American Breakdown

I suppose any organization or relationship or country contains within it enough contradictions to lead to its own demise. Though our great American country has been seen as the shining example of democracy, creativity and freedom, we now appear to be crumbling under the weight of our own incongruity. Our apparent success over the past 70 years has been partly due to our own PR machinations—we have never been shy about speaking of how brilliant and special we are—and partly due to world circumstances.

So much comes with material success—including the power to control the narrative—to tell the origin story of the world in which we live. There is no question that the US has been the greatest success story of consumer culture in the history of the world. After our tangible success in defeating some of the overt forms of fascism in World War II we kept the engines of production running. We nurtured a super-charged consumer culture based on inflaming desire and a single-minded focus on financial measurements.

But the cost of our actions to the natural environment, to those at the bottom of the economic pile, and to those African Americans and Native Americans whose labor and land were essential to this whole Ponzi scheme is only now coming into the full light.

Pete Seeger’s sang a wonderful song in the sixties, Seek and You Shall Find, that had an interlude in which he told the following story:

I got a story about two little maggots. You know, little worms. They were sitting on the handle of a shovel. The shovel was in a workshop, and early in the morning, a workman came, put the shovel on his shoulder, and started down the street to work.

Well, the two little maggots held on as long as they could, but finally they jiggled off, and one fell down into a crack in the sidewalk, and the next fell off onto the curb. And from the curb, he fell into a cat. A very dead cat.

Well the second maggot just started in eating. And he ate and he ate and he ate for three days. He couldn’t eat anymore. He finally said, “*Yawn* I think I’ll go hunt up my brother.”

And the second maggot humped himself up over the curb, humped along the sidewalk, came to the crack. He leaned and said, “Hello! You down there, brother?”

“Yes, I’m down here all right! I’ve been here for three days without a bite to eat or a drop to drink. I’m nearly starved to death! But you… you’re so sleek and fat. To what do you attribute your success?”

“Brains and personality brother, brains and personality.”

So we give ourselves credit for the fortunate circumstances we are born into. We imagine that our success is the result of our individual efforts—conveniently ignoring the vast array of people and circumstances that allowed our efforts to bear fruit.

Here in America, we are deeply mired in a necessary and painful self-reckoning. Our inept and disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic has cut through our national delusion of competence and ingenuity.   The gross inequalities and violence endemic to our way of life have become impossible to ignore.

I credit Trump with the speed of our growing self-awareness. He is the exemplar of so much that is broken about America. His focus on himself, his willful disregard of any facts that don’t support his narrative and his constant self-congratulations are a caricature of our country. He is the distorted mirror in which we can all see enough of ourselves to perhaps stop blaming others and look to ourselves.

I am scared for the very foundations of our country. It appears that this election will vote Trump out of office. But I am not confident. And already Trump is positioning his followers to not accept the legitimacy of any outcome that does not have him staying in the White House indefinitely. What chaos and discord will he sow if the results are against him?

We are in for a dark time.