Dystopian Society

By Michele Livojevic-Davis

This is an examination of the current and possibly future American society. Using empirical findings the book describes trends leading to a destabilized, anomic, and potentially fascistic America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350934113

Book preview

Introduction:

In the Northwest Indiana of my youth, 1950s and 60s, working class families achieved middle class status with income increased through collective bargaining, home ownership, and children who were state university graduates. Many fathers in my circle of childhood friends, including my father, an industrial chemist, worked for one of the major manufacturing industries in the U.S.: U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, their affiliate operations, or support industries in the region—as we were known by the rest of the state.

My extended working-class family were staunch Democrats. My father was the only college graduate from a first-generation immigrant family of nine children. The growing realization that manufacturing in the Northeast and Midwest, union strongholds, was in decline emerged in the 1970s. By the late 1970s, my graduate work in industrial sociology and long interest in working-class Americans led to my doctoral study of the United Steel Workers’ Response to the Decline of Structural Steel in the U.S.

Over the years, my interest in working class Americans has not diminished. I have followed the transition from what E.J. Dionne and Scott Smiley (2012) described as the post WWII tacit contract between private enterprise, government, and the working class in profit sharing. That transition is now complete with the current wealth/wage gap and working-class, anti-government distrust and hostility. Examination of that transition and a resulting devolution to a dystopian American society is the subject of this book.

Part I TRENDS

Trends: Chapter 1

Signs that a Society is Dystopian

The U.S. now appears to be in a state of unstable equilibrium – a term originating in physics to describe a body whose slight displacement will cause other forces to move it even further away from its original position. Political analysts have applied the term to countries on the brink of civil war like Lebanon and Syria (Simon and Stevenson, 2022).

The following characteristics have been associated with dystopian societies:

Life and social structures in decline with citizens living in a dehumanized state of poverty, misery, and despair

Oppressive total social control over all dimensions of life exerted by totalitarian government, bureaucracy, corporation technology, or moral dictates

Perception that citizens are under constant surveillance

Propaganda

Restricted information

Citizens’ figurehead or concept adoration

Citizens living in fear of the outside world and the other

Distrust of the natural world

Mandated citizen conformity

Loss of individuality

Maintained illusion of dystopian conditions as a perfect world (Study Queries, n.d.)

To what extent does this list in part or total reflect the current state of American society? This is a question the work that follows hopes to answer in part or full. While the wage/wealth gap in the United States is of concern to those of us seeking a more equitable society, it is a stretch to describe the current U.S. population as generally living in abject poverty and misery. However, it can be argued that we are experiencing a prolonged and unhealthy distrust of social institutions and the lack of consensus on values unless in the abstract.

This trend can also signify movement toward social destabilization leading to dystopia. Evidence of this is examined in coming chapters.

To ancient Greeks nothing in excess was a maxim to live by. It connoted the danger of imbalance leading to instability. In the early 20th century, sociologist Emile Durkheim contended that societies without consensus on norms and values were anomic, adrift, and unstable. Today the term polarization (bifurcation of extremes) in national and international contexts is framed as an existential crisis.

Social norms are commonly accepted, group-shared expectations. They are temporally affected and culturally defined. Like grammar, a system of norms specifies what is acceptable and what is not in a society or group (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d.). Values are commonly accepted standards of behavior, the principles that help you to decide what is right and wrong" (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.). There is evidence presented in detail later that social norms and values in U.S. society have been lacking consensus in ways that have become destabilizing.

According to the Brookings Institute,

American society is fragmenting. Social solidarity is withering, as evidenced by the fading influence of mediating institutions like unions, churches, and social clubs. Dwindling participation in the community organizations that used to bridge social gaps means that Americans tend more and more to interact exclusively with people who are like themselves. This silo effect is widespread, but the social chasm has grown particularly large between the upper-middle class and everyone else" (Reeves, 2018).

The lack of a sense of community in contemporary America that had in the past been the basis for nominally accepted social norms was noted in sociologist Robert Putnam’s 2000 book Bowling Alone. A partial list of norms, political and social, identified in this research that have been ignored or discarded in recent years includes:

--political mandates, policies that consider whether a newly sitting president has majority popular support when elected

--separation of church and state

--separation of powers per branches of government

--civil political discourse

--respect for social institutions including law enforcement, the military, congress, and the courts—including the U.S. Supreme Court and the press.

--willingness to compromise with political opponents to move legislation and shape policy

--peaceful transfer of executive power

Any of these once generally accepted norms can be examined at length. Because of its connection to other norms and adherence to religious identity, the norm of separation of church and state merits notice. By Spring 2023, the state of Oklahoma considered legislation to approve the nation’s first religious charter school potentially setting-up a constitutional battle over whether taxpayer dollars can be used to fund religious schools. Historically, tens of thousands of parents paid private religious school tuition and supported public schools with their tax dollars. This historical norm is being tested by the Catholic archdiocese which includes Oklahoma City. Some legal experts see charter schools as the next frontier, moving the question whether parents can use state money to pay for private religious schools of their choosing. Americans United for Separation of Church and State is alarmed by the potential for Catholic schools participating in the evangelizing mission of the church (Mervosh and Graham, 2023). And then there is the newly elected (in a partisan vote) Speaker of the House, Michael Johnson’s comment shortly after his election in October 2023.

I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, … People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it. (Pengelly, 2023).

In 1970, sociologist Robin Williams identified a set of values associated with American society. Williams identified these values based on endurance over time and reflection of intense feeling:

Individualism

Achievement and Success

Activity and Work

Efficiency and Practicality

Science and Technology

Progress

Material Comfort

Humanitarianism

Freedom 

Democracy

Equality

Racism and Group Superiority

(Williams, 1970)

Since negative the last of these values seems contradictory. Yet given the current context, it is hard to argue against their existence. If controversial, they nonetheless continue to be part of the American ethos and experience. Are Williams’ values just abstractions and buzz words conducive to political dissension? Your freedom to ignore public health mandates during a lethal pandemic endangers my health. Your freedom to enforce your religious beliefs on non-believers ignores others’ civil rights and an historical democratic norm, separation of church and state. Your governor’s and state legislature’s book-banning denies my offspring full knowledge of their country’s history from a variety of credible and authoritative perspectives.

Note that the list of dystopian characteristics includes loss of individuality. In a society historically valuing individuality to the point of resistance to public health epidemic mandates on social distancing and masks in public places, this value once seemed intractable. The slur of government as big brother and nanny society increasingly voiced from the right are associated with the purported socialistic tendency of the left. The United States ranks number two (on individualism) on the same list that placed Israel as number one. It seems more obvious why this country has such a high individualistic ranking. Everyone seems to have the freedom to do whatever they want here, with some exceptions (World Population Review, 2023). The evidence that follows suggests that this last statement is historically and currently naïve and problematic.

Political Scientist James Campbell (2018) notes that It is widely agreed that the major political parties in the electorate are now highly polarized. There is also a consensus that party polarization in the electorate has increased and that the parties were not highly polarized from the 1940s to the 1980s. According to Campbell, Liberals and conservatives appear to be fundamentally divided over the extent, limits and uses of governmental power.

Public intellectuals question the degree to which liberalism is worth saving. While the consensus appears to be yes, there are qualifications. Cornell West contends that the neo-fascist backlash questioning that assumption is deeply white supremacist, deeply male supremacist, and deeply xenophobic (Deneen et al., 2022).

University of Notre Dame’s Patrick Deneen (2022) refers to right-wing populism as driven by a sense of betrayal of democracy by elites, a managerial class that sees itself as detached from and no longer bearing responsibilities to those who have not been successful – because it’s their fault. They did not work hard enough (Deneen et al., 2022).

How did we get here? What follows is a brief but not comprehensive answer to those questions highlighting relevant explanations for the dilemma of our current sad, divided situation. These explanations will be addressed according to their general focus. Some sources are media commentators or political consultants/analysts. Others are academics and/or public intellectuals. Their focus might differ as to whether cultural, political, social, or economic. Some are distinguished by academic discipline; others are not. Some explanations are framed in formal traditional theoretical structures. Others are more loosely structured perspectives.

Paranoia and Anti-Intellectualism:

We begin with historian and public intellectual Richard Hofstadter. In The Paranoid Style of American Politics (1964), Hofstadter contended that there is a strain of conspiratorial thinking running through American history. He associated this strain with anti-intellectualism and believed that it destroys institutional and intellectual authority in American society. It fuels attacks on the ideal of objectivity (Bernstein, 2020).

Narcissism:

In 1979, Historian Christopher Lasch coined the term culture of narcissism in his book of that title. Critics of today’s performance politics see this as prophetic. According to Lasch, a narcissistic society worships celebrity rather than fame and substitutes spectacle for the older form of theatre.

Politics, State and National:

In a Pew Research Center Report Michael Dimock and Richard Wilke agree with James Campbell that polarization is a stark divide at levels of the citizenry and political parties (2021). It is not surprising, given the state’s historical predilection, that the Texas Republican Party approved a platform calling for a vote by the people of Texas to determine whether their state should reassert its status as an independent nation (Texas Tribune staff, July 20, 2022).

It is more