Belonging Where?

By David Trend:

Throughout its existence the United States has shown a strange tendency to turn against itself, dividing citizens against each other with a vehemence rivaling the most brutal regimes on earth. Some have rationalized the resulting crisis of “belonging” in America as an understandable consequence of cultural diversity, economic stress, and global threat. After all, haven’t there always been “insiders” and “outsiders” in every culture? Aren’t competition and aggression wired into human nature?  Or is there something peculiar about the personality of the U.S.?  Could it be that prejudice is the real legacy of the “American Exceptionalism,” in traditions dating to the genocide of indigenous populations, the subjugation of women, the rise of slavery, the scapegoating of immigrants, and more recent assaults on the poor or anyone falling outside the realm of normalcy?

I discussed selected aspects of America’s divisive pathology in my book A Culture Divided: America’s Struggle for Unity, which was written in the closing years of the George W. Bush presidency.  Like many at the time, I had completely given up on the idea of “common ground” amid the residue of post-9/11 reactionary fervor and emerging economic recession. Media commentators were buzzing constantly about red/blue state polarization.  Opinions varied about the cause of the divide, attributing it to factors including regionalism, media sensationalism, partisan antipathy, or all of these combined. Also joining the fray were those asserting the divide was fabricated, with evenly divided elections showing most people in the middle of the curve on most issues.  My somewhat contrarian view was that the “problem” shouldn’t be regarded problem at all. After all, America always had been divided––through war and peace, boom and bust. Division was the country’s national brand.  But as a book about politics, A Culture Divided didn’t get to the roots or the lived experience America’s compulsive divisiveness.

Speaking at the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, President Barack Obama described America as an incomplete project––a nation caught between ideals of a perfect union and the lingering realities of their failure. While citing advances in civil liberties since the bloody apex of the Voting Rights Movement, Obama also spoke of a federal report issued just days earlier documenting structural racism and misbehavior toward African Americans by police in Ferguson, MO, where months before law enforcement officers had killed an unarmed black teenager. “We know the march is not yet over.  We know the race is not yet won,” the President stated, adding, “We know that reaching that blessed destination requires admitting as much, facing up to the truth.” Continue reading “Belonging Where?”

Signs of rising fascism in Greece and …

Economic decline. Record unemployment. Anti-immigration. Anger toward government. Does any of this sound familiar? Well this isn’t the American Republican Party we are talking about. These are the markers of a rising fascist movement in Greece, where the neo-Nazi “Golden Dawn” is gaining political momentum. It seems that hardship has a differential effect among nations, bringing citizens together in some countries, and dividing them bitterly in others. In Greece the situation is getting ugly these days. In an article entitled “Fear and Loathing in Athens: The Rise of Golden Dawn and the Far Right,The Guardian describes a tale of civil unraveling that indeed might give US voters something to consider. Put simply, the platforms of Greece’s Golden Dawn and the US Tea Party movements are nearly identical. As The Guardian’s Maria Margolis writes, “You can hear it from blocks away: the deafening beat of Golden Dawn’s favourite band blasting out … ‘Rock for the fatherland, this is our music, we don’t want parasites and foreigners on our land’…Tonight is the opening of the Golden Dawn office in Megara, a once prosperous farming town between Athens and Corinth. Continue reading “Signs of rising fascism in Greece and …”