America's Instability:: A Look at the Present, the Past and a Precarious Future

By John Somer

America's Instability: the Present, the Past, and a Challenging Future is a description of the various wars between conflicting value systems throughout Western civilization. America's national election of 2016 is a graphic example of the cultural arguments embedded in our social history. This study does not attempt to solve these complex problems but to clarify their impact on our lives. The opening chapters describe the current systems for evaluating social clashes. The next seven chapters discuss the series of clashes in Western civilization from the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first preserved book, to the cosmic shock of the twentieth century. The next section discusses the two philosophical systems associated with our national crisis. Chapters twelve and thirteen discuss America's unique problems. The following five chapters focus on the violence in Syria as it is aided by Russia. This small nation might be the crisis point of America's place in history. The final chapter offers an image to remind Americans that the United States is more than a geographical entity. We citizens are the United States, and therefore, we have a responsibility to address, disinterestedly, our current problems that rise from a global unrest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643008530

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America’s Instability:

A Look at the Present, the Past and a Precarious Future

John Somer

ISBN 978-1-64300-852-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64300-853-0 (Digital)

Copyright © 2019 John Somer

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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I dedicate this book to the memory of two honest men:

Jeremy Wild and Larry Horn

You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky; why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

—Luke 12:56, NIV

Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the times.

—Matthew 16:3, NIV

2016: A Preface to Our Future

In the early morning of November 8, 2016, a few Americans were surprised to learn that Donald Trump would be the next president. By midmorning, all Americans and many around the globe were shocked. The television pundits who had predicted Hillary Clinton would be the winner were dumbfounded. Naturally, they tried to understand what had happened and pondered its possible implications.

The presidential campaign, from the beginning to the end, was a disturbing experience. It was as strange as watching a bird trying to fly with a crippled wing. It was a graphic example of a society trying desperately to perform an established ritual using only half of its customs. Most voters assumed that Jeb Bush would be the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee; but something happened.

Political parties, voters, and pundits had just experienced what Émile Durkheim calls anomie and Leo Strauss calls modernity, a period of time lacking effective values. Strauss believes modernity began in the early renaissance and extended into the present. Because the election of 2016 seems to be a textbook example of either an anomie or modernity, it offers an opportunity to consider the implications of a value system in conflict with itself.

From the beginning, Republicans and Democrats were prepared to battle one another, but neither expected to experience civil wars. Both parties were surprised when two rebels appeared—Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump challenged Jeb Bush and fifteen other contenders, and Bernie Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton.

Sanders addressed the specific problems of average people and experienced something unusual. Marginalized citizens began to donate to his cause in such numbers that their small donations enabled him to mount a serious challenge to Clinton. Therefore, he would be indebted only to the American people.

Trump, on the other hand, announced that he would finance his campaign with his own vast fortune. Therefore, as a president, he would not be obliged to the rich so he could devote all of his time helping the middle class. Ironically, he received millions of dollars from financial kings that urged him to honor their wishes. Both candidates then appeared to be free to address the needs of the nation as they wanted.

Trump and Sanders touched a sensitive nerve in the country. Trump first appealed to his audience by arguing that the primary cause of their anxiety was the illegal immigrants who were getting all the jobs. One of his solutions would be to build a wall that would protect American workers from the impoverished people of the world.

Sanders, on the other hand, asserted that the government should address the social and economic inequities in America. One of his solutions would enable every American to acquire an education without having to start an adult life with a monstrous debt. Trump was gratified by the thousands of people who attended his rallies, and so was Sanders. These outsiders captured the anguish of the nation and challenged traditional politics. They were the good guys who were going to get the big guys off the backs of the little guys, but the traditionalists knew the nation would select conventional thinkers, either Bush or Clinton.

The traditionalists, however, had no idea of the lives ordinary people were experiencing. Many people felt they were at the bottom of the economy. Moreover, they felt the lies in advertisements enticed them to desire what they cannot afford. What they really wanted and needed was someone to care about them.

As it turned out Donald Trump represented the Republican Party by connecting with suffering adults and Bernie Sanders did not garner enough votes from the anguished young people in America. As a result, Hillary Clinton represented the Democratic party. Unfortunately, neither of the candidates won the trust of all voters. Both conventions were successful, and voters seemed to be enthusiastic when the candidates attacked each other. Of the two, Trump’s presentations seemed more exciting, if often crude.

From the beginning, Trump spoke to the people as though he was just a guy, someone they often met in a local bar. He swore, bragged, exaggerated, and won their hearts. This style was embraced by his supporters but shocked his sixteen Republican opponents during the early debates. Trump humiliated them with his folksy, blunt, and exaggerated language. He hid them behind a single image saying, for example, that Jeb Bush lacked energy and Rick Perry wears glasses to seem smart. At the same time, he italicized his degrading symbols with the body language of a child and exaggerated them with the voice of a barker at a carnival. His opponents did not know how to respond. With the aid of his supporters, Trump became a historical figure and the Republican standard-barrier for the 2016 presidential election.

Many fellow Republicans, however, felt that Trump was not a real Republican, so they became frightened that his words and actions might damage the entire ticket and allow Democrats to win many races on the state and federal levels. What was clear to some American voters, though, was that the leaders of the Republican party, especially those with Christian values, cowered before Trump’s rebellion. They were so preoccupied with maintaining supremacy over Washington, DC, and with selecting the right members for the Supreme Court that they remained silent. They valued their political power over their personal integrity and loyalty to their nation. The Republicans wanted to control the supreme court, the house, the senate, and the presidency. They had to take advantage of this special moment.

Perhaps their overall plan was to retire and receive the bountiful pension provided by the government. Many of these same leaders, of course, argued—naively or ironically—that people, especially the poor and weak, should not depend on the government. They also argued that the government should not interfere with the freedom of the American people. Many of these same Americans, however, interfered with the freedom of a capitalist economy to follow the law of supply and demand, the one commercial law the financial world must obey. Hypocritically, they sold their votes to capitalistic magnates to protect them from legislation that required them to be fair and just in their enterprises.

Unfortunately, many citizens felt this political disease had corrupted the entire nation. From towns to the federal level, some politicians were more interested in preserving their financial base than in addressing the problems of those they represented. They should have been embarrassed when Bernie Sanders proved that politicians do not need to sell their souls to the largest bidder. The year 2016 was a blunt revelation of the false values of many politicians.

The whirl of words, however, proved to be valuable. Trump turned everything upside-down. He revealed, accidently, the hidden iniquitous in many binary values—the wealthy over the poor, white people over people of color, men over women, the powerful over the weak, and the tycoons and politicians over workers. Through his words and gestures, some could see the distorted ideas we Americans have about race, sex, and religion.

When the election was over, however, some believed that Trump would improve America, and others felt the election was an omen predicting the end of the Republican party. Fate seemed to challenge deep American principles. Should we need to replace them with something else? Would Trump help? Without intelligent leadership, anything could happen.

It would be a historical shame if this great nation had abandoned its foundational destiny. The main accomplishment of the United States of America was to combine a democratic republic with capitalism. The tension between these two opponents have sustained this nation during a civil war, two world wars, a great depression, and a great recession. Naturally, every now and then, a politician puts a finger on the scale of fairness and tips the nation toward the government or the economy. God help America if either political party gains total control of this country.

Leo Strauss and Modernity

Modernity was the word Leo Strauss used to identify this type of ethical problem, one he also called the theologico-political predicament. Maybe he defined it with two adjectives because he saw it as a cultural plague undermining the values of Western civilization and of the United States of America. Though he saw himself as a teacher and a student of philosophy, his analysis of the ideas of philosophers over the years became a philosophy based on classical thought. If he were alive, he might have seen the 2016 election as evidence of the underlying rampage of modernity.

In a roundabout way, Strauss may have contributed to this unholy alliance. At the University of Chicago, he became a favorite teacher. He provided many insights into modern philosophy, but his most influential act was to invent a new way to read complex texts written by brilliant philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Strauss felt that powerful minds, daring to ask all questions, protected themselves from political repression or public ridicule by obscuring their meaning with rhetorical devices. Strauss argued, however, that rigorous and patient readers could learn to read the codes embedded in a text and arrive at the author’s real meaning. Many of Strauss’s students seemed to be impressed by this method of reading, especially of the need for powerful minds to protect themselves from the masses of humanity.

While a neoconservative movement started within the Democratic party during the 1960s, the Republican neocons became influential in the second Bush presidency. Many of them had been students of Leo Strauss. Apparently, they embraced the idea that the masses of society should be spared the task of trying to understand complex ideas, especially those created by superior minds.

For example, one of the government’s justifications for invading Iraq was a causal argument. Because Iraq had been the cradle of earthly civilization, the Iraqi people would naturally create a democratic society when America liberated the people from Saddam Hussein’s oppression. This simple justification for the war was intended, apparently, to redefine this act of aggression as a noble attempt to foster democracies—to spread individual freedom throughout the world. Moreover, such an argument reassured American parents that their leaders were wise and honest and that they would care for their children while they fought an aggressive war. So what were the complex mysteries the masses could not understand? Had we planned to steal Iraq’s oil? What we did, however, was blunder into an illegal war.

If we apply the teachings of Sun Tzu, a Chinese author on warfare in the fifth century BC, we can see America’s severe error in attacking Iraq. Sun Tzu reminds us that no general should attack any enemy without understanding its value system. The United States should not stumble into another war against an enemy we do not fully understand, and we should not start a war until we understand our values.

However, waging war seems to be part of the human condition. People have been struggling with one another since there were two of them. There is always a terrible war being fought somewhere on this planet. Since the end of WWII, America has been involved in major wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. We did not win any of these wars as we had won WWII.

Our main enemy now is a band of radical Islamic Arabs called ISIS. Its main arenas are in Iraq and Syria. Iraq continues to drain our resources, but Syria is like quicksand. Vladimir Putin desperately needs to control its two ports or his ships will have to enter the Black Sea to reach Crimean ports. To lose Syria’s ports would weaken his navy. Moreover, both ISIS and Putin understand Sun Tzu’s primary rule of war: never blunder into combat.

While North Korea is always a nuclear threat, Syria is the current door to chaos. Just as our technology opens real doors for us, it has prepared us for a global war. The two world wars were narrow compared to the global mayhem of a war waged with ever-developing technology. In addition, there are so many ways for one country to obliterate another that the country most dependent on electricity is the most vulnerable. Technology has made the weak strong and the strong defenseless.

We need to take a deep breath and think before we plunge into another war. We are still a young country.

When we Americans compare ourselves to older nations, such as Ireland, we notice that they maintain their heritage through their ancient dances and music. When we hear Irish music, we immediately recognize it. Most of the civilizations on earth have ancient traditions that unite their people. Our first colonists, however, had no historic bond with this strange land, so they introduced a variety of conflicting heritages and religions as they attempted to move into an imagined future. The Native Americans, however, had their dances and music, and our African Americans invented the blues, the root of America’s music.

White Americans’ roots are shallow compared to the rituals of their ancestral European homes. We do not want to mistake our array of branches for roots. It might be helpful to understand that Western civilization, America’s historical context, changed its value structures over the centuries.

America’s Instability: The Present, the Past and a Challenging Future examines the historical and cultural events in Western civilization that have contributed to differing values as exemplified by the presidential election of the United States in 2016. I describe these philosophical and political issues in words that are accessible to all people. While this book is not a scholarly report, it does not simplify the ideas of philosophies, such as Strauss. His intellectual integrity is especially notable. He had a fearless acceptance of paradoxes and did not need the security of an absolute perception.

To understand the concepts of anomie or modernity and how profoundly they influence us, we need to consider our recent history. Ethical confusion is the real issue. How and when did revolutions in values begin to reshape our cultures? Until we understand the complexity of our roots, we will not know how to use our branches. If Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) were a young man in 2016, he would, no doubt, write a novel entitled 2084.

A quick glance at our American history will help prepare us to consider anomie and modernity as salient parts of the American experience in Western civilization.

Acknowledgments

I honor the memories of my wife, Constance Louise, and my son, John Joseph, and I appreciate the support of the families of my daughters, Anne Elizabeth Nelson and Joan Leslie Sharp.

I wish to thank old friends who shared many conversations: