The "Essential America"

 Children believe in essentialism. So did ancient Greeks, apparently, according to the wikipedia article.  I don't.

Is "America" essentially a racist country, a white-dominated country, a city on the hill, a light unto the world, an imperial hegemon, a pillar of human rights?  My answer is some of all of the above, more so at different times in history and less so at other times, in some places and at some times.

In other words, it's complicated.

The Worst of Times?

 Lots of attention being devoted to the state of our democracy and the nation  Poor, declining and heading to possible civil war seem to be common analyses.

I'm reading the new Jonathan Alter bio of Jimmy Carter, who cites the opinion of a British visitor in 1971.   At that time, with the Vietnam war going and racial problems stark and the boomer generation not trusting anyone over 30, the outlook seemed grim.  I remember it well. 

A Parallel Between Chinese and American Development?

 A lot of media attention to China, specifically the possible bankruptcy of Evergrande due to overdevelopment of housing, triggered me. 

China's economic development in the last 45 years or so seems to have been based on privatizing land, or at least selling individuals and corporations a long-term right to farm or develop on a piece of land. (I'm hedging because I vaguely remember that perhaps they used long-term leases in some cases, rather like the Brits did sometimes.)

Anyhow, how did the Chinese state get the land? My impression is that as a result of the Chinese Revolution the Communist Party nationalized land in the 1950's, which they've been privatizing since 1980's. 

To me in a broad view that seems like what the English/Americans did--they nationalized the land held by Native Americans and then fueled economic development by privatizing. 

The Face of Our Nation

Benedict Anderson had the concept of "imagined communities"--essentially the idea that people develop a concept of nationhood through shared media, specifically print. 

I'm thinking about the face of America as I experienced it in my youth (1941-63), and how it has changed now, considering print and broadcast media. The America of my youth was white, basically WASP. I don't mean I didn't know of all the non-WASP residents, but WASP was the default, the presumed identity of any person mentioned in media. 

Our actors were Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Alan Ladd, John Wayne and actresses were the Hepburns, Marilyn Monroe. Our TV series were Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Bonanza.  Our radio shows were One Man's Family and Gunsmoke. You'll notice the mythology of my America was Western, the individual trying to do right. Our sex was heterosexual and rarely mentioned; gender was not considered.

These days the face of America as I experience it is multi-racial, multi-cultural, etc. 

I like most of these changes in America, but some, perhaps most, of my demographic cohort has real problems with them.  Change is hard.

Those Were the Days--Anti-colonialism and Am. Revolution

Lots of tweets relating to the NYTimes 1619 project, almost all of them trying to assess the importance of slavery in the American revolution.

I'm reading Louis Menand's The Free World--about halfway through now.  As I lived through the period and was an aspiring intellectual (😕) I recognize most of the names even if I don't remember the books or ever admired the art.  Possibly I'll comment more on it later.  

But today I want to note the Bandung conference, which was a landmark in the anti-colonial movement of the 1950's.  The nations there represented 54 percent of the world's population, or 1.5 billion people (about 4 billion today).  Menand notes that Sukarno , who had led Indonesia's independence effort and was one of the two main sponsors of the conference gave the opening address and cited Paul Revere's ride (Menand, p. 411) as the "start of the first successful anti-colonial war in history".

It's a reminder that the Revolution had many aspects, including its influence as an example on the world stage.

Our Responsibility for America's Past?

 One of the complaints the right has against liberals and progressive is that we make them feel responsible for America's past. Since they weren't living then they had no participation in the misdeeds.  When the subject of reparations is raised, many point out their ancestors came to the country after the abolition of slavery. 

Two thoughts:

• the same conservatives are usually eager to affiliate themselves to the history of a glorious country.  I don't think you can pick and choose--if you love the country you have to take the whole thing; you can't have just the steak and ice cream without the vegetables.  (I realize that sentence isn't politically correct in these days of enlightened nutrition, but it makes the point, as well as comparing conservatives to children.😉)
• Carolyn Hax is the advice columnist for the Washington Post.  Her recurrent theme is you have to deal with your (spouse, significant other, relative, fried) as they are.  I think the same is true, in part, for your country. You didn't choose the country, someone choose it for you.  You can decide to leave and find one more to your liking--that's fine.  But if you remain you have to acknowledge the realities of the past.  (Hax often counsels against trying to change the person, or hoping for them to change. Obviously you can and should try to change what you don't like about America, but as with people you should be realistic.)

Norton's 1774: the Long Year of Revolution

 Mary Beth Norton published this book in 2020,  Reading it in the light of the 1619 Project and our current partisanship makes it particularly interesting.  

Tidbits:

She defines a "long 1774", essentially starting with the Boston Tea Party (December 1773) and ending with Concord and Lexington in April 1775.

Different communities reacted differently to the importation of tea by the East India Company--the Tea Party was the most extreme among the ports (NYC, Philadelphia, Charleston) in that property was destroyed.+

Gadsden writes from SC that the colony is weakened by its high proportion of enslaved blacks--makes them indecisive in responding to the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Port Act (the first UK response to the party).

The activist faction used tactics to manipulate the results.

"Patriotic terrorism" was a thing in 1774. The "woke" were sometimes successful in silencing their opponents, those who disagreed with nonimportation and possibly nonexportation agreements to protest the "Coercive Acts" punishing Massachusetts for the destruction of tea in the Boston Tea Party.

Much of the dynamic seems to be a recognition that all the colonies needed to act together, hence the first Continental Congress and the "Continental Association"

There was a ratchet effect, each big event pushed the sides further apart. In America the progression cemented unity among the colonies and a sense of being a separate country.  Americans might have accepted a revised status similar to that achieved by Canada and Australia in the next century but neither side was able to offer concessions which could have initiated such negotiations.

Within America there was a splitting, as some came to recognize themselves as "Loyalists" and others as committed to the "Patriot" cause, even at the risk of civil war. As the book progressed the reactions of the players seemed similar to those we have seen recently.  As the Patriots coalesced they tend to unite around stronger positions much as the way progressive Democrats have emerged and coalesced since the days of euphoria over Obama's election.

If the Bill of Rights had been in effect in 1774 the Patriots would have violated many of its provisions. Assessing them it seems they followed the rule: look at what we say, disregard what we did.

The British government was receiving reports from the Netherlands and elsewhere of Americans buying arms and gunpowder to smuggle into America.  They took steps to intercept such shipments and pressured the Dutch government to block such sales.  Norton describes these reports but doesn't offer any description of the background--were these individual entrepreneurs acting out of fear of war, much as today people go to the gun store when alarmed, or hope of profit, or were some acting as agents for people in the legislative bodies attempting to speak for the colonies (some improvised conventions, some the colonial assemblies)? Likely there's little documentation to provide such background. 

Although Amazon reviews have criticized the writing as dull, I liked it--it's well done scholarship. 

Bureaucracy Extremes

Started reading "Midnight at Chernobyl" today.  It's been around the house for a while since we saw the TV series based on it,  but hadn't gotten to it until today.

Then I just got off the Facebook group for current and retired FSA employees (mostly field employees but some DC and retirees). I like to keep up with what's happening there. 

There's a big contrast between the rigid bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and the more free floating discussion of issues and techniques in the Facebook group. I wonder how much of that is American versus Russian and how much is technology enabling exchange of ideas. 

I think it was true in the old days of ASCS that there was pretty good sharing of ideas within a state, and perhaps some across state lines based on personal connections.  Back in the 90's we tried to develop the sharing by having "train the trainer" courses with county people mixed in with the state people.  Having the internet and Facebook now facilitates the exchange even more.  

We Are Who We Thought We Are?

 Lots of discussion--"this isn't who we are" or "this is exactly who we are".

The idea of "imagined communities" is relevant.  People imagine what America is, they develop an image of who we are which is based on stereotypes and narratives from the media, schools, movies and TV, etc.  So when a big event happens, it can be inconsistent with the image. That's not necessarily the case however.  For example if we looked at the reactions shortly after 9/11 or the Boston marathon bombing  I'd guess most people thought the reaction to the events was very "American" or "Boston" ("Boston strong").  

Over the long run I suppose the image is sustained if the positive events outweigh the negative events.

Upward Mobility Revisited

Robert Samuelson has a column in the Post on the decline of upward mobility in America.

What's being measured is inflation-adjusted incomes, comparing children and parents.  So the percentages of children who exceed their parents income has declined. A Brookings study tries to parse out which classes and which age cohorts see the change.

A couple of observations strike me:  it's (relatively) easy for poor kids to beat their parents; it's hard for rich kids to beat their parents.  The child of a welfare mother with no job only has to make it into a lasting job while the child of Warren Buffett or Bill Gates will never beat her parents.

The 1940 cohort has the greatest success, so using it as the baseline for comparison skews the results.  People like me profited by the post-war boom, the increase in productivity, which hasn't been matched in later years.

One thing the discussions, particularly Samuelson's, don't approach is a hobbyhorse of mine: in a steady-state economy every person who is upwardly mobile has to be matched by another who is downwardly mobile. That's apparent when, as here, you use inflation-adjusted income as your measure; it's less apparent when you talk about people moving from one level (decile, quartile) to another.

With dollars of income, it's possible for everyone to out earn their parents, provided only that the economy grows enough.  (Think of China, where the income measure means everyone is upwardly mobile.)

The Need for Photo ID and Our Assumptions

President Trump last night said you need photo id when you go to the grocery store.  His people have defended the statement two ways: if you're paying by check, you need the id or if you're buying alcohol you need the id.  His opponents find these lame rationalizations--few people pay by check anymore and he didn't mention beer and wine.

As an opponent, I agree. But there's a danger here of accepting and reinforcing the assumption--all Americans go to the supermarket, all Americans have checking accounts, and all Americans live in single-family homes.  All, of course, are false.  Many Americans go to the local grocery, where their family may have shopped for years, and where the owner knows them and needs no id.  Many Americans have no checking account. Many Americans never go to the store, being essentially confined to their homes and dependent on others to buy their groceries for them. And many Americans  live in group settings where food is served. And some Americans live on the street and depend on food kitchens, etc.

[updated: Vann Newkirk at the Atlantic agrees.]

Imagining the Future--the Founders

John Fea comments on Sen. Mike Lee's Am history--good read.  Lee wrote that Alexander Hamilton could never have imagined the sort of big government we have today, implying that therefore such government was somehow illegitimate.  Fea points out that neither Hamilton nor the other founders could have imagined the society and economy we have today.  I'll go on to note that while Franklin and Jefferson IIRC wrote about the U.S. filling the continent and the expansion of the populace, as is usually the case they just imagined more of the same: more people, more farmers, etc. 

Revisionists of the One-Third Thesis

I learned relatively early, perhaps even in high school some 60 years ago, that one-third of the white American colonists supported independence, one-third supported Britain, and one-third were confused moderates.

From this review of a book on the American Revolution comes a counter, arguing that the support for the Revolution was only about one-sixth and:

In their light, the Revolution looks less like a popular uprising than a coup d’etat. The always-mystifying questions of how a band of ragtag rebels dared challenge the mightiest martial power on the planet and how they succeeded in doing so loom even more mystifyingly in the light of such modest popular support. And the role of coercion and violence in the maintenance of the war effort seem more than ever in need of serious examination.

Looking at the Revolution in the context of modern use of violence, maybe one-sixth is more accurate.  Certainly a lot of revolts seem to have been the work of minorities (i.e., the "Troubles" in Ulster, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, etc. 

American Factoids--Declining Scots-Irish

German Federal States are, on average, about 8,600 square miles. East German states are about 7,000, west German ones are about 9,600. US states are, on average, about 74,000 square miles, so far from comparable.

That's from Lyman Stone also these:

Do you know what major American ancestry-group is declining faster than any other? Scotch-Irish. The vaunted origin-ancestry of Appalachia lost nearly 2.2 million self-identifiers from the 2009 ACS sample to the 2014 ACS sample, marking a 42% decline. The only ancestries to lose more people were German and English; much of the decline in those two groups was centered around Appalachia.

Want to guess the fastest-growing ancestry group in America? I bet you guessed “Mexican” or “Chinese.” Those are solid guesses; Mexican is #3, at 11% growth with 2.4 million new self-identifiers.

The correct answer, however, is “White/Caucasian.” The number of Americans self-identifying not as English or German or Scotch-Irish but “White” as their ancestry, as distinct from just their race, rose 47% from the 2009 ACS to the 2014 ACS, with 3.9 million new identifiers. The second largest grower was “American” as an ancestry; this is un-hyphenated American, mind you. There are 2.9 million new “Americans,” giving 15% growth.

Williamson and I Together?

Not often that Kevin Williamson of the National Review and I agree on anything (not that he knows I exist), but this post, entitled "Calm Down Doom Monger" is pretty good. See my earlier post.

The Saving of America: Immigrants

My mother would have claimed rural America as the heart of true America (even though she was a Bronx girl, her family moved to upstate NY a couple years after she was born).  If she was right, and she wasn't, then immigrants are saving America. From the Blog for Rural America:

"Using recent U.S. Census data, Johnson discovered that, where there is growth in rural areas, minorities account for 83 percent. The Hispanic population in nonmetropolitan areas grew at the fastest rate of any racial or ethnic group during the 1990s and post-2000 time period."

What Is America--the Biggest Slave Revolt

We write as if the definition of America is self-evident, thus the adjective "American" is self-evident as well.

Not so fast.  I tried, and failed, to become a professor of American history.  It's a hard term to define.  Is it the history of the people who live or lived in America?  Sounds like a good starting point, but do we include the history of the Native Americans? Does that make them more American than Americans, or less, or different? 

Maybe we just limit the term to the history of the people who lived in America after 1492?  Does that exclude the Spanish who settled in Florida and the Southwest, or the French who settled in New Orleans and Louisiana?  Or do we say that they only became American when the US gained sovereignty over the land, so their history begins with acquisition?

The other related question is whether there are degrees of Americanness?  Asking the question brings up, for those of us of a certain age, the divisiveness of the McCarthy times.  But it's a good question, at least for the way we usually write.  But it often excludes such groups as Native American tribes, the Amish/Mennonite community, the Hasidic Jewish community, etc. who don't fit neatly into generalizations about American.

This post was prompted by this piece, discussing the biggest slave revolt on soil now claimed by the US.