AMERICAN DEVOLUTION (84 years of American history)

 AMERICAN DEVOLUTION

“To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.“

— Bertrand Russell

This is my brief 84-year-old history of the United States.

From FDR to Trump, America has steadily lost its understanding of reality. In post-World War II, Americans had a firm grasp of the realities of war and the means and methods to recover and build a great nation. Its institutions served reality. The secular government was strong, academia was grounded in liberal arts and sciences, secondary education taught the basics and the classics, and religion spoke quietly of good, trustworthy charity.

America was an honorable republic and an emerging world leader in the goal of peace and prosperity. Factual-based reality was the currency of the realm. Science was the arbiter of facts. The rule of law was the sacrosanct fabric of society. A united people had fended off fascism. Brave men and women, many of whom made ultimate sacrifices, returned to take up the yoke of liberal democracy. America was the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

The institutions of government, politics, education, commerce, and religion were grounded in the reality of purpose and promise. Social ills were diagnosed, and treatments were begun. Secular morality strengthened to fill any void left by religion's lingering wartime memory.

The social safety net was mostly firm but for discrimination, racism, and unequal treatment. Those realities were recognized and exposed to the light of redress. The course was clear. Actual facts were the currency of a just and honorable society, and science emerged as the arbiter of factual reality.

The union was well until an actor from Hollywood was fed a sinister and cynical script that he delivered so eloquently as to erode the nation's fragile progress and begin a steadily declining across-the-board regression from all the post-war advancement.

The Reagan debacle deserves an entire book. In sum, he set about to make the institution of government the scapegoat for the ills he would inflict and the straw man upon whom he could project an incipient fascist philosophy. And it mainly went without notice. He took a reality-based Republican party to a Hollywood make-believe party. The rich would be decisive on the backs of the masses. Everything possible was sacrificed on the altar of Capitalism. Free markets should be free of government interference. 

Enter Pat Robertson and then Jerry Fallwell, harbingers of theocracy to come. (Jumping ahead to the bottom of the trajectory, the bottom-most likely would not have occurred, at least not yet, if these two giant grifters had not taken their snake oil into the secular world and promoted their evil wares in the Republican party.)

The smooth-talking B-list actor carried the Republican's long-range plan of dismantling government into action. He started the privatization of public functions to justify massive tax cuts, the ultimate conservative agenda centerpiece. He was sufficiently engaging and pleasant, and the economy was otherwise robust. His countrymen and women were distracted with their work enough that the turn t From FDR to Trump, America steadily lost its understanding of reality. In post-World War II, Americans had a firm grasp of the realities of war and the means and methods to recover and build a great nation. Its institutions served reality. The secular government was strong, academia was grounded in liberal arts and sciences, secondary education taught the basics and the classics, and religion spoke quietly of good, trustworthy charity.

America was an honorable republic and an emerging world leader in the goal of peace and prosperity. Factual-based reality was the currency of the realm. Science was the arbiter of facts. The rule of law was the sacrosanct fabric of society. A united people had fended off fascism. Brave men and women, many of whom made ultimate sacrifices, returned to take up the yoke of liberal democracy. America was the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

The institutions of government, politics, education, commerce, and religion were grounded in the reality of purpose and promise. Social ills were diagnosed, and treatments were begun. Secular morality strengthened to fill any void left by religion's lingering wartime memory.

The social safety net was mainly strong but for discrimination, racism, and unequal treatment. Those realities were recognized and exposed to the light of redress. The course was clear. Actual facts were the social and political currency and autocratic fascism went largely unnoticed. 

Reagan changed all of that. No more would the government benefit the people. Less government and more affluent people were the goal. Privatization and tax reduction only helped the capital class. Wealth inequality accelerated. Labor unions were marginalized. 

The national obsession with tax reduction and eliminating taxes decimated the secondary and graduate education systems. Adding insult to injury, primary and secondary education was prioritized for privatization. This was all part of an ultra-conservative agenda the brain-dead actor was all too eager to act out, his only significant starring role. Uninterested in politics, Americans went sheepishly about their business.

Social media raised its ugly head, making an overall negative impression on all aspects of progress. Society's advancement stopped for people to turn on and play with new technology. Phones were designed for the pocket, but they ended up on hands most of the day and even the night. Face-to-face interaction died. A perfect storm was brewing, but few noticed, and even fewer issued the requisite warning of the cyclone coming.

The most far-reaching devolution belongs to the U.S. Supreme Court. On a steady decline in quality thinkers and the rise of political hacks, the highest tribunal became a night traffic court, thanks to mediocre rightwing leadership. From the high of post-war jurisprudence to the justification of political expediency and fascist power grabbing, the majority abandoned their role of lawyers and cast aside centuries of stare decisis.

The central salient fact about the downward slope of the last 84 years is the steady descent to fascism and the collapse of democracy. In 1945, the War Department warned the country of the methods and practices of fascism. Government was to be by the few for the few elite. Democracy was antithetical and in the way of the despots. Civil liberties were to be curtailed. Equal rights were abandoned, and the few would make rules and change at will. They would wrap themselves in the flag, feign patriotism, and encourage racist nationalism. They would sew the seeds of conflict and hatred among groups they would promote to enslave themselves to a cult leader who would promise to make America great, secure, and prosperous.

Facts and objective reality are the currency of a just, honest, and democratic society. Reality, correctly understood, is based on facts. Science and its method of inquiry, testing of hypotheses, and attempts to disprove theories is the arbiter of facts. The Bible is not fact. It is the opposite. It is an amalgam of ancient myths repeated from prior eons of history with a view of the world before we even knew Earth circumvented the sun. Best described, the Bible is fiction, unreliable, false reality.

This brings us to the most essential part of the devolution experience, a free press. It's not as free as it once was. It is caught up in the crony capitalism that has created wealth inequality. It also has suffered from breaking the thin line between fact and opinion, nay fact and fiction. A certain amount of inequity in wealth distribution is inherent in capitalism. But now it is crony capitalism, where the billionaires and their cronies control the means of production entirely and serve only the capital class.

Capitalism works. Socialism does not work. A free market without controls will not work. We are headed for doom without the reformation of capitalism.

Journalism blurred the line between fact and fiction and lost the trust of the American people. Technology permitted anyone to publish news on social media. The purveyors of social media delighted in taking advantage of and fueling the fires of the confusion over truth. Truth is elusive if not illusory. But return to truth is the way to avoid the creeping fascism. Somehow, we do not know how, Americans must return to traditional values. Reversing Reagan, who caused the fall, is a start. That is, restoring government controls by, among other things, increasing the minimum wage, empowering labor unions, breaking up monopolies, and taxing the super-rich, for starters.

Finding a moral compass would help. There can be no trust without trustworthiness. Christianity has been on a moral decline for the last 84 years. Honesty and truthfulness from the religious right might save the country. Unfortunately, all these suggestions sound like old-fashioned platitudes except that our survival depends on reversing the devolution.

America continues its downward trajectory. America, the leader of the developed world in superstition, lies, and conspiracy theories, is doomed. The poison of religion will kill America. The rest of the world may survive.