Michael Clifford: The darkening of the American dream
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There was a time when America was Nirvana. In the town where I grew up we had the American Bar and we had the American Stores. Neither had much to do with America. In the window of the American Bar there was a faded photograph of a Black man leaping towards a basketball hoop. This passed for a sporting connection to America.
The American Stores was in operation before my time, but I have an old photograph of it in which the shopfront is just like any typical hardware store of its day.
Donald Trump would have approved of the American Bar and the American Stores in Cahirciveen. Both were exercises in marketing. America was the shining city on the hill, the place across the ocean where dreams could be sculpted to create a life that was beyond your wildest dreams. Slap over the door of your business premises the word “American” and you might haul in an extra few bob on the reflected glow.
The events of the last week, in which the lights dimmed on the city on the hill, feel like a bereavement. A favoured uncle, the one who made good and sent back dispatches about the greatest country on earth, has just died. And now, sifting through his possessions, we can see that the dogeared dispatches bulged with bluster and lies.
Donald Trump’s reaction to the unfolding election count signalled the nadir in the darkening of the American dream.
I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST. The OBSERVERS were not allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to do their job and therefore, votes accepted during this period must be determined to be ILLEGAL VOTES. U.S. Supreme Court should decide!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2020
In statements on Wednesday morning and Thursday evening, he attempted to wrestle from the electorate their right to choose their leader. He wanted the counting of votes to stop, as if he were the dictator of a banana republic where elections were tolerated for window dressing.
The lies that informed his address on Thursday prompted the main TV networks to break away from his speech.
Shockingly, his attempts won’t lead to criminal charges and he will continue to be a major political force in the country.
How times change. How countries change. Wind back the clock 35 years. In the middle of the 1980s, the American politicians on the lips of most Irish people of my generation were congressmen Brian Donnelly and Bruce Morrison, foot soldiers in the American political hierarchy.
Both had sponsored resident visas to be issued to counties on a lottery basis, offering the dream. Ireland did very well out of it. Thousands leaving school or college got what was deemed a passport to a better life.
The Ireland of the 1980s was mired in recession. It wouldn’t emerge for nearly 20 years, but the politics of the time was hugely corrupt, through the figure of Charlie Haughey and some subordinates, and, on a wider basis, through the planning system.
State infrastructure was crumbling. The Northern conflict demanded huge attention and resources. Sexual morality was controlled by the Church. The big debate at the time was whether the State had officially failed. And over the sea, the city on the hill glowed with possibilities and freedom, or at least that’s how it appeared.
Donald Trump is merely the inevitable product of the evolution of the USA since the 1980s. Ronald Reagan’s presidency was marked by a devotion to markets, the slashing of regulation, the retreat of the state from a direct input into people’s lives. Slashing taxes became the political driving force.
What ensued was a growing chasm of inequality. The dream was no longer available on an equal opportunities basis. There were, as Trump might have it, winners and losers.
An illustration of the widening chasm is available in statistics from the Economic Policy Institute thinktank.
In 1965 the typical CEO in an American company received 20 times the average wages for shopfloor employees. By 1989 this ratio was 58 to 1. In 2018 this had increased to 278 to 1.
Between 1978 and 2018, the average CEO salary increased by 1000.7%. Wages for the average worker over the same period went up by 11.9%.
Within these statistics a central plank of the American dream dissolved. Immigrants and working-class Americans had for decades subscribed to the social contract which deigned that if you worked hard your kids would receive a college education, opening up prairies of possibilities. Not any more. College is now accessible only to the shrinking cohort who are wealthy enough to afford it.
Against this background, resentment understandably simmered. But this is America, where aspiration still ensures that those who are financially successful — by whatever means — may be envied, but never resented because they represent the realisation of the dream. So the resentment turned inwards in the form of culture wars. For those who are making the serious bucks, this suited perfectly. Now there exists a widening division between blue and red, which diverts neatly from the far more important division.
Look at the true blue Democrat state of California. In last week’s election voters were asked whether those working in the gig economy should be treated as employees rather than contractors, thus conferring on them proper benefits and protections. The voters in this liberal enclave said no.
They were also asked to approve an increase in commercial property tax to better fund the dilapidated public school system. The voters said no. Democrats, it would appear, don’t like Donald Trump, but neither are they miles away from him in terms of ignoring the gaping inequality that has opened up.
Trump was once a distraction. The election result, in which he increased his vote but didn’t win, renders him a serious enduring force. The Republican party is now the Trump party. He thrives on division and he excels at distraction. To that extent he is made for America right now.
Joe Biden is a decent man, but even if he were minded — and there is no real evidence to suggest he would be — to address the inequality, he simply doesn’t have the power.
So it goes over there. Back here we have our own problems, but nothing on that scale. Issues around housing in particular and youth unemployment require serious focus but are not intractable. Opportunity and personal freedoms are no longer under the kind of constraints that were a feature of the 1980s. This country has the benefit of seeing where others have gone wrong and the chance to avoid the same mistakes.
Right now, given the choice, would you rather be over there or over here?