Anyone listening to the two alternative, largely non-intersecting, political conversations taking place in America today would be forgiven if the opening phrases of Charles Dickens’s novel about the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, naturally popped into mind – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
And in at least one way, the mental reference is an apt one. Anyone looking at America today is, in fact, looking at two different national communities. There is that part of America which has prospered over the last half or three-quarters of a century and which continues to prosper – economically, sociologically, and psychologically. It is enjoying technological and legal freedoms and opportunities that previous generations would have regarded as implausible. But there is also the other American “city” – though, more often than not, not in fact a city at all, but a small town or rural community – which has seen prosperity, purpose, meaning, and, most of all, hope dry up and disappear in a socio-economic drought that has lasted now for three generations.
Two different American experiences shape the discourses
It is hardly surprising that there are two completely different political discourses in America today -- because there are in fact two completely different American experiences in America today. Where one goes wrong, however, is in accepting the notion that what we see today is in reality somehow the best of times, or the worst of times, or both the best and the worst of times simultaneously. It simply isn’t.
Even for those Americans for whom the shift to a post-industrial economy and post-industrial society has been overwhelmingly beneficial, there are serious challenges and problems which demand immediate attention, making life today problematic and life tomorrow frightening. The environmental catastrophe now hitting North America – the same catastrophe that is hitting the rest of the world – is no longer a slow-moving one whose effects won’t be seriously felt until after we are safely and cheerfully in our graves, and which can therefore be left to the next generation to deal with. Like an avalanche that has picked up speed, it is poised to smash through our comfortable resort before we have finished our buffet lunch. Meanwhile, as the recent Covid pandemic drove home, prosperity provides only a limited defense against novel infectious diseases, whose transmission in an interconnected world promises to be even faster than breakthroughs in scientific defenses even when medical knowledge is pushed forward at a forced-march pace. And, of course, despite familiarity having bred complacence, the nuclear Damocles sword continues to dangle overhead even while the accelerating decay of the global economic order threatens the underpinnings of at least some of America’s post-industrial prosperity.
So, at least compared to what one might hope for, it is not the best of times. But even more clearly, it is not the worst of times. Although one might not guess it, given the hand-wringing and gloom-and-doom that appear in the headlines, the American economy is actually, by all usual measures, in terrific shape. Unemployment may be slightly higher than it was a year ago but it is still near historical all-time lows. And real wages – that is, wages after inflation is taken into account – continue to grow, perhaps not at an extraordinary pace, but nonetheless at a significant one. This is not a bad time to be an American in the labor market. Nor is it a bad time to be an American who owns some capital, whether this is in invested to produce current income or squirreled away for the future. Predicting what will happen tomorrow on the stock market is a fool’s errand, but with major American stock market indices hovering near their all-time highs, it is hard to feel sorry for American capitalists.
Current complaints are mostly about inflation, which had a high in the last twelve months of 3.7%. No one can argue that this hasn’t been painful. But to put 2023-24’s inflation rate high of 3.7% in perspective, between 1973 and 1983 the United States experienced 120 consecutive months of inflation above 3.7%. – indeed experiencing 26 consecutive months of double-digit inflation between 1979 and 1981. So, yes, today’s inflation is a matter demanding attention. But anyone who thinks there is some sort of inflationary crisis in America is either misinformed or woefully lacking in perspective.
Much the same can be said about concerns about violent crime in America. America is certainly violent compared to nearly all other advanced industrial democracies, and is far too violent for its own good. And it is certainly the case that violent crime went up during the Covid pandemic, for reasons predicted and explained by sociologists and psychologists. In 2020, during the Trump presidency, homicide rates rose to nearly 7 per 100,000 people, before dropping, by 2022, to about 6.3 per 100,000. Again, however, some perspective may be useful. For 30 consecutive years, from 1968 through 1997, homicide rates in America were above 6.3 per 100,000 – indeed, at or above 9 per 100,000 in 14 of those 30 years, and hitting a high of 10.2 per 100,000 in 1980. America is far too violent, and Donald Trump may be quite right to worry about, as he put it, “American carnage.” But even when “carnage” came to a peak during his presidency, America was far less violent than it had been back when Trump and Biden were young men.
Big picture of the transformation
The bottom line is that America is not experiencing an economic or social crisis. It is passing through a wrenching, long-term economic and social transformation, yes. But there is no crisis. Objectively measured, these are “normal” times, economically and socially. In fact, objectively measured, for most of America, including for many in the “heartland” that is most affected by the great transformation, these are pretty good times.
The disjuncture between objective reality and perceived reality – between actual, lived lives and how these lives are described – reflects the unfortunate truth that Americans, generally speaking, lack any historical perspective (and indeed have very little perspective of any sort) when they consider their present. Lacking perspective, every bump in the road is a mountain and every pothole is an ocean; every day, however much like the day before or the day after, appears unique and either “the best” or “the worst.”
To be sure, there is, perhaps, something of a political crisis in America at the moment, reflecting the long-term divide between those Americans looking forward to the future and those not looking forward to it. But even here, the “crisis” is not of the unprecedented or even unusual sort – it is of a kind which routinely reappears in American political life, and, in fact, by the standards of American history, is not all that large.
The United States is a polity, after all, in which deep political division and nasty partisan rhetoric is the norm, not the exception. Drawing on the history of Greece, Rome, and the American states themselves, the Founders – that is, the authors of the U.S. Constitution – reasoned that a stable liberal democracy required maximum social, economic, and, yes, political diversity in order to survive. Unless men were miraculously to become angels, James Madison explained, only in highly heterogeneous societies could liberalism stably co-exist with democracy. Hence, the need for a large, diverse, heterogenous American republic. But (and this the Founders saw, too!), the maximal diversity necessary for a liberal democratic republic’s survival would also, unfortunately, mean the republic would face constant internal divisions and would routinely appear to be on the brink of political rupture or collapse.
Will the upcoming election determine the future of American politics?
Stepping back from this “big picture” overview, however, the immediate question we would all like answered is what this all means for the elections this coming November. Who is going to win? The doom-and-gloom reactionaries? Or the perpetually optimistic progressives? Regrettably, that is a question that no one yet has an answer to. The race currently looks to be incredibly close. Anyone offering confident predictions either owns a crystal ball not available to mere mortals or is a charlatan.
Four points are nonetheless worth making. The first is that while over a four-year or eight-year time horizon, who wins this election may make a difference for Americans, in the longer term it really won’t. In the longer term, the economic and social forces represented by Harris and Walz will win. The United States will continue to transition to a post-industrial economy and post-industrial society. The parts of American society that will die away in this transition will, regardless of who wins in 2024, continue to die away. For better and for worse, their communities will evolve. Another four or eight years of Republican control of the White House might mean that the “stickiest,” least easily changed of America’s political institutions – the Supreme Court – will be backward-looking and will hold back the flow of the river for relatively longer, but nothing that happens in November 2024 will change the direction the river is flowing.
The second point is that even in the short run, who wins will have less impact than most Americans assume. Neither the progressives nor the reactionaries have a plan that will significantly speed or slow the transition to a post-industrial America. In fact, ironically, a Trump victory might make the process of change even more painful for his political base. The antipathy that both Trump and his political supporters have toward “big government” and “the bureaucratic state” are likely to make it more, not less, difficult for the government to take steps to preserve those elements of rural and small-town America that could in fact be preserved.
The third is that Tim Walz is right: even by the standards of American politics, Donald Trump and JD Vance really are (as Walz puts it) decidedly “weird.” Whatever one thinks of Trump/Vance policies, their grasp on reality seems at times a bit weak. Walz and his running mate, Kamala Harris, are, at rallies and in photo ops, constantly smiling. Perhaps there isn’t as much to smile about as they seem to think. But Trump’s and Vance’s view of America’s present and future conditions – a view which leads them to perpetually scowl – is simply cuckoo crazy. Childless, single women (who may or may not own cats) turn out to be quite able to live meaningful, fulfilling lives, and are not necessarily dried-up, bitter individuals who hate America. There are reasons for post-menopausal women to exist besides to care for grandchildren. Contrary to the conspiracy theories circulating among MAGA supporters, many professional librarians are not, in fact, “groomers” trying to prepare children for molestation. Despite Trump’s claims, the reason that most Central American migrants are seeking entry to the United States is not so that they can rape American women. And Vladimir Putin is not any reasonable person’s idea of a nice man.
This last observation suggests a fourth and final point, one that is in fact troubling. Even if the election of 2024 matters less than one might assume when it comes to America’s domestic policies and long-run future, the election will matter fully as much as observers assume when it comes to America’s foreign policy. America will do fine no matter who wins. The rest of the world, however, has more reason for concern.
***
Edward Rhodes is a professor of Government and International Affairs at George Mason University. Rhodes is best known for his research into the philosophical and cultural roots of American foreign and national security policy. Rhodes served for six years on the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, the Congressionally mandated, nonpartisan body that reviews and certifies the official, published account of American foreign policy for completeness and accuracy.
