Ellen forwarded this article to me yesterday morning, saying you “must read every word” of this piece.
I didn’t read it immediately, but when I did, it put some of the current protests in a context that makes sense to me.
While George Packer, the author, doesn’t get everything right in his Shouting into an Institutional Void, I believe his article helps to explain where we are today, particularly in relationship to 1968.
Two quotes from his Shouting into the Institutional Void.
“The difference between 1968 and 2020 is the difference between a society that failed to solve its biggest problem and a society that no longer has the means to try.”
“This is where we are. Trust is missing everywhere—between black Americans and police, between experts and ordinary people, between the government and the governed, between citizens of different identities and beliefs.”
Shouting into the Institutional Void by George Packer, staff writer for The Atlantic, June 5, 2020
Anon-2 said:
In other words, “orange man bad”. Yawn. “The bigoted and cruel presidency”, where the president increased funding to HBCU’s, low black unemployment, prison reform, prominent AfricanAmericans pardoned.
At some point, liberals and democrats are going to be red pilled…..maybe they’ll figure it out some time in Trump’s second term.
All this talk about “institutional racism”….everyone’s got a different idea of exactly what that is……but guess what? if you want to solve it, we must have a “conversation”…..and guess what? Once you start talking about the causes? You’re not allowed to talk about them…..
It’s socioeconomic, not skin pigmentation. Generations of people dependent on govt., PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS protecting bad cops…..uh oh………better change the subject to ORANGE MAN BAD!!!
Want to see a great conversation between two highly intelligent well spoken people? I pointed out to you Scott Adams years ago….here, he speaks with his friend Hotep Jesus…..and as they talk, you can almost see the lightbulbs turn on for both of them.
Don’t buy all the rhetoric. We all have an amygdala, we were born with it…..we are pattern recognizing machines, we are wired for it….and yet, we’re bad at pattern recognition!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L47qECorr8I
Carrie said:
I really liked the discussion on you tube. Instead of blame
Really talked about issues.. I get tired of always blaming the President when issue has been there for years.
Stephen Kolb said:
Thank you, Richard and Ellen, for this content.
Clearly both a throwback to a memorable time challenged by both race relations and the Viet Nam war.
If hindsight is 20/20, then clearly, George Santayana had it right,
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
We must do better, recalling the pain and our individual and collective reactions and actions to work to form “a more perfect union.”
I think that Newt Gingrich, whose “Contract with America” and no-compromise, zero-sum game in electoral politics and governance, created a new playbook.
If I read it correctly, it seems to prevent many of our elected officials and their proxies from the White House to Congress and on-air personalities who sell the most divisive and hateful messages about and at “the other,” including what used to be recognized as “the loyal opposition,” has contributed to the construction of what I see as a metaphorical “Trumps Wall,” growing ever longer, taller and impenetrable.
Let’s keep reading, talking, listening, working to find ways to reach common ground with hopes of building a society based on the social contract shared by all, privilege be damned.
Anon-2 said:
Stephen, the division started a long time ago, and Trump is a result, so call it “Trump’s Wall” if you will, but I find that unfair. Personally, I think the destructive Nixon years, followed by the Carter “malaise” years…..and that was to be the “new normal”. Then Regan came along with a “morning” message and changed the conversation. The left has never forgiven America for that.
On the other hand, Jefferson and Adams accused each other of being pedophiles, so politics has never been “bean bag”.
Ben Shute said:
Thanks for this. In 2013 Packer write a book, “The Unwinding,” that described many of the changes in our society and economy in previous decades. A review in The Guardian described it this way: “His topic is the coming apart of something in the national fabric: the unravelling of unspoken agreements about the limits to Wall Street’s greed; about what a congressman would or wouldn’t do for the right price; about what a company owes its workers, or what the wealthy should contribute in tax.”
I was disappointed at the time that it didn’t get greater attention. While it won a National Book Award, I don’t think it had much effect in the policy or political worlds. If it had, perhaps the 2016 election would not have been such a surprise to so many.
Chuck Tilis said:
Ellen & Richard,
When Ellen says “read every word” I “read every word.” Of course, I’m referring to the Packer piece Shouting Into the Institutional Void. I have been thinking about this piece every day for what feels like an eternity but is basically a week. Before commenting, which I know you did not request, I wanted to make sure my original reaction would sustain more introspection. Well it has, so let me share my thoughts for discussion.
· The piece is a convenient read that meanders from “hollowed out structure” to “lack of trust” to racism with a narrow historical context—2 periods of unrest. I’m not expecting science to drive the analysis, but it’s too narrow to draw a firm conclusion on his premise. We have other periods of unrest including during the formation of the United States and other periods continuing to the 1960’s that would help provide a better view. Many of these were extremely violent, based on lack of trust, adherence to the institutional norms or a breakdown of the system as defined by Packer. I could start with the drafting of the Constitution.
· Besides finding his presumption that we had more trust in our institutions in prior generations almost a rallying cry for MAGA, I’m not confident such trust, if it existed, was well-placed or crossed ethnic, racial or gender groups. Yes, trust in the system existed for whites and the well-heeled, but not for many immigrant groups (e.g. internment camps, rampant anti-Semitism etc.) women, who were only granted voting rights in 1920 and continue to lack trust in the system for the right to control their own health, LGBTQ who have only recently begun to trust the system and the poor who knew the system was rigged against them (tax code, white collar crimes looked at differently or even sentences for drug offenses.)
· This notion of misguided trust goes even further. Should we trust corporations going back to the industrial revolution. The notion of unbridled capitalism and “caveat emptor” has proven to be extremely detrimental to the well-being of America with the financial crisis the latest example (or is it the pandemic?) I think not just of the muckrakers and the need for antitrust and other regulations to protect the public but also of tobacco, chemical and the tech companies today.
· Should we ever have placed so much trust in law enforcement, justice department or the military/intelligence operations given J Edgar Hoover’s intrusion into the lives of prominent citizens, the so-called pursuit of communists, stop and frisk, regime changes by the CIA with assassinations and enormous payoffs, the Korean “skirmish” with no act of war, Vietnam and body counts or of course the Middle East most recently.
· The trust in politicians is equally suspect through the course of history with the amount of corruption and self-interest. Packer applauds Johnson in a way, but remember LBJ became extremely wealthy due to a number of events around owning broadcast licenses.
· I haven’t even mentioned lobbyists, PAC etc. or gone back to the Civil War, Prohibition, labor riots, the WHO, CDC and the like.
I actually believe the increase in transparency is causing people to distrust (question may be a better action) the system in a good way. This distrust certainly needs to be channeled better by individuals. Similarly, the control systems which journalists refer to as guardrails have not kept pace with these changes in the dissemination of information. Those need to be fixed quickly, which it will with improved leadership. We want a vigorous press and that is not going away despite the efforts of this administration and the Republican Party.
I just don’t think Packer makes the case, and I am not sure the system is actually any weaker for the long term than it’s ever been. Unfortunately, America is seeing these phenomena in real time under an administration which as far as many are concerned from both political parties, the most corrupt, incompetent and immoral in our history. The natural reaction is a sense of panic and dread.
In closing, I believe the norms and system took hold for Trump to be elected—the system is rigged and the hollowing out of many institutions is necessary as exemplified in real time today with a call for justice reform. Unfortunately, too many people placed too much trust in an individual known as not even the remote bit trustworthy. Packer’s concluding paragraph around the election should have been the headline like this—“Never has an election been so important and TRUST in the process so misplaced—except for Kennedy vs. Nixon.”
Ellen Miller said:
Great comments (and some I pretty much generally agree with), but you wanted more from the piece (broader scope) than what he intended. (I liked the narrow focus, especially since I remember ’68 like it was yesterday — it was the summer Richard and I were married ). I thought his points were crisp and focused. He doesn’t write history, he does analysis. This wasn’t a broad look at history……
Generally, I thought Packer’s points were pretty spot on: to wit:
*America was coming apart at the seams, but it STILL had seams. The streets were filled with demonstrators raging against the “system,” but there was STILL A SYSTEM TO TEAR DOWN. Its institutions were basically intact. A few leaders, in and outside government, even exercised some moral authority….
*The difference between 1968 and 2020 is the difference between a society that failed to solve its biggest problem and a society that no longer has the means to try…
*The protesters aren’t speaking to leaders who might listen, or to a power structure that might yield…. Congress isn’t preparing a bill to address root causes; Congress no longer even tries to solve problems. No president, least of all this one, could assemble a commission of respected figures from different sectors and parties to study the problem of police brutality and produce a best-selling report with a consensus for fundamental change. A responsible establishment doesn’t exist. Our president is one of the rioters….
*…there are no functioning institutions or leaders to fail us with their inadequate response to the moment’s urgency….. Democratic protections—the eyes of a free press, the impartiality of the law, elected officials acting out of conscience or self-interest—have lost* public trust. (*Probably better said as ‘have less public trust than they ever had….”)
*Trust is missing everywhere—between black Americans and police, between experts and ordinary people, between the government and the governed, between citizens of different identities and beliefs
His bottom line? Trust in government and its officials across society is the worst it’s ever been. There are no structures people can turn to for change: Congress more inept than ever, and the Senate is led by Mitch McConnell. Good luck with getting anynew laws passed, or money to beef up elections security, etc.
Polls will tell you that the trust in the institutions of government, and its agents (e.g. electeds) have declined precipitously over the years by even the white and well-heeled. Blacks, while justified of their distrust of “white power” have turned to it from time to time to make advances. Do I trust the government less today than I did in 1968 when I was HIGHLY DOUBTFUL? Yes I do. Lydon Johnson was personally corrupt, but he got some fine legislation through that at least tried to move minorities at least part way up a ladder of equity. In spite of himself he did some good stuff.
At my last gig — Sunlight Foundation –we were often criticized because more transparency could lead to more people to be more skeptical. Indeed. We hope they would take the information that we also hoped we could unearth to make them angry, demand accountability, and make change. But Congress was weaker than ever, and Obama never delivered on his promise. He and we knew — information is power. With Trump now that fight is on the back burner.
It wasn’t a rigged political system that got Trump elected. It was the disaffected working class who’d been too long ignored/taken for granted by the Democratic party. They’d had enough. They simply voted for the bastard who said he’d clear out the swamp. That didn’t work out for them, or for anyone else.
Love this conversation with you. We need to do it over bourbon sometime.
:)
Ellen
Anon-2 said:
You’ll all be red pilled, now or later. Politicians get power by CREATING problems, not solving them. “Lyndon Johnson was personally corrupt, but he got some fine legislation through that at least tried to move minorities at least part way up a ladder of equity. In spite of himself he did some good stuff.”
He destroyed the black family, and that was a feature not a bug….he purportedly said, “I’ll have those *n-word* voting Democrat for the next 200 years.
Richard said:
D,
Clearly I failed you in that history course I taught at JFK High School 50+ years ago.
The world is neither black or white, nor red or blue pilled.
My apologies.
Richard
Anon-2 said:
Richard, bite your tongue! You taught your students to think for themselves!
The header asks if these protests are different. Trillions of dollars spent in the great society, and here we are. BLM could be so much more effective if they actually focused on things that matter to blacks: fatherless families, extermination of innocent black babies and black on black violence.
But, it’s an election year, so the left is infantilizing and using them again. People across the country, certainly red America, are scratching their heads, looking at these riots thinking “why are these Dem mayors and governors allowing their cities to be destroyed?”
Richard said:
D,
So Wordsworth was right that “The Child Is Father to the Man,” despite Gerard Manley Hopkins attempts to reverse that.
And so I cry “Uncle’ in our on going differing ways of seeing the world.
Anon-2 said:
Oh….and you had commented on the Sam Harris podcast with Scott Adams….would be curious to see if you found youtube above interesting….
Anon-2 said:
LOL, that’s the Richard I know. Hey, be happy….you won the culture war; it’s a shame your side is just now driving through the streets shooting survivors!