I’m old enough to know that the U.S. hasn’t always enjoyed a peaceful political process. At one point, we had a major Civil War. We didn’t go peacefully into WWII. There were plenty of folks who thought that the Nazis were correct. Soon after WWII ended, many were worried about the Communists. Senator Joseph McCarthy made a career on the Red Scare. And then we had Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks. We are still, of course, far from being “home free.”
The political spectrum in the States shows essentially bi-modal distribution instead of a Bell Curve. People are gathered toward the left wing (liberal) or the right wing (conservative), with very few in the middle. The left-right split seems more extreme now than it has been in a long time. The divisions aren’t as sharp or extreme as they were in 1860, but we’re getting close. The death during the march and protest in Charlottesville, VA illustrates the depth of the divisions between and among us.
The question is, “Why now”? Why are so many people so angry now? As best I can tell from my review of the daily news, the anger and unrest are virtually universal now. Both the “right” and the “left” in the States have ramped up their hate. European countries are also coming unraveled. Africa has had serious problems for a long time. The same is true in the Middle East. Neither South America nor Mexico is doing especially well. That is, of course, one of the reasons so many from those places want to migrate to the United States. Although moving might provide temporary respite, there is, of course, no real escape. Other people are the problem. And other people are everywhere….
Political views used to be arranged on a bell curve, with the right and left extremes representing only a few, and the big bulge in the middle consisting of those with more moderate views. We now seem to have bimodal distribution with the big bulges representing the extremes.
The divisions lead to class conflict, which at its worse can become class warfare.
Class warfare begins when the division between rich and poor is extreme. The poor outnumber the rich, and when they decide that they can’t “take it” any more, they do what they can to get even. The French and Russian revolutions are perhaps the clearest examples of that, although history provides many such examples. Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s provides another example. The Germans were made to suffer following WWI, so they set out to get even in WWII.
The world, including those of us in the States, seem to be at “tripping point.” We are teetering on the brink—of what isn’t clear. We have serious discord, but the division isn’t between rich and poor as it so clearly was in France. The factions are “liberals” and “conservatives,” but not all liberals are poor, and not all conservatives are rich. Some of those on the extreme right of the “right wing” are poor, and some of those who are the most liberal are wealthy. Where we can go from here isn’t clear—at least not to me.
We are, at least, living in interesting times.
