To some extent, they can, simply because yes, they did vote for the clowns who have made the mess we’re in. (Or didn’t vote at all, which isn’t much better.) But there are important caveats to this fact.
For a start, let’s remember the fact that, in the words of that great Los Angeles philosopher, private eye Phillip Marlowe, “Voters elect, but party machines nominate.” So have we had real political choices, or just two slightly-different dishes (from the same kitchen!) on a steam table of political school lunch food?
And that’s leaving aside, of course, any number of value issues concerning the integrity of elections or the fact that the courts have removed any number of key decisions from electoral control.
Could we have “demanded,” as was suggested above, that things be otherwise? Perhaps. But the problem is that for millions of ordinary people to “demand” something, this takes
leadership. An elite. The “e” word. A million people marching for civil rights on the Mall in Washington in 1963 was an inspiring sight, but those people didn’t just materialize. They were
organized to be there, a process that went back decades and required a small number of talented individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr.
Without leadership, no mass movement.
Here’s where I get pessimistic, because the hard fact is that most of the people capable of exerting leadership in our society have been bought. For a start, there is the blunt fact that trade policy, and economics more generally, is both complex
and relevant to making money. So most people who are able to master it are able to hoist themselves into the top 10-15% of population whose interests on trade issues diverge from everyone else’s. As a result, American society is, to a significant degree, self-decapitating with respect to all economic problems where the interests of the mass and the elite diverge.
Where’s the leadership on lob loss, outsourcing, and trade giveaways to foreign nations going to come from? Frankly, there ain’t much now. The organization I work for is one of the few groups operating on a national scale on this issue. I never fail to be amazed how there are much larger and better financed organizations out there working on issues that, frankly,
aren’t multi-trillion dollar issues of national economic survival. (Don’t get me started on how much political effort in this country is wasted on causes that are, by comparison, small beer.)
I know. I know. There are the unions. They’re a part of our coalition here at the Coalition for a Prosperous America. But frankly, they’re a mixed bag. I’ve seen unions like the Steelworkers and the Teamsters be pretty sophisticated about what’s wrong with “free” trade. On the other hand, the United Auto Workers still doesn’t seem to get it—as evidenced by their recent crumb-guzzling sellout on the
Korea Free Trade Agreement —despite the fact that they may have been hurt worse than anybody.
Unions depend, in the final analysis, on
solidarity, i.e. people seeing their economic fate as dependent upon the fate of others. If you don’t see the world that way, you can starve to death without ever trying to join a union. And the entire thrust of American culture since the late 1960s has been in favor of radical individualism. You can see this in everything from sexual mores on TV to the most abstruse academic economics. So the bottom line is that Americans may be simply too selfish to solve their own economic problems.
That’s the real nightmare scenario we’re fighting against here, because if that’s true, then we don’t have a chance against any of the other nightmares. Our likely fate, if this comes true? We’re going to get beaten by
high-solidarity societies—from the Confucian tyranny of China to the technocrats of Japan to the Social Democrats of Europe.
As Rousseau said, “a tyrant need not worry that his citizens hate him, so long as they do not love each other.” Our problems may not be entirely our own fault, but we sure as hell aren’t going to get a solution from anyone else.
