Author Archives: Susan Barsy

Trump’s Rise Signals a Full-Blown Political Crisis

16 Aug 2016 By in The Trump Years Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

American primitive (La Brea diorama), by Susan Barsy
We are living through the 2016 presidential election.  Someday, perhaps next year, perhaps decades from now, we will try to recall just what it was like.  What was it like, when Donald Trump, in his bid for the presidency, claimed the Republican nomination and precipitated widespread political turmoil?

This is an experiential question, historical yet subjective; it’s not a question of fact, social science, or policy.  Therefore we will each be entitled to our own truths, however aberrant or incompatible.

Meanwhile, the very multiplicity of our views, which will never agree, adds to the confusion of what we are experiencing, the uncertainty of how it will all end.  Where is the nation heading?  What will happen to its party system?  Whose judgments and actions will prove to have been most insightful and right, a question whose importance will grow retrospectively, furnishing a yardstick for identifying who in our generation is most discerning, most trustworthy.

Watching and listening to a Trump-obsessed nation and being part of that nation ourselves, nets some insight into past political upheavals, particularly rise of Hitler in early 20th-century Germany.  The abiding mystery of Nazism is how the German people could have empowered someone so aggressive and hateful.  How could they have been so mistaken as to repose trust in someone so utterly inhuman, so indifferent to world order and prevailing norms?  From the perspective of August 2016, it’s more understandable how masses of citizens could end up giving too much power to a dangerous leader.

Something similarly unpredictable is happening in American politics, something for which we all bear responsibility, yet we aren’t completely sure what it is or how bad it will be.  And we don’t agree on what we should do.

Three conditions are combining in the United States, creating widespread and practically leaderless confusion.  Together, they amount to a dangerous political crisis, threatening a constitutional government we normally think of as stable and strong.  A disillusioned electorate cognizant of its powerlessness and vulnerability, a weak unresponsive leadership class, and the appearance of an unknown but charismatic ‘political savior’: there you have the recipe for political catastrophe.

All three elements—the frustrated expectations of American citizens, an outmoded and out-of-touch political establishment, and Trump’s charismatic authority—must be addressed to move beyond this dangerous political crisis.  Unfortunately, a rotten political system is difficult to replace or reform overnight.  Our parties are filled with self-seeking prima donnas.  Creatures of party, they’ve lost touch with the people.  They farm out the task of deciding what they believe in, relying on experts to formulate their positions.  Collectively, in their quest for personal power, the leaders of both political parties are failing the people of the United States.

Anti-Trump forces comfort themselves with the notion that, if only Hillary Clinton will win, the United States will ‘be okay.’  Thank goodness the people who are demanding change at any price are not quite a voting majority!  This theme organizes much political discourse.  The experts, who deliver so much in the way of political anesthesia, tamp down our anxiety with a never-ending stream of surveys and polls.  Meanwhile, Trump, with his stark directness, soldiers on defiantly, feeding his electrifying certainties to millions of mesmerized followers.  Trump and the popular discontent he energizes will remain a threat until his opponents unite and respond to the people’s needs by forging an appropriate yet superior ideology of change.

Image: A diorama showing
the inimical relation between two extinct species
at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles.
Author photo.

Panicking in 1837

24 Jul 2016 By in History Tags: , , , , ,

black & white lithograph of a society in distress and disorder

Though a vestige of the distant past, Edward W Clay’s drawing of a demoralized and stricken society is as crisp and familiar as if it were drawn yesterday, because it encapsulates enduring American fears.  Created in 1837, soon after the end of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, the print depicts the social and psychological effects of an economic and political crisis then gripping the United States.  The print implicitly condemns Old Hickory’s rule, whose responsibility is invoked in a surreal fashion, his hat, spectacles, and pipe framing the word ‘Glory’ in the sky.

The individuals and crowds depicted personify both the causes of the economic collapse and its consequences, which included a souring of the national mood, blighted prospects, and various kinds of degradation and ugliness.

The unstable figures at left set the tone, a homeless woman lying with her child on the ground, composing a perverted “Holy Family” with the gentleman-turned-souse standing over her.  Tipsy and threatening to topple over entirely, he grasps a gin bottle, for which she reaches out eagerly.  Their homelessness and lack of propriety are shocking, even pitiful, yet they are not to be pitied, for, in the artist’s eyes, this class of people, shown gathered under the ‘Loco-Foco’ tent, had partly caused the economic catastrophe.

The Loco-Focos were extreme Democrats who demanded that the government have nothing to do with banking or the money supply.  They were the kind of angry down-and-outs who, just months earlier, had attacked landlords and the largest flour merchants in New York City, blaming them for the ruinously high prices that had driven them out-of-doors and left them hungry.  The Flour Riot, during which 6,000 protesters caused an estimated $60 million in damage, crystallized the class divisions and hatred that had intensified in tough times.

Also under the Loco-Foco tent is a black man dressed in some sort of military uniform.  Scowling and inscrutable, with a smoke dangling from his lips, he is armed and appears ready to do battle against property.  A flour barrel at right is still marked at $14, an astronomical price.  A scroll lying on the ground bears ‘Popular Sayings,’ among which is ‘Our sufferings is intolerable.’

The other principal figures in the print are more sympathetic.  They exude respectability (despite the fact that they have no shoes).  At right are two skilled craftsman, one of whom is begging, their useless tools emblems of stagnant industry.  Next to them is a barefoot seaman, possibly a mulatto, who, lacking other alternatives, is in danger of being re-enslaved, a white man with a whip standing over him.  A well-dressed mother with her son approach a fat bond broker, begging some change.

The background shows chaos gripping a prosperous city.  Rapid economic expansion had preceded the Panic of 1837, when a radical changes in the nation’s monetary policy caused a dreadful collapse.  Jackson’s destruction of the Bank of the United States (a forerunner of today’s Federal Reserve) had increased local banks’ issuance of paper currency not backed by specie (gold), a situation that was a nightmare to regulate.  Jackson responded with an executive order (the infamous Specie Circular) requiring that specie be used for certain transactions.  This further devalued paper money and set off a demand for gold coin that banks couldn’t meet.  Many collapsed.

The dislocation and hardship the Panic brought on caused a ground-swell of anti-government feeling and resentment toward bankers and the wealthy.  The political ‘establishment’ shown here isn’t suffering: the military is marching down the street, the sheriff’s office is buzzing.  On the far shore stand a busy alms-house and spanking-new prison.  Though the customs house is idle, the flow of imports at a standstill, plenty of patronage workers remain on its payroll.  These loungers look down from its safe confines.  Meanwhile, a crowd frantically forces its way into a bank, despite a sign announcing ‘No Specie Payments Made Here.’  Anti-semitism infuses the prominence given ‘Shylock Graspall,’ whose pawn-shop is busy.

All this when the nation was just 61 years of age!  From the perspective of the 2016 presidential election, Americans may conclude that little has changed.

Image from this source.
Click the image to enlarge.

Politicking at Saratoga

12 Jul 2016 By in History Tags: , , , , , , 12 Comments

shows crowd arriving at Union Hotel in 1865.
Nineteenth-century politicians flocked to the springs in the summer after Congress adjourned.  The heat of Washington and other coastal cities and the attendant danger of disease made retreating to the wooded up-country sensible as well as agreeable.  Beginning around 1800, inn-keepers built large resorts there to accommodate the need.  The most well-known and successful of such resorts grew up around the site of healing mineral springs, in towns like Saratoga Springs, New York; White Sulphur Springs, Virginia; and Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania.

Each resort drew guests from across state lines, making these watering-holes ideal for politicking.  White Sulphur attracted visitors from throughout the Upper South, while Saratoga drew its custom mainly from New York and New England.  Bedford drew politicians from across the mid-Atlantic states.  It was also a haven for officials whose duties kept them in the capital during the summer months.  James Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian, spent the summers of his presidency at Bedford Springs.

The resorts really took off after the creation of steamboat and railroad lines.  In combination, the steamers and trains made it easy for travelers to reach the resorts from New York City or Washington, DC.  The Union Hotel in Saratoga, shown above, grew hectic after the arrival of the daily ‘steamboat train.’  Many of its passengers came by boat up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, where they caught a connecting train carrying them the rest of the way.

The trunks’ labels identify guests hailing from Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania.  The male crowd in the foreground means business, for they’re laden not only with trunks but with valises, no doubt crammed with correspondence and other papers.  They hobnob before blending into the pleasure-seeking crowd of women and men who throng the hotel’s ‘office’ (lobby).

Only an elite class of Americans could afford to leave home for the sake of summer leisure.  The wealthy and influential persons gathered at the resorts were exactly the sort whose support a politician needed to prevail in the November election or achieve the goals defining his political career.  The patriotic names given to many of the hotels at Saratoga and elsewhere (the Union, the American, the Congress) attest to the political functions they tacitly served.

Image:
‘Appearance of the Office of the Union Hotel, Saratoga, New York,
on the Arrival of the Steamboat Train from Albany,
from a sketch by Mr. Albert Berghaus,’
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 12, 1865.
From the Yates Collection of Saratogiana at Skidmore College.
For more information, click here.

The Grief and Anguish After Dallas

8 Jul 2016 By in American Conditions Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Preparing to mend Fort McHenry flag, Courtesy Library of Congress
What more is there to offer amid the voluble discourse of this sad week, when violence took the place of order and justice?  The United States: will the terrorism of Charleston and Orlando diminish them?  Will we descend to the habit of a shrug when children are murdered in our schools, when movie-goers are gunned down in a theater, when a cafeteria worker is shot to death in the middle of a routine traffic stop, when a sniper decides to channel his anger into killing police officers?

Sadly, we may grow indifferent if the spiral of unjustified violence continues much longer. We may shun the news for fear of having to look at the latest, outrageous use of quick-murdering guns. We may all cease to bat an eye at the latest victims, the latest place when guns were used to sort out human conflicts that deserved to be aired in the courts. And when that happens, we will have lost the semblance of unity that has kept us going until now. We will be just another war-torn country, with battle-lines too subtle to stay on the right side of.

Congress, endlessly preoccupied with the 2nd Amendment, has forgotten the larger purposes that, according to the Constitution, justify our federal government, particularly its charge to ‘insure domestic Tranquility’ and ‘promote the general Welfare.’  Will Congress act, in whatever ways it sees fit, to promote the internal peace and safety that Americans of all races crave, and that, by right, we are all entitled to expect?  Or will Congress forget its obligation to the nation, its members cravenly priding themselves on dedication to some lesser cause or party?

Changes in law are needed, but America also needs something more that’s harder.  Americans need to look into their hearts and examine whether they are living up to the potentialities of our civic culture, a culture that has allowed us to dwell with one another in a relatively open and unfettered way.  Americans need to recall the great civil tradition that has inspired generations to grow into a society where people who differ from one another nonetheless co-exist, enjoying ‘the blessings of Liberty’ and fitfully recognizing in one another our mutual humanity.  We have striven according to an Americanness that is deeper than either religion or skin.  This cultural effort will be imperfect always, but without it we will be condemned to grieve forever, anguishing over the most precious republican virtue lost.

Image: from this source.

The Rude Power of the Vote: Brexit

27 Jun 2016 By in International Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

morning-after-brexit

A popular vote to decide the UK’s place in the world: In retrospect, David Cameron’s idea of putting the question to the people appears more and more extraordinary.  This is not how countries (at least representative democracies) are normally led.  Normally, populations delegate power to political leaders, trusting in their competence and relying on their superior agency and expertise.

The US has never held a national referendum.  Here, referenda are technical measures.  They are used at the state and local level, to amend constitutions or see if a policy innovation is agreeable to the people.  Our national votes are reserved solely for filling the presidency.  The Brexit vote represents a high-water mark of democracy that one hopes the US will never reach.

Presidential elections are often described as referenda, but this is usually hyperbole.  The motives that determine the citizens’ choice between two candidates can seldom be reduced to a vote for or against a single policy.  One exception is the election of 1860, when the ensuing breakdown of the Union justifies our concluding that voters saw Abraham Lincoln’s victory as determining the future of slavery.  They were so sure his election spelled the end of it that they didn’t even wait for him to take power: secession conventions formed and slave-holding states began to leave.  Then, as with Brexit, the losers doubted the outcome’s legitimacy.  A minority with a lot to lose discovered a majority it couldn’t bear.

Inspiration in a deep-dish pizza

Writing in Slate, Osita Nwanevu argues convincingly that Cameron came up with the idea of the EU referendum while eating a Chicago deep-dish pizza at O’Hare.  He was heading back to London from the 2012 NATO summit, which Chicago hosted that year.  While waiting for his flight, he and British foreign secretary William Hague reportedly went into a classic Chicago eatery and came up with the idea of the EU referendum while eating local food and rubbing elbows with a bunch of ‘nobodies.’

The summit itself crystallized globalism’s discontents.  Its massing of elite power drew thousands of ‘pro-democracy’ protesters to Chicago, along with a few would-be terrorist bombers.  While the leaders of the western world met to chart the future of democracy, massive crowds clogged the streets, charging NATO leaders with betrayal and insisting that their governance ignored the people’s urgent needs.  Did Cameron metaphorically ingest some of the democratic forces assailing him from all sides?  Certainly, his belief that the UK’s internal divisions could be reconciled through a popular vote represented a conversion to democratic faith.  He expected, however, that the people would ultimately strengthen the leading class’s hand.

The transcendent power of a multi-national economy

In the 1990s, I attended a forward-looking talk given by the late Harold Perkin, a historian who studied long-term class developments in England society.  His subject was the powerlessness of nation-states relative to multinational corporations.  Already, he argued, capital flows and the far-flung operations of such businesses were eroding and transcending the bonds that had previously constrained and united inhabitants of geographically defined countries.  Whereas previously the upper, middle, and lower classes in a country like Britain had been bound together legally and economically, those interdependent ties were weakening.  Increasingly, the economic elite were creating a world with rules that they, as capitalists and corporate titans, were entitled to define.  Since then, the trend that Perkins so presciently defined has grown more pronounced.  Now the professional classes are used to this world, and they don’t think the lower classes should be allowed to curb it, certainly not with the rude club that the right to vote furnishes.

The problem afflicts the US as much as the UK.  In the States, growing economic inequality has gone hand-in-hand with geographic and social changes whose tendency is to limit ordinary connections between Americans of different classes.  Increasingly, well-educated and well-off Americans raise their children within ‘bubble-worlds’ populated with others of their type.  This is very different from the earlier hierarchical class structure of American communities, where the right of an elite to exercise leadership was still connected to their position within a locality.  This vanishing social structure promoted empathy and upward mobility, while rooting elite influence in something like popular sanction.  Whether in religion, neighborhoods, or the economy, there are few traces of these old face-to-face relationships, which fed a spirit of interdependence and reciprocal obligation.

Meanwhile political leaders cede their power to ‘the people.’

Paradoxically, American politics has at the same time become increasingly democratized, with leaders instigating changes designed to give ‘the people’ more sway.   It’s a trend that’s been underway for at least a century, since the Constitution was amended to allow for the direct election of US Senators, giving citizens a power previously seated in state legislatures.   Candidates for national office make their appeals directly to the people, for, with enough popular support, they can thumb their noses at the other pols whose help they once needed.  Likewise, the nominating conventions, where delegates were empowered to attain consensus authentically, are increasingly lifeless affairs, determined solely by rules and by votes the people cast in the primaries.

As the people’s rage rattles the laissez-faire globalism that an elite indifferent to their sufferings universally favors, the elite may well begin to ask, Too much democracy?