Rebooting American Dynamism

Every day and all day our world, dominated by online media, demands that we stare at our feet. Especially the flames at our feet that politicians, pundits, influencers, family, and friends warn us are ready to consume us all. Most of these folks fan the flames rather than attempt to extinguish them in a twisted attempt to get attention at the expense of our well-being. Fear mongers have become endemic in our society in the last several years. “World War III is imminent!” “Our democracy is about to collapse!” “Immigrants are rapists, drug mules, and murderers!”

Of course, most often what the fear mongers are saying is “Look at me!” to feed their vanity and to influence those they wish to manipulate. And while doomsayers can cause expectations to spin up into manifestation—the proverbial self-fulfilling prophecy—generally all they actually accomplish is increasing our anxiety to the point of our exhaustion. Their claims, while possible, are not probable based on facts and reason. These fear mongers are political and social parasites gnawing at the feathers of our better-angel wings. Their pessimism promotes peril at the expense of prosperity.

We live in an open society by choice with limited guardrails as a democratic republic. Openness, which is also known as (small “l”) liberal, is what our founders wanted for us after escaping the tyranny of religion and monarchies in Europe. Self-determination, which is a concept born of the Protestant Reformation when the Calvinist notion of pre-destination was set aside in favor of the notion that any person could become worthy of a heavenly afterlife through their own volition and perfection, together with individualism born of the same Reformation that allowed a direct relationship between people and God (without, in particular, papal intermediation), became two of the pillars of liberalism.

The ideal of a self-directed destiny is the most fundamental value in our founding documents as well as the foundation of the American Dream. Writers in the 19th century, from Charles Dickens, to Alexis de Tocqueville, to Frederick Jackson Turner, all lauded the spirit of Americans who they considered as curious, intriguing, and at times, inspirational. As the journalist, John O’Sullivan wrote in 1845, it was Americans “manifest destiny to overspread the whole of the continent.”[1] Americans are, after all, an irascible bunch of high achievers.

In America, we decided to embrace capitalism as our economic system and democracy as our political system. Both have served us extraordinarily well. Together with some other basic structural advantages like being on a continent protected from most foreign threats by large bodies of water, and the only industrial capacity left in the world after World War II, The United States under capitalism and democracy became a superpower. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, a lone superpower. We were actually granted the unusual and perhaps unprecedented opportunity to quit staring at our feet to instead look out at a horizon of promise to set the example for the world and affect the advancement of humanity both at home and abroad.

For most of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, we Americans did look at the horizon more than at our feet and ushered in the digital age and the age of affluence which, among other things, marked the transition worldwide from the perpetual condition of scarcity that had been with us since the beginning of time, to the condition of abundance in terms of resources and wealth never before achieved in the history of humankind. It is amazing what you can achieve once you stop staring at your feet.

But then, we traded self-determination for self-absorption. (Affluence does have deleterious effects.) In what I have termed the “Age of Deceit,” Americans sacrificed three founding values in the last twenty years. We abandoned individualism for narcissism; perfectibility (making things better) for entitlement; and, exemplar exceptionalism (setting the humble example) for hubris. This period of crisis, now twenty years old, was marked by the War on Terror, the Great Recession, the pandemic, and now punctuated by a nearly completely dysfunctional federal government. The through-line thread has been our embrace of deceit amplified most shamelessly and hideously by the most prolific liar in American presidential history, Donald Trump.

Great crises do, however, produce great opportunities. By its nature, evolutionary change is a slow process whether you are observing genes, or social norms, or the broader operating systems of civilizations. However, the response to crises can create a moment in time when progress can accelerate faster than what Charles Darwin hypothesized in The Origin of Species. Lifting one’s eyes toward the horizon in the context of new realities and rethinking legacy norms and systems are essential to the advancement of humanity.

Two types of events in American history illustrate how these accelerated periods of progress can occur: awakenings and foundings. The first impacts the character of the citizenry and the second impacts the structures and systems by which those citizens govern themselves. Both are necessary to affect the rebirth of any society and today are necessary to save us Americans from our current selves; to restore American dynamism. Frankly, in America, we are overdue for both a re-awakening and a re-founding.

America’s two so-called “great” awakenings (early 18th and 19th centuries) were based in religious revivalist events. At their essence, however, their effect was to restore and reinvigorate the American character. While organized religion has, at best, a dubious track record (especially among leaders) at representing high moral character, the popularity of these awakenings does illustrate the nature of Americans who, at their core, want to be people of good character. Our prevalent and natural disposition is to achieve consonance between our behaviors and common virtues like honesty, humility, discipline, and hard work. Frankly, in this regard, the Age of Deceit in the last twenty years has been exceptional rather than normative. Although we have recently been exploited by some really bad actors, our history is full of better examples of leadership in all sectors of our society.

These first two awakenings also illustrate the ebb and flow of religion in America by and between the private, public, and political spheres of our society.  When religion peaks, it is in all three spheres as it last did most recently in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then, it retreats as it is doing today never leaving the private sphere, but back from the public and political spheres.

Although the religious right claims a third period of awakening in the 1980s, this period was not about reinvigorating virtues-based character; that claim is a ruse. It was about politicizing religion to gain power and attract financial support for Bible-pounding evangelists and a cadre of televangelists who preferred Gucci loafers and private jets to Florsheim shoes and Greyhound buses, let alone the sandals and walking staff of Jesus Christ. Their wallets were much more important to them as they swindled the souls of Americans.

Today, the question is where shall we turn to guide us to better behaviors and better days? How can we make a better America?

As for our national character, inasmuch as we are in a period of waning religiosity today, religious texts and preachings may not resonate. Thankfully, we do have a clear option. Our founding documents should suffice when considered together with the inspirations our founders took from classical literature and moral philosophy from ancient philosophers as well as philosophers from the period of Enlightenment (18th century). Cicero, Seneca, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Epictetus are among the ancients they studied (especially Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations). And, John Locke, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Henry St. John (Lord Bolingbroke), and Henry Home (Lord Kames) were among the British and Scottish philosophers our founders often cited from the Enlightenment period.

Although I will leave it up to our adult population to reestablish their own footings of character today, I do believe we need to demand that civics and moral philosophy return to the classroom as requirements for our children and young adults. Think of what I am suggesting as a second period of enlightenment, al la Locke, Hume et al. We might also include the works of more recent people like William James, Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and poets like T.S. Elliot, Mary Oliver, and Langston Hughes, among many others.

Further, to bind our students to America in a meaningful and authentic manner, I would also suggest (as others have) that we require two years of national/community service of our high school graduates that would qualify them for a four-year college scholarship following their service. Not only would their service help bind them to their country and communities, it would undoubtedly make their subsequent college education much more meaningful and fulfilling. Whether we call it an awakening or enlightenment is not important; our national character most certainly needs a reboot.

On the structural issues, America also needs a reboot in the form of a third founding. After the Civil War, we had our second founding that was aimed principally at achieving a closer semblance to the founder’s aim held in the ideal that “all men are created equal.” In effect, we were recognizing that in the context of that postbellum era we could craft new amendments, laws, and policies to actualize an ideal. In particular, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments (abolishing slavery, establishing due process for all, and voting rights for all citizens, respectively) were directly intended to actualize that ideal that “all men are created equal.” Although these so-called “Reconstruction Amendments” were passed, they were subsequently attacked by certain justices in the Supreme Court and diluted repeatedly by what became collectively known as Jim Crow laws. While not yet fully realized today, they are largely intact; progress is, after all, marked by steps forward and steps backward, which is to say, irregular and ragged.

In all, since the Bill of Rights ten amendments in 1791, we have enacted seventeen more amendments. The point is, dynamism must be embraced to meet the conditions of the day. The First Amendment provides “the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”[2] We should exercise that right.  Without amendments to our Constitution, revisions of law, and the evolution of norms, it is unlikely our Constitution and republic would have survived. Indeed, I expect our founders would be astonished that our republic has survived as long as it has.

In my opinion, we must recognize that our federal government has become locked into an abysmal state of inefficaciousness. Its scope must be dramatically narrowed with authority and resources returned to the states to deal with many issues we have (inappropriately) put on the back of our federal government. At both the federal and state level, we must also consider allowing the private sector to turn some of our issues into their opportunities. I recognize that suggestion is like touching the third rail for many of my leftward leaning friends, but we must all be open to new ideas. In addition, partisanship that has been institutionalized through gerrymandering must be reformed, and an electoral college that does not assure a fair and certain election must follow the lead of Maine and Nebraska to award electors proportionally to the popular vote (which can be done without an amendment to the Constitution).

I am sure others can think of further reforms to revitalize our federal government and heal the union. At some point, all sides will reach a level of frustration and fatigue to motivate them to entertain these discussions. That point may come sooner rather than later as we face election chaos in the next few months that while deeply concerning may also—finally—cause enough of us to demand fundamental changes to our structures and systems of governance.

I acknowledge that these are troubling times for many reasons and that the flames at our feet require our attention. I also know, however, that if we ignore the horizon, progress and greater well-being for humanity will remain perpetually beyond our reach. As long as we are focused on the short term, we will continue to be a victim of circumstance in the long term. Long-held and highly regarded virtues must be placed back on the table to be embraced with fidelity. The usage of “probity,” which the Cambridge Dictionary defines as “the quality of being honest and behaving correctly,” has dropped so low as to be considered archaic, today.[3] Perhaps TikTok can restore its use. Finally, we must ignore the fear mongers in our midst. Like anger and violence, stress and anxiety do not help solve problems; in most cases they make them worse. Lifting our eyes, embracing virtues, and ignoring the doomsayers will also lift our hearts and spirit.

It is our duty as adults and parents to assure that every future generation has the tools to build their own spine of character, and to build an appropriate and effective societal infrastructure through our constitutional, legal, and normative commitments so that they may thrive on their own terms.

If we accomplish this, the American beacon of hope that was once the light of the world will shine brightly again.

 

[1] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 151. Manifest Destiny and its contribution to new imaginings of America in the late 1800s are also explored in Patricia Limerick Nelson, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987).

[2] See the Bill of Rights here: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript.

[3] To see the usage of “probity” since 1800, see Google NGram Viewer, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=probity.

By |2024-10-20T12:49:33+00:00October 6th, 2024|General, Recent, The New Realities|0 Comments
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The Election as Reflection

If humankind survives, someday historians and eventually, archaeologists, will look back at today to wonder how a society that had largely achieved all of its ambitions—that successfully achieved an abundance of prosperity—went to war with itself. That some external threat or cataclysmic event did not do them in; rather, that they defeated themselves. They will study how the greatest empire in the then-modern era—the United States of America—imploded. Jared Diamond’s, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), that covered the last 15,000 years of history may be followed by Stupidity: How the Smartest Society in the Anthropocene Epoch Imploded.

Each weekday, I rise and turn on the financial markets as reported by Bloomberg Television. I am interested in financial markets, but the real reason I tune in is that it is the only news outlet where the actual news is told without being coated in bias and deceit. All they care about is how the actual news impacts capital markets. They are realists in the spirit of Niccolo Machiavelli as opposed to spin artists pursuing eyeballs and ears with righteous ideological blather. Fox, MSNBC, CNN, Facebook, X, et al, which have far larger audiences will, no doubt, be one factor cited in future cultural analysts’ assessments as prime contributors to the implosion. Financial news outlets are not, however, completely innocent. They are simply assisting wealthy folks and institutional investors in their exploitation of market inefficiencies. Financial opportunity exists in both functional and dysfunctional societies.

As financiers and traders hope, the upcoming election will produce gridlock in Washington D.C. People who make money for a living in capital markets know that the market manipulations, represented by Trump and Harris including his macho “tariff man” bluster and her anti-free market “price gouging” controls, are economically unsound. Capitalists want a congress addled by pettiness to get none of these market manipulations passed. They recognize the benefits of political constipation.

Capitalists also know that a U.S. deficit that is approaching $40 trillion dollars in 2025 is only sustainable as long as the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency. The dollar’s days as such will not last forever. I first studied and wrote about moving to a single global currency in 2008, well before cryptocurrency. My analysis showed that notwithstanding the risk to the U.S. of a non-dollar single global currency, the benefits to both world security and economic stability far outweighed protecting the dollar. My argument then (and now) is that the U.S. needs to embrace the idea to affect a soft landing for the dollar; to manage the transition rather than risking its inevitability. Today, we have cryptocurrency that is the obvious instrument to affect this transition. While much maligned by traditional bankers and politicians, it has the potential to deliver a legitimate global currency beyond the reach of central bank manipulation making it a more stable medium of exchange than the dollar.

Allowing our debt to ratchet higher—in spite of all of our other sources of power—will compromise America’s hegemony and allow the endemic deceit-driven negativity and avarice of our society to tip the U.S. toward implosion. Of course, the solution for the deficit is simple: raise taxes and reduce expenses for decades to come. But we don’t have the character and attendant will power for anything that is simple and clear. We are too immersed in delusion while staring at our loveliest selves on our social media feeds. Omphalos syndrome— the belief that a place of geopolitical power and its currency is the most important place in the world—is our most fundamental delusion. In Greek mythology omphalos represented the naval of the earth. In other words, as a syndrome, naval-gazing is not a particularly healthy condition for world leadership, especially when your own house is not in order.

As the saying goes, “in a democracy you get the government you deserve.” This election, as illustrated through the partisan avatars of Trump and Harris, is actually a reflection of who we are as a people today: profoundly selfish and divided against ourselves. Our allies grimace while our enemies drool. Indeed, as another old saying goes, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

Largely because of our social media ideosphere and corrupt/deficient/compromised political leaders, reasonable fact-based discourse that favors consensus-driven problem solving that is both inclusive and optimistic has been set aside for fear, hate, violent, and shame-based rhetoric. This rhetoric is aimed at manipulation in the interest of swindlers rather than persuasion meant to serve the common interests and purposes of a stronghold society. Our founding fathers, in particular Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in The Federalist Papers (Federalist no. 9 & 10, respectively), repeatedly warned us of the danger of factions who prefer passion over reason; in today’s vernacular, bullshit over reality.[i] But few of us study these cornerstones of civics and moral philosophy anymore. It has now been decades since they were required courses in student curricula. Optimism and high-mindedness that defined America’s character through the 20th century has been set aside in favor of deceit-driven negativity and avarice in the 21st century.

The manner in which we conduct our lives is so far from the character that produced the most powerful society in the history of the world that it will not take future historians or archaeologists long to write the story of the great implosion—as another chapter in the long history of how empires fail.

However, it is not too late to reclaim the moral high-ground. There is hope. What we can’t foresee may save us, but only if we add integrity of character back into the mix. The unforeseeable always drives history, and in our nation’s first two centuries, the unforeseeable has tilted in our favor. The reason it did was the American character.

My maternal grandfather was born in 1890. In his earliest days on the prairies of South Dakota, his family lived in a windowless sod house. He fought in World War I, raised a family during the Great Depression and World War II, and just three months after his death we landed a man on the moon—the rocket engines for which my father helped engineer. Was any of that foreseeable? Hardly. In my lifetime, the arc of history continued with advances in science and technology that produced enormous increases in the well-being of humankind. From basic vaccines to digital technologies to now the promise of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and fusion-based sources of new energy—a trifecta of extraordinary potential. Just two generations after a sod house, we stand at the edge of unfathomable frontiers of human progress. None of it, foreseeable.

Americans have done amazing things, and can do amazing things again. In spite of ourselves, the quiet diligent explorers, inventors, and innovators of tomorrow may offer us a way out—to save us from ourselves. But we have to add back the advantage that our founders established in the late 18th century, that Tocqueville documented in the 19th century, and that 20th century generations actualized together with dramatic advances in science and technology. We must restore our character. The Roman playwright, Terence, adapted by the Roman poet, Virgil, argued that “Fortune Favors the Bold.” They were only partially correct. Substantial and sustainable prosperity favors those who are bold, but who also have high character. Who honor virtues with integrity.

Regardless of any potential breakthrough solutions, my plea today is that we must drop the mongering—of fear, hate, violence, and shame—to have a chance of doing the right thing together in unison. If we don’t shed these debilitating modalities, the unforeseeable will flip from hope to implosion. Further, that until we start thinking of each other instead of just ourselves, it is unlikely we will be little more than fodder for those future historians and archaeologists.

In their late-life correspondence, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson questioning whether any great society could recover from its curse of prosperity and lost character. He asked, “Have you ever found in history one single example of a Nation thoroughly Corrupted—that was afterwards resorted to Virtue?”[ii] He pointed to Rome which in his assessment had been a “vast empire until it was felled by riches and luxury.”[iii] My sense is that America is at its tipping point and we will soon know if we can right our own ship, or fail as the Roman empire did. Our founders doubt us from the grave.

While we wring our hands and argue over the war between Russia and Ukraine and the future of NATO, or the conflicts between Israel and Iran, or the potential invasion of Taiwan by China, or the many other concerns beyond our borders, the most pressing issue is here at home: the collapse of the American character and the impending implosion of the greatest empire in the history of humankind, the United States of America. If we don’t focus on fixing ourselves all the other issues do not matter. We will have no influence over them, anyway.

In a few weeks we will (hopefully) all vote. Many of us may be holding our noses as we do so, but not voting is simply unacceptable for those of us who claim to be citizens. To be clear, we need look no further than a mirror to see who is responsible for both today and tomorrow. It is not just the politicians—including Trump and Harris—it is principally us. What emerges is our doing. What comes next is unforeseeable, but can once again save us as long as we couple extraordinary developments with a humble, compassionate, and determined sense of character.

 

[i] Hamilton, Madison & Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin Group, First Signet Classic Printing 2003), p. 66-79.

[ii] John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, December 21, 1819, Founders Online National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7287.

[iii] Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024), p. 214.

By |2024-10-06T13:26:17+00:00September 22nd, 2024|General, Recent, The New Realities|0 Comments
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