The roots of discontent

The direction America is headed

Well, my bro said that he thought that (what was supposedly) Jay Leno's diatribe was good food for thought, and he was right. I’ve been thinking about it ever since in the context of various other issues. More specifically, I guess I’ve been thinking about the nature and roots of discontentment of Americans. What seemed to be Leno’s presumption was that Americans are discontented with the direction in which America is heading because of the effects poor economic conditions are having on them, i.e. for purely selfish reasons. While he may be right with regard to some people, I think that his interpretation of “the direction the country is headed” is infinitely narrow and shallow. Also, while he is correct that we should feel no small amount of joy about the degree of comfort and privilege that is afforded us as citizens (and residents) of the United States, this is not a reason to overlook the negative aspects of American foreign and domestic policies. Rather, it is all the more reason we should be concerned that our national policies are fair to all affected by them, and it is all the more reason for Americans to be upset when they feel America’s strength is misused. As Ben Parker said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Actually, it was Churchill, or Roosevelt, or Kipling or…but the point is the same. As THE superpower, we have a responsibility to use our power, which in strict economic terms is derived from American taxpayers, with the utmost moral conscience.

Non-advocative representation

When an elected leader acts on behalf of the represented in a manner contrary to the moral values of the represented he or she violates the most basic principle of our republic. The framers of our constitution knew that power corrupts and their distrust of power and authority derived from power was so firm it led them to lead a revolt against Britain. Certainly, the founding of a nation that would oppress other peoples with its power with the goal of maintaining or expanding its power was not what they had in mind when they committed their treason against the oppressive British crown.

While there could and should be some justification or some validation for the actions the U.S. government has taken in Iraq, it has not been presented to The People. The primary justifications, WMD and collusion with al Queda, have proved unverifiable or false, and the Executive branch has consistently refused to address the questions of doubters, citing national security and executive privilege—basically leaving us in the dark for our own good. While there may be some precedents for such behavior (the Nixon Administration’s spying on the Democratic Party to help ensure that America stays what they perceived as the proper course for us and our covert wars in South and Central America and Asia being examples) that behavior is inherently contrary to the foremost American precept that The People are the sovereign and the role of the elected is to do their bidding, for, if the people are not privy to the information, they cannot make informed decisions. The gravity of this contradiction is particularly illuminated by the withholding of classified information from Congress whose role is supposed to be making informed decisions on The Peoples’ behalf. It is unconceivable to me how the constitution can be twisted to permit this degree of subversion of The People. The propagandization of the news, long perceived as the Fourth Estate, is plainly a component in this puzzle, further disinforming The People and creating an atmosphere where the subversion of The People is permissible. The secrecy of the Executive, the propagandization of the news media and the negligence of the Congress to act on behalf of The People to check executive power have conspired to warrant great suspicions that the government is acting with ulterior motives, not on behalf of or in the interest of The People.

The mere appearance that this is happening should be very alarming to most Americans for a variety of reasons. The appearance of the essential theft of our democracy and betrayal of the pubic trust is perhaps paramount among them. The taking of our tax dollars and the accumulation of debt on our behalf for a war, the justification for which remains mysterious to us, particularly as many Americans are experiencing personal financial difficulties and economic stratification is becoming more intense by a personally selfish oligarchic administration is a betrayal of the trust The People have placed in the government. An elongated list of reasons for alarm would be tangential. These two reasons alone—that the government is not operating in accordance with constitutional mandates and that we are being forced to pay for its unlawful actions—are reason enough for The People to be alarmed and angry. These grievances (unfair taxation and an effective lack of representation) were at the heart of the argument for American independence. To endorse the actions of the current government, specifically with regard to Iraq, is to discard the fundamental principles of republican democracy. The point with regard to Iraq policy is absolutely not to disregard American security; it is to ensure the proper functioning of American democratic government. The point is not to direct blame for Iraq policies or the inexpediency of those policies; it is to ensure that the government serves The People and not visa versa by holding those suspected of having betrayed The People accountable or at least answerable for their actions. The founders would expect nothing less of us than that we hold government accountable to us. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had a healthy distrust of authority (healthy enough to commit treason) and would hope that we use a healthy degree of the same. I use the word “hope,” because it is also true that pessimism ran deep among those men. They expected this experiment in democracy to fail and this nation to fall in to monarchy, authoritarianism, or even theocracy. The appearance of betrayal of our representatives in government and their unaccountability is a symptom of an impending failure of our democracy. This sign of failure is definitely at the root of the problems leading to the discontentment of Americans, but is by no means the sole problem.

Most of what I have said here regarding the responsibility of the government to act in the interest of The People and our responsibility to hold our representatives accountable (lest we discard our democracy) I would have thought would go without saying. However, the great division of Americans over their support for or dissent from America’s policies regarding Iraq indicate that a clarification of the reasons for dissent is needed. The above should at least serve as a starting point for some discussion of Iraq policy in the context of rights and duties of the government and the governed. In this essay, the preceding case against the government is simply a prerequisite to the following.

The nobility of the American working-class?

The failure of the American government to present itself as a faithful servant of The People in the case of Iraq is perceived by many as merely one of several such instances. Perhaps alluded to in Leno’s essay is the discontent of many over economic matters. I say “perhaps,” because, he attributes discontent to America’s being “the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen.” While he might be in the ballpark, I think he’s missing the game entirely. The noble worker holds no small place in the American iconography—he is the quintessential American underdog, the cowboy, the factory worker, the construction worker, the farmer, the soldier, teacher, policeman and fireman. While, in the case of public servants and perhaps farmers the nobility lies in part on the self sacrifice he or she makes for the benefit of the rest of us. For the cowboy and the soldier, nobility comes in part from the romanticized lifestyles and idealized sense of honor we impose on them. For the underdog, who perhaps embodies the American Dream moreso than any of the others, nobility comes from his successful moral or physical struggle against a superior but morally corrupt opposition such as a corporation; a corrupt official; or a richer, more privileged, and spoiled man. He is the Everyman, the common man. For the workers by whose labor this nation was built, nobility comes from being the underdog, fighting the good fight on behalf of the rest of us, making the sacrifices that benefit the rest of us, and, instead of being rewarded for their sacrifices by rising in stature, continuing on through a thankless life of drudgery. It is all most Americans ever know. It is on their shoulders the rest of us are carried. It is true that even the poor in the U.S. live in relative luxury compared to the rest of the world’s poor, but they live in the U.S., not the rest of the world. One can make the argument that each of us chooses his or her place in society and is responsible for his or her place, negating any social responsibility the rest of us might carry for anyone else. So, what status does the American worker hold in society? Is he a noble American icon? Or, is he a blight on society, dependant, willingly exploited, a pathetic contrast to the American Dream? For much of our young nation’s history the American Dream was one of opportunity for everyone, not just one in which anyone can rise to be super successful but one in which anyone can achieve a decent standard of living. None of us may be the idealized, noble American worker but many Americans do nevertheless identify with him and perceive our society from his perspective. Although aristocracy has always had a place in our country, our constitution gives the same privileges to us all, and the usurpation of rights by an oligarchy is an attack on the Constitution.

Much like we embrace Robin Hood who “stole from the rich and gave to the poor,” we embrace the America that is economically destratified, where we are all truly born equals. So, it is from this perspective that Americans feel betrayed by their government. They feel overlooked, neglected, even forsaken in favor of the rich. Wealth is relative, and in the last few decades the rich have been getting richer while the poor have been getting poorer. This is not just the natural order; this has been fostered by our government’s tax policies and business regulations. Contemporary historian and author Kevin Phillips, having recently left the republican party wrote a series books on just this topic during the post-Reagan era: The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath (1991), Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity (1994), and Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics (1995). He was sounding the alarm that America was becoming economically stratified and that this was having negative consequences on our democracy. The pot hasn’t boiled as quickly as he thought, but he was right about the pot boiling, about why and about the consequences. Leno misses with his assertion that we are just a bunch of spoiled brats. Since he is totally out of touch with how the rest of us non-millionaires live and how we feel about our democratic disempowerment and about the degradation of our relative standard of living, he totally misses the point. The exclusion of working-class Americans from our own democracy ought to be reason enough for discontentment, yet there is an even greater problem at the root of it.

The American work ethic and the betrayal of American industry

Implicit in the nobility of the American worker is the idea that Americans derive their pride and patriotism from the belief that we, as a nation are working towards a greater goal. Americans are not the spoiled brats that Leno thinks we are; we want to work hard and work to bring honor upon our selves and our country. It is the inability to do so that breeds discontentment—idle hands, stagnation, the inability to fulfill one’s potential—the classic causes of frustration. This increasingly oligarchic society and economy are betrayals of that trust that we as a nation are unified for a greater purpose. The supply-side economic paradigm exacerbates things, because we are no longer work for American corporations that pay taxes, in turn benefiting the nation or that invest in new technologies that will benefit the nation. American corporations seem to be selfish and exploitative institutions that usurp our national wealth and power by gradually taking and taking and never giving back, slowly tilting the balance of wealth to the point that they own the government and the rest of us are powerless. The failure of corporations to invest back in the society that paid and labored for its empowerment is no less of a slight. Tax cuts for the wealthy initiated under Reagan and persisting today were supposed to provide those who were wealthy enough to make substantial investments with money to do so. And, these investments were supposed to pay-off in jobs that would allow the lost tax income to “trickle down” to the rest of us, thereby fostering economic development and sustaining working-class standards of living—supposedly a win win situation. Many like to attribute the technological advancements of the 1990s on these tax cuts for the wealthy; however, there is no shortage of detractors. The virtues of tax cuts for the wealthy, if there are any, will not be known for decades if ever, yet this is the form of tax policy. While most Americans are left to wait for wealth to trickle-down to them, American Oil companies enjoy prosperity unimaginable to most of us, American automobile companies refuse to embrace alternative fuel technologies (we’ve been waiting for decades), legislator-lawyers escalate criminal penalties to obtain votes and create business for their industry, American corporations send their jobs to cheap overseas markets—all with the blessings of our representatives. And, all the while, our ability to do anything about any of it is eroded.

Most Americans remain pawns in a game of the rich and powerful from which they will never benefit. Deeper than the political and economic disfranchisement is the forestalling of both American progress and Americans’ ability to do their part in it. Perhaps those working class Americans who do not feel discontent are those who have fulfillment in their working lives or in their creativity, and it is those who do not who are most discontented. As wages stagnate, the cost of living rises and businesses cut jobs, the search for personal fulfillment cannot center on one’s work life. One must create his own form of fulfillment. This is contrary to the fact that in America we have centered our lives on jobs where we enlist the values of honor, dedication, sacrifice, and pursuit of excellence. American progress is built upon American workers who embrace these values and do so with noble intentions of playing their part in American progress. It has been their privilege, the source of their nobility and honor and their willingness to sacrifice. The sense that American workers have been abandoned has created an atmosphere not unlike that of Stalinist Russia where workers have no desire to work because it brings no fulfillment, are hopeless to affect any change in their own conditions and are entirely subject to the government-backed industry. Whatever the American Dream is, this it is not. Perhaps Leno is right, and it is in this sense that Americans are spoiled—Americans have come to expect rewarding work, and the lack of it has soured their attitudes. Regardless, this is from where American rebirth must come. Americans are wanting for work, for good work that will bring them honor and the nation prosperity. They want corporate America to play their part and stop acting purely in self-interest. They want to recreate America as the model it was after WWII, one where sacrifice was honored and rewarded, where there was nobility in our national pursuits and where the government was "of the people, by the people, for the people." And, their frustration results from government’s and industry’s failure to provide them with the opportunity to do so.

The promise of American progress

Now that we’ve put the national wealth in the hands of the rich and the national faith in their willingness and ability to invest wisely to the benefit of the nation, what do we do? We’ve given the wealthy all the cards. We’re waiting … impatiently. But, our representatives aren’t listening to us. The so-called Fourth Estate is trying to manipulate us rather than inform us. And, the industry that we put our faith in appears to be taking over our government and our media and using them against us. Many Americans feel that instead of being able to work together as a nation to better our situation, our prospects are limited. Fulfillment is to be found in the patriotic fight against Islamic radicals who “hate us for our freedom” (a ridiculous slogan that should make the administration’s motives suspect) or in the successful pursuit of endless capital gain (perhaps the new American Dream—proclaiming the virtue of greed), but where else? We’ve been disempowered to do much to change the status quo. Anyone who condescends to say we’re just ungrateful brats has been watching too much network news, trusting too much in the government, blindly assuming the good intentions of American corporations and is totally out of touch with the working-class.

Americans need noble national goals, investment in those goals, and domestic industry that will work towards those goals. It is a lot to ask—true. But, men and nations decide their values and find fulfillment in lives that embrace those values. Progress might be the preeminent American value. Progress is what we as a people demand. Perhaps more that anything else, it is what we believe in. Political, industrial, social, economic, scientific, technological—progress is at the center of the American identity. The abandonment of tangible progress in favor of ideological progress (the supposed propagation of democracy or Christianity) or capitalistic or free-market progress (which is no progress at all for the great majority of Americans) has left most Americans parched for want of something to believe in, something to work towards, and distraught with doubts about validity of these new values. This, the inability to work toward goals we believe are noble and which we believe represent progress, is at the heart of American discontent. Perhaps we are spoiled if we are so audacious to expect such lofty goals and achievements from our nation, but, then, maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t think the men who revolted against Britain on our behalf would object.