On America, Trippies, and the Tripping Twenties- Part 1

It has become clear that the 2020s have been traumatic and cataclysmic for Americans. A pandemic, a nasty election year, partisan divisiveness, a series of destructive wildfires and hurricanes, and record polarization have shown how fragile this country is. America no longer commands the respect or envy of the world; people in other countries mock the public health response and the country having the highest death toll. Of course, India is suspected to have a much higher death toll around 4–6 million, and the US ranks #16 in the overall list. America was ranked #1 in the Global Health Security Index, indicating a strong readiness for a pandemic with the power and might of the CDC and strong stockpiles of ventilators, PPE, and other medical armaments. Indeed even the GHS people stated this:

“its score and rank do not indicate that the country is adequately prepared to respond to potentially catastrophic infectious disease outbreaks. Significant preparedness gaps remain, and some of those are playing out in the current crisis. The United States’ response to the COVID-19 outbreak to date shows that capacity alone is insufficient if that capacity isn’t fully leveraged. Strong health systems must be in place to serve all populations, and effective political leadership that instills confidence in the government’s response is crucial.”

It appears that the leaders bungled it, and the health disparities meant some communities have been hit harder than others, primarily on the basis of wealth and race. Hence affluent conservative communities view vaccines with suspicion and disregard, while inner city communities in major cities like New York City and Los Angeles are pushing vaccine mandates despite large racial gaps in vaccination rates. The public health responses have varied widely; Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom imposed stringent lockdowns and reopened slowly while Republican governors like Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis lifted most rules by the end of 2020 and are now mostly reopened. Democrats are rushing to encourage vaccines by incentive or mandate, while Republicans are adamant that its time to move on and retake our liberties.

Lockdowns please no one, and according to a paper titled ““The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Policy Responses on Excess Mortality” by NBER published in June 2021, “We failed to find that countries or U.S. states that implemented SIP policies earlier, and in which SIP policies had longer to operate, had lower excess deaths than countries/U.S. states that were slower to implement SIP policies. We also failed to observe differences in excess death trends before and after the implementation of SIP policies based on pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.” Other researchers have come to different conclusions, and it seems to remain the majority opinion that lockdowns are worth the cost and damage and misery they inflict. Those who have dissented like the brave minds behind the Great Barrington Declaration have faced personal harassment and vitriol from their pro-lockdown colleagues; this is separate from whatever scientific disagreements or counter-evidence they offer against this position. The politicization and increased hostility in academia is simply shameful, and America has no shortage of “experts” called upon by either side to bolster their positions. Dr. Fauci, an eminent scientist in infectious diseases and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases(NIAID), is seen as a saint by Democrats and other liberals, but he is thoroughly reviled and distrusted by Republicans and other conservatives. While I have my issues with Fauci on the need for masks and how we view the severity of this pandemic, I think this politicization, this division is symptomatic of dark times in America.

2021 has been another trying year for people. It started with the January 6th riots, which began due to a belief that the election was stolen from Trump, that Trump had won in a landslide or just pulled out close wins in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona. There had been dialogue and various theories among Trump’s loyal base, who were in a state of disbelief and denial over the pandemic. It had taken 4 days to declare Biden the winner, and there were still many late/mail-in ballots to count. I can testify that my drinking game with my friend Sarah was hilarious; we just had no idea where the results were going. Ohio and Florida went rather red; Georgia and Arizona and Texas were too close to call for most of the night. We were both laughing at how ridiculous and made up the election was; two old white men fighting over an overhyped office from the same two parties in charge for as long as anyone can remember. I made it back home safely, but I’ve never done a drink session like that since.

“These are the times that try men’s souls”, said Thomas Paine(he certainly felt their pain too) in 1776 after a tough winter. The country had just declared independence from Great Britain, and it had launched an unprecedented struggle to secure that freedom against a very powerful country, a country many had been born in and had ties to. The American Revolution was perhaps even more divisive than the Civil War, with roughly as many Loyalists fighting to stay part of Britain as Patriots struggling to break away. Each colony saw massive fighting and war within cities, towns, frontier settlements, and families. Yet the tough winter that befell the Patriot army in 1776 led to the raid on Trenton, a comeback in American history matched only by the New England Patriots in the second half of the 2017 Super Bowl. While there were tough times even after that, the battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris in 1783 solidified the victory of the Patriots and the French over their mutual enemy, the Limeys. The rest, as they say is, is American history. Come 2021, and America is now the largest superpower with the highest GDP and still the best military on the planet. Clearly the country has had a proud and successful history.

American history is not the rosy tale often told in history classrooms. The American nation and its prosperity has a hideous dark underbelly that has always been there, and only now is the country tackling this with a full reckoning and understanding of what went wrong. The genocide of the Native American tribes and the slavery of African-Americans is what helped fuel this progress, provided the land and labor to give America an edge over its rivals. The results of this linger even today; black and Native Americans have the highest rates of poverty, low educational attainment, low incomes, low wealth, lower life expectancies, and other disappointing outcomes. These disparities have persisted since the idealist 1960s with little sign it will narrow in the near future. The history and present reality of these racial issues weigh on many, leading them to question their American identity and whether they should have any pride in that at all. How can Americans be proud of a country built on stolen native land and one where millions of Africans were brought into bondage after being kidnapped from their homes? And one where the former were relegated to remote, isolated, hardscrabble reservations and the latter to an enduring status as second-class citizens even after the Civil War. The prevailing American identity is built on white supremacy, focused especially on WASP ancestry.

Early in the country’s history, this WASP identity tied the elites together in both North and South. It also ensured a smooth transition from British colony to a republic founded on British Whig ideals of freedom, laissez-faire economic policies(except tariffs), property rights, guaranteed representation, and freedom to speak and dissent. The yeomen farmers of the West were included in this culture, along with other growing minorities like the Germans, the Dutch, the French, and the Swedes. The country was largely united religiously; in 1790, Catholics were only 1.6% and the Jewish population numbered just 2000. While the Protestant sects were fragmented and divided across the country, there was a general anti-authoritarian sentiment and local focus of churches. 90% of people lived in rural areas and raised crops and livestock for their maintenance; the Industrial Revolution had yet to reach the US. Whatever their lot, farmers generally valued cheap land and not being tied to a landlord or close to the few large cities of the East and the associated bankers. As the population exploded with immigration and high population growth rates due to fertility and relative lack of mouths to feed compared to Europe, the American nation moved west at dizzying speeds. This was facilitated by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which launched a wave of settlement and conflict with the natives and later British and Mexicans.

Unfortunately for the natives, the original English settlers and Americans were remarkably arrogant and convinced of their moral superiority. The Puritan leader John Winthrop delivered a sermon to the first group of Massachusetts Bay Colonists, where he extolled the colony as a divine mission of brotherly love and service to God. The Puritans were called to build a new society in a new land, and they were to be of high moral rectitude, chastity, and industriousness. He concluded with this phrase, “We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

The Puritans were certainly somewhat successful and stable compared to the Jamestown colonists, but they had terrible relations with the Natives. There was a terrible war, King Philip’s War, that ended with the destruction of most of the native American community in New England and the decimation of the English colonies in that region. It came from the inability of the Puritans to accept the natives as equal human beings, preferring to view them as evil savages and guided by some kind of satanic force. There were more enlightened colonists who sought peace and cooperation with the various tribes, recalling the assistance given to the Pilgrims by friendly natives. They were rebuffed by a general sentiment of colonialism and cultural supremacy, viewing the land as wilderness to be tamed and settled by God-fearing, morally superior Englishmen. There was to be no attempt to assimilate or intermix with the natives like the Spanish and French colonial empires had done, nor was there a purely financial motive to maintain peaceful trade relations like the Dutch had done in New Amsterdam(now New York). All the native land was potential property, and the natives were essentially just squatters on land that God had granted to the English and later Americans to settle and master.

The result was the dark side of American history, an expansion that displaced and decimated the Native Americans through war and sickness. From 1600 to 1900, over 90% of the original Native American population had been wiped out and dropped to less than 250,000. In contrast, the total US population was 76.3 million, almost 90% white. The Mexicans were viewed as little different from the natives; Mexico was crushed in the Mexican-American War and the Southwest was annexed with many pre-existing missions and ranchos, ripe for white American settlement. The WASPs and their settler allies had managed to conquer all of the land north of Mexico, creating Canada and the United States. There were also groups initially not welcomed at first; the Irish, the Italians, the Slavs and Jews of Eastern Europe, the Arabs, the Mexicans, the Chinese and others were excluded from the WASP definition of true Americans. These groups were controlled through ethnic competition for jobs and housing, often leading to inter-ethnic bickering and fighting. The Irish and blacks, in particular, fought bitterly to the delight of WASP industrialists and political elites. The cities became melting pots of diversity as waves of immigrants came and transformed entire neighborhoods into Little Italys, Germantowns, Chinatowns, New Dublins, etc. The ethnic white working classes gradually assimilated into the WASP culture and population, creating a mixed, united white population in control of the country. Other groups, like the Chinese, Indians, and other Asian groups, became model minorities and held over the Latino, native, and black communities, who languished in poverty.

The frontier was declared closed in 1893, and the US would begin its imperialistic program shortly after, establishing an economic empire over the Western Hemisphere and the Philippines. The WASP desire for economic growth, expansion, and settlement just was not sated; it matured into an industrial capitalism and “liberal democracy” that sought to open the world to American business, tourism, and trade. This is how America became a superpower and the world’s largest economy right after WW2, and how it triumphed over the Communist Soviet Union, also built on Russian colonialism in Central Asia and Siberia. American businesses and administrations funded coups in various countries against Communist and left-wing leaders hostile to American multinational companies, and they engaged in the Korean and Vietnam Wars when direct involvement of US forces proved vital to confronting the Communists. The US and the Soviet Union engaged in proxy wars in many countries like Nicaragua, Laos, Yemen, and Afghanistan, causing untold death, misery, and suffering. Many right-wing dictators and strongmen were propped up by the US, and many left-wing guerilla groups engaged in brutal warfare and destruction. There was a rise in inequality, economic devastation, and human rights violations in much of the developing world; US foreign policy has really only been successful in Korea, Japan, and Grenada where a side had the clear moral high ground.

What about the US today? The WASP culture and values of dignity, discipline, industry, quiet, unemotional leadership, subtle arrogance, and self-righteousness have given way to a materialistic, consumeristic society that has become divided and fragmented. While there are a variety of divisions among Americans, none is stronger and more toxic than politics. Both parties, the Democrats and Republicans, have been around for decades, but there was a series of unwritten norms and carefully-crafted structures that kept things stable and united in the country since the Civil War. The rise of partisan media, declining local ties, economic dislocations and disruption, technology, and secularism vs evangelicalism has led to a split between rural, red America and urban, blue America. Recent election cycles have become more divisive and negative, culminating in the January 6th riot on the Capitol. This was a terrible assault on freedom and liberty, and it came from a widespread, unproven belief that the election was stolen by Democrats from President Donald Trump. The very fact Trump had won in 2016 despite an arrogant, toxic campaign and brash, undignified manner horrified the nation’s political elite; the Republicans quickly embraced him and used his appeal to create a personality cult. The Democrats defined themselves as anti-Trump and cast away economic priorities and kitchen-table issues to attack Trump as a reactionary white supremacist and opposed to an enlightened, technocratic, multicultural America. Even well into 2021, the division still exists and continues to darken and cloud this country. “Let’s Go Brandon” has become a viral meme and code for “Fuck Joe Biden”; Democrats continue to push fairly extreme Covid policies and social justice/woke policies in opposition to the existentialist, nativist Trump threat. It is very likely 2024 will be a rematch between Trump and Biden, two old, balding, out of touch leaders. The old WASP self-righteousness and moral absolutism, cultural snobbery and elite anxiety over working-class, less-educated people continues to hold sway in America; white Democrats and white Republicans are driving all virtually of the conflict and white American identity is largely divided into a binary red-blue divide. Us vs them, friends vs enemy, good vs evil, is now political in this country.

The real America is neither red or blue, neither urban or rural. The political elites and media titans driving this divide ignore the diversity of America; America is no longer a majority white country. The author, me, is of Indian descent but a proud American; my brother is dating a woman who is East Asian but also born in the US. And I have grown up in a diverse, multicultural generation, and I have traveled all throughout the country, especially in California. People are generally only divided by politics and class, not by race, culture, or religion. There is a sense that the American identity can no longer be based on white Anglo-Saxon Protestant values; to continue this will continue to tear apart this country and divide further disunity and strife among Americans. People in this country want to belong, want community and meaningful work and connections. The hippies and other spiritual peoples I have met in California, along with the surviving Native American tribes, have caused me to present this solution to our problems: going back to a confederacy of autonomous tribes with unique laws and customs that respect and tolerate each other. America has the Amish and proud urban communities living together; why should these communities fight and seek to impose their values on each other, their lifestyles and customs. Let us celebrate our diversity, our heritages, and our place as a legitimate beacon of hope and opportunity for millions throughout the world. But let us also form stable communities and tribes people belong to, let us live in harmony with the environment, let us worship the Creator God however we wish or don’t wish to, let us have our customs and activities without hurting each other, let us trade ideas and work together. My inspiration from this is the very natives of this land itself; they existed largely peacefully and in harmony with each other. If America can do this, it will truly be a Shining City on a Hill.