Perfect Storm, Imperfect Union
"I think that over the past few years, Americans have been feeling increasingly insecure about all sorts of things," historian Geraldo Cadava told The New Yorker's Political Scene podcast late last month. "You can chalk it up to the pandemic. You can chalk it up to climate change. Any number of things are making a lot of us anxious and insecure and that can be a destabilizing feeling."
A Yale PhD who currently teaches at Northwestern, Cadava writes on the Latino experience in the United States.
Good stuff, Walt. Reading excellent analysis like this always reminds me of Alvin Toffler. Taking Future Shock and Third Wave together, he sure didn’t miss much.
Excellent piece.
I propose an alternative explanation to 9/11 puncturing Americans sense of bliss… Fox News. They started spewing their poison in 2000…
Agree!
Mr. Trump is certainly playing on these fears: he has claimed that “the blood-soaked streets of our once great cities are cesspools of violent crimes” and that Americans are living in “the most dangerous time in the history of our country.” (per NYT)
We didn’t have polls in the 4 breakdowns / warring troughs described by the 4 generation cyclicality, we advancing socieities live through. They bottomed in 1785, 1865, 1943, and hopefully next year. In each of the 3 previous horrifying troughs, U.S. survival was in doubt. It is today once again, but this experiment of impossibly, conceptual ‘equals’ making the laws, enforcing them, and owning the property has dramatically changed history. It has always been cynically flawed, but realization of those flaws is higher now than ever. This has actually increased our peril as the flaws have drawn their defensive adherents. It could end it, but giving up is not a choice – we probably will kill ouselves but maybe we won’t and this impossible concept will overcome negative reality once again.
In 1991 we poisoned our own troops with sarin gas after Desert Storm while blowing up Saddam’s chemical weaponry. We still lie to ourselves about that to this day as a result of Bush’s knowledge of how to operate our “intelligence” system, against it’s supposed heroes (liabilities if deemed legit by the media). That is a serious brain (blank) for the country who were led to believe by the Bush administration that sick soldiers are/were over hyping the issues being experienced. So we have been walking around with a huge blind spot in our thinking apparatus and a gaping hole in our ethics as a country for decades.
The gateway for my Hispanic friends (never liberals to begin with) and neighbors embrace of Trump comes through the meat head media: Joe Rogan, Dana White, and Elon Musk et all.
Some times I look at some of my family members, friends and acquaintances and I wonder if my view of our country and the decline of our society is just overly fatalistic. Most of the folks I know, including bright well educated people, seem mostly oblivious to what I perceive as increasing dangers to the principles of free and “democratic” living. Then I read pieces like this and at least I get the somewhat bitter comfort of knowing others see similar signs of system decay and wonder how sustainable the American experiment is if we keep our present course.
Excellent- This is one of the reasons I subscribe
I really wish you would interview Peter Turchin….