—Dylan Thomas
The position of those embracing a post-liberal order is a far cry from the Reagan Republicans’ claim to want small government and free markets. The new ideologues want a strong government to enforce their religious values on American society, and they reject those of both parties who support democratic norms—for it is those very norms they see as destructive. They urge their leaders to “dare to rule.”
It is hard right now to decide if democracy is winning or loosing. It certainly is being challenged. If democracy prevails it will be by the skin of its proverbial teeth, or so it seems to me. We had three significant tests of democracy this past week. The indictment of 45. The election of a new Supreme Court Judge in Wisconsin. The expulsion of two black Democrat legislators and the near expulsion of one white woman Democrat legislator in Tennessee. In the indictment of 45 and the election of a new judge in Wisconsin, democracy took steps to steady itself. In Tennessee, the loss of democracy was on full display, along with attendant racism.
I had been thinking that I needed to write a piece about how angry Christians are making me right now. I can see they want to force their religious views on me and the rest of the country. A majority of the rest of the country doesn’t want this. Yet, somehow, they have managed to claim control over some crucial levers of power and are busy forcing their world view on the rest of us. Christians are pushing an intolerant culture war. As Aaron Sorkin put it so well in The News Room, they are the American Taliban. I abhor intolerance.
I realize though that it’s not all Christians and not Christians specifically I am angry with, it’s the white patriarchal structure it supports that I am angry with. I have no use for it.
This patriarchal structure is on the ropes. The demographics are solidly against it. The majority of the people are not aligned with them. In this democracy, they are losing power. They have reached a moment in time when they either seize control and move the country to authoritarian rule or they loose their grip on power. That power has been steadily ebbing away even as they have plotted a takeover, something that has been brewing since the Regan administration. We are now at the place where they are going for broke. I currently believe they will fall short, but it’s really a closer call than I would like it to be.
Their conviction that American “tradition” focuses on patriarchy rather than equality is a dramatic rewriting of our history, and it has led to recent attacks on LGBTQ Americans.
The struggle is with the world as it has been. A world where white male privilege dominated. The framers of the constitution produced a document that reached for an ideal they were far short of meeting at the time of writing. We are still short of meeting it but we have continuously struggled to realize those ideals and progress has been made.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
–Preamble to the Declaration of Independence
It’s a difficult slog. The Enlightenment Humanist ideal expressed in the Declaration of Independence has always been ahead of its time, as good ideals generally are, and stands as a promise for each successive generation to deliver on. The seeds of the destruction of the patriarchy, or at least of bringing it to heal, were planted with this preamble. As the demographics of this country shift to a black, brown and Asian majority, as young people pursue the values of enlightenment humanism because their diversity demands it, the patriarchy is challenged and teetering.
However, on the first day of 2020, whites under age 18 were already in the minority. Among all the young people now in the U.S., there are more minority young people than there are white young people.
Among old people age 65 and over, whites are still in the majority. Indeed white old people, compared to minority old people, will continue to be in the majority until some years after 2060.
Hispanics and the other racial minorities will be the country’s main demographic engine of population change in future years; this is the most significant demographic change Americans will see.
With the demographics shifting and with the majority of the people in favor of bringing the patriarchy to heal and instituting a multiarchy1 that offers participation to everyone without prejudice as to race, sex, sexuality or circumstances, one has to wonder how the patriarchy has been able to come so close to cementing their control. The answer, I suspect, is an ability to be single minded and ruthless. Something liberals, enlightenment humanists, struggle to be.
One of the weaknesses in the humanistic temperament is a tendency to flail in the contest for power. Self-doubt, a cheerful disposition, and a joyous pursuit of knowledge are qualities that might make for wise leaders, but can also produce hapless political combatants. Or, as Mann once declared: “In all humanism there is an element of weakness, which … may be its ruin.” Bakewell’s subjects are for the most part critics who write on the fringes. Or, like Bertrand Russell, her primary 20th-century protagonist, a serial proponent of doomed causes.
A multiarchy is humanist in its general character. The very nature of a humanist world view is to eschew the concentration of power, by distributing and collectively holding it. This is called democracy. This is a weakness that is exploitable by the white patriarchal structure which is nothing if not very efficient at producing aligned and focused power.
And so, here we are, saddled with a white patriarchal structure that refuses to “go gentle into that good night.”
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This is the term I have coined to describe a liberal multiracial power structure I believe is struggling to be born. ↩︎