Hiding in Plain Sight. America Is Failing.

"Something's happening here,

What it is ain't exactly clear."

As you watch the goings on in America today, does that ever leave you feeling just a little unsettled? Do you wonder what's coming next?

Those who experienced the United States during the turbulent 60s and early 70s have a working knowledge of how America weathers the blows of social unrest and how real progress can be lost to the illusion of prosperity.

At my school the male students fell into two groups - those still eligible for the draft and the guys I often hung out with, guys in their early 20s a few of whom were already old men. I knew two who had volunteered. The others were all drafted. Some claimed they were gay. One guy, fearing the worst, put on about 40 pounds to convince the draft board he was too fat to be any use. It might have worked for some but not the guys I knew.  The fatty, Keith, was put through two rounds of boot camp and they burned that 40 pounds right off him.   A couple of years after his discharge - boom - it was back almost overnight.

The protests were real enough. The students who massed to demand an end to the Viet Nam war, they were real. The black folks (no, there weren't many whites with them) who turned out to demand their basic civil and human rights, they were as real as the pavement they walked over.

I'm convinced that the Viet Nam protests accomplished very little. It took years but, finally, the White House and the Pentagon realized there was no winning formula. In 1968 they were averaging 1,400 dead American soldiers per month - for nothing.  The civil rights movement was somewhat more successful - for a while - in some places but at least it was for something good, a worthy purpose.

Then came the late 1970s, a time of relative peace and prosperity. College campuses calmed the hell down as the focus reverted to jobs, careers, wealth. Some of the radical leaders wound up ensconced on Wall Street.

Meanwhile Black America still struggled for that elusive breakthrough.  The Civil Rights Act, "affirmative action," the Voting Rights Act became a resented normalcy for a big chunk of white America that seethed at the idea of a black guy who worked hard being promoted above their grade-6 dropout asses. No matter, their day would come.

Meanwhile, Black America endured a wave of unarmed black men executed by trigger happy white cops who, almost invariably, got away with it. The "I had a dream" rallying cry of 57 years ago gave way to "I can't breathe." Meanwhile domestic terrorism, usually affiliated with white supremacists, went largely unchecked by law enforcement.

America in the 21st century is really different from America as it was in the closing half of the 20th century. The past two decades have seen the cementing of corporate and political power unknown in the postwar era. The past two decades have seen the elite break away from mainstream America as wealth was drained out of the working classes and into the pockets of the emerging aristocracy.

Something is happening here and it is definitely not exactly clear.

Cornell law and government prof, Joseph Margulies, contends that "America Has Failed."  Margulies cites four new American realities as proof that the United States has become a failed state.

1. The Nation cannot feed its people.

According to the most recent report by the Department of Agriculture, more than 37 million people in the United States, including more than 11 million children, did not have access to sufficient food to lead a healthy life. And that was in 2018, well before the pandemic that produced the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. Now it is much worse. Feeding America, a network of the nation’s largest hunger-relief organizations, estimated that 54 million people, or one in every six people in the country, including 18 million children—one in four—will go hungry at some point in 2020.

2.  The Nation cannot house its people.

Prior to the pandemic, nearly 21 million renter households—almost half the total—were “cost-burdened,” which meant they spent more than 30% of their household income on rent. Another 11 million renter households—roughly one in four—were forced to devote more than half their household income on rent, which predictably drove them to skimp on other essentials, like food, medical care, and insurance. Among renter households below the poverty line, the numbers are even more frightening. More than half these households spent over 50% of their monthly income on rent, and one in four spent 70 cents of every dollar they earned to fend off eviction. And that was when the economy was good.

Now, by contrast, the nation faces what may become “the most severe housing crisis in its history.” So warns a coalition of scholars and affordable housing advocates, including the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project, the Aspen Institute, and the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In a paper published earlier this month, the authors predicted that “in the absence of robust and swift intervention,” between 30 and 40 million people could be evicted from their homes by the end of the year.

3.  America cannot guarantee its people access to clean, safe water.

As of 2019, more than 2 million people in this country do not have access to indoor plumbing. Another 44 million are served by water systems that recently had health-based violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. No less serious is the matter of water affordability. A Boston economist recently completed a comprehensive study of water affordability in this country as of 2018. He examined conditions in 12 cities. ...His findings were shocking. For the poorest among us, water bills are universally unaffordable. In 11 of the 12 cities, 100 percent—and in the 12th, 99.9 percent—of the population that survived on incomes of less than half the federal poverty level lived in neighborhoods where water bills were unaffordable. 

In some cities, the depth of the affordability crisis is hard to fathom. In Cleveland, nearly 90 percent of the poorest residents pay at least 12 percent of their income on water, more than four times the amount that is considered affordable for that income bracket.

4. America will not protect wage earners.

What do you call a nation whose policymakers ensure that the wealthy will be protected while the poor will be left out?

Since the pandemic, the Federal Reserve has taken extraordinary steps to support the U.S. economy. The Nasdaq reached an all-time high weeks ago, and the S & P 500 returned to record levels just last week, making this the shortest bear market in U.S. history. ...Those whose money is in the market, in other words, have more than fully recovered, at least financially, from the crisis. ...In this as in most things, wealth rules. Eighty-four percent of all stocks owned by Americans are held by the wealthiest ten percent of American households. The poorest half of Americans—roughly 160 million people—own virtually no stocks or bonds. They simply do not have enough disposable income to become investors.

The stock market is booming, but as Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve recently said, “[t]he stock market isn’t the economy.” While the rich have more than recouped their losses, the poor continue to suffer. “Individuals and businesses are not going to make it through this unless they get grants, and only the federal government can do that.” But the federal government apparently won’t; Congress has left town, and most federal support has expired.

So what do you call a nation that cannot feed, house, and provide water for its poor, but can somehow manage to find the tools to support and enrich its wealthy?


You call it a failure.