Divided states of America

[Heracles 417]

Divided states of America

Simon Mann

October 30, 2010

SOMETIMES, the divisions that lurk in America become glaringly apparent. Mostly submerged, often papered over, they remain fissures in the great and evolving work that is the republic of the United States.

Sometimes they are illuminated by the everyday; a trip to the baseball in the nation's capital, Washington, is a case in point.

On those balmy summer evenings when the smell of hot dogs and fast food, freshly cut grass and the sweaty remains of the day waft across the expectant after-work crowd, a sense of privilege emerges long before the first pitch. It arises when the thousands of fans cram the subway trains that leave downtown on the Green Line.

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As the carriages draw alongside the platform at Navy Yard, a pointer to a past industrial era that is a short walk from the stadium, the crush heads to the exits. Should the crowd cast an eye over its mostly white shoulder, it would see an example of Divided America that for visitors can be surprising, even confronting: almost exclusively, the faces remaining on the train are black.

From Navy Yard, the Green Line slips beneath the Anacostia River and eases its way through Washington's south-east quadrant, where African Americans account for 95 per cent of the population and where rising crime in the '80s and '90s, fuelled by the trade in crack cocaine, gave Washington its label of ''murder capital of the US''. Though easing, much of the city's crime today remains centred in those same neighbourhoods.

America has come a long way since the segregated meal counters of the Deep South, and a growing black middle class counters the notion of disadvantage. But sometimes, its slip can show.

In the cafeterias of its public schools, black kids sit with black kids and white kids stick mostly with their own, too. And in Washington's leafy north-west suburbs, bands of Latino workers trim the lawns of wealthy white folk, or serve them in restaurants at miserable pay rates, relying on diner gratuities to survive.

That the divisions are so stark in the nation's capital, a majority black city, seems symbolic of a gulf that still exists between the various communities of this vast and prosperous land.

Anacostia, and disadvantaged suburbs like it, lie just a few kilometres from the White House, where America's first black president presides in troubled times in which old divisions are becoming writ large and new ones are emerging.

Two years on from Barack Obama's historic presidential election victory, hope has given way to fear and to cultural warring between liberals and conservatives and to a new class of mad-as-hell Americans who talk of bringing down the establishment and about safeguarding the nation's liberties.

In these paradoxical times, some freedoms are cherished more than others: an evangelical southern preacher must be persuaded not to burn copies of the Koran and throughout America hostility is rising against the siting of new mosques. Anti-government militias play weekend war games brandishing M-16s, proclaiming themselves ''patriots'' ready to defend American liberties against a possible Muslim uprising.

''It's all circling around the same problem of personal liberties,'' explains Walter Berglund, the liberal protagonist in Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom. Why should governments intervene?

''People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can't afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles.

''You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to f--- up your life whatever way you want to.''

Just two years after the country swung wildly to the Democratic cause, the political pendulum is poised to swing all the way back - and some - in Tuesday's mid-term elections (Wednesday, Melbourne time) as a Republican Party being driven sharply to the right by the populist no-holds-barred Tea Party reclaims the language of political triumphalism: ''We're taking back the country,'' they cry. And from a ''socialist'', no less.

The political poles are shifting further apart. Partisanship is in the ascendancy; moderates are on the nose, derided as mealy-mouthed. Whither America's most challenging issues?

''Our politics follows from our economics, and vice versa,'' says Robert Reich, a leading progressive intellectual, once a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet and now professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

''In times of economic growth, when everyone's incomes are growing, it's easy to feel generous,'' says Reich in an email exchange with The Age.

''In times of economic stagnation, when incomes are flat or endangered, almost every issue becomes a zero-sum game in which either you win or 'they' win.''

And how. Those divisions are being magnified once more by the grim economic reality in which America stews - divisions of race, of class and mostly of opportunity - while scapegoats are being stalked. Illegal immigrants, whose cheap labour has for decades helped underpin economic growth, are being demonised.

The languid economy is the central theme in a country of ''haves'' and ''have-nots'', where a new dichotomy is emerging between those people with homes and those whose homes have been repossessed, between those with jobs and those who are unemployed or struggling to get enough work to make ends meet, and where half the nation, according to a recent poll, say they are not living the American Dream. And half of those again expect they never will.

In another poll, 63 per cent of Americans doubted they could maintain their current standard of living.

''The modern American Dream for me was general prosperity and well-being for the average person,'' writes Time Warner commentator Fareed Zakaria, who grew up in India. ''European civilisation had produced the great cathedrals of the world. America had the two-car garage.''

But accompanying the Great Recession has been a psychological depression and evaporating confidence in America's

''can-do'' resourcefulness. As Zakaria tells it, Americans are worried beyond the current debate over whether fiscal stimulus or deficit reduction is the right remedy.

''[Americans] fear that we are in the midst not of a cyclical downturn but a structural shift, one that poses huge new challenges to the average American job, pressures the average American wage and endangers the average American Dream,'' Zakaria says.

''The middle class, many Americans believe, is being hollowed out. I think they are right.''

Reich agrees that this is no cyclical phenomenon, that the middle class is under siege and that ''something structural is going on''.

New technologies and globalisation have allowed US jobs to be shipped offshore, crimping opportunities for ordinary Americans; while safety nets that might have been funded by imposts on the rich have not been expanded to compensate. In fact, the reverse is true, which has led to widening disparities between rich and poor.

THE root of such fierce divisions in American society, of increasingly extreme positions and growing anger, according to Reich, is that disparity, though anyone taking such a position in America today risks being branded a socialist.

Indeed, when the Democrats' leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, recently addressed steel workers on how disparities might be bridged, a follow-up discussion on Rupert Murdoch's conservative Fox News channel carried a shorthand summary across the bottom of the screen: ''Pelosi takes socialist tone: addresses disparity of income in America.''

Those disparities, in fact, were never more pronounced than shortly before the Great Depression and again in 2007, just ahead of the financial meltdown that triggered America's current predicament.

In 1928, the richest 1 per cent of Americans earned 23.9 per cent of the nation's total income. As prosperity was shared more widely in the post-World War II years and through the economic nirvana of the '50s and '60s, the figure fell to around 8 per cent by the 1970s.

But that proportion had climbed back to almost 24 per cent by 2007.

''And we all know what happened in the years immediately following these twin peaks - in 1929 and 2008,'' Reich says.

Income disparity was charting new extremes in 2007. According to the Internal Revenue Service (America's tax office), the 400 richest American households earned a total of $US138 billion that year, up from $US105 billion a year earlier. That's an average of $US345 million each, on which they paid a tax rate of just 16.6 per cent.

''What we get from widening inequality is not only a more fragile economy but also an angrier politics,'' wrote Reich recently as a pointer to his latest book, Aftershock.

''When virtually all the gains from growth go to a small minority at the top - and the broad middle class can no longer pretend it's richer than it is by using homes as collateral for deepening indebtedness - the result is deep-seated anxiety and frustration.

''This is an open invitation to demagogues who misconnect the dots and direct the anger toward immigrants, the poor, foreign nations, big government, 'socialists', 'intellectual elites', or even big business and Wall Street.''

Through this bitter crossfire, Barack Obama has steered an agenda that

has angered the right and disappointed the left: the former claims he has unnecessarily expanded the role of government and added to the nation's debt, while the latter says he has been too cautious, wasting a mandate for a radical overhaul of health, for punishing miscreant Wall Street bankers and reshaping the economy.

Yet the administration was hampered by a Congress that never quite got on board and a Republican push-back that made bipartisanship a mirage.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, implemented a hard-nosed strategy the moment Obama became President, using procedural tactics to deny Democrats easy passage of legislation, and makes clear now that his

raison d'etre in the next two years is to see Obama forced out of office.

While not exonerating Obama, the much-in-demand, independent, Washington-based political analyst Charlie Cook suggests the depth of the economic crash meant ''any one-party government right now would be paying a horrific price''.

But in a Q&A with The Washington Post, Cook suggests that irrelevant ambitions complicated Obama's political task. ''Every month, every week, every day that Washington seemed focused on healthcare instead of the economy frightened people,'' he says. ''It seemed out of touch.''

Environmental and healthcare reforms might have been popular in good economic times, but not as the economy was sinking.

And when unemployment climbed through 9 per cent, despite projections of a peak of 8.2 per cent, ''I have never seen an economic stimulus completely discredited before. But it was,'' adds Cook.

Further, Cook lays the blame for the administration's misreading of the situation not at the feet of Obama's aides such as former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who ''knew they should cut a deal on healthcare [and] get to the economy'', but with the President himself.

''He had already been first at everything,'' Cook tells the Post.

''He wanted to be something other than the first - to be historical, game-changing, to have grand influence like FDR or LBJ. But he missed out on the day job,'' which was employment and economic growth.

So divisions now are running deep, and despair is palpable.

''The real issue [facing America] is the collapse of opportunity for so many people in the working class and the middle class,'' says Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and researcher into the effects of political polarisation.

''Mass unemployment, underemployment, entire industries down-sizing with no particular hope of recovery … And so, the atmosphere of anxiety I think is rooted in the fact that people don't have a clear understanding of what the success story is for the next decade, either for the country or for themselves personally.

''Unless they have some increased confidence that somebody does understand the path to a better future and is prepared to put the country on course to move down that path, our political system is going to be very unstable and characterised by resentment, rejection and mistrust.''

The exact dimensions of the Democrats' failure won't be drawn until late next Tuesday, but pundits have been writing them off for weeks in the House of Representatives where Republicans need 39 seats to re-establish control. By late this week, Cook was pushing up the numbers, tipping gains for the Grand Old Party of 48 to 60 seats ''with higher [Democrat] losses possible''.

Late-night TV comedian Jay Leno cut to the chase: ''This Sunday is Halloween, the scariest day of the year. Unless you're a Democrat. Then that would be next Tuesday.''

Ironically, a handful of Senate candidates whose Tea Party backing landed them nominations in plum seats, could yet deny the Republicans control of the Senate and a clean sweep of Congress. There, the party needs 10 seats out of the 37 up for grabs, to clinch a majority.

But polling suggests more moderate candidates might have done the trick, as several of the Tea Partiers implode amid erratic campaigning.

Either way, the upshot of Tuesday's vote will be a divided legislature: a Democratic president, a Republican House that must accommodate a Tea Party caucus and with neither party with the sort of majority in the Senate that would guarantee passage of their political agenda.

Optimists believe that the outcome will force a new bipartisanship, rather than political gridlock. As Galston says, ''Americans don't want their elected representatives to yell at each other for the next two years. They want them to get something done.

''And if one party or the other is perceived as contributing more to the decibel level of the debate than to actual solutions, then eventually that party is going to pay a political price. It always happens. To be more specific, if the Republicans gain a share of governing power as a result of this election, as I believe they almost surely will, then the American people are going to apply a new standard to them, a new test. They cannot simply say 'No'. They will have to be seen as offering solutions. If they don't, they could quickly become seen as part of the problem.''

The refrain of the typical Republican candidate does not augur well for post-election harmony. Typically, it plays like this: One, say 'No' to things we cannot afford; Two, rein in healthcare reform; Three, refuse to raise taxes.

The attitude portends a fierce battle over the future of government spending and tax reform.

Barack Obama has put a freeze on discretionary government spending, although that accounts for just 15 per cent or so of the budget. His healthcare reforms are framed to start delivering cost savings within the decade. And he wants tax cuts that were put in place by George W. Bush - and favoured the rich - to be allowed to expire at the end of 2010 for those Americans earning more than $US200,000 a year.

Republicans, however, want to repeal Obama's healthcare and financial regulatory reforms, say they won't touch the defence budget and want the Bush tax cuts retained for all at a cost of $US4 trillion over the next decade. Less clearly have they articulated spending cuts necessary for reining in the budget deficit, currently running at more than $US1.3 trillion a year.

And Galston concedes: ''The better Republicans do [on Tuesday], the less likely they are to compromise.''

http://www.theage.com.au/world/divided-states-of-america-20101029-177fa.htm

Edited November 2, 2010 by Heracles

[luckytxn 2,265]

Luckily the rest of the world is pretty much insignificant and their opinions all taken together don't mean squat.

[sly_wolf 199]

Luckily the rest of the world is pretty much insignificant and their opinions all taken together don't mean squat.

A little arrogance is always good.

[Heracles 417]

Luckily the rest of the world is pretty much insignificant and their opinions all taken together don't mean squat.

Likewise. Because of people like yourself YeehA!, the country has become the butt of jokes.

For starters, I know you did not read this, as the time you entered to the time you posted was too quick. You've heard of reading right?

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

I think what tells people more about Americans, is that about half of them don't even bother to vote. They are brainless drones who don't know anything and don't give a sh*t about anything other than sitting in front of the TV, munching fried foods, and drinking beer. They just don't care about anything and lack not only the motivation but also the brainpower to participate in the democratic process. And if you have 150,000,000 idiots in a single country, you can't be surprised that we're continue to lose momentum in the world and get passed by in about every possible discipline.

[natty bumppo 297]

Likewise. Because of people like yourself YeehA!, the country has become the butt of jokes.

For starters, I know you did not read this, as the time you entered to the time you posted was too quick. You've heard of reading right?

could it be ... he is not a slow reader ...

or maybe .... he read first .... then signed-in ...

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Those perceptions that have been caused by Obama, will change tomorrow. All signs show that the loss will be greater than expected and the US will be more united than it has been in decades. Rejoice Heracles!

[Heracles 417]

In these paradoxical times, some freedoms are cherished more than others: an evangelical southern preacher must be persuaded not to burn copies of the Koran and throughout America hostility is rising against the siting of new mosques. Anti-government militias play weekend war games brandishing M-16s, proclaiming themselves "patriots" ready to defend American liberties against a possible Muslim uprising.

"It's all circling around the same problem of personal liberties," explains Walter Berglund, the liberal protagonist in Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom. Why should governments intervene?

"People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can't afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles.

"You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to f--- up your life whatever way you want to."

I think what tells people more about Americans, is that about half of them don't even bother to vote. They are brainless drones who don't know anything and don't give a sh*t about anything other than sitting in front of the TV, munching fried foods, and drinking beer. They just don't care about anything and lack not only the motivation but also the brainpower to participate in the democratic process. And if you have 150,000,000 idiots in a single country, you can't be surprised that we're continue to lose momentum in the world and get passed by in about every possible discipline.

That quote says it all really. When I read it, I immediately thought of some on here from the Midwest [no names] and various other parts of America. You essentially have half the country stuck in an 18th century mindset, now add in the millions of idiots who plague the US ghettos.

The divide between the educated to the Yeeha! / whzup! / Si! types is also growing rapidly, yet the latter still have a big say in this country. And assume they are actually smarter than the rest and even know more than them. Not only that, that look at education and the rest of the developed world in disdain, many from their mobile homes or rundown towns. The stupid are basically cocksure, while the smart people are full of doubt.

It's also true what you say, there are more than enough poor people to be able to drive change, they just need to vote in the right party. However, they are just too lazy or stupid to do anything about it. All they really need do is to purchase a ticket and get to a first world country. Six months work at Walmart. Oh noes, they'd rather live in squalor.

Anyone who has seen Idiocracy will have a glimpse into where America is heading.

Edited November 2, 2010 by Heracles

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Another baiting thread.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Another baiting thread.

Actually, this is probably the best, most accurate article about the state of US politics that's been posted on here in a long time.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Actually, this is probably the best, most accurate article about the state of US politics that's been posted on here in a long time.

And of course it was posted by the most pro US member here.

[alienlovechild 75]

Actually, this is probably the best, most accurate article about the state of US politics that's been posted on here in a long time.

Really? Which part did you like speaking as one with a different perspective than most of us simple natives?

[Henykat 16]

Likewise. Because of people like yourself YeehA!, the country has become the butt of jokes.

For starters, I know you did not read this, as the time you entered to the time you posted was too quick. You've heard of reading right?

It always has been...simply because of jealousy...now crawl back under your bridge and get your filthy hand out of my wallet

[spookyturtle 9,466]

It always has been...simply because of jealousy...now crawl back under your bridge and get your filthy hand out of my wallet

For a country so bad and so loathed by the rest of the world, it just baffles me why there is so much comparison to the US? Why compare yourself to the bottom of the barrel?

[Henykat 16]

I think what tells people more about Americans, is that about half of them don't even bother to vote. They are brainless drones who don't know anything and don't give a sh*t about anything other than sitting in front of the TV, munching fried foods, and drinking beer. They just don't care about anything and lack not only the motivation but also the brainpower to participate in the democratic process. And if you have 150,000,000 idiots in a single country, you can't be surprised that we're continue to lose momentum in the world and get passed by in about every possible discipline.

Yeah...too bad we don't have 90% idiots like Hitler had in Germany