Since the end of World War II and the Depression’s perceived threats to democratic societies, America has been consumed with how to do democracy better. This generally came in the picture of the FDR’s America, where the government exists to support the people and spread goodwill as opposed to the laisse-fair governments of the post Civil War United States. At least that’s how it is when viewed from the proverbial helicopter, ignoring for the moment the bad things that occur in any big country and seen as necessary to survival in the moment.
This wave of democracy reached began with FDR and its peak in the late 1960s in the form of LBJ‘s social programs of the Great Society and the passage of the Voting Rights Acts. These programs are best evidenced by FDR’s Social Security and LBJ’s Medicare, Medicaid and Food stamps program. In the last 10 years, this Federal philosophy has come into greater question as Americans live their life and ponder what kind of government or society they want. For most citizens this is not an overwhelming occupation but we listen to our friends and family who are more concerned with change than others and it has more and more been a topic often heated of the mainstream America. These changes up until very recently have all settled around What are the limits of government in a free society and how do we take care of more people better.
I feel this examination of the 80 years of liberal policy government all came to a crescendo in 2008 in Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois. When Barack Obama walked on stage to address the crowd after being elected President of the United States. As the nation shared in this triumph of Hope, a small segment of the electorate was not happy, and maybe it was in heat, but it was a concern: “What was to happen to our status quo?” Underneath this sense of positive change in America was the dark tendrils of fear.
I believe ever since then there has been a growing counter influence on the American people. First a contrarian whisper, then a cry to to a reflexive form of nationalism as an answer to the perceived erosion of American values as understood by those who limply cheered for Barack Obama’s election, but secretly wondered “what will happen?”
Over the past 18 years in America has been a struggle for direction as witnessed by the inconsistent elections and trying nature of our politics. Much of this it must be said is business as usual, in our free society, which allows everybody an avenue of appeal no matter how ridiculous their notions but this time their rhetoric did not fade and was it and be drawn out by saying her constituents, but this time became the QAnon nation.
A consisten stream of violent far right or far left activism is reshaping the country from the Great Society envisioned in the late sixties.
- Ruby Ridge,
- Waco,
- Oklahoma City
- Election of Donald trump
- Black Lives Matter
- The polarization of technology wealth
- Impending explosion of AI
