The bitter fruits of our alienation from America

Summary:  We conclude our examination of the hit TV show “Castle” by adding up what we’ve learned from it about America. Perhaps we have become alienated from 21st C America because we no longer see ourselves as part of it. Hence our unwillingness to defend it. Today we discuss the consequences of that alienation. It’s not pretty.

This continues from part 1: “Castle” shows that many of us don’t defend New America because we don’t like it.

Contents

3. Why should we worry about alienation?
4. No worries! Others will rule us.
5. How we got to this dark place
6. Other posts in this series about “Castle”
7. For More Information
8. The flip side of alienation is irresponsibility

 

(3)  Why should we worry?

Wikipedia describes alienation (lightly edited):

In sociology and critical social theory, alienation refers to an individual’s estrangement from traditional community and others in general. … the atomism of modern society means that individuals have shallower relations with other people than they would normally. This, it is argued, leads to difficulties in understanding and adapting to each other’s uniqueness (see normlessness).

Alienation attacks the glue that holds a nation together, so that we no longer see ourselves as fellows in a great joint venture.   Just as unit cohesion makes possible survival on the battlefield, strong social cohesion allows — makes possible if not certain – a society to survive what would otherwise be overwhelming threats. Solon’s reforms gave Athens the such strong social cohesion that they remain a beacon for us millennia later.

Alienation of individuals from the group disrupts cohesion, and can prove fatal to the group in times of great stress. As a social illness, it might have already gone deep into US society.

This might explain the splintering of the American polity and our inability to do what we have done so well in the past — to respond collectively to serious threats. We no longer see America as ours; we feel alienated, which feeds on itself as our internal structures decay — and we realize that alone we’re powerless.

It’s obvious in a thousand ways. Our ability to take collective action to address serious national problems diminishes, as we see in Washington’s gridlock during the past decade. Even support for vital government programs — like rebuilding our infrastructure — declines.

We have heard countless warnings about Latin America-style hyper-inflation. Instead we should worry about Latin American-style social cohesion. In the 1920s people in the great European nations described the wealthy as being “Rich as an Argentinian.” Generations of social conflict wrecked their economic and social structures. Their GDP per capita now ranks 55th, between Gabon and Croatia.

Americans have fought to defend our nation. People don’t fight to defend a place we just live in. We can lose everything in a heartbeat of history.

(4)  No worries! Others will rule us.

The 1% grow more powerful every year, and slowly consolidate their control of America. An atomized people, millions of individuals, have little ability to resist.

1. Why the 1% is winning, and we are not, 26 July 2013
2. The 1% won a counter-revolution while we played. We forgot that we are the crew of America, not passengers., 28 April 2014
3. How the 1% runs America. Runs us. The answer points to 2 futures for us., 8 May 2014
4. As the 1% grows more powerful, they speak their minds more boldly, 31 May 2014

(5)  How did we get to this dark place?

From Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987):

Country, religion, ideas of civilization, all the sentimental and historical forces that stood between cosmic infinity and the individual, providing some notion of a place within the whole, have been rationalized and have lost their compelling force.

America is experienced not as a common project but as a framework within which people are only individuals, where they are left alone. To the extent that there is a project, it is to put those who are said to be disadvantaged in a position to live as they please too. The advanced Left talks about self-fulfillment; the Right, in its most popular form, is Libertarian, i.e., the right-wing form of the Left, in favor of everybody’s living as he pleases.

… If there is an inherent political impulse in man, it is certainly being frustrated. But this impulse has already been so attenuated by modernity that it is hardly experienced. {Americans} feel a sense of impotence, that they have little or no influence over the collective life, but they live comfortably within the administrative state that has replaced politics.

(6)  Setting the stage for a New America

1. From March 2014: Stand by for political realignment in America!
2. Diagnosing the Eagle: Alienation.
3. The bitter fruits of our alienation from America.
4. Scary lessons for America from pre-revolutionary France.
5. All posts about Politics in America.
6. All posts about About inequality & social mobility.
7. All posts about ideas for Reforming America: steps to new politics.

(7)  For More Information

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For ideas about what you can do see Reforming America: steps to new politics. You cannot make a difference. I cannot make a difference. Organized together we can change America. Act soon. Events are in motion.  Time is not our friend.

(8)  The flip side of alienation is irresponsibility

When alienated from America we feel no responsibility for it.