CURRENT STATE

 

For over nearly two years, this blog has presented a dialectic argument which ended with a promotion of a mental construct to guide the teaching of civics in American classrooms.  That mental construct is what this blogger calls liberated federalism, a version of federalism.  In turn, federalism offers a view of governance and politics which many scholars have adopted as a theoretical base for their work.  In a few words, the construct promotes a citizenry that is federated.  That is to say that among the citizens, there is a sense of partnership.

          As such, they are highly encouraged to be participants in the formulation of policy that the government issues, and that they support a polity with certain qualities of governance which include an abiding concern for the common good – the hallmark of a commonwealth.  Those postings that have been issued over the last months have described and explained this view extensively.  Many of them have depended on numerous citations, probably a good number from the late twentieth century. 

This posting relies on a contemporary journalist, David Brooks, and his recently published book, How to Know a Person[1] – a book this blogger wholeheartedly recommends.  This posting will ask questions of the author and supply Brooks’ “answers” by quoting his book.  Readers will hopefully see the relevance and support of Brooks’ work to the basic ideas of liberated federalism.

 

Question:  Mr. Books, how do you see the state of the US today?

Answer:  “We live in an environment in which political animosities, technological dehumanization, and social breakdown foster distrust.  We’re living in the middle of some sort of vast emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis.

… Depression rates have been surging since the beginning of the twenty-first century.”[2]

Question:  Can you be more specific?

Answer:  “More to the point, 36 percent of Americans reported that they felt lonely frequently or almost all of the time, including 61 percent of young adults and 51 percent of young mothers.  People [are] spending much more time alone.

The thing we seem to suck at most is relationships.”[3]

Question:  Assuming you are correct, what are the major consequences for Americans of your overall view?

Answer:  “The effects of this are ruinous and self-reinforcing.  Social disconnection warps the mind.  When people feel unseen, they tend to shut down socially.  People who are lonely and unseen become suspicious.  They start to take offense where none is intended.  They become afraid of the very thing they need most, which is intimate contact with other humans.  They are buffered by waves of self-loathing and self-doubt.  After all, it feels shameful to realize that you are apparently unworthy of other people’s attention.”[4]

Question:  Have people in the US reacted to the state you describe?

Answer:  “[P]eople want to find ways to heal.

            … Sadness, lack of recognition, and loneliness turn into bitterness.  When people believe that their identity is unrecognized, it feels like injustice – because it is. [They] often lash out, seek ways to humiliate those who they feel have humiliated them.

            … In 2021, hate-crime reports surged to their highest levels in twelve years.  In 2000, roughly two-thirds of Americans gave to charity; by 2021, fewer than half did.

            … The social breakdown manifest as a crisis of distrust. … High-trust societies have what Francis Fukuyama calls ‘spontaneous sociability,’ meaning that people are quick to get together and work together.  Low-trust societies do not have this.  Low-trust societies fall apart.”[5]

Question:  What is it about the American nation that has wrought these conditions?

Answer:  “In our society, we confer huge amounts of recognition on those with beauty, wealth, or prestigious educational affiliations, and millions feel invisible, unrecognized, and left out.”[6] 

Question:  Are there political implications deriving from these conditions?

Answer:  “The crisis in our personal lives eventually shows up in our politics.  According to research by Ryan Streeter of the American Enterprise they [these disaffected people] are active in politics.  For people who feel disrespected and unseen, politics is a seductive form of social therapy.  Politics seem to offer a comprehensible moral landscape.  We, the children of light, are facing off against them, the children of darkness.  Politics seems to offer a sense of belonging.  I am on the barricades with other members of my tribe.  Politics seems to offer an arena of moral action.  You just have to be liberal or conservative, you just have to feel properly enraged at the people you find contemptible.

            … Healthy societies produce the politics of distribution.  How should the resources of the society be allocated?  Unhappy societies produce the politics of recognition.  Political movements these days are fueled largely by resentment, by a person’s or group’s feelings that society does not respect or recognize them.  The goal of political and media personalities is to produce episodes in which their side is emotionally validated and the other side is emotionally shamed. … [A person so moved] is trying to affirm his identity, to gain status and visibility, to find a way to admire himself.

[But such an attempt] doesn’t actually give [that person] community and connection.  People join partisan tribes, but they are not in fact meeting together, serving one another, befriending one another. … [That sort of politics is] marked by a sadistic striving for domination.  You may try to escape a world in the pulverizing destructiveness of the culture wars.”[7]

Question:  So, what can we expect the future to be given what you describe?

Answer:  Ultimately, the sadness and dehumanization pervading society leads to violence … These young men often have no social skills.  Why doesn’t anybody like me?  As one research put it, they are not loners; they are failed joiners. …  [G]uns can provide a narcotic sense of power.”[8]

Question:  Why is that so?

Answer:  Why[?]  … We can all point to some contributing factors:  social media, widening inequality, declining participation in community life, declining church attendance, rising populism and bigotry, vicious demagoguery from our media and political elites.

… I see as a deeper cause of our social and relational crisis.  Our problem, I believe, is fundamentally moral.  As a society, we have failed to teach the skills and cultivate the inclination to treat each other with kindness, generosity, and respect.

 … ‘[M]oral formation’ … is really about three simple, practical things.  [They are] restrain their selfishness [,] … helping people find a purpose [in their lives], teaching the basic social and emotional skills so you can be kind and considerate to the people around you.”[9]

Question:  Have American schools contributed to these developments?

Answer:  “Over the centuries, our schools reflected the failings of our society – the racism, the sexism, and all the rest.  But over those centuries, for all their many failings, schools really did focus on moral formation.  They thought it was their primary job to turn out people of character, people would be honest, gentle, and respectful toward those around them.  But starting just after World War II, the focus on moral formation gradually fell away. … [As] Edward McCellan argues … ‘Educators who had once prided themselves on their ability to reshape character now paid more attention to the STAT scores of their students, and middle-class parents scrambled to find schools that would give their children the best chances to qualify for elite colleges and universities.’”[10]

Question:  And how about parents and the rest of the culture; do you share your blame with them?

Answer:  “Parents started practicing ‘acceptance parenting.’  They were less inclined to mold their children’s moral lives, and more likely to just cheer them on for their academic and athletic achievements.

            … American culture became demoralized. … In 2018, the Pew Research Center asked Americans what gives them meaning in life.  Only 7 percent said helping other people.  Only 11 percent said that learning was a source of meaning in their life.

            In short, several generations, including my own, were not taught the skills they would need in order to see, understand, and respect other people in all their depth and dignity.  The breakdown in basic moral skills produced disconnection, alienation, and a culture in which cruelty was permitted. … We need to rediscover ways to teach moral and social skills.”

 

And this blogger would add that a liberated federalism guided civics education curriculum, broadly implemented, would be the way to start what Brooks so aptly argues the nation should be about doing.

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[1] David Brooks, How to Know a Person:  The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (New York, NY:  Penguin Random House, 2023).

[2] Ibid., 97.  The answers of this “interview” are directly quoted from Brooks’ cited book.

[3] Ibid., 98-99.

[4] Ibid., 99.

[5] Ibid., 99-100.

[6] Ibid., 100-101.

[7] Ibid., 101-102.  Emphasis in the original.

[8] Ibid., 102-103.  Emphasis in the original.

[9] Ibid., 103.

[10] Ibid., 103-104.