As 2014 begins, the primary season is upon us. As a nation we are afflicted by that quadrennial rash of political fever. In the United States for at least the last fifty years, we have seen the growing influence of political conservatism and right wing movements. It is time to reorient ourselves in the broader landscape of politics. While the last two presidential elections offer strong reasons for optimism, we need to be aware of the stakes in 2014.
Proto-fascist movements in this country include the Tea Party, the militia underground and patriot organizations, the Christian Right, the conservative-entertainment complex [Limbaugh, Beck, Fox News, etc.] and more recently, extremist Republican Party members who celebrate the language of violence and gun culture. Many present-day Americans on the Right channel a dangerous rage and hatred towards the vulnerable (the poor, the elderly and the sick), towards Muslims, towards undocumented workers, towards gays, intellectuals, feminists, and liberals. They have a long list of people they don't like. To the sober-minded, this American proto-fascism is a frightening and powerful undercurrent within American society and has been growing since 1973, and even earlier in the 20th century. We all remember this quote from Sinclair Lewis: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
Ultimately, historians have looked beyond the bombastic rhetoric of the Right and concluded that contemporary conservative ideology is grounded not in specific issues such as limited government, low taxes, or free markets - most of which are disposable ideas that the Right has been quick to embrace or reject to suit the needs of the moment. At the deepest level, however, contemporary conservatism is now based on a dual vision of America as [1] a white Protestant nation feeling threatened by people of color [American Racism], and [2] a country whose greatness is driven by private enterprise and military adventures [US Imperialism].
In 1964 the liberal candidate, Lyndon Johnson, received about 62 percent of the popular vote, a substantial victory. Four years later, the conservative candidates, Richard Nixon and George Wallace, together polled 57 percent of the popular vote. In these pivotal four years, roughly three-fifths of the electorate moved from supporting liberalism to supporting conservatism. Sometime in the vicinity of the late 1960s or early 1970s, conservatism began to find greater support, politically and intellectually, in American society.
Why did this transformation occur? In history, as in life, there are no easy answers. A few obvious possible factors include the backlash against the civil-rights movement, distaste for the protests against the Vietnam War or for the war policy itself, disenchantment with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs and the media driven perception that crime and the disintegration of families presented a growing threat to the nation's future.
But a much more important source for the rise of conservatism in recent decades is the declining standard of living for working people that began to reverse the United States' economic fortunes in 1973. While such factors as the backlash against the civil-rights movement and Vietnam might have triggered a temporary conservatism in the late 1960s, the deep and abiding conservative convictions we have displayed as a nation in the past several decades indicate deeper roots in an important transformation that straddled the early 1970s.
The conservative revolution that began a generation ago was prompted by the loss of the American dream, a birthright to which citizens had become accustomed in the heady affluence immediately following World War II. In an era when the Gross National Product more than tripled between 1945 and 1965, Americans not only did better than their parents, but they learned to expect that would always be the case.
It was a shock when, in about 1973, the promise of ever-expanding affluence began to crumble: in 1973 average hourly wages hit their summit and began a steady decline. Average weekly earnings peaked a year earlier; productivity in the national economy, which had caused real wages to double between the end of World War II and 1973, hit a plateau where only anemic gains were recorded.
One reason, certainly, is that in the decades after 1945 the United States had the only industrial economy left unbombed, so our economy had a world of markets with no competition. By the early 1970s, the thundering hooves of foreign competition were deafening.
1973, the first year of Nixon's second term, witnessed the first oil embargo, Roe v. Wade, the Yom Kippur War, the expansion of the Watergate revelations, Kissinger's first year as secretary of state and the U.S. peace treaty with North Vietnam. Further, the engine of the national economy was starting to cough. It has been harder to pay your bills; there was growing hostility to taxes and growing resentment of Washington.
Too many Americans have fallen into the conservative Right wing trap during this period. The decades since the 1960s, after all, have witnessed the blossoming of New Right family and Christian groups, protracted tax revolts, the triumph of Reaganism, Middle-Eastern oil wars, and more recently, proto-fascist machinations.
This period of conservatism has been, in effect, the politics of economic decline. Our universities, government programs, health care system, libraries and roads are all becoming more modest - some of them noticeably shabby, like pensioners who can't replace their tattered socks.
The historical lesson here is that the politics of decline has produced a public ethic in which people, facing shrinking fortunes, are pitted against each other. In this environment many people are forced to choose between preserving what they can for themselves or contributing to the commonwealth, the common good. Taxes are resented as an unwarranted intrusion, rather than as a contribution to such community benefits as education, transportation, quality health care, street lights and safety.
Can we break the grip of this ominous, Malthusian closefisted approach to life as long as our economy is shrinking? In the same way that Frederick Jackson Turner worried that democracy might be impossible after the closing of the frontier, we might wonder today whether liberalism will be impossible after the end of affluence. The challenge confronting the people's movement this year is to rebut the reactionary narrative of division and decline.
The Republican Party has been the beneficiary of this increased national conservatism. More than ever, however, with Republican obstructionism in the House of Representatives and antiquated Senate rules, and despite President Obama's efforts, America is in the grip of a politics of decline that reaches back to 1973,
The entire tapestry and trajectory of the conservative movement is dangerous. Historians now trace the roots of today's conservative movement to the 1920s. Indeed, modern conservatism was born out of post-World War I fears that secular, pluralistic, and cosmopolitan forces threatened America's national identity. Moreover, the tactics of conservatives have been used for generations to put their slant on policy and culture, to choke the growth of the liberal state from the New Deal era to the Great Society to the Clinton/Obama years, and to build the most powerful network of media, fundraising, and intellectual organizations in the history of representative government.
The power of the far Right presents an enormous challenge to the labor led, multiracial people's movement that succeeded in electing the nation's first African American President in 2008-and re-electing him in 2012. The coming 2014 campaign is anything but an "off year" or "interim" election. The financial resources being brought to bear by the ultra Right can be negated by a large, broad and organized, people's movement.
Photo: immigrant rights demonstration Los Angeles Google images/CC
