Turbulent Seas

There's never a shortage of contemporary Cassandras who forecast America's doom based on a collection of trends and statistical indicators.  I'm sure every powerful nation-state going back to ancient Babylon has had its share of them.  But sooner or later, one of them ends up getting something right.  Like this one.  Here's an excerpt from Ed Luce's 2012 book, Time to Start Thinking:

Fast-forward six years, and Luce's analysis turned out to be dead-on.  It's not difficult to understand why voters feel disconnected from the two major parties. Consider the major events and trends of the past ten to fifteen years.  The 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Wall Street bailout. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.  The outsourcing/automation of manufacturing jobs and stagnant wages.  Government shut-downs and political brinkmanship.  The "Retail Apocalypse." Two quagmire wars.  It doesn't take an expert social scientist to understand that a whole lot of people are increasingly uncertain about their futures, and that they view Washington and Wall Street elites as unhelpful and indifferent.  It's a simple equation: economic distress + frustration with current system = openness to demagoguery.  Just to make things interesting, add a healthy amount of simmering racial resentment.

And so, enter Donald Trump.  If you wonder why I rail against him so vocally, it's because he ascended to the presidency at a really bad time.  And I'm not just talking about the portion of the population worried about their futures. The day he took office, the NSA was engaging in bulk data collection of Americans' communications, dozens of police forces across the country were utilizing military-grade equipment, the precedent of launching drone strikes against American citizens without due process had been established, and our civil liberties were being eroded in the name of fighting terrorism.   It was a farfetched, extreme worst-case scenario, but taken together those things would provide an aspiring autocrat all the tools they needed.  So when Trump said things like he'd only acknowledge the election results "if he won," I got a bit nervous. 

I'm sure there are many, many servicemembers, police officers, intelligence analysts, and other government workers who refuse to carry out unconstitutional, and potentially, authoritarian-type orders - like spying on citizens because of their political views or anti-Trump activism.  There are many public servants who understand the Constitution, who know their history, and who recognize the potential of these programs being used toward undemocratic ends.  However, there would still be a significant number who would carry out those orders, and one only needs to look at the past fifty or so years of US history to find examples.  Look at Abu Ghraib, COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, the Chicago PD "black sites," and several other incidents, to see how easy it is for things to go off the rails.

Meanwhile, nothing is being done to fix any of this.  Now maybe there's no easy solution for the economic anxiety stuff, but I'm sure there are ways to alleviate the distress: job retraining programs, government investment in developing industries like nanotechnology and solar energy, etc. But the government could be doing a much better job of cleaning its own house: terminating the bulk collection program, making police forces get rid of the military hardware, strengthening Constitutional protections and curbing Executive power.  Yet to nobody's surprise, it's not. 

I'm a natural pessimist, but I don't see this ending well unless the political and business classes start acting to make Americans' lives better.  The path is wide open for a genuine autocrat to show up, and that person probably won't be as incompetent as Trump has been.

Reality Check

I want you to watch a video, then I want you to look at a graph.

You might have seen the video already, because it's been making the rounds on social media.  It's a speech Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the Stoneman Douglas HS shooting, gave to news outlets.  It's powerful and it hits like a gut punch. 

Now, the graph.

 

Image courtesy of Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight.com

Nate Silver says the students speaking out is having an effect, and I believe he's correct.  The Stoneman Douglas HS students could be the catalyst that finally gets some heavily-supported gun control measures implemented.  Now, it's great to see teenagers get involved in activism, defying the "lazy, apathetic slacker" label adults apply to them.  But think about what's going on here for a second.

These teenagers speaking out seems to be what's making a difference.  It's not kids and teenagers dying that's tipping the scales, because we already had Sandy Hook, Columbine, and Virginia Tech, and none of them led to meaningful change.  No, the teenagers had to make their voices heard, loudly and often, to shake up the status quo even a tiny bit.  Instead of doing normal teenager things like going to prom and playing sports, these students are spearheading the latest movement for stricter gun control legislation.  What does that say about us as a country? 

It shouldn't take a band of high school students invoking their murdered classmates to produce meaningful change.  That's a job for older adults: parents, community leaders, legislators.  Adults are the ones old enough to vote, to contribute to candidates, and to run for office, so we are responsible for operating the institution of government.  And yet, we've failed to even have a discussion about mass shootings.  It should not be this way.  We, as a nation, have failed our children.

What's more, our politicians have failed us.  Instead of even engaging in thoughtful debate over gun legislation, they have repeatedly ducked the issue.  Now, maybe the research would show that no form of gun control could make a difference (I seriously doubt that), but the point is to at least address the issue.  The politicians' refusal to do so shows how little they think of us, or how out of touch they are.  Or a combination of the two.

On top of that, it exposes a deeper problem afflicting our government: money in politics.  Emma Gonzalez and others have rightly pointed out the causal relationship between a politician's refusal to discuss the issue and the sizeable check he or she gets from the NRA.  Like Marco Rubio, who is one of the students' two Senators.  Rubio doesn't think the days following a massacre that left seventeen of his constituents dead is a good time to discuss gun violence; could it be because he's the NRA's third-highest recipient? Any government that prioritizes keeping the moneyed donors happy over tackling problems that are literally killing people is a deeply broken and dysfunctional government.

It's frustrating and shameful that our country is so unable to achieve meaningful change, and that our politicians are so unresponsive.  But it's a damn disgrace that it takes teenagers, a demographic that is legally prohibited from wielding many forms of political power, to nudge the system even an iota.  Something is deeply, systemically wrong when it comes to that.  

Our politicians are failing us, but we are also failing, as citizens and as responsible adults.  

It's time to do better.