Can American democracy be saved? — Andrew Bacevich suspects so — but I doubt it

11 August 2017

A more optimistic view than mine

Professor Andrew Bacevich never writes anything that does not combine "smart" with "important":

Like it or not, the president of the United States embodies America itself.

Ours is a republic that has long since taken on the trappings of a monarchy, with the president inhabiting rarified space as our king-emperor.

[T]he cult of the presidency has provided an excuse for . . . centering on hopes of another Roosevelt or Kennedy or Reagan appearing as the agent of American deliverance.

Donald Trump’s ascent to the office once inhabited by those worthies should demolish such fantasies once and for all.

In November 2016, Americans who consider themselves ill served by the post-Cold-War consensus signaled that they had had enough.

The response of the political establishment to this extraordinary repudiation testifies to the extent of its bankruptcy.

In both parties embarrassingly small-bore thinking prevails . . . .

Preliminary steps [in re-direction] . . . ought to include the following:

First, abolish the Electoral College.

Second, rollback gerrymandering.

Third, limit the impact of corporate money on elections at all levels, if need be by amending the Constitution.

Fourth, mandate a balanced federal budget . . . .

Fifth, implement a program of national service, thereby eliminating the All-Volunteer military and restoring the tradition of the citizen-soldier.

Sixth, enact tax policies that will promote greater income equality.

Seventh, increase public funding for public higher education, thereby ensuring that college remains an option for those who are not well-to-do.

Eighth . . . attend to the growing challenges of providing meaningful work . . . for those without advanced STEM degrees.

Ninth, end the thumb-twiddling on climate change and start treating it as the first-order national security priority that it is.

Tenth, absent evident progress on the above, create a new party system, breaking the current duopoly . . . .

The glitch

Absent armed revolt, each of Professor Bacevich's prescriptions requires:

a majoritarian consensus,

as well as

the political ability to force changes through a captured political system designed to prevent meaningful change.

The Electoral College, gerrymandering and corporate money are aimed at preserving domination by the non-majority interests that have captured all three branches of American government, with the public's often deluded assistance.

If we further descend Bacevich's list, we see that none of his suggestions are likely to pass muster with the "In Group" or with numerically dominant portions of the voting base:

Corporate and "special" interests do not want a balanced budget because that would turn off some of their money faucets.

National service would notably diminish the Military Industrial Complex's ability to start and maintain profitable wars, and many Americans continue to want to dodge serving.

Similarly, our American ethos deludes itself into opposing more equitable income distribution as being an anti-capitalistic (read pinko-commie) measure.

Funding public higher education would create a more thoughtful and politically competent Rabble — something that no one at the privileged top could realistically afford to favor for fear of eventually being dethroned by folks with a finer tuned sense of what is "fair".

Providing meaningful work would require re-defining most Americans' unexamined conceptions of progress and markets.

And dealing with climate change would require that we recognize the value of the Commons — something that Americans generally love to ignore, especially when preservation or improvement come with immediate costs.

In sum

The Elite have mangled our supposedly democratic system to entrench themselves in power. They oppose each of the improvements that Bacevich suggests. And large segments among our public approve of their disapproval.

The moral? — If we want to overturn how things are . . .

We will have to upset our vapid thinking about what a just society achievably entails. Which probably means that little will happen in the way of change.

Americans, for the most part, have brain-washed themselves into becoming willing, but irritable sheep.

President Trump's election certainly suggests public annoyance. But given the idiotic responses to it from both political sides (as well as from most independents), I am not even marginally convinced that many of us are prepared to grapple with Professor Bacevich's basic question:

“Without the Cold War, what’s the point of being an American?”

Answering the "what's the point" question would require the work of thinking, combined with an analytical sense for probing the limits of:

(a) societal fairness

and

(b) achievable institutional means for reasonably balancing differing perspectives.

How likely are these analytical qualities to appear among the culture of propagandized dullards that astronomer Carl Sagan described 22 years ago?

Times change, but I am not optimistic that ours is going to usefully come in Professor Bacevich's intelligently proposed package. Revolution tends to wreck things first, and then cobble them in new directions. Revolt's initial work is, usually illegally, done by small groups of rabble rousers.

Naturally, this aspect gives people pause:

I am by temperament a conservative and a traditionalist, wary of revolutionary movements that more often than not end up being hijacked by nefarious plotters more interested in satisfying their own ambitions than in pursuing high ideals.

Yet even I am prepared to admit that the status quo appears increasingly untenable. Incremental change will not suffice.

The challenge of the moment is to embrace radicalism without succumbing to irresponsibility.

Historically speaking, there has never been such a responsibly indulged revolution. Hence, my pessimism.

PeteFree.com

Can American democracy be saved? — Andrew Bacevich suspects so — but I doubt it