The US at the Crossroads — Imagining the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

A colleague recently remarked that the US is like a spinning top that, as it slows down, begins wobbling before it falls down completely. We can all feel the wobbles in the daily stream of strange events, from the Capitol Riot, the landmark trials against a former president, to extreme climate change events affecting people and agriculture, to the endless litany of corporate profit inspired pathologies (opioid epidemic, polarization, gun deaths…).

I saw Johan Galtung present a lecture at Melbourne University in 2006. In that lecture he said the US would experience a breakdown around 2024. His original date was later but he said the Bush Jr. initiated Iraq War had brought the timeline forward. Galtung is not an analyst to dismiss without due diligence. He had earlier predicted the demise of the USSR before it also collapsed, something that an army of analysts at the CIA and NSA purportedly missed.

Galtung uses contradictions to do his forecasting. The logic is straightforward. If a social contradiction exists, it can get better, it can get worse or it can change in character. If it’s better this means it is being resolved. If it’s worse it means that it has not been resolved, it has deepened. Unresolved contradictions can lead to social breakdown, conflict, revolution and war. Take for example the contradiction in the US leading up to the US Civil War (1861–1865). The North was rapidly industrializing, and abolishing slavery. The South was refining its political economy based on slave powered agriculture. The contradiction was not simply divergent political-economies, but cultural as well — attitudes and lifestyles also clashed. We know what happened next from the history books.

Likewise, we know the US is beset by contradictions of various types. Today we find ourselves wondering what will become of the US with its host of contradictions. Will they be resolved? Will they get worse? What will happen? We can feel and see that the US is indeed at a crossroads that leads to different futures. But what are these roads actually, and how do we nudge in our own small (and collectively big) ways toward the better outcome?

Drawing on Galtung’s core concept of social contradictions as key determinants in thinking about our futures, this article explores what these contradictions are, and provides an analysis that leads to four future scenarios. These are the proverbial roads the US could go down.

Progressive Majority vs Minoritarian Oligarchic Rule

The US is a social experiment on a grand scale that has afforded a diverse population with unprecedented opportunity. Over its 200+ years as a nation the US has brought more and more people into the fold as citizens afforded dignity and rights. Its deep pathologies sit side by side with the ideals reflected in its founding.

The most fundamental contradiction within the US is cultural at its core, and is therefore expressed through two competing visions of what US society should be. One vision can be called “Liberal Progressive”, and is the legacy of the various movements for dignity and equality the US has experienced, including abolitionism, women’s suffrage, labor rights, disabled rights, civil rights and LGBTQ rights. This vision wants a society that has equal protections for all people (from voting to anti-discrimination laws), regulates the market and protects workers, and provides basic opportunity (e.g. educational opportunities) and levels of care for the needy (universal medicare).

The other vision, which is a foment of nativistic energy and oligarchic sponsorship, can be called “Reactionary Minoritarian Oligarchy”, and is the legacy of the older power structure of the country: 1) the military (neo)colonial project of the US (first Manifest Destiny and now global expansion), 2) the economic liberal project of the US (the drive toward deregulated hyper-capitalism and billionaire led oligarchy), 3) the whiteness project of the US (the social construction of whiteness to divide poor and middle class Europeans from non-Europeans and create a pseudo-scientific race hierarchy), and the 4) theocratic project to make sure the US is a Christian nation in the vision of loony evangelists. This vision implicitly wants a US society culturally dominated by white ethno-nationalist and Christian people, and economically and politically dominated by a minoritarian oligarchy with para-militaristic enforcement.

These two visions of US society, in my analysis, are not reconcilable, just as the cultures of the US Northern States and US Southern States were not reconcilable leading up to the US Civil War. Implicit white supremist attitudes cannot coexist with anti-discrimination laws. Protections for workers (e.g. unionization) cannot co-exist with deregulated hypercapitalism.

Consequences of Irreconcilability — Preservation or Non-preservation

Irreconcilability, however, does not mean the US cannot continue to exist. Irreconcilability as a key principle logically leads to two possible outcomes for the US. One outcome is that one of these two competing visions dominates and subordinates, co-opts or integrates the other — the union is preserved at a cost. The other outcome is that the US ceases to be a union as it has historically come to be today (e.g. the end of expansive federal powers and cooperating states).

In summary, irreconcilability leads to two branching possibilities. 1) The union is preserved because it is either dominated by a progressive liberal majority or a reactionary minoritarian oligarchy. 2) the union is not preserved and leads to a de-federalist devolutionary dynamic or a fundamental breakdown in the federal-state system.

The consequences of irreconcilability culminate in these four futures:

1. The preservation of the union through the rise and dominance of a liberal progressive majority (preferred)
2. The preservation of the union through the rise of a reactionary minoritarian oligarchy that enforces a fascist-like and reactionary society (not preferred)
3. The devolution of the union, with powers moving to states, regions or cities (not preferred but better than 2)
4. The collapse of the union, a conflict or even a civil war that rips the country apart (depends on who wins and victory may also be a pyrrhic one)

This analysis uses the term preservation to describe a situation in which the federal system of a law of the land for all people continues, and the union of states also continues. There are two types of preservation that are possible, a better and a worse.

The better type of preservation sees a progressive liberal majority continue to grow in both its size and power. It’s well known that when counted up, progressive liberals are now a much larger voting block than reactionaries and conservatives. However, because of the way in which districts have been gerrymandered, because of the unevenness of the electoral college, and because of the recent appointments of conservative judges, the full power of this progressive majority has been suppressed. This version of preservation sees a progressive liberal majority not only grow in numbers but extend its power by ensuring fair voting, balancing perspectives in the Supreme Court, and by ensuring factual accuracy in news reporting and holding social media platforms to account.

A worse type of preservation is the preservation of the union through reactionary minoritarian oligarchy. This is a situation in which, even though liberals outnumber this minority, they continue to rule the country as a minority. This situation, because progressive liberal numbers are increasing, is harder to maintain, and therefore requires tougher and more Machiavellian tactics. Continuing to strong-arm Supreme Court appointments, the criminalization of protest and dissent, and acceleration of voter restrictions for people of color, disinformation, and other more extreme tactics that can be used to maintain minoritarian control even while progressive liberal numbers increase.

There are also two main possibilities for the non-preservation of the union that are conceived of in this analysis, a better and a worse.

The better type of non-preservation is the dismantling of blanket federal laws that apply to all states. This in fact is already happening, as seen with the overturning of Roe versus Wade. The Supreme Court didn’t outlaw abortions in the United States, that would’ve been a more fundamental type of forced irreconcilability. However they did undermine the federal protections and rights that women have had to have an abortion in any and every state. Now it is up to the state itself to decide whether abortions are legal or not, and in what circumstance. What is being undermined is the homogenization of law in the United States, a federal “law of the land”. This might be understood as a move towards the devolution of power.

The worse type of non-preservation of the union manifests through conflict and violence. This was the case with the US Civil War, as states in the United States mobilized armies to attack and defend themselves. Could this happen in the future? Intuitively it feels unlikely, as the federal government has overwhelming power against whatever spot fire rebellions might occur. In the case of the Capitol Riot, hundreds of people have been prosecuted already. However, if large enough and connected enough parts of the population felt that “their country is being stolen”, and they did not want to live in a future being created by either progressive liberalism or minoritarian oligarchy, it’s possible that certain elements of society would try to break away.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Exploration of contradictions provides a window into the fundamental irreconcilability between progressive liberalism and its minoritarian reactionarity opposition. And the possibility of preservation and non-preservation give us the core analytic structure to explore four possible scenarios.

The Better Preservation Scenario — Progressive Majority

Generationally the voting block that can be considered progressive majority (that support issues common to this) has been getting bigger and bigger. A future in which the progressive majority dominates would in the short term overcome the tricks and schemes used by Republicans to disenfranchise voters. Given the numbers, without the ability to use tricks and schemes, a progressive majority should dominate. In the long term, this progressive majority would ideally shift the political economy from one dictated by moneyed interests, to one where law and policy is a genuine reflection of the desires of this majority. This longer term shift would be much more challenging, as it would require changing the laws and mechanisms by which big money influences and shapes law and policy.

In addition, the public sphere has been shattered by decades of an anything goes approach to news and media. In order to dampen polarization, there will need to be new ways of managing the public sphere to ensure openness (first amendment rights) while mitigating the worst excesses such as hate speech, disinformation / misinformation and organizing by violent extremists. The challenge in this scenario is, as discussed, that preservation means that the laws and policies of a progressive majority will apply across all states. There are many people, especially associated with “heartland USA”, that are dead set against living in this future. The resistance to progressive liberalism will become more intense, not less. Finding a way to create common ground and bringing as many people along (workers, women, youth, etc) will be key to the success of a progressive liberal shift.

The Worse Preservation Scenario — Minoritarian Oligarchy

Unfortunately a future in which progressive liberalism prevails is not assured. We are already living in a minoritarian oligarchy to an extent, in which a wealthy donor class and corporate lobbying dictates law and policy. The recent Trump appointments to the supreme court have strengthened this minoritarian rule. And efforts by Republicans in many states to make voting more restrictive for certain demographics (poor and POC areas) also strengthens minoritarian rule. Republican organizers know that, by the numbers, they cannot win with anti-poor, anti-POC, anti-gay, anti-feminist narratives and policies. To win long term they need to use institutions to deepen and strengthen minoritarian rule and to legitimize their use of power.

This requires a number of strategies to achieve this. First is to use divide and conquer strategies, such as masquerading as champions of “white” people (while eviscerating the “white” middle class). Secondly, it entails creating a parallel reality through fostering media echo chambers that tend the conservative and reactionary flock. Thirdly is to further undermine basic voting safeguards. Finally, it requires suppression of dissent through systems of violence.

The killings of black civil rights activists in the 1950s-60s is telling. The country at the time was functionally in a state of apartheid in many parts of the country. Faced with a civil rights movement that challenged these human rights abuses, the FBI formulated the COINTELPRO program to neutralize it by a variety of means (assassination, false crime charges and false imprisonment, use of forged documents and planting false reports in the media to discredit activists). Again, because a preservation of the union scenario entails that the laws and policies of minoritarian oligarchy will apply across all states, there will be great dissent from progressive liberals, and even more so as progressives will outnumber their detractors. They will be vocal and demanding. They will not go quietly.

One conclusion then is that for a minoritarian oligarchy (with a traditional Christian morality) to maintain and extend its power, suppression of dissent will need to increase to new levels of violence, reaching or even exceeding the levels they were at in the 1950s and 60s. This would entail targeting activists as was done with COINTELPRO, detainment / interment, and in its extreme the use of death squads. The CIA, after all, has supported and sponsored many dozens of anti-communist and anti-socialist death squads and other types of fascist governments to do the same in many countries around the world — we can conclude then that the mentality and willingness to commit these crimes in the US domestically does in fact exist among a certain type of American. And therefore we might imagine that a minoritarian oligarchy will have semi-fascist qualities, the targeted use of violence to suppress dissent, the propagandistic use of media (which has already begun), the tampering with electoral systems to create the facade of representation, support by and for big business elites, and the use of Christian morality as a means of legitimization.

The Better Non-preservation Scenario — Devolution of the Union

It would be difficult for the reactionary counter movement to progressive liberalism to capture the commanding heights (supreme courts, voting systems, legislature, media dominance) and establish an ongoing minoritarian oligarchy, as they do not have the numbers. Yet the fundamental cultural contradiction still exists, that many Americans (e.g. in “heartland USA”) cannot accept the new cultural implications of a future created by liberal progressives; and vice versa, that liberal progressives do not want to live in a future defined by a minoritarian oligarchy with a traditional Christian morality. In a situation where a minoritarian oligarchy cannot succeed at dominating, an alternative is to subvert the functioning of a federal system. We can already see this through the way in which the Republican party regularly threatens to block supply (federal funding of programs) as a way to strong arm Democrats. It’s an unprecedented strategy because blocking supply effectively means temporary insolvency, which can have massive impacts on the economy. Yet faced with an inability to muster numbers in the legislatures, Republicans have taken to a strategy of threatening the very functioning of the government to get their own way.

A more specific example is the recent supreme court decision overturning Roe vs Wade. Instead of outlawing abortion across the country, the decision merely undermines the blanket protection that women have had to have an abortion in any of the 50 states. Now, it depends on the state laws to determine whether a woman can have an abortion. Thus another strategy to undermine liberal progressivism includes dismantling the federal “law of the land” system. In its future implications, each state goes its own way, a type of devolution of power, analogous to Welsh devolution. In this future, legislative paralysis (a legislative deadlock between parties) and a supreme court intent on underming pro-liberal federal protections, would drive states to become the battlegrounds for these fundamental questions. Obviously, states that are already conservative, like Texas, would consolidate the cultural characteristics they desired (bans on same sex marriage or even relationships, deregulated business environment etc.). Other states like California would be liberal progressive safe-havens, supporting multiculturalism, LGBTQ+ rights, regulated business, etc.

This tension between state power and federalism has existed since the founding of the nation. The first 13 colonies differed quite a bit, both culturally, politically and economically. This divergence was curtailed through the Civil War when this autonomy (the South’s trenchant defense of slavery) could not be sustained. But the incorporative project continued and allowed states to develop in a variety of divergent ways. For example Oregon had black exclusion laws until 1926. Two world wars bolstered federalism, and when the civil rights movement had their first victories, these gains (affirmative action, the Civil Rights Act of 1964) were applied federally, to every state. So how far can devolution go?

Some of these questions come down to circumstance. For example if the functioning of the federal government was seriously undermined, through a financial / economic collapse, the resources to impose and apply federal law would be diminished. In a war against a foreign enemy, federalism is most often strengthened. Some of this also comes down to mythology. The myth of the “melting pot” imagined the US as an integrated whole. But irreconcilability could entail a fractionation process, where the freedom to live how you want to live means people live quite differently depending on the state. But what if this irreconcilability became too much, as with the Civil War?

The Worse Non-preservation Scenario — Breakdown or War

The idea of an irreconcilability so profound and so difficult to untangle that we would end up in another Civil War is both a stark thought and at first seems implausible. The irreconcilability expressed in the Civil War was fundamental. The South was committed to slavery and, refusing to live within the yolk of the growing power of the North, decided to break away. Could this happen again?

It is possible that the tension between progressive liberal federalism and conservative devolution could lead to a state attempting to break away. Let’s take the Lone Star State as a possibility. Texas becomes a bastion of conservatism as it drives for devolutionary powers. Yet a progressive majority comes to dominate federal elections. The federal government drives liberal progressive laws which are anathema to an emboldened Texan polity. Texans refuse to obey. The federal government attempts to use federal police, FBI and military force to impose its will. Battles break out as Texan partisans resist occupation. Emboldened and galvanized, other conservative states join in in solidarity, etc. Or this scenario could be enacted in reverse, with a conservative minoritarian federal government attempting to impose its will on an emboldened California.

A group of people in the US who are proponents of accelerationism want to see a destabilization and breakdown of society and descent into conflict as a means to accelerate social change and bring about social transformation. Historically, conflict provides ideological extremists and advocates for social transformation opportunities to gain power. The ​​ boogaloo movement is pushed by right wing extremists who seek to incite a second American Revolution. It is possible that, facing the implications of a liberal progressive federal government that would severely impose limits on corporate profits and strip oligarchic elites of power and wealth, these elites would fund and arm dissident groups as a way of retaining power. This is, after all, part of how Hitler came to power in Nazi Germany, through a Faustian bargain with big business.

Conclusion

I imagine that the worst outcome the US could experience would be a second Civil War. The death and destruction of war brings suffering and tragedy on so many levels. Yet the idea of “the worst” is also subjective. For some Americans, would the thought of living in a perpetually liberal progressive future feel worse than war? For others, would the thought of living in a perpetual minoritarian Christian oligarchy also feel worse than war? For some, avoidance of violence is not an automatic good.

There are two more scenarios that I considered that break the assumption of irreconcilability. The first is a hybrid scenario where liberal and conservative values hybridize in strange new ways, and the traditional distinction between liberal and traditional / conservative no longer holds, e.g. green conservatives and LGBTQ hyper-capitalists. The second is a parallel world scenario, where because of the pervasive segmentation and fractionation done by social media friend filters, we can be right next to someone with oppositional or contradictory values and perspectives but never ever meet them. People will create their own worlds, hidden or visible — and people will not care how others live so long as they don’t bother each other. This is similar to devolution, but is spatially different as irreconcilable differences co-habits geographically but not experientially (think metaverses).

Returning to the four scenarios, it seems like there is a strong possibility a progressive majority could define the future of the US. The numbers are there, and the demographics (age, ethnicity) point in this direction. Yet nothing can be taken for granted. Contradictions can be normalized into toxic pathology, as with the South’s legacy of slavery, or as with casteism in India. The US has supported fascists on almost every continent, will it also succumb? As well, if a country cannot face its contradictions, breakdown can ensue, as we saw in the USSR. The US has many demons to address and many wounds to heal. Irreconcilability can also entail the US as a world with many worlds, as states devolve into distinctive and autonomous entities, until these differences are no longer tenable, as per the irreconcilability of the Civil War.

Ultimately, the future that is best for the majority of Americans requires the ascent and dominance of a progressive liberal majority. It needs to be tolerant and protect people’s freedoms and rights, but it needs to be strong and decisive enough to counter the minoritarian playbook, wresting legislation and policymaking from corporate and oligarchic influence, building a media ecosystem which expresses factuality and scientific rigor, creating fair voting systems, and weaving common ground among a diverse population — a future in which all Americans, regardless of their differences, are given equal rights and respect, care and opportunity to participate and succeed in the grand experiment.

References

Galtung, J. (2009). The Fall of the US Empire — And Then What? (Peace, Development, Environment, 5) TRANSCEND University Press