Not since the Vietnam War has America been more divided. This is different. Then, the civil unrest was nearly a civil war. The anti-war riots, the race riots of the 1960's(1) were far, FAR more widespread and serious than the clashes yesterday between pro-Russian and pro-American groups. But those disappeared as the war wound down. The 1970's(2) were an antithesis of vapid stupidity.
These times are different. The differences between Russian America and American America are more fundamental. Race is the key issue today as it was one of the two key issues then. Race has always been there in American history, it will always be there, it will never go away. The other issue today, of course, is Donald Trump. So, when Trump goes away after four years or eight years may the 2020's see a replay of "We are Family"? I think not. If so however, how imperfect the perfectibility of man that we "progress" back again to disco and leisure suits.
But I think not. The soul of America is race.(3) "Soul," as always used here, is "the animating principle" of a thing. The soul is a mutable thing but if Cambria County Pennsylvania votes for an American in 2020 or 2024 as it did in 2008, only to vote, by a 2-1 margin, for a racist useful fool of Russia in 2016, has its soul mutated? The soul doesn't mutate that quickly.
In a 2015 speech, Russia's strongman, Vladimir Putin, laid out the programme for a race-based nationalism as the animating principle of a future politics in his nation-and in others. To state the obvious, Putin found a soul-mate in America in 2016. Perhaps in Britain too. Perhaps in France in 2017.
Someone said to me, in response to "The original America of the Constitution is dead. This is a different country, America 2.0.," the person said to me, "It's the same country, the same voters." Both of us were right. He was right that we are the same people in 2008 and 2016 but I was right that it is a different country. The animating principle is still race, Putin and Trump tapped into that substratum vein that lay so thoroughly covered in America that a plurality of us thought it was buried.
The difference today from the 1960's then, or from the 1860's, is not that the American people have changed, nor the American soul, the difference is that the nation has changed, has been changed, from a uniquely American, constitutionally-based nation of laws, of separation of powers, of an independent judiciary, an unassailed and unassailable free press, into a pretty garden variety strongman state. Authoritarianism with a Russian-American face.
The soul of the American nation is, and always has been, the Constitution. That was not under assault in the 1960's. The Constitution easily withstood threat, to part, in 1937; it survived the Civil War, a unique period that knows no parallel today; it is the period of 1824-1840, the "Era of the Common Man," that presents the nearest parallel to today, when an authoritarian strongman greatly expanded executive authority and disregarded the Constitution when it served his purposes. Andrew Jackson did change the soul of the nation and those changes were not undone. But the "Era of the Common Man" is not a perfect parallel. Neither Jackson nor his common men were foreign-influenced.
Famously, America's common men and women have never had truck with foreign "isms" that would have changed fundamentally the soul of the nation. Until the present day.
1. Here, "the 1960's" has always described that period between the Kennedy assassination in 1963
and Nixon's resignation in 1974.
2. 1974-1981.
3. I disavow "the pursuit of happiness" as America's soul.
These times are different. The differences between Russian America and American America are more fundamental. Race is the key issue today as it was one of the two key issues then. Race has always been there in American history, it will always be there, it will never go away. The other issue today, of course, is Donald Trump. So, when Trump goes away after four years or eight years may the 2020's see a replay of "We are Family"? I think not. If so however, how imperfect the perfectibility of man that we "progress" back again to disco and leisure suits.
But I think not. The soul of America is race.(3) "Soul," as always used here, is "the animating principle" of a thing. The soul is a mutable thing but if Cambria County Pennsylvania votes for an American in 2020 or 2024 as it did in 2008, only to vote, by a 2-1 margin, for a racist useful fool of Russia in 2016, has its soul mutated? The soul doesn't mutate that quickly.
In a 2015 speech, Russia's strongman, Vladimir Putin, laid out the programme for a race-based nationalism as the animating principle of a future politics in his nation-and in others. To state the obvious, Putin found a soul-mate in America in 2016. Perhaps in Britain too. Perhaps in France in 2017.
Someone said to me, in response to "The original America of the Constitution is dead. This is a different country, America 2.0.," the person said to me, "It's the same country, the same voters." Both of us were right. He was right that we are the same people in 2008 and 2016 but I was right that it is a different country. The animating principle is still race, Putin and Trump tapped into that substratum vein that lay so thoroughly covered in America that a plurality of us thought it was buried.
The difference today from the 1960's then, or from the 1860's, is not that the American people have changed, nor the American soul, the difference is that the nation has changed, has been changed, from a uniquely American, constitutionally-based nation of laws, of separation of powers, of an independent judiciary, an unassailed and unassailable free press, into a pretty garden variety strongman state. Authoritarianism with a Russian-American face.
The soul of the American nation is, and always has been, the Constitution. That was not under assault in the 1960's. The Constitution easily withstood threat, to part, in 1937; it survived the Civil War, a unique period that knows no parallel today; it is the period of 1824-1840, the "Era of the Common Man," that presents the nearest parallel to today, when an authoritarian strongman greatly expanded executive authority and disregarded the Constitution when it served his purposes. Andrew Jackson did change the soul of the nation and those changes were not undone. But the "Era of the Common Man" is not a perfect parallel. Neither Jackson nor his common men were foreign-influenced.
Famously, America's common men and women have never had truck with foreign "isms" that would have changed fundamentally the soul of the nation. Until the present day.
1. Here, "the 1960's" has always described that period between the Kennedy assassination in 1963
and Nixon's resignation in 1974.
2. 1974-1981.
3. I disavow "the pursuit of happiness" as America's soul.
