The status quo has been interrupted. Things seem unmoored. For those unhappy with the way things have been, this can feel hopeful. But will we see deep systematic change to the national and global status quo or simply a return to what was considered normal before the election of Donald Trump? I fear that most Americans are more deeply wedded to the way things are than they are aware.
It is encouraging that so many seem to recognize that the problem of police brutality to Blacks is not simply a matter of a few “bad apples.” The status of Black people in the U.S. (and beyond) is a systematic problem that can be seen most clearly in the context of European colonialism.
Beginning 500 years ago, European countries invaded and conquered almost the entire non-European world: Africa, the Americas, most of Asia. In places like North America, European settlers finished the job of conquest and domination. Colonialism was a process of extraction of minerals, furs, agricultural products, labor and things like Native American artifacts that could be placed in European museums to emphasize how frozen in the past such societies were compared to the dynamism of Europe.
The colonial world was one of extreme hierarchy that ranked people on a scale of humanness with Europeans at the apex. Even Christianity itself— despite the words of Jesus — was used to justify the dismantling and genocide of these “heathen” societies. Despite the nominal decolonization that followed World War II, the US-dominated world of more recent decades is built upon similar hierarchies and extraction. Most Americans haven’t noticed the level of international bullying this order requires.
After the nominal end of slavery in 1865, as Carl Doerner clearly delineated in his June 20 piece, the situation barely improved for most Blacks. Overcoming tremendous initial disadvantages has been prevented by the inequalities that still pervade our political economy.
Although injustices exist in nearly every sector from housing to criminal justice, let me point out two important ones. Because health care is tied to employment, those without good jobs get bad health care, and because education is tied to local property taxes, those who can afford wealthy neighborhoods get good schools.
How can one climb out of that hole? Medicare for all and state-funded public education would be easy first steps in the direction of equality. If Joe Biden isn’t willing to attack such fundamental injustices, replacing Trump with him is just like firing a bad cop but not addressing the deep — 500-year-old — problem of systematic inequality.
There is nothing more revealing of how deep our problems are than the specter of so-called progressives in the anti-Trump mainstream media clamoring for a return to “normal,” to the days of Clintons, Bushes and Obamas. Here you see the real power of our established order: pundits complain about Trump by citing generals, CIA and FBI operatives, and people like John Bolton — the very people who built and maintained an unjust order. I fear that the outpouring of white participation in recent protests is based on the idea that Trump is the problem rather than the actual much deeper one.
The world has been on a crazy rollercoaster since Sept.11, 2001. G.W. Bush tried to dominate the entire world and wound up revealing the clear limits, and indeed, the deterioration of American power, especially soft power.
A worldwide anti-globalization movement flared in the late 1990s based on the fact that the U.S.-dominated global order increasingly concentrates wealth. Neo-liberal capitalism not only creates inequalities, it constantly requires more growth, but the earth systems that support all life are visibly collapsing.
The recent film “Planet of the Humans” (free online) argues persuasively that our current trajectory is unsustainable. We cannot maintain this growth by substituting solar and wind for oil and gas. We need to slow it way down (as during the pandemic, but permanently).
Noam Chomsky recommends voting for Biden simply because four more years of Trump will doom the planet. I understand that argument, but Biden basically demands a return to the pre-Trump days (when he was vice president). Does he understand how deep the problems are? Is he willing to lead a global movement to change capitalism (and save the planet), to make schooling, health care, housing equal now?
Only, I suggest, if there is a huge and vocal movement that pushes for these things. In the face of our deep disaster, we need more than the removal of its most morbid symptom: we need revolutionary change.
Patrick McGreevey is a resident of Greenfield.