1980

The Netflix original series “Stranger Things” has popularized the term “the upside-down,” and some have begun to employ the concept to understand and critique contemporary American politics and the era of Trump. “Stranger Things” is set in the 1980’s, and I think applying the upside-down to the politics of the 1980’s and Ronald Reagan is more on point.

While the period from 1932-1980 was filled with systemic policies and individual acts of racism and sexism, it was also marked by a philosophical shift in the role of government as it related to workers (as least white, male workers), the poor, and the environment. The policies enacted during this time frame improved the lives of millions and opened opportunities for many in the white working class. Having reaped the benefits of those programs, the people who took advantage of those opportunities then set about dismantling that very system, insisting that they became successful by pulling up their own bootstraps, all by themselves.

I’ve become fixated on the year 1980. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, it marked a significant shift in governmental philosophy and economic policy-making. Reagan, along with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and economists like Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, ushered in a new era, the era of Neoliberalism. Not to be confused with the political philosophy of Liberalism, Neoliberalism is a conservative economic philosophy focused on liberating capitalism from government restraints. As Reagan once quipped, “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.” We have been stuck in the upside-down ever since.

Neoliberalism is Laissez-Faire on steroids. The blessed trinity of Neoliberalism is privatization, deregulation, and union busting. Evaluated according to these criteria, Neoliberalism has been a phenomenal success.

Since 1980 an incredible amount of wealth has been created, and it has disproportionately enriched a tiny segment of the population and starved the public sphere of funding. This era of free market fundamentalism has a corresponding theology, and its advocates fiercely defend it as any cult member would. Facts, history, and data are irrelevant to those who subscribe to this trickle-down ideology. There is virtually no historical evidence that deregulation and cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations actually leads to job creation and rising wages. What history shows us is that instead of reinvesting in the economy what actually happens is a hoarding of wealth and a concentration of political power.

Democracy is now subservient to capitalism. We are upside-down. We are no longer in charge of capitalism; capitalism is in charge of us. Private consumption is crowding out the public good. We are no longer primarily citizens; we are workers and consumers. In fact, we’ve been lead to believe by the cult of Neoliberalism that capitalism and democracy, that consumer and citizen, are synonymous. This is profound ignorance.

Neoliberalism is not here to stay, and it’s just a matter of time till this era ends and is replaced by something else.   But if the something else takes us deeper into the upside-down, the impact on this nation and the world will be disastrous.

It’s the Masculinity

At what point will we name the problem? While it is the courage of women that has driven the issues of sexual harassment and assault into the light, at some point men are going to have to engage in a long, thoughtful discussion about how we learn to be men. Men are going to have to identify and discuss the toxicity of contemporary American masculinity. While individual men must be held accountable for their actions, we need to get beyond holding individual men accountable and address the social responsibility that all men share to change the masculine script, and men are going to have to be the ones to hold men accountable.

If you are male and you were born, raised, educated in the United States you were conditioned to define systemic and institutional exploitation and objectification of women as normal. No man is immune to this conditioning, including the so called “good men” or men who self-identify as “feminist.” The masculine script is embedded in the institutional and cultural legacy we’ve inherited. Regardless of how we think and behave as individual men, men collectively must acknowledge that we’ve inherited a social system that is male-dominated, male-centered, and male identified. Central to this social system is the control of women; control of women’s bodies, of women’s wages, of women’s opportunities, and the systemic subordination of anything culturally associated with women and femininity.

Resistance to confronting cultural masculinity and the system of male privilege is in no shortage. Many men, and some women, can be found disparaging any attempt to critically question masculinity as the feminization of men, the “wussification” of America, and various versions of the adage that “boys will be boys.” This topic creates a lot of anxiety among emotionally insecure men who feel threatened, and some of these men lash out by retreating to a hyper-masculine posture, acting violently, using weapons to regain a perceived loss of control, abusing domestic partners, sexually assaulting or harassing women, and if all else fails, claiming that it is men who are under attack. While most men don’t do these things, the majority of men remain silent.

Focusing on individual men without connecting this problem to larger systemic issues will ensure that this will continue. It’s not just men in positions of power in politics, media, and entertainment. These men are everywhere and in every institution. What we are witnessing is not an abnormality of American masculinity, it is the embodiment of American masculinity. Masculinity is cultural, not biological. This can be changed, but only if men possess true strength and courage to change, model a different kind of masculinity, and support legislation to protect women’s’ rights, pay equity, and a more diverse workforce. This is not solely a problem of men disproportionately holding and abusing power. If we ignore the role that masculinity plays in understanding abuses of power by men then we will miss the forest for the trees.

The Sociological Perspective

My patience is being tested with the widely held belief that the reason institutions are problematic is because of “bad” people and that replacing bad people with “good” people is the solution to the problem. I find this way of thinking almost childlike, as if we are a nation of eight-year olds who are incapable of comprehending the weight of history, culture, and the structure of institutions. This way of thinking and understanding the world is the result of a combination of intellectual laziness and our sophomoric idolatry of individualism, and it contributes to a simplistic worldview comprised of polarized opposites of good and bad.

Good people can be found in bad systems, bad people can be found in good systems, and no system or person can be easily classified as good or bad. We want so badly for our heroines and heroes to be flawless and our nemesis to be devoid of any humanity that we lose sight of the dynamic process between people and systems. I’m not suggesting that people within systems don’t matter; when people operate within systems they do not understand they are a menace. Saying you want to “change the system” may prove popular, but unless you understand history and how a system is structured you have virtually no chance of changing any system.

People love to complain about Congress, and indeed, public trust and confidence in Congress has fallen for several decades, regardless of the party in power. I think the vast majority of our representatives, regardless of political affiliation, are good, well-intentioned people. Our confidence in government has not fallen due to the individual failings of people in certain positions but rather due to the way the obligations, expectations, and responsibilities of the positions themselves have changed, and changing how the system operates requires an understanding of history and the way social systems encourage and discourage specific actions.

It never ceases to amaze me that when an instance of corruption and abuse of power occurs within either the public or private realm that our response is to remove those persons directly involved, replace them, and then pretend that we’ve somehow fixed the problem. Holding individuals accountable is fine and necessary, but if we keep inserting new actors into a system that that is flawed to begin with do we really expect a different outcome?

We’re so hung up on assigning personal blame that we struggle to elevate the discussion of social accountability and responsibility. I did not build monopolistic capitalism, but that’s what I inherited. I did not build the system of white supremacy, but that’s what I inherited. And I did not build the system of patriarchy and male privilege, but that’s what I inherited. If personal bigotry of all types is eliminated tomorrow, we are still left with the inertia of history, and institutional discrimination will continue. White supremacist, patriarchal capitalism exists regardless of how wonderful we may think we are, and offering critical analysis of those systems does not constitute a personal attack.