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The deep divide between the American people and mainstream politics and media

February 12, 2022

The deep divide between the American people and mainstream politics and media

A dangerous gulf exists between Americans’ concerns about their lives, their country and their future, and the priorities, proclivities and pre-occupations of the country’s mainstream politics and media. Other liberal democracies should heed the lessons.

In 2013 I collaborated in a survey that investigated the perceived probability of future threats to humanity in four Western nations: the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Across the four countries, over a half (54%) of people rated the risk of ‘our way of life ending’ within the next 100 years at 50% or greater, and almost three-quarters (73%) rated the risk at 30% or greater. A quarter (24%) rated the risk of ‘humans being wiped out’ in this time at 50% or greater.

The US stood out from the other three countries in several respects. It had the highest percentage (30%) who thought humans might be wiped out (19-24% in the other countries). It had a much higher level of agreement with fundamentalist responses to global threats, with 47% agreeing or strongly agreeing that ‘we are facing a final conflict between good and evil in the world’, and 46% that ‘we need to return to traditional religious teachings and values to solve global problems and challenges’. (The results presumably reflect the strength of religion in the US, especially ‘end time’ thinking among Christian fundamentalists.) In the other three countries only 30-33% agreed with these two statements.

The survey also included questions about how concerned people were about a range of personal and societal issues. The US stood out here too, with higher levels of concern about many societal issues, especially political and economic. Two thirds (65%) were moderately or seriously concerned about ‘the state of politics in my country’, compared to 42-53% for the other three countries; 64% were concerned about ‘corruption of politicians/officials’, compared to 39-47% in the other countries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Demise of the Official Future

December 13, 2018

The Demise of the Official Future

Americans are more likely to think the US is heading in the right direction since Donald Trump’s election. Why?

The poll results are extraordinary: the proportion of Americans who thought the country was ‘heading in the right direction’ rose sharply when Donald Trump became president of the US, while the proportion who thought it was ‘off on the wrong track’ dropped. The numbers were even at about 50%.

Negative perceptions have increased again since, but remain lower than during the Obama presidency. In September 2010, the earliest US data in the recent Ipsos report, ‘What worries the world’, about 70% thought the US was on the wrong track, 30% that it was heading in the right direction. In September 2018, the ratio was about 60% ‘wrong track’ to 40% ‘the right direction’ – about the same as the world average.

The US findings are at odds with so much of the media commentary about Trump, especially in the liberal media: his loss of the popular vote, the gerrymandering, the Russian interference, his low approval rating, the sustained criticism of him in the mainstream media. What can explain the trends? I want to offer one explanation, based on a social, not political, analysis; there may be others.

The answers we get in survey questions depend critically on their wording. In this case the question was not asking anything about the presidency, Trump and his actions and utterances. It asked Americans, ‘Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track?’

I have long argued that people’s concerns about modern life and the future have been poorly reflected in politics, and it is this that lies behind the unease and disenchantment in the electorate, not just the conduct of politicians and the merits of specific policies.

The Ghosts of Past Political Failures Haunt Environmental Challenges

November 14, 2018

The Ghosts of Past Political Failures Haunt Environmental Challenges

We will not solve climate change and other pressing global threats until we admit, and learn from, the repeated failures of past proclamations and promises. 

The general public, the American news magazine proclaims in its cover story, ‘The ravaged environment’, ‘has been seized with such anger and alarm as to goad political leaders into proclaiming conservation of the environment the chief task of this decade’. The US president is quoted as saying this must be the decade ‘when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its water and our living environment. It is literally now or never.’

At last! But wait. When was this? The president is obviously not Donald Trump. Perhaps Barack Obama? No, it was Richard Nixon, the date was 26 January, 1970, and the magazine was Newsweek.

It is barely stretching the truth to say that since the 1960s, we have declared each decade as the time for decisive action on the environment, and as each decade passes, we postpone the deadline another ten years. Now, as we near the end of the 2010s without the necessary action having been taken, the 2020s are shaping up to be the critical decade.

In the same year – 1992 – that I cited the Newsweek article in an essay for the Australian Commission for the Future (to make a similar point to that here), more than 1700 independent scientists issued a warning to humanity that environmental destruction required a great change in its stewardship of the Earth if ‘vast human misery’ was to be avoided. Last year, on the 25th anniversary of that warning, more than 15,000 scientists signed a ‘second notice’ warning that with the exception of stabilising the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in solving environmental challenges, and ‘alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse’.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Closing the Gap between the Science and Politics of Progress

February 13, 2018

Closing the Gap between the Science and Politics of Progress

Ed.note: This article draws on a paper published this month in the international journal, Social Indicators Research. The paper is available on Richard’s website, www.richardeckersley.com.au

Global politics is based on an outmoded and increasingly destructive model of human progress and development. Can science change a dire situation?

‘My view of human progress has stayed surprisingly constant throughout my presidency. The world today, with all its pain and all its sorrow, is more just, more democratic, more free, more tolerant, healthier, wealthier, better educated, more connected, more empathetic than ever before. If you didn’t know ahead of time what your social status would be, what your race was, what your gender was, or your sexual orientation was, what country you were living in, and you asked what moment in human history you would like to be born, you’d choose right now.’ Barack Obama, President of the United States 2009-2017

It is unusual for a national leader to articulate his worldview in this way. Nonetheless, Obama’s view of progress is one that is, broadly speaking, shared by politicians and governments throughout the developed world and beyond (partly framed here by the ‘identity politics’ that characterises political debate today). The view reflects the dominant or orthodox model of development.

However, this model is increasingly at odds with what science tells us about the world. It is not that the specific achievements are wrong, but that they are incomplete, and so present a false picture of progress. The growing gap between the conventional view and the realities of people’s lives helps to explain the widespread public disquiet in many countries and its political consequences, evident in growing political volatility and extremism.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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