‘Old-Line’ Citizens Disconnecting To Own Democratic Institutions
The anti-immigration debate in the early 1990s was differently tinted from today’s. Back then undocumented immigrants were fewer. But legal immigrants were surging in and, it was said, refusing to integrate — to shed their culture and embrace America’s. Anger was focused on their “multiculturalism.”
The anger deflected from what, in retrospect, was an embryonic variant of the anti-immigration hostility we’re seeing today and the backlash it’s provoking among immigrants. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the great historian who died four months ago, diagnosed the hostility in “The Disuniting of America,” his 1992 book on multiculturalism: “When old-line Americans, for example, treat people of other nationalities and races as if they were indigestible elements to be shunned and barred, they must not be surprised if minorities gather bitterly unto themselves and damn everybody else.” It wasn’t foreigners, in other words, who were sowing disunity. Nor is it foreigners, then or now, who are lacking trust or confidence in those democratic institutions that “old-line Americans” want immigrants to embrace.
Earlier this month the Gallup Organization released its latest survey of Americans’ confidence in their institutions (See box). The numbers are not too different from what they were 10 years ago, but news stories focused on one item: Congress’ all-time low rating. Conservatives gloated with we-told-you-so sophomorism, Democrats having won back Congress in November. But the gloaters miss the point.
Americans are in a lecturing mood about immigrants refusing to integrate. But it’s “old-line Americans” who are disassociating from their own democratic institutions, whether it’s the three branches of government, the Fourth Estate, the criminal justice system or the educational system.
The contrast with Americans’ love of uniforms and their addictive dependence on force is startling, even as the last few years have been flattering neither to the military nor to domestic police forces. Torture, brutality, massacres and routine humiliation of civilians have bloodied the military’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As if taking their cue from the Pentagon’s disturbingly popular excesses, domestic police forces are growing more militaristic, more uncompromising and brutal in the name of control above all, even when children are involved. The New York Times’ Bob Herbert has been documenting the rise in police brutality and repression of children nationally, but Central Florida has its own examples, whether it’s the police killing of 8th-grader Chris Penley at his Orlando middle school last year — for wielding a toy gun — or the use of a Taser on a special education student in a Flagler County high school in January. Yakov Smirnoff’s “what a country” punch line comes to mind: We’re growing more Soviet every day.
Democracy’s customs carry on. Candidates campaign. Voters half-heartedly vote, half-heartedly buy newspapers, watch the news in diminishing numbers. They listen in on cable’s and talk-radio’s many shout shows. But that’s not democratic discourse or conversation. It’s the sound of one hand clapping. The “disuniting of America” Schlesinger wrote about in the 1990s here seems more pronounced, and more gravely so, because it’s from within. Democracy isn’t politics alone. It isn’t just the campaigns and the elections but what happens the other 364 days throughout the nation’s democratic institutions, and how connected people feel to those institutions in a republic that “embodies ideals that transcend ethnic, religious and political lines” (as Schlesinger wrote).
That the only institutions Americans feel truly connected to, or at least confident in, are primarily nondemocratic, authoritarian, force-driven and designed in large part to kill, repress, punish or, in religion’s case, evoke submission, should make us wonder: Are we truly a free people? In words, certainly. In reality, we run around chanting about freedom but everywhere we beg for chains — for ourselves, and more ominously, for our neighbors.
Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at ptristam@att.net or through his personal Web site at www.pierretristam.com .
© 2007 News-Journal Corporation.
Great article but it begs at least one question. I’ve noted myself for years that the talk at social and family gatherings invariably turns at one point or another away from the typical topics and onto the issue of preparations for the next disaster, be it the Hurricane, flood or outbreak of disease or terrorist attack. During the course of the conversation one notices two common threads, 1) how to stay out of the way of bumbling gov’t activities and 2) how soon one would need to evacuate to avoid the crush. Some individuals are training in emergency medical treatments because its understood by all involved in the conversation that during the course of the disaster, first responders will be first fleers and that the first to stick their heads up after the disaster will be armed, hostile looters. Theres no confidence in gov’t; no interest in involving gov’t in a helping way and a tremendous interest in staying out of the gov’ts way when it trundles through.
The numbers above qouted are stunning; Americans have virtually no confidence in 3/4 of the “Institutions” of their democracy. So, the question? It’s simple. Considering our disgust with gov’t however in the world do you expect to gain support from a majority of Americans to raise taxes to provide more of that which we loath and distrust? Giving it more money only means it increases it’s footprint on our necks!
the last paragraph is scary, b/c it rings true. that americans trust the military far above other institutions is disturbing. in what sense is the military not an instrument of those other institutions americans so distrust? ditto police & organized religion.
anyway, it’s not all bad news. distrust can be a very healthy sign.
Mis(used)trust created US distrust.
It’s news to me that religion is designed “in large part” to “evoke submission.” A divisive remark, if I may say so.
Vic Anderson: absolutely correct.
dwatkins9, can you give me an example where religious discourse is NOT used to evoke submission? even one?
dwatkins9, i mean public, civic statements, in the political arena.
Tristam, like so many other LIBERALS, uses an old, wrong rightwing shiboleth to describe the rightward shift in recent American political consciousness–the SOVIET CURSEWORD! In Russian this word is spelled SOVET and it means literally “COUNCIL”. Popular councils have existed in Russia and many other countries since well before the dawn of the twentieth century. The Workers and Soldiers Councils which assumed power during the October Revolution in Russia were subsequently REPLACED early in the twenties by Stalin’s bureaucracy through stealth, fraud and treachery and against the Left Opposition lead by Trotsky and Lenin. The remnant of the old STALINIST BUREAUCRACY is what collapsed in the early 1990’s; not the Soviets! Indeed, the American People should currently be building COUNCILS(Sovets)of workers and soldiers representatives to displace and (yes)OVERTHROW the Neocons and their filthy, rotten and WAR_DEPENDENT Capitalist mode of production!! Incidentally, did anyone notice how the VENEZUELAN Councils of popular power OVERTHREW the U.S.-orchestrated coup in 2002?……..thought so.
To Jedediah-
What about religious discourse as employed in the civil rights movement? Martin Luther King was a minister (for God’s sake).
You could check out George Washington’s farewell address.
Without religion, what reason is there to prefer justice over injustice? All that’s left is the state of nature, or the war of all against all - right?
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.” - Henry A. Wallace
“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in … practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions … and the deportation of whole populations - not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”
George Orwell, 1984
The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one.”
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels
“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
Hermann Goering
“Terrorism has replaced Communism as the rationale for the militarization of the country, for military adventures abroad, and for the suppression of civil liberties at home. It serves the same purpose, serving to create hysteria.”
Howard Zinn
JFK - “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
GWB - “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what your country can do you for.”
It seems to be endemic, if not epidemic.
The relationship of the media to the politics and behavior of ordinary Americans is no mystery–garbage in, garbage out.
I don’t worship in my church much anymore. I taught and attended classes for 70 years. But now people don’t want a quiet environment, elegant or starkly simple music and self-disciplined behavior the better to give oneself over to what one came for.
They want to wave their arms and rock back and forth while drums bang and various folk come forward to say where they went “on mission” for two weeks last summer and how much the natives loved them by the time they left. Then there’s the applause for music meant to glorify our Lord, not to amuse us. And the tittering on cue at not funny jokes.
I regret that I get nothing from what I used to consider my unique weekly experience without which I could not do.
Oh, Lobster! What a sadly eloquent commentary on the contrast of now with then. I am writing you because of the echoes in my own heart. It is possible while alone in one’s own chamber to find and nurture that quiet space within and many do so. Yet the feeling of doing so together with others is one some of us do not lightly forego. But even now, with the strange climate changes happening worldwide (and throughout the entire solar system, as I understand), spring still follows winter. If so in Nature, so likewise in the affairs of humankind… including the way we gather and express the feeling of being part of something larger than this small self. I hope you will see this as a handclasp to the future.