(ThyBlackMan.com) America’s experiment with democracy and its position as a political and economic superpower died quietly after a punishing and long illness. Future historians and social scientists in discussing America’s life and eventual death highlighted four basic elements that lead to America’s demise. Those four elements were:
- Anti-immigration policies that severely damaged its economy and its role as an economic superpower;
- Its inability and unwillingness to seriously and adequately address and atone for its original sin of slavery;
- Its misunderstanding of the power of television and the new technology leading to their misuse severely undermining its political and social institutions; and
- A significant unenlightened electorate unable to adequately participate in and protect their democracy.
Cutting Off One’s Nose to Spite One’s Face
In the late 1960s, the US began a shift toward the right. There was a growing sentiment among right leaning politicians and right leaning economic and social theorists that in order to maintain its economic hegemony and flourish, America needed to dismantle its social safety net programs. Social safety net programs created by the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Society of President Lyndon Johnson. The sentiment became a major tenet of the Republican party.
The Republican party also in later years as it shifted further to the right became a chief proponent of xenophobic and racist anti-immigrant policies. Such policy once enactment served to drastically and negatively undue the American economy at a point when America needed most for immigrants to help fuel its economy.
Immediately after World War Two, the US experienced an explosion in its population. The baby boomers indirectly as children and directly as adults helped the US to attain unprecedented economic growth and dominance.
However, as the baby boomers aged and retired from the workforce and America experienced a decline in its birth rates there developed a significant shortage of workers to keep its economy roaring. An economy which needed not just workers but consumers.
The severe workforce shortage affected its almost 100 year-old social safety net programs for its elderly citizens and with their elimination forced millions of America’s elderly into unfathomable poverty.
Due to narrow partisan politics, ignorance, prejudice, misinformation and hate, America adopted anti-immigration policies which in the end had the result of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. America went from the world leading economic power to an economic eunuch.
Two Americas: One White and One Black
From its inception in 1776, the US inherited the preeminent question of its existence, how shall it treat the millions of enslaved Africans brought to America as chattel and free labor. It would remain the dominant political and economic issue from 1776 to the present. Less than 100 years after its founding, the fledgling nation would find itself in a civil war regarding its treatment of enslaved Africans. In many ways that war never ended and the question of how it would treat its now no longer enslaved but nonetheless not free Africans was never satisfactorily addressed.
The nation failed to have a serious reckoning of its inhumane involvement in the African slavery trade. It failed to have a serious reckoning of the mistreatment, injustice and inequality through laws, policies, practices and procedures used against the descendants of the enslaved Africans.
It failed to have a serious reckoning on the lasting impact on the descendants of the enslaved Africans. It failed to acknowledge and accept how whites then and now directly and indirectly benefited from the institution of slavery and the systemic laws, policies, practices, and procedures used against the descendants of the enslaved Africans.
It failed and refused to atone. It resulted in two Americas, one White and one Black, separate and unequal.
In the end, trillions of dollars, countless hours and resources were wasted over the years to ensure that America remained a White America and a Black America. A divided America unable to reach its full potential to be a great America due to inequality, injustice, resentment, fear, mistrust, alienation and hostility.
The Medium is the Message
Future historians and social scientists found mountains of empirical data highlighting the discourse, division, hostility, anger, misinformation, disinformation highlighted on television and internet to explain America’s war with itself. It’s inhouse us versus them battle royale.
The evidence was abundant and conclusive. However, it told only a part of the story. A significant overriding part of the story nevertheless, but not the complete story.
In the 1950s and 1960s, many if not most households had one television normally located in the living room. After dinner which all members of the family partook together, the entire family would move to the living room and watch television together as a family. Negotiations took place, compromises made as to what the entire family would watch together as a family.
By the 1970s and 1980s, many families moved away from the single television family time to a television in various rooms. By the 1990s and 2000s, desktop computers, laptops and cell phones became the objects of one’s attention. The nuclear family as was once known had become a relic of a bygone age. Television, computers, and the internet shrunk the world but at the same time it led to individuals and families being further apart than at any time in the history of mankind.
That is not to say that television and the new technology was bad. Like any invention developed by mankind it was neither good nor bad. It was how it was used.
American society never fully understood the power of television and the new technology on the everyday lives of people. As such Americans became distant, alone and alienated. The desire to be part of something greater than oneself was no longer important or possible. Feeling part of a neighborhood, physical community, an American spirit all became like the nuclear family relics of yesteryear.
Participatory Democracy
In the introduction to his classic “Invisible Man” Ralph Ellison spoke of the need to develop conscious, articulate citizens if a democracy was to achieve its optimum. It was at such a point that art and democracy converged. That it was imperative that artists, writers and creators used their gifts to enlighten the citizenry.
To create conscious, articulate characters and protagonists in film and literature who would impose meaning on the disparate American experience. That films, literature and other forms of artistic expression would be created not for some privileged elite but for the masses within the entirety of American society.
Future historians and social scientists unfortunately uncover the opposite. They found an absence of films, television programs and books full of characters and protagonists who inspire the mind and soul to be better, to reach higher.
What they found was an abundance of vampires, werewolves, serial killers, psychopaths and sociopaths. What they found was an abundance of art, film and literature devoid of relevancy and social redeeming value. What they found was art for art’s sake full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
What the future historians and social scientists also found was a contempt for the citizens of the nation by the controlling political forces of the nation. Instead of presenting meaningful, well thought out and intelligent discourses on the various issues confronting the citizens of the nation, the controlling political forces of the nation handed out emotional and empty soundbites aimed not to educate but create fear, mistrust and hate.
The result was not progress, unity and a sense of common purpose, but division, anger, alienation and resignation. The controlling political forces remained in control until there was no nation to control.
The future historians and social scientists concluded that America had a significant unenlightened electorate, and democracy was destined to fail and did.
The inscription on America’s tombstone reads, “She sought greatness but died tragically and prematurely troubled and disillusioned.
Staff Writer; Al Alatunji
