The rise of Bush I thought of at first as a terrible mistake (imagine a chorus of Screeching Supremes) but I have come to see his flaws of character as reflecting flaws in American culture and politics: 'Bush R' Us'. Racism is a central factor.
We are divided by status, class, history, identity, privilege and education. And race is a determinant in all of those. I believe that Americans have a weak belief in equality and a weak sense of community, and racism is an important factor.
The problem with having a weak sense of equality is that in leads to an idealization of and infatuation with wealth and privilege for its own sake. Bush and Ms. Paris Hilton waltz on the same cultural stage. It leads to a tolerance for treating our own people badly.
18,000 Americans die every year only because they lack health insurance, and that is a factor in the deaths of many more. 40 million lack health insurance. Prisons incarcerate armies of poor. The cost of college increasingly burdens the working and middle class. The wages of college educated 25-34 year olds has fallen 8% in only 5 years.
I think the strong reacton to 9-11 was related to symbolism: some of ours were killed by them. If we kill our own people through policies the rest of the developed world rejects, it's okay. It's like an abusive family: I'll beat up my own kids, but don't you try it, or I'll kick your a*s.
There are guys in my family who have such a fantasy identification with Bush as a dude they can 'relate to' that they don't seem to notice or care that they have no prospects, no pension, no insurance, etc. White voters look at the white power structure and see themselves. It's a mythology for suckers.
This fantasy allows a reality I call "Americans Treat Americans Like Shit." One of the divisions it rests on is that whites are unwilling to let their tax money be spent on people of color. They don't believe people of color are equal, that developing their talents will benefit America as a whole. This leads to a nation where community is in decline, infrastructure is decaying, and the middle class is shrinking.
The Democratic party has been unable to offer leadership in this area. I think the effort of trianguating whites and people of color in an uneasy coalition has exhausted their ability to find a principle and stand for it.
But that is not the only problem: Democratic leaders must make peace with an ever more predatory and short sighted American capitalism, which has taken to abandoning the American worker at every opportunity. Dems have not offered a vision of community to our racially divided nation because such a vision is of no interest to lobbyists and funders with real money.
I will be addressing these issues when I write about how the Democrats can wrestle patriotism away from the Republicans, redefining it in the process. But here is an interesting take on these issues in the Guardian. The writer is discussing various theories as to why whites vote Republican:
There is a reason why we are only talking about white working-class voters: black people, regardless of income, overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Indeed, were it not for black people, the Democrats would have won the presidency only once, in 1964. That was the year President Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights act, turned to an aide and said: "We have lost the south for a generation." We are well into the second generation now, and the racialised politics of the south seem to be influencing the rest of the country rather than the other way round.
In other words there is a clear racial attachment that white voters have to the Republican party that does not override income but certainly qualifies it. No understanding of why so many of them vote Republican can examine class as though it is distinct from race.
Second, they assume a greater class attachment to the Democrats than the party deserves. Unlike the Republicans, who openly lobby for the class interests of their supporters and deliver on them, Democrats do not promise substantial changes to the lives of ordinary working people in America and rarely deliver even on the symbolic ones.
Which brings us to the final problem. The strongest correlation between income and voting is not whom you vote for but if you vote at all. The more you earn, the more likely you are to turn out. According to the census, 81.3% of those who earned $100,000 or more turned out in 2004; the figure for those who earned less than $20,000 was 48%.
That's because the rich have something to vote for. They have two parties; the poor here have none. Ultimately, the question of what's the matter with Kansas or any other state must in no small part be answered by yet another one: what's the matter with Democrats?
Comments