Sometimes I wish that every American could spend a year living under a genuinely repressive or corrupt regime. Perhaps we should establish study-abroad programs in Myanmar, Turkmenistan, or Eritrea. We could use that kind of perspective right now, before we conclude that our republic is in such desperate straits that it’s time to go for the defibrillator.
Why is America in such a gloom right now? Where’s the fire (or famine, or plague, or enemy invader)? Stagnant wages and mediocre job prospects have generated frustration in many segments of society, but these alone are not enough to explain the sense of impending doom that has fueled populist movements on both sides of the line. Changing demographics, geopolitical weakness, a growing fear of foreign enemies, and a series of government scandals (which have lingered, mostly unresolved, like the stink of old cigarettes) have all added to the despair. Obamacare is still with us, and still bad.
Perhaps the most under-discussed source of disillusionment is the loss of the marriage fight. To many, this most recent chapter in our culture wars stands as a stunning lesson in the absolute futility of fighting fair. Neither millennia of human tradition, nor overwhelming popular numbers, nor reams of sociological evidence seemed to count for anything once the progressive elite had spoken. It was scarring and embittering. It’s unsurprising that a populist backlash would follow in its wake.
Despite all that, it’s still disconcerting to see conservatism bobbing crazily on such emotional seas. Liberals are more used to this, since they’re routinely dashing around like headless chickens, rallying to the flag of whatever interest group seems neediest at the moment. Conservatives are normally more grounded, preferring principle-based causes that conduce to fairness, order, and tradition. (If conservative advocacy on behalf of the unborn is an exception, it is the exception that proves the rule: Because they are nameless, faceless, and not yet integrated into human society, the unborn are the unlikeliest of interest groups. That makes them uniquely vulnerable, as lovers of fairness, order, and tradition can clearly see.)
It’s worrisome, therefore, to see conservatives hunting for interest-group champions. Only in a truly demoralized conservative movement could the crass materialism of Donald Trump find a foothold. That kind of nihilistic energy reflects more than just economic anxiety. It evidences a deeper sense of despair about the moral and cultural trajectory of our society. Trump’s promises are transparently empty; like a nanny in He-Man pajamas, the substance of his message belies his brash exterior. But his promise to restore American greatness has struck a chord with many voters. They fear that our society is in terminal decline, and many prominent conservatives are happy to underscore that fear.
This is ludicrously overdrawn. To be sure, our cultural and moral challenges are significant, but it’s time to face a hard truth. The sky isn’t falling. Our doomsday rhetoric is becoming self-indulgent. And it’s a shame to be wasting all this energy on a collective panic attack, when we’ve got miles to go before we sleep.
Colorful rhetoric is a journalist’s friend, but let’s be honest. Most Americans have no experience of true political oppression. The din of our bellicose public square persuades us that the situation is desperate, when really that’s a sign of comparative health. Recent events have reminded us that our nation is not invincible to the decadence, corruption, and decline that have consumed other, once-great societies. That is sobering, indeed. We forget, though, that a modest rise in temperature is not just a symptom of illness. It’s a sign that the body is fighting off the infection.
Colorful rhetoric is a journalist’s friend, but let’s be honest. Most Americans have no experience of true political oppression.
We’re grappling with our problems noisily, through a conversation that involves much foolishness, irrelevance, misdirection, and mudslinging. But that, in itself, is not bad. It’s what free societies do. When an uneasy hush settles over the public square, that is the time to panic.
Conservatives love to joke about the incompetence of institutions, but actually our expectations remain, in general, quite high. Here’s an example. From 2002 until 2004, I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan. Soccer (“football”) was the favorite sport there, and many major cities had stadiums. My students (mostly teenage boys) were surprisingly uninformed about their local teams. They loved Manchester United but seemed to have little interest in Uzbek soccer. Midway through my service I got an idea of why that might be.
Some soccer-loving American friends started going to local games. As longtime fans of the sport, they were strongly under the impression that at least some of the games were fixed. A match would proceed normally for awhile, but in the last few minutes the leading team might start making obvious, clownish mistakes that would ultimately lead to a loss. My friends found it hard to believe that this phenomenon was natural.
I never confirmed whether local officials were truly calling the outcomes of Uzbek soccer games. But I did ask several local friends and students whether they believed it to be true. They shrugged. They didn’t know for sure, but it didn’t seem implausible to them. C’est la vie. For them it really was.
I think about Uzbekistan every time the sports world becomes embroiled in scandal (or “scandal”). In America, a single bad call can generate enough outrage to end a collective-bargaining standoff with NFL officials. In Uzbekistan, teenage boys are barely bothered by the suggestion that their local games might be fixed.
Uzbekistan has one of the world’s nastier political regimes, but it’s not Stalin’s Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. It’s just the kind of low-level strongman’s playground where every imaginable official takes bribes, and people avoid discussing politics around their own dinner tables because “the walls have ears.” A hundred years from now, it will probably get a paragraph in the history of repressive modern government. The unhappy plight of the Uzbeks is, unfortunately, very far from exceptional.
Well-officiated football games will not save us from looming debts, a rash of overspending, the collapse of the family, the hollowing out of the middle class, unsustainable entitlement programs, or the surge of radical Islam. On the other hand, a society that demands fair football games is positioned to navigate these other problems. We still have a strong sense of fair play, a zeal for excellence, and the kind of political foundation that can sustain a free society. Our condition is not terminal. But if we continue romanticizing our problems, we may dull our appetite for prudent reform, of a sort that might ensure that our children never have to peer across oceans just to find a respectable sporting match.
Check your privilege, Americans. You still live in the greatest nation on earth.