Hopeless? Is the world getting better or worse? Is it merely changing, but not getting appreciably either better or worse?
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There have been moments in my lifetime when we thought things were finally changing for the better: the defeat of fascism at the end of World War II; the smashing of the Berlin Wall; the enlargement of the European Union to include former Soviet-bloc countries to stabilize democracy there; the death of Mao and trial of the Gang of Four; the end of apartheid in South Africa; the start of NAFTA, signaling the end of Mexico's trying to defy geography and scapegoat the U.S. for all its problems.
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But soon after every such step forward, we took the proverbial two steps back.
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The defeat of Nazism and Japanese militarism produced the triumph of Communism in East Europe and mainland China.
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The reunification of Germany ended the German economic miracle and mired Germany in unemployment and stagnation.
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The European Union has expanded beyond any coherent cultural bounds and become dilute and fractious, even as some leaders delusionally work toward a 'United States of Europe' to replace the U.S. as the world's one superpower, which would entail grave risks in terms of economic, political, cultural, and even military conflict.
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Maoism is gone but not forgotten, and the politics of repression remain entrenched in China. The hoped-for political liberalization and 'inevitable' democratization that prosperity was supposed to bring haven't happened. Worse, the rise of China within WTO-mandated free trade is fundamentally subverting all rich countries around the world, and the Chinese Communists are using vast inpourings of money to build up their military to challenge the U.S. first for regional and then world domination.
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South Africa has descended from a marginal member of the industrial world into a full member of the Third World.
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Irresponsible population growth among Mexico's poor has grossly outstripped economic growth and impelled tens of millions to look to the United States for a better life, further subverting our economic security and putting stark downward pressure on wages and benefits for American workers.
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Everywhere we look, people have managed to screw up every good thing we've accomplished.
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What most people in the West see as the promise of the modern world is viewed as a threat instead to superstitious people in societies all around the planet. Islamists fly into massive violence to hold back the future and return to 'good old days' that were never good enuf. Even in the richest and most modern country on Earth, Christian fundamentalists renounce science, see evil in tolerance, and work to take us, too, back to 'good old days' that were never good for any but the few, 'simpler' times that were hard times that every generation worked to improve or escape.
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Parts of this country are still run as little better than feudal baronies, where one family pretty much runs a town or entire county. That one family loves it that way. But feudalism looks a lot different to the serf than to the lord of the manor.
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In order to return us to illusory 'good old days', rightwingers will slash our civil liberties and institute a moral dictatorship even if that means they have to enact a political dictatorship too. People cannot have the right to choose wrong.
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Democracy isn't a quick fix. The Bushites are trying to make the world safe for Israel by 'promoting freedom' and instituting democracy in all its neighbors, by military force if need be. But the people of Palestine democratically elected Hamas, a sworn enemy of Zionism. Elections in Iran installed a fervent enemy of Israel. Any democratically elected government in any Moslem country anywhere near Israel will be anti-Zionist (as it should be).
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Even here, democracy doesn't really work. Money will prevail more often than fail. And the poor can be manipulated to vote against their own interests, as we see in the South over and over again.
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There are even full-scale assaults on what we thought were the solid, irreversible accomplishments of the New Deal. Centerpiece of that basic change in our way of doing things is Social Security, established almost 70 years ago — but the Radical Right is working mightily to destroy a program that has worked for 70 years!
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"The more things change, the more they stay the same." And the human being of today is in no fundamental way one whit better, smarter, or more enlightened than the human being of 5,000 years ago in the "Cradle of Civilization" (Iraq), Indus Valley, or China. For chrissake, China has still never had a democratically elected government, and Chinese society is still organized around the Confucianist principle that social harmony depends upon everyone accepting their place in a more or less rigid hierarchy. Social mobility is un-Confucian.
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Indeed, most societies to this day are rigidly structured. What your father was, you will be. If you don't accept that, you are a malcontent verging on sociopathic enemy of society. That's a large part of why millions flee Mexico, because they want to live their own dreams, not what society would hold them to. They come here and their ambitions to improve their lives and rise in society threaten to upset the applecart of the old Establishment. The Establishment doesn't want that to happen. The rich want compliant slaves, not people looking out for themselves and aspiring 'beyond their station'. Cheap labor is great for the rich, but not if it comes with aspirations.
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Progress is never secure. We can never be complacent that any achievement is "irreversible". Progressives must always be on guard, and the only way to keep from sliding backward is always to press forward.
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It's not enuf to "fite the good fite". We have to win it. Over and over again.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,464.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:47 PM