What’s Happening to Us?

The Choice Now Before Us- are America's Best Days Before Us or Behind Us?

Sep 27, 2024

A Time for Reflection

With less than fifty days until the 2024 election, and with absentee voting underway in some states, my response to the bombardment of campaign ads, email, texts, and social media has been one of reflection. I have been asking myself, how did my country get to this place? A place where its politics and interaction in the public square has become one of harsh division, harsh conflict, harsh rhetoric, and in many cases, damaged relationships, even within one’s own family? How did this happen?

I was aware this to be a rudimentary question. A question others have been asking as well. But for me, it was important to find the answer (or answers) to this question myself so I could better understand what is driving our current political environment.

A Common Answer- Polarization

One of the first answers often given as the source of our contentious politics is “political polarization.” We see it in our families, our city government, our federal and state governments, as well as in our day-to-day interaction with friends and coworkers. We see it clearly in our political parties. We certainly know it when we see it. But what exactly is it?

Political polarization is “the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes.” Scholars distinguish political polarization from other forms of polarization, specifically ideological polarization (differences between the policy positions) and affective polarization (an emotional dislike and distrust of political out-groups).[1]

Two Sides to Polarization

After the 2020 presidential election, results of a Pew Research Center survey indicated “ideological silos” were appearing on both the left and the right of the U.S. political spectrum. This survey found that both consistently conservative and liberal Americans are more likely than their ideologically mixed Americans to say that it is important for them to live in a place where most people share their political beliefs. The 2020 presidential election voting map bears this out.[2] “Birds of a feather seem to be flocking together”, politically speaking.

The Wall Street Journal (Journal) reported, based on their analysis of the 2020 presidential election map, three driving forces of polarization. First is an “urban-rural divide. Democratic voters are increasingly more urban as they become concentrated in metropolitan areas. Republican-leaning counties have also become more numerous by expanding in rural areas. Second is racial diversity. While always a reality in big cities, the share of minorities in these “blue counties” has accelerated. Third is education level. The Journal found that counties where whites without college degrees are a large share of the population have become heavily Republican.[3]

This separation is not just occurring demographically, but also in Americans’ attitudes towards political beliefs of others. According to the Journal, “…The views of each party have hardened ideologically. And views of their political counterparts are increasingly negative.” Since 1995 the views by Republicans and Democrats towards the other has increased to 75% to one of “mostly unfavorable.” [4]

But hold on a moment. Despite all the evidence for political polarization, there is also evidence to the contrary. Or at least that polarization is not as great as we think it is. A Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health study found that:

“…As politics grows increasingly polarized, a new global study finds people often exaggerate political differences and negative feelings of those on the opposite side of the political divide, and this misperception can be reduced by informing them of the other side’s true feelings...”[5] (emphasis mine)

Kai Ruggeri, PhD, assistant professor of health policy and management at Columbia summarized this other side of polarization saying:

“…While differences between the beliefs and actions of opposing political parties undoubtedly exist—particularly on widely covered issues like gun ownership or access to reproductive healthcare—their opinions on less reported issues are often more similar than we think.”[6] (emphasis mine)

Perhaps our perception of polarization causes us to view it as greater than it actually is? Regardless, it seems there are other answers to this question of how our politics got to where they are today that deserve examination.

Another Reason- Economic Policies and Middle-Class Decline

Some contend that the state of our current politics has been created by our government’s economic policies over the last four decades (or more) and through those policies, both political parties have created the economic inequality we have today. Political scientists Levitsky and Ziblatt have identified the importance of this saying:

“The failure to deal with stagnating wages over the past fifty years has made America an outlier in terms of both poverty and inequality…Scholars have linked the rise of radical right-wing populism in the United States to the persistent failure to address problems of stagnating incomes and rising inequality.”[7]

But there’s more than stagnating wages at work here. Economist John Komlos points to a process that began with Reaganomics of the Reagan administration and its tax cuts. Komlos argues these tax cuts favored the rich by increasing their wealth and political clout. As an example, Komlos says that in tax year 1985, the top 1 percent gained a $350,000 windfall while the typical household received $3,500, and the poor received a couple of hundred dollars (all in today’s dollars). These Reaganomics policies also hurt the middle class by crushing unions, according to Komlos.[8]

Komlos also points to the Democrats for economic policies that hurt many Americans. Under President Clinton financial deregulation and hyper-globalization accelerated the process of moving wealth away the middle class. Immediately following Clinton’s presidency, George Bush Jr.’s tax policies “continued to pamper the superrich.” [9]

The middle class, as a result, has been steadily declining, especially with the Millennial generation. Historian Thom Hartmann points to his post-WWII Boomer generation which had the same average age in 1990 as the Millennial generation has today. In 1990, the Boomer generation held 21.3% of the nation’s wealth. Today, the Millennial generation by contrast, “…has roughly the same number of people as Boomers were in 1990 but hold only 4.6% of the nation’s wealth.”[10]

Another Big Economic Reason- Economic Anxiety and the 2008-09 Financial Crisis

However, as bad as these policies have been to American’s economic prosperity, Komlos asserts that in 2008-09 the “bottom fell out” with “…Barack Obama’s bailing out the super-rich and his disregard of Main Street. This is fermentation for people in despair.” With that, Komlos believes we “…blew an opportunity to drastically restructure its economy and make it fairer when the bottom fell out in 2008-2009 (i.e., recession). The rich and powerful were on their knees, they were bankrupt,” he said. “That’s the only time when you could have really put the economy on a bigger path.” The taxpayer bailout of banks in 2008, caused in large part by the easy credit of subprime mortgages, was, in Komlos’ view “…the biggest transfer of wealth from bottom to the top in history of mankind.”[11]

Author Arthur C. Brooks, describes this economic crisis as,

“…worse than anything since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Millions lost their homes or jobs or both. Huge swaths of people felt left behind by the economic recovery and forgotten by the political classes in Washington, who were offering them no solutions and didn’t seem to care much about their plight. Their despair didn’t register in public opinion surveys. Neither the conventional left nor the conventional right fully grasped it.”[12](emphasis mine)

For Brooks, this despair resulting from losing one’s home and job created a loss of dignity. The group most impacted by this “dignity gap” has been working class men, many of whom are without high school diplomas, eventually stopped looking for work, and became socially isolated not only from the work force, but other social institutions as well.[13]

Many Lose Trust and Become Cynical

That is when it hit me- these economic forces and events of the forty plus years in and of themselves may not have created the current political environment, but they created the first step toward it. That next step is two pronged- eroding trust and encouraging cynicism in government. According to democracy scholar Professor Larry Diamond, “…When democracy withers it often has a lot to do with what citizens, think, believe and value.”[14] Diamond adds that democracy must “…earn people’s faith through good governance…If it cannot, it’s in trouble…”[15]

However, as poor governance and poor economic conditions begin to erode people’s belief in their democracy and in what is commonly referred to as “the American dream,” another belief begins to form and replace it. Bremmer describes it as a citizen perspective that believes “…democracy in America no longer seems to be working,” and the idea of it being “essential” for one to live in a democracy begins to fall away.[16]

Unfortunately, Americans’ loss of trust in and cynicism toward government go hand in hand and are documentable. In a 2022 survey, Pew Research found that “…Americans remain deeply distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. Just 20% say they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time – a sentiment that has changed very little since former President George W. Bush’s second term in office.”[17]

With distrust in place, cynicism takes hold. Political scientists view cynicism as often being associated with increased support for outsider and extremist candidates willing to break political taboos. It is associated with decreased support for incumbents as well as growing distrust between politicians themselves, making to work together to solve problems. Voters may get more active as they get cynical, but their politicians become less active, which contributes to a cycle that drives even more cynicism.[18] Psychologist Jamal Zaki describes cynicism as poisonous to a society by fueling mistrust of each other, extreme division, and leads many to embrace a populist “strongman ruler” who promises to protect us from each other, and from “outsiders”, but at the cost to our personal freedom.[19] Is any of this sounding familiar?

My AHA Moment!- the Real Reason Our Politics are as They Are

That’s when the answer to my question as to how and why our politics got to where they are today started coming into focus. As disturbing as the answer was to me, it rings true for me. It is an unsettling answer. For many Americans, their world view framework has been changing,

With a loss of trust in and a more cynical view toward their government, many Americans became receptive to rethinking how they view their nation, their fellow Americans, their nation’s history, and its future. How this change in world view happens is powerful in its impacts, and those impacts can be destructive.

Historian Timothy Snyder, in his book The Road to Unfreedom, describes nations as having one of two views of their politics, their history, and their future. One view is the American view, the politics of inevitability. This is a world view that has “…a sense that the future is just more than the present,”[20] Or, as author Stuart Stevens puts it, “...Americans have long possessed an innate optimism, the conviction that they live in the greatest country in the world, and it will always be such.”[21]

The second world view according to Snyder, is the “politics of eternity” which is the opposite of the “politics of inevitability.” These are politics as we see them play out today in Russia and many other nations that have strongman regimes. While the politics of “…inevitability promises a better future for everyone, eternity places one nation at the center of a cyclical story of victimhood.”[22] Snyder goes on to explain that with the “politics of eternity”:

“…Time is no longer a line to the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past…within eternity, no one is responsible because we all know that the enemy is coming no matter what we do. Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but can only guard against threats. Progress gives way to doom.” [23] (emphasis mine)

Election 2024 is a Decision on Our Nation’s World View

For many of us, we have passed from our traditional American world view that the future inevitably holds something better for our nation to a world view that has been invaded by the politics of eternity. What paved the way for the invasion of this dark world view of the politics of eternity? It has been the shrinkage of our middle class, polarization, our taxation policies that favored the rich, income inequality, economic anxiety and the financial crisis of 2008-09, mistrust and cynicism toward government, as well as forces like the deregulation of campaign contributions which magnified the influence of the wealthy.[24]

All of this has chipped away at and weakened our optimistic world view of the United States’ future. It is then that many have become wrapped up in the view of inevitability. As Snyder notes, “…As income inequality grew, time horizons shrank, and fewer Americans believed that the future held a better version of the present.”[25]

Snyder describes economic instability as the “why” behind this shifting world view stating, “…When economic instability suppresses social advance, it is hard to imagine a better future, or indeed any future.”[26] When that happens, it then becomes much easier for a nation’s citizens to give heed to a leader that mythologizes the nation’s past, promising to “make us great again”. As Snyder aptly puts it, “fiction comes to life” and a leader selling this fiction tells “lies without remorse or apology, because for him untruth is existence.”[27]

The question for us now as we near the 2024 presidential election is- which world view will we choose? Which leader espouses the world view that we believe best serves the oldest democracy in the world? Will we choose a world view based on optimism for the future, or one based on continual victimhood and a mythologized past? Do we believe the nation’s best days are before us or behind us? How we answer that question will make all the difference for generations of Americans to come. The stakes are that high, which is why we must choose wisely.

[1] Political polarization - Wikipedia

[2] “Election Reveals an America Drifting Apart,” by Joel Eastwood, Max Rust, Yan Wu, and Randy Yelp, The Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2020.

[3] The Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2020, Ibid

[4] The Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2020, Ibid

[5] Political Polarization: Often Not as Bad as We Think | Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

[6] Political Polarization: Often Not as Bad as We Think | Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

[8] The Road to Trump Began With Reaganomics & the Loss of the Middle Class, Economist Says | Duke Today

[9] The Road to Trump Began With Reaganomics & the Loss of the Middle Class, Economist Says | Duke Today

[11] The Road to Trump Began With Reaganomics & the Loss of the Middle Class, Economist Says | Duke Today

[12] Love Your Enemies, How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt,” by Arthur C. Brooks, pg. 69, Copyright 2019, American Enterprise Institute, HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.

[13] Love Your Enemies, by Arthur C. Brooks, pp 69-70, Ibid.

[16] Is Democracy Essential? Millennials Increasingly Aren’t Sure- And That Should Concern Us All,” by Ian Bremmer, NBC News, February 13, 2018, 4:01 AM CST.

[17] Americans’ Views of Government: Decades of Distrust, Enduring Support for Its Role | Pew Research Center

[18] In American Politics, Everyone’s A Cynic | FiveThirtyEight

[19] Why cynics earn less and die earlier — and how hope can help | Here & Now (wbur.org) Why cynics earn less and die earlier — and how hope can help | Here & Now (wbur.org)

[21] The Conspiracy to End America, Five Ways My Old Party is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy, by Stuart Stevens, pg. 25, Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104, Copyright 2023 by Stuart P. Stevens.

[22] The Road to Unfreedom- Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder, pg. 8,Ibid.

[23] The Road to Unfreedom- Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder, pg. 8,Ibid.

[24] The Road to Unfreedom- Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder, pg. 7,Ibid.

[25] The Road to Unfreedom- Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder, pg. 7,Ibid.

[26] The Road to Unfreedom- Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder, pg. 264,Ibid.

[27] The Road to Unfreedom- Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder, pg. 269,Ibid.

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