fixing?
10. Vow that change will start with you first. Scientific studies shows that in any society, if a culture of turn-taking falls apart with too many taking too much, all it requires is a small group of individuals committed to strong reciprocity to ‘invade’ a population of self-interested individuals and re-establish fairness and generosity. Your acts of fairness and generosity will create a ripple effect that will be heard around the world.
Now let me know your wish list in reclaiming America.