What with all this agonizing over ?values,? the Republican drum thumping about traditional families being under attack, and the Democratic scrambling about in search of a ?values message? no one ever asked, WHAT values are we actually talking about? The recently formed American Environics team completed a sophisticated in-depth plumbing of the American psyche, layer after layer, and what they have turned up is a remarkable sea change over the last ten years in the basic world view held by the core of the American people. It is not, actually, a pretty sight, and the enormous amount of data revealed will be mined over the next election cycle, but here are some surprising nuggets, based on an article in The American Prospect magazine.From 1992 to 2004, Americans have turned increasingly more authoritarian simultaneously with feeling ?adrift, isolated, and nihilistic;? in other words, at once more libertine and more puritanical than even in our more recent past. Based on a values matrix divided into four quadrants, each representing different world views, as a people we have been moving rather quickly from the more liberal ?fulfillment? quadrant (with its gender parity, personal rights and freedom of expression) and toward the ?survival? quadrant where illiberal values lie such as sexism, fatalism, and an increasing focus on ?every man for himself.? However, social values are moving away from the authority end of the scale where duty and responsibility lie, and toward the ?atomized? end of scale which is more rage-filled with xenophobia, sexual permissiveness, and a hedonistic emphasis on consumption. This self-centered philosophy is exemplified on television by Bill O?Reilly. Acceptance of violence as a part of life is one of these new ?values.?
Michael Adams in his book American Backlash, published in 2005, describes this change: ?While American politics becomes increasingly committed to a brand of conservatism that favors traditionalism, religiosity, and authority, the culture at large is becoming ever more attached to hedonism, thrill-seeking, and a ruthless, Darwinist understanding of human competition.? Sounds a lot like one political party currently in office nationally, doesn?t it? Does this explain some of their successes?
Underpinning this growth of individual isolation and personal fatalism is a new economic reality which, more than simply globalization, has effectively destroyed worker solidarity, atomized workers from each other, removing their protections so there is ?no one to catch them if they fall.? Actually, the very term working class is losing its meaning in this age of de-industrialization when the average household income of workers in their prime, aged 26-59 years of age, is $66,000 for men and $61,000 for women, and when an income of $50,000 is the threshold dividing economically insecure from the comfortably prosperous. The old-time industrial proletariat or blue collar today is reduced to 18 percent of male workers and 7 percent of female. The average worker is very much on his own, making too much money to receive government assistance, but unable to unionize and resentful of those who do have outside aid.
In the gap between ?relative affluence and relative isolation? is the opening for cultural appeals. The social solidarity, familial stability, education, and private privileges of the well-to-do or the new elite, have become aspirational values of the growing under class of middle-income voters, who want to be like the elite but are not. The elite traditionally stay married or, if they divorce, re-marry; they educate their children and have a stable home life while the declining middle class have a much more disrupted life with multiple divorces, job losses, abortions and children born out of wedlock, poor or no education, and so on. It is in this environment of social disruption that the churches move in, often ?exacerbating the situation.? The voters have turned to Republicanism because the Democrats have not defended the traditional middle class values against the lawlessness of an economic system that pits every man against every other man, emphasizing libertarian machismo and a modern brand of nihilism... an economic and social system glorifying ruthlessness, greed, violence to get your rewards at all costs. In my opinion, it is not that many people do not dislike how things are turning out; but rather that there has been no coherent response against these changes that has been offered by Democrats, while Republicans have ridden the wave and exploited the rage and helplessness felt by average voters.
During the recent Virginia gubernatorial election, Peter Brodnitz, Tim Kaine?s pollster, decided in advance to develop a strategy to deal with the inevitable cultural attacks by Republicans, specifically the question of the death penalty, which they of course supported with true violence-prone machismo, and Kaine did not, leaving himself open to charge of being a bleeding heart liberal. What happened was that Kaine spoke frankly about his religious values which made him oppose the death penalty, and as a result the Republican attack fizzled because people understood Kaine?s moral yardstick, and concluded that he was not? gasp? a liberal.
What does this mean for the upcoming elections this year, and for 2008? Will Webb?s ?moral yardstick? of Fairness trump the Republican-engendered Rage? Or will Harris Miller?s statement that he is an ?Old Testament? sort of guy be more appealing? What do you think?