{"id":10254,"date":"2016-11-15T17:07:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T22:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=10254"},"modified":"2016-11-23T02:37:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T07:37:15","slug":"american-authoritarianism-the-origins-of-the-disease-and-possibilities-for-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/american-authoritarianism-the-origins-of-the-disease-and-possibilities-for-healing\/","title":{"rendered":"American Authoritarianism: Origins of the Disease and Possibilities for Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAn American said to me at Berne: \u2018The trouble is that we are all eaten by the fear of being less American than our neighbor.\u2019 I accept this explanation: it shows that Americanism is not merely a myth that clever propaganda stuffs into people\u2019s head but something every American continually reinvents in his gropings. It is at one and the same time a great external reality rising up at the entrance to the port of New York across from the Statue of Liberty, and the daily product of anxious liberties.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

— Jean-Paul Sartre, \u201cAmericans and Their Myths\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Many of us were shocked to hear early Wednesday morning of the electoral triumph of Donald Trump, a man we thought too bombastic, racist, xenophobic, sexist, vulgar, and stupid to ever garner the electoral votes needed to win the presidency.\u00a0 We took it for granted that a civilized, rights-based democracy would never\u2014could <\/em>never\u2014elect an autocrat.\u00a0 Without question the surprise is warranted: \u00a0apart from the contrary poll data, the election of a candidate who promised repeatedly to violate the Constitution<\/a> seemed blatantly in conflict with the process and likely choice of a free people whose freedom rests on the Constitution.\u00a0 Threats to exclude, marginalize, and punish whole groups of people seemed to contradict the pluralism that is not just an American value but is<\/em> America itself.\u00a0 And yet the majority of U.S. states\u2014representing 306 electoral votes<\/a>\u2014chose Trump.<\/p>\n

We got it wrong.<\/p>\n

We thought there wasn\u2019t as stark a racial divide in our country (though pollsters and commentators made predictions largely based on racial demographics).\u00a0 We thought that Trump\u2019s divisive rhetoric and proposals would appeal to fringe voters but moderation and calls for inclusivity would win over the majority.\u00a0 Perhaps more than anything, we believed that presidential elections are essentially contests of policy and competence, where rationality dictates and ultimately wins.\u00a0 They are not.<\/p>\n

Presidential elections are exercises in collective mythologizing:\u00a0 Every four years the U.S. voting populace gathers together to create or recreate a nation-myth we\u2019ve told ourselves and wish to hear anew, or perhaps differently.\u00a0 Thus John F. Kennedy called his election<\/a> \u201cnot a victory of party but a celebration of freedom \u2026 signifying renewal<\/em> as well as change<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 Kennedy, like all great speech-making presidents (Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, Obama), frequently referenced the heroes, events, and principles of the founding\u2014as a way to justify his policies and, even more, to create or reinforce a sense of unique American identity and purpose under which a majority would feel included, validated, and energized.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s proffered myth wasn\u2019t very specific or altogether consistent, but it was strong all the same.\u00a0 He wrote it, shouted it, embroidered it on all his hats:\u00a0 \u201cMake America Great Again.\u201d\u00a0 With that, Donald Trump conjured and reaffirmed a mythic American identity, the invoking of which overshadowed its precise content.\u00a0 The message and myth were significantly racist, sexist, and xenophobic\u2014I don\u2019t want to discount that, or minimize the hate that Trump\u2019s campaign has already engendered and which is more and more invading private lives and bursting into public spaces.\u00a0 But that racism, sexism, and xenophobia were motivating to voters in the same way as\u2014and as part of\u2014his nation-myth:\u00a0 they created and affirmed imagined communities<\/a> within which people felt empowered and connected, in opposition to a defined scapegoat or enemy (the person of color, woman, immigrant, non-American or un-American, … Chiiiiina).\u00a0 (It\u2019s telling also\u2014that the other is most vividly feared and hated when it\/they\/she\/he is unknown.\u00a0 Many of the states that voted for Trump have relatively small immigrant populations, while Texas, though it went Republican, was closer than it has been since 1996<\/a>.\u00a0 While that\u2019s partly a matter of voter demographics, it also says something about voter viewpoints.)\u00a0 Finally, as a strongman, unafraid of conflict (relishing it, actually) and ready to do anything required to re-establish American power and status, Trump became and conformed well to the mold of mythic hero, reflecting and fighting for the imagined community he celebrated.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, with loose themes of hope and unity, utterly failed to craft a vision of an American myth.\u00a0 She did not significantly appeal to the founders, the Constitution, the greatness once possessed.\u00a0 Though the content of her proposals arguably better matched the values expressed by the founders, the Constitution, and the \u201cAmerican idea\u201d (as it has been broadly understood from Toqueville through Scalia and Kennedy), she neglected the myth-making effort; she struggled to develop a coherent campaign message<\/a> and ultimately failed to enunciate an American myth in which she adequately played a hero role.<\/p>\n

As a means of winning voters and championing policies, nation-myth-making is tremendously powerful and has been often adopted.\u00a0 As historian Andy Schocket wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThose battles over the Revolution\u2019s meaning raged even before the ink was dry on what we now consider our sacred founding documents \u2026 Both sides in the Civil War claimed to be acting on the founders\u2019 legacy \u2026 The founders were both in favor of and against the Vietnam War and civil rights for African Americans and women. Thomas Jefferson applauded President Ronald Reagan\u2019s attempts to devolve some federal responsibilities to the states but not his exploding of the federal deficit. And Alexander Hamilton … was both sympathetic with and appalled by Bill Clinton during the controversy over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. We continue today to enlist the founders for our own political battles and to invoke the Revolution in our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, though nation-myths justify tyrannies and genocides, they also can inspire positive change and hope.\u00a0 As President Obama did adroitly, one can use the myths of the founders and other heroes to construct an American narrative of progressive inclusiveness and equality\u2014a continual communal effort to create a \u201cmore perfect union.\u201d\u00a0 Thereby Obama attempted to illuminate, or solidify, a national \u201cWe\u201d characterized by a common heritage of expanding liberty:\u00a0 He regularly referred to the principles of \u201cOur Founding Fathers,\u201d even quoting<\/a> \u201cthe father of our country\u201d (suggesting we are all his children?); and in campaign speeches<\/a> he made preserving the \u201cAmerican Dream\u201d a central theme.<\/p>\n

Our shock and despair at witnessing the election of a candidate more drawn to authoritarianism<\/a>\u00a0than to freedom or equality is understandable, but it overlooks the fact that similar myth-making has manipulated the body politic long before this election.\u00a0 It is particularly problematic now because our liberal champion didn\u2019t win\u2014or our candidate didn\u2019t prove to be the sufficient hero.\u00a0 As a result, we now face the threat of an authoritarianism U.S. democracy has never known and bigotry increasingly erupting into widespread violence and bullying<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, even a good myth\u2014and the right hero [as Barack Obama was?]\u2014may do disservice to our freedom, equality, and integrity, if and to the extent the myth is false<\/em>.\u00a0 The potential of nation-myths to mystify, distort the truth, and pacify populations\u2014under authoritarian and<\/em> democratic regimes\u2014begs that we explore why they carry such influence.\u00a0 Efforts to elect a humane, reasonable, anti-racist president in 2020 demand that we reevaluate and draft new strategy.\u00a0 And for the sake of hoped-for healing, we\u2019re obliged to identify and explain our sickness.<\/p>\n

The reason people are seduced by nation myths\u2014and why they adopt attitudes of white and male and American supremacy\u2014is not ultimately greed but fear, not hate but suffering.\u00a0 People are isolated, disconnected, disempowered, and invalidated, by a global capitalist system in which they can\u2019t compete and are shamed for it<\/a>, and by a political system under which they find neither efficacy nor spiritual connection.\u00a0 They want love, but they will accept superiority and anger in its place.\u00a0 When Trump told voters\u2014some consciously racist, but most probably not\u2014that he would restore the country\u2019s status and power and virtue (unrestricted by corruption), he offered them limited connection and false validation within an imagined community:\u00a0 \u201cGreat-Again America.\u201d\u00a0 Hillary Clinton offered them nothing new and nothing mythically old.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t seem much of an option, which explains how so many Trump voters felt they had \u201cno other choice,\u201d that their vote was a painful, lesser-of-two-evils necessity.<\/p>\n

Voters chose a troubling mythic Trump-nation over an uninspiring\u2014because unarticulated\u2014Clinton-nation.\u00a0 They were wrong, because Trump\u2019s vision of America is neither loving nor moral nor consistent with true human being<\/em>\u2014and the myth will disappoint. \u00a0But they didn’t feel<\/em> an alternative. \u00a0Hillary Clinton might have presented a counter-myth, similar to what Obama portrayed in 2008.\u00a0 But Clinton\u2019s myth would likely also disappoint (even if she won), for the liberal world-view, as mediated and described through the founders\u2019 voices, also depicts an unreal ontology:\u00a0 of humans as individually free, equal, and isolated; of government and community as threatening and rightly limited; of economy as a zero-sum competitive market of privately-owned goods; of law and order as semi-divine and ordained.\u00a0 A nation-myth built on such false premises will fail to sustain interdependent, empowering community.\u00a0 It is also intrinsically blind to those in society not<\/em> free and not<\/em> equal, who need more than government non-interference but instead positive redress, whose property has been taken and never given back, whom law has never seen nor respected.\u00a0 These are indigenous people, African-Americans, Latinos, immigrants, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and the many trapped in poverty\u2014all those who weren\u2019t<\/em> the white, wealthy men who wrote the Constitution and became the legendary founders.\u00a0 A true<\/em> myth\u2014a vision that will effectively promote an authentic interdependent community of love and empowerment\u2014must express a different ontology, whether through national narratives or direct appeal to peoples\u2019 present aspirations and struggles.<\/p>\n

We could point to many explanations for Trump\u2019s victory.\u00a0 David Plouffe, Obama\u2019s 2008 campaign manager, cited a number of causes<\/a>, including third parties, bad data, poor turnout, and David Comey. \u00a0One academy award-winning director wrote in 2010<\/a> that, given celebrity idolization in modern culture, a reality TV star was bound to be elected president, sooner or later.\u00a0 But Donald Trump won, in large part, because he invoked a compelling, albeit problematic, nation-myth, offering people limited connection and validation as \u201cAmerican,\u201d along with protection and security through demonization of the other.\u00a0 Hillary Clinton offered no alternative myth, no vision, no identity. \u00a0If Democrats wish to win the next presidential election, they will need to offer something more than policies, competency, and liberalism\u2019s alienating ideal of free and equal competition (which turns out to be only free and equal for elites). \u00a0Finally, if progressives are to successfully create a national community with greater freedom, beyond isolation; greater equality, without hierarchy and division; and greater mutual understanding, based in common humanity, we will need to develop a vision of America that addresses spiritual suffering and longings, uniting races, classes, cultures, and creeds.\u00a0 Can we summon a vision that goes beyond heroes and tall tales, manipulating voters and winning elections, to create a sustainable, real<\/em> American identity?\u00a0 Having identified a disease of isolation, hierarchy, racism, and fear, can we create true and just community to cure it?\u00a0 That is a project of nation-building<\/em>, not just nation-myth-making.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAn American said to me at Berne: \u2018The trouble is that we are all eaten by the fear of being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":10273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,1218,775,42],"tags":[1252,894,1239,1249,282,1251,1250],"coauthors":[907],"class_list":["post-10254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amicus","category-executive-branch","category-racial-justice","category-voting-and-elections-rights","tag-american-identity","tag-donald-trump","tag-election-2016","tag-framing","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-nation-myth","tag-nationalism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/80\/2016\/11\/American-Tattoo.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZrWS-2Fo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10254"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}