Ball of Confusion (Part Two)
Shooting…
Those are some of the words of Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong from the Temptations 1970 hit, Ball of Confusion. The song still resonates some fifty years later. American cities are experiencing mass outward migration as people flee from the pandemic seeking space. We are fighting over 2nd Amendment rights while people are shooting protesters and innocents in schools, the streets and places of worship. Police brutality is a weekly event, and civil rights has emerged to the forefront of our national conversations. The song also mocks our politicians as the cities are aflame in the summertime. It suggests that we have not learned from history.
When this song was written, the short lived legacy of freedom and equality was fading. The glorious moments of the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 were challenged by assassinations, the rise of the Black Panthers, the 1968 Democratic and Republican conventions, and the election of 1968. "Law and order" promised by Richard Nixon and George Wallace overtook the "unity" promised by Hubert Humphrey. Wallace, the southern Democrat and segregationist, received over 13% of the vote handing the victory to Nixon. His success gave rise to the second Southern Strategy which enabled Ronald Reagan, George Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump to turn former Democratic southern states red. In reality, despite all that we think, the Civil Rights era America came to an abrupt end as regional racial grievances were turned into political agendas that made controversial issues ones of economics.
The legacy of 1968 is the Ball of Confusion. And we, the American citizens, reflect those degrees of confusion. We are emerging as the least sensible people on the globe. Americans are hypocritical, insensitive, and undereducated. Politicians are banking on our confusion so that they can steer the issues of 2020 into things that can favor their agendas rather than to address our national conflicts.
After digesting the two 2020 conventions, my sense of fear and worry have only increased. Technology made the eight nights quite interesting, but the delivery of information was lacking. In my estimation, neither side made a convincing argument to break with party and vote for the other side. Probably, a good percentage of the electorate will be turned off from the process and not vote for the second time in eight years. And this will not serve the best interests of the nation.
The conventions bode poorly for our concepts of democracy. Each side indicated the end of America. The Republicans portrayed another era of doom and gloom if the Democrats come to power. They spoke of lawlessness, high taxes, and godlessness. The Democrats spoke of presidential corruption, gross inequities and denied opportunities that will only increase.
As a historian, it is hard not to take sides when it comes to the truth. However, who's truth are we observing? There were and are two vastly different realities. Historians, now and in the future, will analyze these times from their own bubbles of the past and present. Our national history on the era of Trump will be as fractional as the histories of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
On one side there is an attempt to go back to a mythical past and on the other is an attempt to create a mythical future. America, sadly has never been "great". It has been the American promise that is great. American exceptionalism stems from hopes and dreams of a perfect world. The United States is just over two hundred years old. It is not in the same categories with France, the United Kingdom, or Russia and it cannot be compared to the Greek or Roman Empires. Yet, we hear those comparisons on a daily basis. America had a Civil War before its one hundredth birthday. It's democracy was never a true democratic and equal society, and that's why it is a republic. Our republic has been overthrown in silence by legal decisions, and it been undermined by devices like the Electoral College fearing the will of the majority. Presidents Clinton, Tilden, and Gore can tell you how the system actually works. America is not the shinning city on the hill. We can see the mountain top but we have not reached it.
Perhaps we should look north towards Canada for a counter narrative on the virtues of democracy. It too has a wide variety of problems but has not had a Civil War after 100 years of birth. No nation is perfect, but we should stop arguing that America is great or the best, because its industrialization and modernization saved the world. That war is history, and the United States has not won a major war since 1945.
Republicans and Democrats can't even agree on the issues. We have a crisis in public health and health care; climate and environmental problems; a continuing civil rights struggle for complete equality; our infrastructure is crumbling; we are in the beginnings of a pandemic without a vaccine; our schools are failing this generation of students; higher education is leading people into debt; an entire sector of work is no longer available within the nation; we are forced to import certain goods; a large percentage of our population is homeless and/or underemployed; and there is a lack of confidence in our legal system which is resulting in nationwide protests.
The Republicans were vicious in their criticism of Joe Biden. He was described as a person who had his head in the sand over the last 47 years, only to emerge to run for president. A distinguished football coach called him a "Catholic in name only". His distinguished record of service was continually downplayed and distorted. Biden was blamed for depressions, recessions and natural disasters. Audiences were told that Kamala Harris was an angry woman and that she wasn't really representative of black society and its values. Republicans claimed that they are saving historically black colleges and universities, and that they favor school choice. Republicans argued that the Democrats would take away guns and push abortion to the moment of birth. That these radical leftist leaning Democrats were really socialists trying to destroy the United States!
No one should believe that this laundry list is representative of the Democratic party. And yet, we know that they will. The Democrats equally failed to acknowledge the achievements of the Trump administration, but they did not lie about their philosophies or methodologies. The Republicans used people of color as pawns and props - a Cuban American to compare Castro to Biden; a set of black athletes to say that Trump was not racist but a wonderful and caring person; immigrants of color who received citizenship; and pardoning a black criminal. They brought forth two distinguished South Carolinians who revised the definitions of racism to argue that the president was not racist and that America was a good place. Yet these two people of color were also tools of oppression. They argued the legendary comments that hard work yielded success. However, each knows that for their races and genders there is a glass ceiling. The former governor and ambassador to the United Nations was afraid to say that she removed the Confederate flag and instead called it a symbol of hate, and the current junior senator could not admit that his advancement was a by-product of racial control and that he was also used as a pawn in the cause of police reform.
So, we are living in a period of confusion. Americans are engaged in a cold civil war. There is a strong national notion of distrust. It was not created by the current president and his political party, but they have clearly capitalized on it. The opposition is still struggling to define a point of attack. As a result misinformation is the nature of daily conversations and interactions.
We either don't want to admit the truth or are afraid to accept the truth but either way this nation is in trouble. Regardless of who wins in November, there will be a significant number of unhappy people. America is going to remain fragmented, but yet it is important to vote to make sure your voice is heard. There is a degree of irony in encouraging people to vote when the outcome does not look good. However, voting is a responsibility in a democracy. If countless others don't vote and we have a split between the popular vote and the Electoral College, I fear we will see another Civil War.
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