A Political Sweep Over America
How could we be so ignorant to have let this political wave take over us? Were we really so blind or brainwashed into believing anything that came our way or were circumstances just so arbitrarily misconstrued?
A nostalgia which was mixed with racial resentment and geographical proximity, one of the greatest American migrations – the 'White Flight' took place in New York and many other places across the country in the 1950s and 1960s, where people from various European ancestries migrated to other parts of the city or country on a large scale. White people didn't want to live next to people of another colour, so they left the city to move to other expensive areas of the city.
Much of this population included European Americans who comprised the first European settlers in America. These included Italian Americans, Irish Americans, Polish Americans, German Americans, Spanish Americans, British Americans who were from Scotland, Netherlands, Wales, France, Sweden and Mexico.
At the very same time people were blinded by bureaucracy and it was a time when there was no other safety net to fall into, but that of the tyranny of leaders. The irony of the situation was that the Americans, themselves were aware of the false propaganda that they were being led into.
They were trapped in this ‘dogmatic cycle’ of not being heard, not caring and not doing anything to change their situation. It was also a period of growing mistrust amongst major American societal institutions, the news media labour unions, the federal government, corporate America and even organised religion.
James Truwslow Adams, an American historian and writer from Brooklyn is well known for his academic study or achievement (scholarship) about American history and his three-volume history of New England. According to him, he expressed and coined the term ‘ the American Dream’ in his book ‘The Epic of America’ which was published in 1931.
The American Dream was “a dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone. This dream assured an opportunity for each and everyone according to his/her ability or achievement.
It was a rather difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and many Americans and began to grow weary and mistrustful of it. It was not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."
As America emerged as a world power fighting in World War I, there was a period when America emerged as through an economic boom called the Roaring Twenties where people became richer which was then followed by a huge bust – known as the Great Depression where the stock market had crashed and hit it lowest low. Over a quarter of the nation had no jobs and many banks ran out of money. However, it ended with World War II, leaving Amefrica as one of the most powerful countries in the world.
Through the process of globalisation which simultaneously occurred at he same time and the rapid economic growth, a lot of youngsters earned more money and enjoy higher standards of life than their parents.
Driven by international trade and investment, globalisation was also pushed forward by business, science and human migration, in turn leaving behind its impact on the environment, the physical well being of humans, different cultures and political ideologies.
It was a time when under-developed nations could finally connect to developed nations, making it very easy for the integration of the world into one huge market. Companies, people and governments of different nations could now interact with each other.
The crux or endpoint of globalisation facilitated the American Dream; a hypothetical situation where others would recognize each man and womanfor what they are, regardless of his/her fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
It was at this time when America got freedom, under the Declaration of Independence that was adopted by the Continental Congress. America became a beacon of liberty, hope and opportunity. It became the land, which is regarded as a place where success can be guaranteed, regardless of where you came from.
Since this time, it has forever been the land, which inspires the young and the old. However, this is has always been the ‘ideal and ‘hypothetical’ case of how things ought to be, or how they should be!
In reality, however this was not the case.
America was living in a state of disillusionment, where they knew how the powerful were deceiving them and lying to them. The very same people in power knew that the Americans people knew of their lies and although they said they “cared”, they did absolutely nothing about it. It was like living in a trapped world.
The people having control didn't seem to know how to deal with them and no one had any vision of a different or better future. For the past 40 years, financiers, politicians and even technological utopians, instead of facing the real complexities of the world preferred to retreat. Suicide bombs, waves of refugees, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, even Brexit.
There was no escape to a better life. There was no way to know what is true or what was false; it was a time when Americans were lost in a fake world and could not see the reality outside.
They constructed a simpler version of the world so that they could hold onto power and as they created this fake world, which grew, everyone continued to play along with it. This was reassuring and even those who were attacking the system – the radicals, artists, musicians and the whole counterculture actually became part of this trickery because they too had retreated into the make-believe world. This retreat into a dream world allowed dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside.
In 1975 New York City was on the verge of collapse and for 30 years the politicians who ran the city had borrowed money from banks to pay for its growing services and welfare. New York was in the midst of a fiscal crisis and the middle classes fled from the city and the taxes that they paid disappeared with them. It was a time when financial systems began to run the city and the whole concept of ‘shuttle diplomacy’ i.e. the action of an outside party in serving as an intermediary between the two principals in a dispute. So the banks lent the city even more.
These banks insisted that to protect their loans they should be allowed to take control of the city. It was the start of an extraordinary movement where financial institutions took power away from politicians and run the society themselves. They were only representatives of something that couldn't be negotiated with – the logic of the market.
For them, there was no alternative to this system; it should run society. No one even objected to these bankers, the radicals and the left-wingers. Instead they had retreated and were living in abandoned buildings in Manhattan. There was a mood of disillusion that had come over them. This led to the enforcement of austerity on the city, which insisted that thousands of policemen, teachers and firemen were sacked.
This was a new kind of politics. Old politicians believed that crises were solved through negotiation and deals, however the bankers had a completely different point of view. It was also a time when there was shuttle diplomacy between the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Middle Eastern Leaders in the Arab-Israeli dispute and the retreat by Hafez-al-Assad of Syria as well as the onset of hypernormalisation (surreal state of late-stage communism in which semantic basis of consensus reality is absurdity)in the Soviet Union.
In New York, people began to get worried about the size of the growing debt and whether the city would ever be able to pay back. Then, one day the banks just stopped; stopped providing any source of money. No one seemed to want to do anything and they just experienced their state of disillusionment. People watched the decaying city with a cool detachment.
Radicals turned to art and music as a means to express their criticisms of society. Instead of trying to change the world outside the new radicalism was trying to change what was inside peoples heads and the way to do this was through self-expression, not collective action. This era of the 1970’s could also be described as a period of social disorders and high rates of crime.
In 1977 (July 13-14), New York faced a very serious electricity blackout, which resulted in citywide looting and many other criminal activities including arson.
"We live in a world where the powerful deceive us....
We know that they lie....
They know that WE know that they lie
but, they don't care .....
We say we care, but do we?
Nothing ever changes! This is considered normal!
WELCOME to the POST TRUTH world of how we got to know where we are now....
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