Richard Longworth: Our summer of extreme discontent
John Case
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0803-leadership-20110803,0,5792399.story
chicagotribune.com
Our summer of extreme discontent
By Richard C. Longworth
August 3, 2011
Am I the only person who feels we're living through a bad and scary pastiche of old disaster movies, like "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Dr. Strangelove"? Who feels that both nature and politics are spinning out of control, that things that could never happen here are happening here?
Maybe it's this dank, oppressive summer, with its stifling heat followed by teeming rains, followed by more heat and more rain, with a plague of floods, tornadoes, hail and gale. OK, all summers are hot and tornadoes happen. But it's the extreme violence that jars. We can hear the global-warming scientists say, "We told you so." Which they did.
Then there's the farce in Washington, echoed in state capitals, all run by men and women who are unqualified or unwilling to deal with looming crises, especially the financial one. Some lack intelligence, compassion and any sense of history, and are proud of it. Others know better but seem paralyzed.
Tea party leaders like Rep. Michele Bachmann exemplify the former, President Barack Obama the latter. Demonstrably intelligent and decent, he is the American Hindenburg, seeing all sides and choosing none. The debt crisis — both the negotiations and the temporary resolution — only reinforce this judgment.
The Irish poet William Butler Yeats described this in words that, nearly a century after he wrote them, still strike terror:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Some critics think Yeats, writing in 1919, had the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in mind. His poem, "The Second Coming," resonated again in the 1930s, as Europe crumbled. It still holds meaning today:
Things fall apart: the center cannot hold …
What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I've lived and worked over the years in countries conquered by the rough beast, places like Russia and Germany. Before their cataclysms, both had vibrant cultures. Germany, in particular, was educated, scientifically advanced. Both countries, crippled by feeble leaders above and fanatics below, had no defense against the forces that overwhelmed them.
Can it happen here? Americans always have felt that this country is different, destined for permanent success and world leadership. Almost every problem we've ever had, we've solved. We had a Civil War and a Great Depression, and rose above it. We've had our know-nothings and our political wars. But in the end, reason prevailed. Unlike much of the world, we've gone 150 years now without ripping ourselves apart.
No one ever got rich betting against the United States of America.
So why does this time feel different?
One reason is globalization. Once each industrial nation controlled its own economy, and ours was the strongest of all. That control has fled. The economy is global. So are our major corporations. It's a whole new economic world. We don't understand it and we aren't coping.
An offshoot is the rise of Asia, especially China, and the sense that America and the West are in decline. Perhaps we're declining in relation to China. Perhaps we're just declining, and China doesn't have much to do with it. But we Americans see ourselves as exceptional. We don't handle decline very well.
Another reason is the fact that we can't solve most of our truly big problems — globalization, global warming, terrorism — by ourselves. We're the most powerful country in the world, and there's not much we can do alone.
A big reason is that, even if we could lead, we'd do it badly. The world still looks to America for leadership, but American policy and politics are so controlled by money, and so much of that money is hostile to rational leadership, that we can't give the world what it needs. On climate change, for instance, the power of political donors like the Koch brothers guarantees bad policy. Without campaign finance reform, which the U.S. Supreme Court blocked, America's global leadership is a negative force, not a positive one.
The upshot is that, when leadership is needed, it's nowhere in sight. The power of money ensures that we are ruled by know-nothings filled with passionate intensity. The globalization of our lives ensures that our leaders, in Washington or state capitals, have less and less ability to influence important issues. So they spend their time and energy squabbling about minutiae.
The stakes are high. An American who lectures China on multiparty democracy will be taunted with the answer, "Sure — just like yours?" What do we say?
All is not lost, by any means. Perhaps — perhaps —- we can rise above partisan paralysis, recognize the new global world for what it is, and once again survive and thrive.
But in this summer of our discontent, even the Cubs are still losing. All Cubs fans know that a team can have a bad century. Can the same thing happen to their country?
Richard C. Longworth is a senior fellow at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Copyright © 2011, Chicago Tribune
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