{"id":49238,"date":"2022-09-18T14:28:40","date_gmt":"2022-09-18T21:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=49238"},"modified":"2022-09-18T14:28:40","modified_gmt":"2022-09-18T21:28:40","slug":"everyday-erinyes-336","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2022\/09\/18\/everyday-erinyes-336\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #336"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

I assume it’s no news to anyone here that “Conservative” principles and government, far from being conservative, are reactionary and will make our country a worse – and a poorer – place to live. MAGA should stand for “Make America Garbage Again.” Well, we now have hard statistics and hard math to prove that – to prove, not just that it will happen, but that it is already happening (has already happened.)
\n==============================================================<\/p>\n

US is becoming a \u2018developing country\u2019 on global rankings that measure democracy, inequality<\/h1>\n
People wait in line for a free morning meal in Los Angeles in April 2020. High and rising inequality is one reason the U.S. ranks badly on some international measures of development.
\nFrederic J. Brown\/ AFP via Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kathleen Frydl<\/a>, Johns Hopkins University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The United States may regard itself as a \u201cleader of the free world<\/a>,\u201d but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list.<\/p>\n

In its global rankings, the United Nations Office of Sustainable Development dropped the U.S. to 41st worldwide<\/a>, down from its previous ranking of 32nd. Under this methodology \u2013 an expansive model of 17 categories, or \u201cgoals,\u201d many of them focused on the environment and equity \u2013 the U.S. ranks between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries.<\/p>\n

The U.S. is also now considered a \u201cflawed democracy,\u201d according to The Economist\u2019s democracy index<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a political historian who studies U.S. institutional development<\/a>, I recognize these dismal ratings as the inevitable result of two problems. Racism has cheated many Americans out of the health care, education, economic security and environment they deserve. At the same time, as threats to democracy become more serious, a devotion to \u201cAmerican exceptionalism\u201d keeps the country from candid appraisals and course corrections.<\/p>\n

\u2018The other America\u2019<\/h2>\n

The Office of Sustainable Development\u2019s rankings differ from more traditional development measures in that they are more focused on the experiences of ordinary people, including their ability to enjoy clean air and water, than the creation of wealth.<\/p>\n

So while the gigantic size of the American economy counts in its scoring, so too does unequal access to the wealth it produces. When judged by accepted measures like the Gini coefficient<\/a>, income inequality in the U.S. has risen markedly over the past 30 years. By the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development\u2019s measurement<\/a>, the U.S. has the biggest wealth gap among G-7 nations.<\/p>\n

These results reflect structural disparities in the United States, which are most pronounced for African Americans. Such differences have persisted well beyond the demise of chattel slavery and the repeal of Jim Crow laws.<\/p>\n

Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois first exposed this kind of structural inequality in his 1899 analysis of Black life in the urban north, \u201cThe Philadelphia Negro<\/a>.\u201d Though he noted distinctions of affluence and status within Black society, Du Bois found the lives of African Americans to be a world apart from white residents: a \u201ccity within a city.\u201d Du Bois traced the high rates of poverty, crime and illiteracy prevalent in Philadelphia\u2019s Black community to discrimination, divestment and residential segregation \u2013 not to Black people\u2019s degree of ambition or talent.<\/p>\n

More than a half-century later, with characteristic eloquence, Martin Luther King Jr. similarly decried<\/a> the persistence of the \u201cother America,\u201d one where \u201cthe buoyancy of hope\u201d was transformed into \u201cthe fatigue of despair.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate his point, King referred to many of the same factors studied by Du Bois: the condition of housing and household wealth, education, social mobility and literacy rates, health outcomes and employment. On all of these metrics, Black Americans fared worse<\/a> than whites. But as King noted, \u201cMany people of various backgrounds live in this other America.\u201d<\/p>\n

The benchmarks of development invoked by these men also featured prominently in the 1962 book \u201cThe Other America<\/a>,\u201d by political scientist Michael Harrington, founder<\/a> of a group that eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington\u2019s work so unsettled President John F. Kennedy that it reportedly galvanized him<\/a> into formulating a \u201cwar on poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy\u2019s successor, Lyndon Johnson, waged this metaphorical war. But poverty bound to discrete places<\/a>. Rural areas and segregated neighborhoods stayed poor well beyond mid-20th-century federal efforts.<\/p>\n

\"Tents
Camp Laykay Nou, a homeless encampment in Philadelphia. High and rising inequality is one reason the US rates badly on some international development rankings.<\/span>
\nCory Clark\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In large part that is because federal efforts during that critical time accommodated rather than confronted the forces of racism, according to my research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Across a number of policy domains, the sustained efforts of segregationist Democrats in Congress resulted in an incomplete and patchwork system of social policy. Democrats from the South cooperated with Republicans to doom to failure efforts to achieve universal<\/a> health care<\/a> or unionized workforces<\/a>. Rejecting proposals for strong federal intervention, they left a checkered legacy of local funding for education<\/a> and public health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today, many years later, the effects of a welfare state tailored to racism is evident \u2014 though perhaps less visibly so \u2014 in the inadequate health policies<\/a> driving a shocking decline<\/a> in average American life expectancy.<\/p>\n

Declining democracy<\/h2>\n

There are other ways to measure a country\u2019s level of development, and on some of them the U.S. fares better.<\/p>\n

The U.S. currently ranks 21st on the United Nations Development Program\u2019s index<\/a>, which measures fewer factors than the sustainable development index. Good results in average income per person \u2013 $64,765 \u2013 and an average 13.7 years of schooling situate the United States squarely in the developed world.<\/p>\n

Its ranking suffers, however, on appraisals that place greater weight on political systems.<\/p>\n

The Economist\u2019s democracy index<\/a> now groups the U.S. among \u201cflawed democracies,\u201d with an overall score that ranks between Estonia and Chile. It falls short of being a top-rated \u201cfull democracy\u201d in large part because of a fractured political culture. This growing divide is most apparent in the divergent paths between \u201cred\u201d and \u201cblue\u201d states.<\/p>\n

Although the analysts from The Economist applaud the peaceful transfer of power in the face of an insurrection intended to disrupt<\/a> it, their report laments<\/a> that, according to a January 2022 poll, \u201conly 55% of Americans believe that Mr. Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Election denialism carries with it the threat<\/a> that election officials in Republican-controlled jurisdictions will reject or alter vote tallies that do not favor the Republican Party in upcoming elections, further jeopardizing the score of the U.S. on the democracy index.<\/p>\n

Red and blue America also differ on access to modern reproductive care for women. This hurts the U.S. gender equality rating, one aspect<\/a> of the United Nations\u2019 sustainable development index.<\/p>\n

Since the Supreme Court overturned<\/a> Roe v. Wade, Republican-controlled states have enacted or proposed grossly restrictive<\/a> abortion laws<\/a>, to the point of endangering a woman\u2019s health<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I believe that, when paired with structural inequalities and fractured social policy, the dwindling Republican commitment to democracy lends weight to the classification of the U.S. as a developing country.<\/p>\n

American exceptionalism<\/h2>\n

To address the poor showing of the United States on a variety of global surveys, one must also contend with the idea of American exceptionalism<\/a>, a belief in American superiority over the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

Both political parties have long promoted this belief, at home and abroad, but \u201cexceptionalism\u201d receives a more formal treatment from Republicans. It was the first line of the Republican Party\u2019s national platform of 2016<\/a> and 2020<\/a> (\u201cwe believe in American exceptionalism\u201d). And it served as the organizing principle behind Donald Trump\u2019s vow to restore \u201cpatriotic education<\/a>\u201d to America\u2019s schools.<\/p>\n

In Florida, after lobbying by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a>, the state board of education in July 2022 approved standards rooted in American exceptionalism while barring instruction in critical race theory<\/a>, an academic framework teaching the kind of structural racism Du Bois exposed long ago.<\/p>\n

With a tendency to proclaim excellence rather than pursue it, the peddling of American exceptionalism encourages Americans to maintain a robust sense of national achievement \u2013 despite mounting evidence to the contrary.\"The<\/p>\n

Kathleen Frydl<\/a>, Sachs Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

==============================================================
\nAlecto<\/span><\/strong>, Megaera<\/strong><\/span>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>, We are going to need all the help we can get to break enough of the American people out of their comfortable denial of reality and into a place where they are willing to work – and fight (hopefully not with weapons, but even that if necessary), not only to preserve our democracy, but to raise it to the status of a true and inclusive democracy. Because, if that doesn’t happen, we will all lose everything.<\/p>\n

The Furies and I will be back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":48958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4676,3729,3711,3748,3831],"class_list":["post-49238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-democracy","tag-furies","tag-gop-crimes","tag-racism","tag-world","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}