How the U.S. Disintegrated into a Toxic Dysfunctional Political and Social Time Bomb-Part 1
Alternate Titles (Couldn’t come up with a shorter one.
Good Governance as an Elusive Human Achievement
How the U.S. ended up in its current dysfunctional political and social toxic milieu.
Human evolutionary history is the most interesting evolvement of the evolutionary process. While humans are relatively new comers on the scene, human abilities certainly stand out in both their complexity and rapidity of their development. For the first time, the mental capacity of a species has played a major role in the domination of other species world wide. Actually, humans have literally overrun the planet, altered the natural resources of our planet in a major way, achieved a lifestyle totally unique to any previous life form, and yet our species has evolved in a way which has now made humans the most destructive species ever—to other species, to the natural resources of the planet, and now to the welfare of our own species. At this point in time the human species is literally out of control, unable to address the major life issues of our time, and increasingly unable to tolerate its own diversity. This inability to co-exist with other species, protect the planet’s natural resources, discipline itself to ward off climate change, control it’s own reproductive rate, and adhere to it’s own innate ethical principle (the Golden Rule) toward the members of its own species, has driven our species to a very unstable, unpredictable future existence.
Americans from the beginning of American history have felt special, independent, violent, resourceful, and believed in some sort of manifest destiny—usually believed driven by God’s will. We were, by God’s intent, so it goes,, a nation of exceptionalism. We were better than other countries, and it was God’s will that determined this. It more and more now seems like more and more arrogance than God’s will, but this has to be worked out in this musing. In all our history we would often do obvious self serving actions and always follow it with what was close to a demand: “God Bless America”. Given human mental attributes, it seems patriotism needs be addressed to the species as a whole, not nation vs nation, race vs race, culture vs culture, religion vs religion OR, in the end our species will end up causing our own implosion. A Tower of Babel seeped in feelings more than reason has arrived. There was a period when whoever had the most guns and the better guns, would win any conflict. The American Indians and minorities across the planet found this out. Today, terrorism has as much power to implode any nation as superior weapons of mass destruction. It is a whole new ballgame and a dangerous development.
The Europeans who ‘discovered’ North and South America (they didn’t really) found themselves in a land rich in natural resources and seemingly endless territory. Economically, North America prospered, and South America did not. This is a puzzlement. Perhaps it had to do with the mentality of those early ‘conquerers’. The early Spanish conquistadors were brutal and violent. The only tolerated religion was Catholicism and there was no torture or punishment severe or cruel enough for savages who believed differently. Columbus was the first and perhaps the most vicious of the early conquistadors. He landed in land where human existence was primitive but sharing and peaceful. He immediately, having guns as the means, made slaves of this population, and if the cruelty of slavery didn’t kill them, diseases to which they had no immunity, did.
Here are a few gems from Columbus:
"The Indians are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say, 'no,'" the Columbus quote in Stephan's tweet reads, "To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone."
"They would make fine servants," a second quote from the tweet reads. "With 50 men, we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
“While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.” (one of Columbus’s sailors)
“Endless testimonies . .. prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy…
And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them head first against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you offspring of the devil!” Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying, “Go now, carry the message,” meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them…” (Bartolome DeLas Casas—the priest who accompanied Columbus).
This method of conquering the existing societies in South America continued unabated until violence as the means to an end became essentially the history of South America, and continues in more sophisticated subtle forms today.
The early North American ‘conquistadors’ were far more peace loving compared to the South American conquistadors—up to a point. Many of the early settlers were escaping from persecution in Europe. In some cases, once they gained control of an area, example— the Puritans, they themselves became as persecutory to those who deviated from Puritan beliefs as those who had persecuted them in Europe. In South America it was pretty much Spaniards vs the natives so the hatred was easier to focus. In North America, all kinds of ethnic groups began to show up one way or another. By nature humans do not welcome diversity, it becomes an acquired trait, if at all. Forced to find a way to live together in order for a community to prosper, varying degrees of tolerance surfaced at different stages in American history. At first it was the white Protestant property owners who had all the rights and privileges. Blacks, with few exceptions, had no rights or privileges. It took a civil war with massive numbers of deaths, before blacks achieved some rights and any freedom. Civil and legal rights began to follow a pathway in which more and more groups gained rights and privileges other groups already had. It seemed as recently as the sixties and seventies that we would become, at last, a land where everyone would have the same rights and privileges as anyone else. Probably the mosts stunning reversal was when gays gained the right to legally marry. This latter happened almost overnight.
But all of this increased tolerance and appreciation of diversity was, at best, shallow and uneasy. Civil rights acceptance rarely becomes really effective until the older generation has passed away.
For the last 50 or so years another change was taking place in America, and it is one that may very well undo any progress in tolerance for diversity. Ever since the Eisenhower Presidency, in which there were steep graduated income taxes, and few loop holes to escape taxes, the wealthy managed, via their wealth and lobbyists to steadily accumulate more and more of the nations wealth as their own. Today 3 individuals own more of our wealth than the bottom 50% of our citizens. This wealth doesn’t come from nowhere, it comes off the backs of the middle class workers. It can’t come from the poor as they have nothing much to give. While the percent of our wealth owned by the wealthy grew exponentially, the income of the poor and middle class hardly budged in terms of buying power and in some cases regressed. More and more loopholes for the affluent to escape taxes were passed by Congresses, tax breaks for the affluent flourished, jail time for criminal monetary acts by white collar workers became virtually nonexistent. In most cases the monetary criminal penalty for the crime was less than the profit attained by the actions in question. People like Donald Trump, using legal loopholes, stiffed workers and investors right and left, declared bankruptcy 6 times and each time their wealth soared and as a bonus they paid little or no taxes. All of this happened on both Republican and Democratic administrations. The national debt soared. So did the military budget making defense contractors extremely wealthy. All this defense spending did not enable the U.S. to really win any victories for the common folk of any country we invaded or gave support to rebels at almost a constant pace for the last 50 years. All of these military adventures were paid for out of borrowed money. At the same time the politicians, in order to get elected, promised tax cuts. And the tax cuts were significant for the affluent, nonexistent for the poor (who didn’t make enough money to even pay taxes) and insignificant for the middle class which was shrinking. Disdain for all politicians grew with every passing election. Fewer and fewer people even bothered to vote. This meant if less than half of the people entitled to vote did so, a person could be elected with less than 25% of those entitled to vote. Some democracy! As Bernie Sanders pointed out, our democracy had become rigged and functioned mainly to ensure the wealthy became even more wealthy.
One might ask, how can the wealthiest 2-5 % of a population manage to control the democratic process in America? It starts with lobbyists. There are more than 20 lobbyists for every member of Congress. In 1971 there were 175 lobbyists and in 2016 there were 7,700 registered lobbyists. Almost all of them work for the interests of the wealthy. Just since 2000 the amount of money spent by politicians to get elected has grown from $4.3 billion to $6.4 billion and most of this money comes from the affluent. With this in hand, why would the general public elect politicians who have no interest in their own economic stagnation or decline? Part of the problem is the complexity of modern day issues like climate change, human overpopulation, economic science, and so on. While educational opportunities for the affluent are excellent, the educational opportunities for the middle class and especially the poor are abysmal. The United States doesn’t rank like 30th among modern industrialized countries in basic education because of how the children of affluent parents are educated, but because poor communities have little to spend on educating their own children. This is not accidental at all. It takes no higher math to understand that as long as education of children is based primarily on property taxes, affluent communities will have good schools and poor communities in the urban, suburban, and rural areas will have poor schools and poor teachers. The poorer communities took a hard hit in American when the War on Drugs started up in the 70’s and made poor communities the center of underground drug dealing, supported especially by marijuana sales, one of the least toxic recreational drugs—far less toxic to the body than either nicotine or alcohol. Businesses fled the poorer communities to avoid these drug wars and all the crime that comes with them. So this left poor communities with poor schools, poor teachers, and little employment opportunities, and unsafe neighborhoods filled with crimes to property and unprotected citizens. There is no racial component to any of this. Blacks, or hispanics who are raised in affluent neighborhoods are no more likely to engage in criminal activity than white citizens growing up in the same neighborhoods. And rural poor areas are riddled with criminal acts to the same degree as black or hispanic poor neighborhoods, if the density of the population is similar. It will be somewhat less if the population or the poor is more spread out in rural areas. However the degree of anger for their situation is vey high.
At some point well meaning (I guess) individuals decided to compensate somewhat for the situation by implementing affirmative action as a remedy. But whether purposely or accidentally, they applied this affirmative action to race and gender. The practical result of this was that minorities or women growing up in affluent neighborhoods were able to leap frog over others raised in similar environments because of their race or gender when it came to hiring or promotions. Very few of the minorities living in our ghettoes benefitted much from affirmative action. Naturally, many whites living in affluent neighborhoods became agitated that a minority person living next door, raised under the same environmental conditions, got favorable treatment in the job market or when it came to promotions. Common sense would dictate that affirmative action should apply only to those being raised in a disadvantaged neighborhood, and that a good government would not allow its own ghettoes to grow in number and depravity. Good government is responsible for all the communities under its jurisdiction. Good government ensures that all its citizens have good schools, good teachers, good medical care, good job opportunities, good pensions, a safe environment, and all children monitored (via chronic stress tests) to ensure their situations are acceptable for their formative years. All this is how crime rates are reduced. Just more police is a farce.
For the last fifty years all these varied situations above kept simmering and growing in size. More and more American citizens trapped in stagnant job income and personal safety insecurity became more and more hostile to politicians of any ilk. But all this growing anger was handled deftly by the wealthy. Starting with the less likelihood these unfortunate victims of government neglect will ever vote, the wealthy prayed upon the prejudices rampant in society and now beginning to grow into a backlash as to what was perceived as special treatment for minorities. Suddenly all these civil rights began to be viewed as enabling minorities of any ilk to get the jobs and government support at the expense of their own economic will being. In their own minds, they were sick of seeing so many minorities suddenly playing major roles on TV, whether it be athletes, actors, news commentators, game show participants, work place employees or whatever. Resentment kept building and it just seemed that if all these minorities with new rights and considerations were out of the picture, their own economic welfare would improve. On top of this, the wealthy—many of whom got to the top by worshipping money as some sort of God or compulsive behavior (enough is never enough) used the politics of divide and conquer to keep the ‘peasants’ warring amongst themselves. The conservative message to voters became more blunt: “your economic situation is the way it is because of immigrants (legal and illegal), blacks, hispanics, asians, liberals, dwindling influence of religions, communism, etc. Of course this was all poppycock. Without the illegal immigrants the bargains, especially on produce, would not exist, and the poorest citizens would have to do the labor at slave wages. Letting a small percentage of minorities, most of whom were raised in affluent communities, get well paid jobs kept these minorities from rioting, a sort of carrot dangling out in front.
Then along came Obama, a decent sort of chap who never met a group he didn’t want to help find more success. But he hit two brick walls. Except for his first two years in office the Congress was controlled by Republicans (via such strange laws which enables North Dakota and other such scarcely populated states to have as many Senators as a huge state like California). Obama managed to get modest health care reform through and after that Congress would not even consider any of the legislation he proposed. If he could get little done, he would get the blame. Obamas’s desire to help every group prosper backfired when the only group he was allowed to have prosper became the wealthy. Nothing which gave the wealthy more means to gain more wealth was blocked by the Republican Congress.
Then along came Trump, an uneducated blowhard who inherited a lot of money and became a star used car salesman with zero ethics and no concern for anyone except his own wealth, power, and public presence. His specialty was name calling, both enemies and his own party leaders whenever the whim hit him. Nobody thought he could get elected, but the primary system—a political charade which goes on for at least two years before an elections, attracted all kinds of ‘characters” and few competent qualified leaders wished to endure such a process. Most entered the fray, not to win, but to gain a considerable income from charitable donations to their campaign. The debates became more like a dating game TV show where serious issues are brushed aside and we get some sort of comedic slapstick entertainment. Trump simply came out mad at everybody and everything and treated the debates like some sort of ghetto playground put down contest. His level of anger and insults matched the level of anger and disgust so many American felt who were trapped in stagnant wages and low paying jobs.
The decline of American democracy is complex and may very well be irreversible at this point in time. Successful governance is in decline most everywhere. I define successful government as one which maximizes contentment for the greatest number of its constituents.
With neither party in America a position to right the ship, and the growing antagonism to human diversity, it is this antagonism that has pretty much left American Government frozen into inaction on the major threats to human welfare on a global basis. This antagonism to diversity, the decline of the Golden Rule as the basis for human ethics, the use of violence to save conflict, allowing the already wealthy to own even more of American wealth, the replacement of feelings rather than facts as the basis for actions, are all human traits which is making a harsh evolutionary correction for our species almost a certainty. Long term, of course all this is but another blip on the evolutionary process. I stated in an earlier musing that I could not care less about the 2018 American election. At my age this is a misstatement. While the Democrats will slow the speed to which so many will go over the proverbial cliff, this only benefits those older people like myself. The younger generation is in a very tough predicament. The time, place, and genetics of our birth are all based on luck. It is what it is. I guess in the last analysis all species are but puppets in an amazing evolutionary process.
Part 2 will follow. The decline of government effectiveness in America is filled with relevant complexities. Can’t manage an analysis in a few paragraphs.
Alternate Titles (Couldn’t come up with a shorter one.
Good Governance as an Elusive Human Achievement
How the U.S. ended up in its current dysfunctional political and social toxic milieu.
Human evolutionary history is the most interesting evolvement of the evolutionary process. While humans are relatively new comers on the scene, human abilities certainly stand out in both their complexity and rapidity of their development. For the first time, the mental capacity of a species has played a major role in the domination of other species world wide. Actually, humans have literally overrun the planet, altered the natural resources of our planet in a major way, achieved a lifestyle totally unique to any previous life form, and yet our species has evolved in a way which has now made humans the most destructive species ever—to other species, to the natural resources of the planet, and now to the welfare of our own species. At this point in time the human species is literally out of control, unable to address the major life issues of our time, and increasingly unable to tolerate its own diversity. This inability to co-exist with other species, protect the planet’s natural resources, discipline itself to ward off climate change, control it’s own reproductive rate, and adhere to it’s own innate ethical principle (the Golden Rule) toward the members of its own species, has driven our species to a very unstable, unpredictable future existence.
Americans from the beginning of American history have felt special, independent, violent, resourceful, and believed in some sort of manifest destiny—usually believed driven by God’s will. We were, by God’s intent, so it goes,, a nation of exceptionalism. We were better than other countries, and it was God’s will that determined this. It more and more now seems like more and more arrogance than God’s will, but this has to be worked out in this musing. In all our history we would often do obvious self serving actions and always follow it with what was close to a demand: “God Bless America”. Given human mental attributes, it seems patriotism needs be addressed to the species as a whole, not nation vs nation, race vs race, culture vs culture, religion vs religion OR, in the end our species will end up causing our own implosion. A Tower of Babel seeped in feelings more than reason has arrived. There was a period when whoever had the most guns and the better guns, would win any conflict. The American Indians and minorities across the planet found this out. Today, terrorism has as much power to implode any nation as superior weapons of mass destruction. It is a whole new ballgame and a dangerous development.
The Europeans who ‘discovered’ North and South America (they didn’t really) found themselves in a land rich in natural resources and seemingly endless territory. Economically, North America prospered, and South America did not. This is a puzzlement. Perhaps it had to do with the mentality of those early ‘conquerers’. The early Spanish conquistadors were brutal and violent. The only tolerated religion was Catholicism and there was no torture or punishment severe or cruel enough for savages who believed differently. Columbus was the first and perhaps the most vicious of the early conquistadors. He landed in land where human existence was primitive but sharing and peaceful. He immediately, having guns as the means, made slaves of this population, and if the cruelty of slavery didn’t kill them, diseases to which they had no immunity, did.
Here are a few gems from Columbus:
"The Indians are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say, 'no,'" the Columbus quote in Stephan's tweet reads, "To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone."
"They would make fine servants," a second quote from the tweet reads. "With 50 men, we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
“While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.” (one of Columbus’s sailors)
“Endless testimonies . .. prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy…
And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them head first against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you offspring of the devil!” Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying, “Go now, carry the message,” meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them…” (Bartolome DeLas Casas—the priest who accompanied Columbus).
This method of conquering the existing societies in South America continued unabated until violence as the means to an end became essentially the history of South America, and continues in more sophisticated subtle forms today.
The early North American ‘conquistadors’ were far more peace loving compared to the South American conquistadors—up to a point. Many of the early settlers were escaping from persecution in Europe. In some cases, once they gained control of an area, example— the Puritans, they themselves became as persecutory to those who deviated from Puritan beliefs as those who had persecuted them in Europe. In South America it was pretty much Spaniards vs the natives so the hatred was easier to focus. In North America, all kinds of ethnic groups began to show up one way or another. By nature humans do not welcome diversity, it becomes an acquired trait, if at all. Forced to find a way to live together in order for a community to prosper, varying degrees of tolerance surfaced at different stages in American history. At first it was the white Protestant property owners who had all the rights and privileges. Blacks, with few exceptions, had no rights or privileges. It took a civil war with massive numbers of deaths, before blacks achieved some rights and any freedom. Civil and legal rights began to follow a pathway in which more and more groups gained rights and privileges other groups already had. It seemed as recently as the sixties and seventies that we would become, at last, a land where everyone would have the same rights and privileges as anyone else. Probably the mosts stunning reversal was when gays gained the right to legally marry. This latter happened almost overnight.
But all of this increased tolerance and appreciation of diversity was, at best, shallow and uneasy. Civil rights acceptance rarely becomes really effective until the older generation has passed away.
For the last 50 or so years another change was taking place in America, and it is one that may very well undo any progress in tolerance for diversity. Ever since the Eisenhower Presidency, in which there were steep graduated income taxes, and few loop holes to escape taxes, the wealthy managed, via their wealth and lobbyists to steadily accumulate more and more of the nations wealth as their own. Today 3 individuals own more of our wealth than the bottom 50% of our citizens. This wealth doesn’t come from nowhere, it comes off the backs of the middle class workers. It can’t come from the poor as they have nothing much to give. While the percent of our wealth owned by the wealthy grew exponentially, the income of the poor and middle class hardly budged in terms of buying power and in some cases regressed. More and more loopholes for the affluent to escape taxes were passed by Congresses, tax breaks for the affluent flourished, jail time for criminal monetary acts by white collar workers became virtually nonexistent. In most cases the monetary criminal penalty for the crime was less than the profit attained by the actions in question. People like Donald Trump, using legal loopholes, stiffed workers and investors right and left, declared bankruptcy 6 times and each time their wealth soared and as a bonus they paid little or no taxes. All of this happened on both Republican and Democratic administrations. The national debt soared. So did the military budget making defense contractors extremely wealthy. All this defense spending did not enable the U.S. to really win any victories for the common folk of any country we invaded or gave support to rebels at almost a constant pace for the last 50 years. All of these military adventures were paid for out of borrowed money. At the same time the politicians, in order to get elected, promised tax cuts. And the tax cuts were significant for the affluent, nonexistent for the poor (who didn’t make enough money to even pay taxes) and insignificant for the middle class which was shrinking. Disdain for all politicians grew with every passing election. Fewer and fewer people even bothered to vote. This meant if less than half of the people entitled to vote did so, a person could be elected with less than 25% of those entitled to vote. Some democracy! As Bernie Sanders pointed out, our democracy had become rigged and functioned mainly to ensure the wealthy became even more wealthy.
One might ask, how can the wealthiest 2-5 % of a population manage to control the democratic process in America? It starts with lobbyists. There are more than 20 lobbyists for every member of Congress. In 1971 there were 175 lobbyists and in 2016 there were 7,700 registered lobbyists. Almost all of them work for the interests of the wealthy. Just since 2000 the amount of money spent by politicians to get elected has grown from $4.3 billion to $6.4 billion and most of this money comes from the affluent. With this in hand, why would the general public elect politicians who have no interest in their own economic stagnation or decline? Part of the problem is the complexity of modern day issues like climate change, human overpopulation, economic science, and so on. While educational opportunities for the affluent are excellent, the educational opportunities for the middle class and especially the poor are abysmal. The United States doesn’t rank like 30th among modern industrialized countries in basic education because of how the children of affluent parents are educated, but because poor communities have little to spend on educating their own children. This is not accidental at all. It takes no higher math to understand that as long as education of children is based primarily on property taxes, affluent communities will have good schools and poor communities in the urban, suburban, and rural areas will have poor schools and poor teachers. The poorer communities took a hard hit in American when the War on Drugs started up in the 70’s and made poor communities the center of underground drug dealing, supported especially by marijuana sales, one of the least toxic recreational drugs—far less toxic to the body than either nicotine or alcohol. Businesses fled the poorer communities to avoid these drug wars and all the crime that comes with them. So this left poor communities with poor schools, poor teachers, and little employment opportunities, and unsafe neighborhoods filled with crimes to property and unprotected citizens. There is no racial component to any of this. Blacks, or hispanics who are raised in affluent neighborhoods are no more likely to engage in criminal activity than white citizens growing up in the same neighborhoods. And rural poor areas are riddled with criminal acts to the same degree as black or hispanic poor neighborhoods, if the density of the population is similar. It will be somewhat less if the population or the poor is more spread out in rural areas. However the degree of anger for their situation is vey high.
At some point well meaning (I guess) individuals decided to compensate somewhat for the situation by implementing affirmative action as a remedy. But whether purposely or accidentally, they applied this affirmative action to race and gender. The practical result of this was that minorities or women growing up in affluent neighborhoods were able to leap frog over others raised in similar environments because of their race or gender when it came to hiring or promotions. Very few of the minorities living in our ghettoes benefitted much from affirmative action. Naturally, many whites living in affluent neighborhoods became agitated that a minority person living next door, raised under the same environmental conditions, got favorable treatment in the job market or when it came to promotions. Common sense would dictate that affirmative action should apply only to those being raised in a disadvantaged neighborhood, and that a good government would not allow its own ghettoes to grow in number and depravity. Good government is responsible for all the communities under its jurisdiction. Good government ensures that all its citizens have good schools, good teachers, good medical care, good job opportunities, good pensions, a safe environment, and all children monitored (via chronic stress tests) to ensure their situations are acceptable for their formative years. All this is how crime rates are reduced. Just more police is a farce.
For the last fifty years all these varied situations above kept simmering and growing in size. More and more American citizens trapped in stagnant job income and personal safety insecurity became more and more hostile to politicians of any ilk. But all this growing anger was handled deftly by the wealthy. Starting with the less likelihood these unfortunate victims of government neglect will ever vote, the wealthy prayed upon the prejudices rampant in society and now beginning to grow into a backlash as to what was perceived as special treatment for minorities. Suddenly all these civil rights began to be viewed as enabling minorities of any ilk to get the jobs and government support at the expense of their own economic will being. In their own minds, they were sick of seeing so many minorities suddenly playing major roles on TV, whether it be athletes, actors, news commentators, game show participants, work place employees or whatever. Resentment kept building and it just seemed that if all these minorities with new rights and considerations were out of the picture, their own economic welfare would improve. On top of this, the wealthy—many of whom got to the top by worshipping money as some sort of God or compulsive behavior (enough is never enough) used the politics of divide and conquer to keep the ‘peasants’ warring amongst themselves. The conservative message to voters became more blunt: “your economic situation is the way it is because of immigrants (legal and illegal), blacks, hispanics, asians, liberals, dwindling influence of religions, communism, etc. Of course this was all poppycock. Without the illegal immigrants the bargains, especially on produce, would not exist, and the poorest citizens would have to do the labor at slave wages. Letting a small percentage of minorities, most of whom were raised in affluent communities, get well paid jobs kept these minorities from rioting, a sort of carrot dangling out in front.
Then along came Obama, a decent sort of chap who never met a group he didn’t want to help find more success. But he hit two brick walls. Except for his first two years in office the Congress was controlled by Republicans (via such strange laws which enables North Dakota and other such scarcely populated states to have as many Senators as a huge state like California). Obama managed to get modest health care reform through and after that Congress would not even consider any of the legislation he proposed. If he could get little done, he would get the blame. Obamas’s desire to help every group prosper backfired when the only group he was allowed to have prosper became the wealthy. Nothing which gave the wealthy more means to gain more wealth was blocked by the Republican Congress.
Then along came Trump, an uneducated blowhard who inherited a lot of money and became a star used car salesman with zero ethics and no concern for anyone except his own wealth, power, and public presence. His specialty was name calling, both enemies and his own party leaders whenever the whim hit him. Nobody thought he could get elected, but the primary system—a political charade which goes on for at least two years before an elections, attracted all kinds of ‘characters” and few competent qualified leaders wished to endure such a process. Most entered the fray, not to win, but to gain a considerable income from charitable donations to their campaign. The debates became more like a dating game TV show where serious issues are brushed aside and we get some sort of comedic slapstick entertainment. Trump simply came out mad at everybody and everything and treated the debates like some sort of ghetto playground put down contest. His level of anger and insults matched the level of anger and disgust so many American felt who were trapped in stagnant wages and low paying jobs.
The decline of American democracy is complex and may very well be irreversible at this point in time. Successful governance is in decline most everywhere. I define successful government as one which maximizes contentment for the greatest number of its constituents.
With neither party in America a position to right the ship, and the growing antagonism to human diversity, it is this antagonism that has pretty much left American Government frozen into inaction on the major threats to human welfare on a global basis. This antagonism to diversity, the decline of the Golden Rule as the basis for human ethics, the use of violence to save conflict, allowing the already wealthy to own even more of American wealth, the replacement of feelings rather than facts as the basis for actions, are all human traits which is making a harsh evolutionary correction for our species almost a certainty. Long term, of course all this is but another blip on the evolutionary process. I stated in an earlier musing that I could not care less about the 2018 American election. At my age this is a misstatement. While the Democrats will slow the speed to which so many will go over the proverbial cliff, this only benefits those older people like myself. The younger generation is in a very tough predicament. The time, place, and genetics of our birth are all based on luck. It is what it is. I guess in the last analysis all species are but puppets in an amazing evolutionary process.
Part 2 will follow. The decline of government effectiveness in America is filled with relevant complexities. Can’t manage an analysis in a few paragraphs.
