It is increasingly interesting, almost amusing to me, to read the hand wringing that many express about the 2016 election. I know…I shouldn’t be amused. And, it is a sickening laughter, if it is laughter at all. But I am amused nonetheless because all of this has been so easy to see.
Perhaps worse is how so many average people display how they are pawns in the action, provoking, prodding and pushing exactly towards the crisis that they supposedly wish to avoid. People are stunned that Mr. Trump has been getting support? They apparently cannot comprehend that there is a scared and angry segment of society tired of being accused of being racist or homophobic or narrow minded. Then, these stunned people who can’t believe Trump’s support go onto social media to slam the man and his followers as racist, homophobic and narrow minded.
Meanwhile, others can’t believe Ms. Clinton has been getting support. They apparently cannot understand that there is a scared and angry segment of society tired of feeling marginalized, ignored as women or treated badly because of the color of their skin. Then, these disbelieving people over the support to Clinton go onto social media to slam the woman and her followers, marginalizing their concerns, mocking her voice or looks as a woman and using either openly racist terms or terms that have racist overtones.
Each side keeps pushing the other to the edge, further and further away from any middle ground of compromise. Of course, both Trump and Clinton claim in their speeches to be ready to bring everyone together. Either they are the most naïve people or worse, have far darker plans for anyone who disagrees with them.
How in the world did we get here? I have been writing and warning about the coming Great Crisis. As a key part of that, the Philosophical Divide that splits the country is a key part of that journey. To understand our current division, you simply need to go back to the end of the middle phase of our 80-year cycle. Remember, as William Strauss and Neil Howe taught in Generations and The Fourth Turning, the saeculum is a term to use to describe an 80-year pattern that has existed for the past 500+ years of Anglo-American culture (England and her children, especially the ones in North America).
The saeculum has four parts: the High (after the previous Great Crisis), the Awakening (spiritual high), the Unraveling (memories get short, forgetting the previous crisis as younger generations rise in adulthood), and the Crisis. Each is roughly the span of a generation, so about twenty years. In each, as society moved into the Unraveling, things began to happen that started to create the philosophical divide that would ultimately become a crisis point. As that happened, older people would begin to speak about how “years ago” the leaders or the people “used to work together” regardless of political affiliation.
Well, of course they did because in the High, everyone was united (or nearly so). The dissenting voices had either been completely silenced or run off…or they knew to keep their heads down and make no big scene. Just quietly go along with the new way of things.
So, what about us now? It must be all Obama’s fault, right? No? Then Bush…he’s guilty for everything. Actually, though, it’s about 20-25 years prior those men. But before we go back, let’s consider what one can see in the political spectrum today in 2016. Right now, as I see it, there are five clear groups of individuals who are engaged in a great debate about the direction of the country.
We’ll use the same “right-left” descriptions often stated today, though most no one understands why it’s right or left. In the same way, the words “conservative” and “liberal” no longer mean anything connected to their historical meanings. However, we will use them to aid in your grasp of the setting.
The five groups can be understood this way moving from far right to far left:
- Angry Far Right concerned more about national issues such as security, immigration, abortion or social ills related to morality; angry about being categorized by the progressive left as evil or wrong
- Small Government Right who wanted the promise of Reagan to fulfill the shrinking of government agencies or government control
- The Establishment group, half Republican half Democrat….both are ultimately conservatives…wishing to conserve “what is”…the FDR/LBJ semi-socialist progressive style of large government doing many things but never really fully Socialist.
- Large Government Left who want more progressivism, more programs that mimicked European-styled socialism
- Angry Far Left concerned more about economic inequality, lack of ability for equal chance and fears of what far right would return to in social terms; angry about being ignored or impoverished and categorized by the small government right as lazy or wrong.
Now as with all types of generalizations, there are issues with these groupings of mine. And of course, as in any country at any time, the issues are too many to hold the groupings for long. A person’s view changes some depending on what the specific topic might be.
So, how did we get to this division in 2016? In the 1970s, as the Awakening period was in full swing, something happened economically that began to undermine the Keynesian/Progressive philosophy that had held sway since the early 20th century. The economy went into the tank. As people suffered, an old idea began to resurface suggesting that all of the larger government programs of the Progressives had been a mistake. This was the return of the “Small Government Right” (SGR); I say “return” because this is the view of the Founders, that government should be small and with limited power. Reagan’s election in 1980 was the successful revolution of growing “small government right” through the 1970s. However, he won the election by also tapping into the “Angry Far Right,” those ready to fight, especially over social ills.
From the perspective of the SGR, the election of Reagan in 1980 was the start of a journey back to pre-progressivism, perhaps back to the views of the Founders. Of course, President Reagan was not able to really be the “SGR Reagan” some remember and claim today; he had to work closely with Tip O’Neill and the Congress…almost all Establishment, majority Democrat party. But, with the 1984 election, the SGR could believe in a longer-term victory as Reagan had an overwhelming election. He won 525 electoral votes (out of 538), 97.58% of the Electoral College.
However, something happened that the SGR did not see coming. The 1988 election brought to the fore George H.W. Bush who was part of the Establishment from the Republican side. To the SGR, he was a “Moderate.” This partially happened because Reagan, like every two-term President since George Washington, had a disastrous second term. Pat Robertson, a televangelist from Virginia and Jack Kemp were more in line with what the SGR and AFR thought Reagan had stood for, but they did not get Reagan’s support.
Bush’s election halted the move toward the small government right; he even slid back to Establishment middle as he raised taxes during his single term. This fact is one reason why he lost to Bill Clinton in 1992…because the SGR and angry far right would not fully support him. They voted for Ross Perot in the 1992 election.
So, to the SGR and the AFR, they had been betrayed. In the meantime, however, the left was okay….except that during President Clinton’s first term, the SGR and AFR elected “Republicans” who took control of Congress, both houses. This came as the right of the Republican party, taking key thoughts from Reagan’s second inaugural address in 1985 (so 10 years later in 1994), put the spotlight back on the SGR wishes. This forced Clinton to move back to the center of the Establishment.
President Clinton was Establishment (as Bush was too), but had hoped to move more to the left, awakening the “Large Government Left” with ideas like national healthcare….that movement was lost and many on the left became incensed with this failure. This defeat coincided with Clinton’s own disastrous second term dealing with his moral failures. Those issues actually emboldened the AFR who saw the moral failure of the President as indicative of what they had been fighting about in the first place. However, that rise in activity against the President triggered the coming of the Angry Far Left seen in groups like “moveon.org.”
Moveon was born in 1998, created by two computer entrepreneurs who expressed their own frustration with growing partisan “warfare.” Their initial website created a petition stating “Congress must immediately censure President Clinton and Move On to pressing issues facing the country.” The 1998 election, however, didn’t go their way as SGR and AFR Republicans held Congress and then voted to impeach the President. According to one of the founders, this was too much and it was time for the movement to become more political. They set out specifically to defeat any Congressperson running in 2000 who voted for impeachment.
The battle lines were now drawn. Clinton’s issues and the fight of the SGR/AFR coalition to try and preserve the Reagan promise brought out the AFL. The contentious 2000 election spurred the AFL, and the philosophical divide was clearer than ever before. The right coalition was hopeful the 2000 election could confirm and refuel the movement right that the Reagan election had portended. Of course, both parts of the right coalition were wary because George W Bush was like his father (and Clinton), part of the Establishment. This would have been the central fight of his term, except….
9/11
The terrorist act at the end of 2001 sparked a move largely to the right, or at least in support of Bush, which actually silenced or softened the right coalition. They could feel that even if Bush was a moderate Establishment, the country was coming their way. Nope. A year later, in November 2002, Code Pink was established, serving warning that the AFL was not out of the fight. Their anger was more about the lives and money wasted in wars.
When combined with the continued feeling that Bush and/or right coalition had somehow cheated the election of 2000 (thus, cheated the move back to center left that had begun under Clinton)….the AFL grew. As it grew, and as the Iraq war spawned, then the Larger Government Left became emboldened on its own.
This group is perhaps the smallest of the 5 because through the 1970s-1990s, they saw accurately that the Establishment’s aim of continuing the FDR/LBJ semi-socialist progressive style of large government was good enough. But now as the War on Terrorism seemed to deeply alter the nature of the country, such feelings about the Establishment position wasn’t good enough. The LGL could see correctly that the right coalition of SGR/AFR would not give up their fight.
If anything, the final four years of President Bush’s second term (also disastrous as all the other previous Presidents), with the economic disaster of 2007 that still extends to today and the historic election of President Obama in 2008 merely entrenched both sides. This is the point of the philosophical divide…as the two edges fight, claw and grapple for the win…the center shrinks. Today other groups like “Tea Party” Republicans (SGR+AFR) and the “Occupy Wall Street” movement (AFL with some LGL) have tried to coalesce as new political parties. Part of our current tension of the 2016 election is not just a fight between the left and right, but WITHIN the left and the right. Only time will tell if either the Republicans or the Democrats split, decline or vanish.
What we have, though, is a widening divide, pulled ever wider by the two angry sides of the country. Neither side seems capable of coming to a conversation for conclusion…which is exactly what we see when we look back in history at the other Great Crisis moments. At this point, the “other side” becomes an enemy to be destroyed, silenced…eliminated.
This is where we stand right now…just a few short months away from the 2016 election. Divided. Deeply divided.