AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGINS TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973---Episode 9

   Halfway through the twentieth century, the historian Richard Hofstadter, in his book The American Political Tradition, examined how our important national leaders, from Jefferson and Jackson to Herbert Hoover and the two Roosevelts --- Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Hofstadter concluded that "the range of vision embraced by the primary contestants in the major parties has always been bounded by the horizons of property and enterprise . . . They have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man. . . The culture has been intensely NATIONALISTIC. . ." 

Having left the end of the century and begun a new one, observing the last twenty-five years, we have seen exactly that limited vision Hofstadster talked about --- a capitalistic encouragement of enormous fortunes alongside desperate poverty, a nationalistic acceptance of war and preparations for war. Governmental power swung from Republicans to Democrats and back again, but neither party showed itself capable of going beyond that vision. 

After the disastrous war in Vietnam came the scandals of Watergate. There was a deepening economic insecurity for much of the population, along with environmental deterioration, and a growing culture of violence and family disarray. Clearly, such fundamental problems could not be solved without bold changes in the social and economic structure. But no major party candidates proposed such changes---until a POTUS candidate named Bernie came along in 2016. The American people continued to be entertained by national bullyism. 

In recognition of this, perhaps only vaguely conscious of this, voters stayed away from the polls in large numbers, or voted without enthusiasm. More and more they declared, if only by nonparticipation, their alienation from the political system. In 1960, 63 percent of those eligible to vote voted in the presidential election. By 1976, this figure had dropped to 53 percent. In a CBS News and New York Times survey, over half of the respondents said that public officials didn't care about people like them. A typical response came from a plumber : "The President of the United States isn't going to solve our problems. The problems are too big."

There was a troubling incongruity in the society. Electoral politics dominated the press and television screens, and the doings of presidents, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and other officials were treated as if they constituted the history of the country. Yet there was something artificial in all this, something pumped up, a straining to persuade a skeptical public that this was all, that they must rest their hopes for the future in Washington politicians, none of whom were inspiring because it seemed that behind the bombast, the rhetoric, the promises, their major concern was their own political power. 

The distance between politics and the people was reflected clearly in the culture. In what was supposed to be the best of the media, uncontrolled by corporate interest----that is, in public television, the nightly "MacNeil---Lehrer Report," the public was uninvited, except as viewer of an endless parade of Congressmen, Senators, government bureaucrats, experts of various kinds.

On commercial radio, the usual narrow band of consensus, excluding fundamental criticism, was especially apparent. In the mid-1980s, "talk radio" had perhaps 20 million listeners, treated to tirades from right-wing talk-show "hosts " with left-wing guests uninvited. 

A citizenry disillusioned with politics and with what pretended to be intelligent discussions of politics turned its attention [or had its attention turned] to ENTERTAINMENT , to gossip, to ten thousand SCHEMES FOR SELF-HELP.  Those at its margins became violent, finding scapegoats within one's group [as with poor-black on poor-black violence], or against other races, immigrants, demonized foreigners, welfare mothers, minor criminals [standing in for untouchable major criminals] . 

There were other citizens, those who tried to hold on to ideas and ideals still remembered from the sixties and early seventies, not just by recollecting but by acting. Indeed, all across the country there was a part of the public unmentioned in the media, ignored by political leaders----energetically active in thousands of local groups around the country. These organized groups were campaigning for environmental protection or women's rights or decent health care [including anguished concern about the horrors of AIDS] or housing for the homeless, or AGAINST MILITARY SPENDING. 

This activism was unlike that of the sixties, when the surge of protest against race segregation and war became an overwhelming national force. It struggled uphill, against callous political leaders, trying to reach fellow Americans most of whom saw little hope in either the politics of voting or the politics of protest.