Answering Kennedy’s Call
Something is going on in the American culture and psyche, a change that I believe will return us to a more optimistic era of hope and possibilities.
I see what Pulitzer prize-winner and Political Scientist Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) and co-author Shaylyn Romney Garrett describe in their new book, The Upswing; How America Came Together a Century Ago and How WE Can Do It Again, as a return to a more progressive “We” era, a societal coming together with less divisiveness than we have experienced in recent decades.
“Americans Hate Divisiveness, We Need to Demand More,” is the headline of a recent PEW Research poll, in which: “57 percent of Americans believe that partisan conflicts receive too much attention these days. And 78 percent say there is too little focus on important issues facing the country. But if we want something different in the political dialogue, we the people need to demand it by rejecting divisive rhetoric and rewarding substance and solutions.”
I have called recent decades the Age of Narcissism. It was a time when “what’s in it for me” topped “what’s in it for us.”
Putnam and Garrett describe American history over the past 125 years with the “I-We-I” curve, using a series of bell-shaped curves to evidence the history of “a gradual climb into greater interdependence and cooperation, followed by a steep descent into greater independence and egoism.”
There is mounting evidence we have begun such a change that resembles earlier, more progressive eras. Putnam and Garrett have called it “The Upswing”, a return to the “We” era that we last experienced in the 1960s, before the Vietnam War and killings of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr., tore our country apart in a de facto civil war of red states vs. blue states.
The Kennedys and MLK, Jr. were the upholders of the last “We” era before we descended into our dark ages, accompanied by a greater lawlessness and distrust of our laws and institutions.
The sixties was the decade of greater voting and civil rights, income equality, and equal opportunities in education and the workplace with the enactment of anti-discrimination laws.
I came of age when President Kennedy promised a New Frontier of peace and end to the cold war that I also believed would happen after listening to him as a student and then volunteering for the Peace Corps. Kennedy instilled a ‘can do’ spirit that anything and everything was possible when he said there were better ways to serve the country than war: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Sarge Shriver, the Peace Corps first director, then adopted Rotary’s motto for PC Volunteers, “Service Above Self.”
The descent into darkness was also a time when many Americans were in the throes of “Deaths of Despair…” said Nobel Prize-winner Angus Deaton and Anne Case, who uncovered the damage done by drug use and suicides among the rust-belt workers who had lost their industrial age jobs.
Maybe the change from the darkness to light was first noticeable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the weaknesses of excessive individualism became evident in the partisan divide over the treatment of its victims—when literal survival required cooperation over competition, regardless of the politics or religion.
Positive changes also occurred with modern technologies such as the Internet that enabled Americans to talk to each other more freely. This may sound counter-intuitive with the ‘anything goes’ frontier mentality of its abusers and propagandists, but it has enabled the younger generations to be seen and heard much more than older generations.
Pollsters have seen the changes in our younger generations towards more communality. They are the Internet generations that communicate and get their news via cell phones and laptops, are more ethnically diverse, and less intolerant.
PEW reported in 2020, “Generation Z represents the leading edge of the country’s changing racial and ethnic makeup. A bare majority (52%) are non-Hispanic white – significantly smaller than the share of Millennials who were non-Hispanic white in 2002 (61%). One-in-four Gen Zers are Hispanic, 14% are black, 6% are Asian and 5% are some other race or two or more races.”
The earliest era of great change described by Putnam and Garrett was when citizens and parties come closer together in the turn of the last century, the Progressive era, which gained full force when Vice President Teddy Roosevelt became the President with the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
“The Progressive movement did not eliminate polarization, to be sure, but in reflecting reformist, egalitarian, and even communitarian sentiments among leaders of both major parties, it laid the groundwork for decades of declining polarization,” they said.
There is something else bringing people together, much of it involuntary—the growing threat of climate change. The overheating and droughts in major regions of planet Earth have caused massive migrations from areas of famine and overpopulation that is creating a more global population mix.
There’s a consequent backlash that is creating anti-immigrant policies such as Brexit, but it is being countered with the so-called DEI policies (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies created by progressives that increase egalitarianism, which is another way of saying it means to reduce the record wealth and income inequality fostered during the dark ages.
It will require more egalitarianism among developed countries with labor shortages such as the U.S. as we become even more ethnically and racially diverse. We have no choice but to welcome immigrants to maintain economic growth.
In fact, we see it already happening with the younger generations.
“A recent online survey found that younger generations are more optimistic than older generations about becoming wealthy in the future. Fully 69 percent of Gen Zers and 54 percent of millennials who don’t consider themselves wealthy now said that they think that they will be wealthy someday, a survey by Lending Tree revealed, as opposed to 41 percent overall. The survey, conducted by Question Pro in early September was taken by 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 77.”
I have listed just a few of the changes for good that are coming. It’s happened in the past and WE are doing it again!
Harlan Green © 2024
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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