A new politics for a new dream
by James Gustave Speth
Photograph | Peter Bedhnorz | Corbis
Part one of this article.
WE NEED A COMPELLING VISION for a new future, a vision of a better
country—America the Possible—that is still within our power to reach.
The deep, transformative changes sketched in the first half of this
manifesto provide a path to America the Possible. But that path is only
brought to life when we can combine this vision with the conviction that
we will pull together to build the necessary political muscle for real
change. This article addresses both the envisioning of an attractive
future for America and the politics needed to realize it. A future worth
having awaits us, if we are willing to struggle and sacrifice for it.
It won’t come easy, but little that is worth having ever does.
By 2050, America the Possible will have marshaled the economic and
political resources to successfully address the long list of challenges,
including basic social justice, real global security, environmental
sustainability, true popular sovereignty, and economic democracy. As a
result, family incomes in America will be far more equal, similar to the
situation in the Nordic countries and Japan today. Large-scale poverty
and income insecurity will be things of the past. Good jobs will be
guaranteed to all those who want to work. Our health-care and
educational systems will be among the best in the world, as will our
standing in child welfare and equality of women. Racial and ethnic
disparities will be largely eliminated. Social bonds will be strong. The
overlapping webs of encounter and participation that were once
hallmarks of America, “a nation of joiners,” will have been rebuilt,
community life will be vibrant, and community development efforts
plentiful. Trust in each other, and even in government, will be high.
Today’s big social problems—guns and homicides, drugs and
incarceration, white-collar crime and Wall Street hijinks—will have come
down to acceptable levels. Big national challenges like the national
debt, illegal immigration, the future of social security, oil imports
and the shift to sustainable energy, and environmental and consumer
protection will have been successfully addressed. U.S. emissions of
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will have been reduced to a
tiny fraction compared to today.
Internationally, the United States will assume the role of a normal
nation. Military spending will be reduced to a level close to Europe’s
today; military interventions will be rare and arms sales small. The
resources thus freed up will be deployed to join with other nations in
addressing climate change and other global environmental threats,
nuclear proliferation, world poverty and underdevelopment, and other
global challenges. The U.S. will be a leader in strengthening the
institutions of global governance and international regulation, and we
will be a member in good standing of the long list of treaties and other
international agreements in which we do not now participate.
Politically, implementation of prodemocracy reforms will have saved
our politics from corporate control and the power of money, and these
reforms will have brought us to an unprecedented level of true popular
sovereignty. Moreover, government in America will again be respected for
its competence and efficiency. And, yes, taxes will be higher,
especially for those with resources.
Overall, the economy will be governed to ensure broadly shared
prosperity and to preserve the integrity and biological richness of the
natural world. It will simply be assumed that the priority of economic
activity is to sustain human and natural communities. Investment will
concentrate in areas with high social and environmental returns even
where not justified by financial returns, and it will be guided by
democratically determined priorities at the national and local levels.
Corporations will be under effective public control, and new patterns of
business ownership and management—involving workers, communities, and
other stakeholders—will be the norm. Consumerism will be replaced by the
search for meaning and fulfillment in nonmaterial ways, and progress
will be measured by new indicators of well-being other than GDP.
This recitation seems idealistic today, but the truth is we know how
to do these things. Our libraries are full of plausible, affordable
policy options, budget proposals, and institutional innovations that
could realize these and other important objectives. And today’s world is
full of useful models we can adapt to our circumstances.
NEW VALUES
Many thoughtful Americans have concluded that addressing our many
challenges will require the rise of a new consciousness, with different
values becoming dominant in American culture. For some, it is a
spiritual awakening—a transformation of the human heart. For others it
is a more intellectual process of coming to see the world anew and
deeply embracing the emerging ethic of the environment and the old ethic
of what it means to love thy neighbor as thyself. But for all, the
possibility of a sustainable and just future will require major cultural
change and a reorientation regarding what society values and prizes
most highly.
In America the Possible, our dominant culture will have shifted, from today to tomorrow, in the following ways:
- from seeing humanity as something apart from nature, transcending and
dominating it, to seeing ourselves as part of nature, offspring of its
evolutionary process, close kin to wild things, and wholly dependent on
its vitality and the finite services it provides;
- from seeing nature in strictly utilitarian terms—humanity’s resource
to exploit as it sees fit for economic and other purposes—to seeing the
natural world as having intrinsic value independent of people and having
rights that create the duty of ecological stewardship;
- from discounting the future, focusing severely on the near term, to
taking the long view and recognizing duties to future generations;
- from today’s hyperindividualism and narcissism, and the resulting
social isolation, to a powerful sense of community and social solidarity
reaching from the local to the cosmopolitan;
- from the glorification of violence, the acceptance of war, and the
spreading of hate and invidious divisions to the total abhorrence of
these things;
- from materialism and consumerism to the prioritization of personal and
family relationships, learning, experiencing nature, spirituality,
service, and living within limits;
- from tolerating gross economic, social, and political inequality to demanding a high measure of equality in all these spheres.
We actually know important things about how values and culture can be
changed. One sure path to cultural change is, unfortunately, the
cataclysmic event—the crisis—that profoundly challenges prevailing
values and delegitimizes the status quo. The Great Depression is the
classic example. I think we can be confident that we haven’t seen the
end of major crises.
Two other key factors in cultural change are leadership and social
narrative. Leaders have enormous potential to change minds, and in the
process they can change the course of history. And there is some
evidence that Americans are ready for another story. Large majorities of
Americans, when polled, express disenchantment with today’s lifestyles
and offer support for values similar to those urged here.
Another way in which values are changed is through social movements.
Social movements are about consciousness raising, and, if successful,
they can help usher in a new consciousness—perhaps we are seeing its
birth today. When it comes to issues of social justice, peace, and
environment, the potential of faith communities is vast as well.
Spiritual awakening to new values and new consciousness can also derive
from literature, philosophy, and science. Consider, for example, the
long tradition of “reverence for life” stretching back over twenty-two
hundred years to Emperor Ashoka of India and carried forward by Albert
Schweitzer, Aldo Leopold, Thomas Berry, E. O. Wilson, Terry Tempest
Williams, and others.
Education, of course, can also contribute enormously to cultural
change. Here one should include education in the largest sense,
embracing not only formal education but also day-to-day and experiential
education as well as the fast-developing field of social marketing.
Social marketing has had notable successes in moving people away from
bad behaviors such as smoking and drunk driving, and its approaches
could be applied to larger cultural change as well.
A major and very hopeful path lies in seeding the landscape with
innovative, instructive models. In the United States today, there is a
proliferation of innovative models of community revitalization and
business enterprise. Local currencies, slow money, state Genuine
Progress Indicators, locavorism—these are bringing the future into the
present in very concrete ways. These actual models will grow in
importance as communities search for visions of how the future should
look, and they can change minds—seeing is believing. Cultural
transformation won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible either.
AVERTING DISASTER
High on any list of our duties to future generations must be the
imperative to keep open for them as many options and choices as
possible. That is our generation’s gift of freedom. Here, the first
order of business is to preserve the possibility of a bright future by
preventing any of today’s looming disasters from spinning out of control
or otherwise becoming so overwhelming that they monopolize resources of
time, energy, and money, thus foreclosing other options. My list of
biggest threats includes the following:
- severe disruption of global climate
- widespread exhaustion, erosion, and toxification of the planet’s natural resources and life-support systems
- militarism and permanent war
- major economic or financial collapse, possibly linked to failing energy supply and soaring prices
- runaway terrorism and resulting loss of civil liberties
- pandemics and antibiotic resistance
- social and cultural decay, including the rise of criminality
- hollowing out of democracy and the dominance of corporatocracy and plutocracy
- something weird from the lab (nanotech? robotics? genetic engineering? a new weapon system? indefinite life extension?)
Much ink has been spilled warning us about these threats, and we must
take them very seriously. In America the Possible, these warnings have
been taken seriously and the threats avoided. We can already see the
problems leading to all of the threats listed, but we are not yet fated
to experience their worst.
THE VIRTUES OF NECESSITY
Even with disaster averted, there are still powerful constraints and
limits on future options. And there are the lessons from positive
psychology about what contributes to happy, fulfilling lives. In fact,
three sets of developments are coming together and are pushing us to
nothing less than a new way of living: the imperative to protect the
climate and the earth’s living systems; the need to adjust to the rise
of scarcities in energy and other resources; and the desire to shift
national priorities to things that truly improve social well-being and
happiness.
If we manage these factors well, the result could be a blessing in
disguise, leading us to a new and better place—and a higher quality of
life both individually and socially. Life in America the Possible will
tend strongly in these directions:
RELOCALIZATION. Economic and social life will be rooted in the
community and the region. More production will be local and regional,
with shorter, less complex supply chains, especially for food. Business
enterprises will be more rooted and committed to the long-term
well-being of employees and their communities, and they will be
supported by local currencies and local financial institutions. People
will live closer to work, walk more, and travel less. Energy production
will be distributed and decentralized, and predominantly renewable.
Socially, community bonds will be strong; relationships with neighbors
will be unpretentious and important; civic associations and community
service groups plentiful; levels of trust and support for teachers and
caregivers high. Personal security, tolerance of difference, and empathy
will be high, and violence, fear, and hate low. Politically, local
governance will stress participatory, direct, and deliberative
democracy. Citizens will be seized with the responsibility to
sustainably manage and extend the commons—the valuable assets that
belong to everyone—through community land trusts at the local level, for
example, and an atmospheric trust at the national level.
NEW BUSINESS MODELS. Locally-owned businesses, including
worker-owned, customer-owned, and community-owned firms will be
prominent, as will hybrid business models such as profit-nonprofit and
public-private hybrids. Cooperation will replace or moderate
competition. Business incubators will help entrepreneurs with arranging
finance, technical assistance, and other support. Enterprises of all
types will stress environmental and social responsibility.
PLENITUDE. Consumerism, where people find meaning and
acceptance through what they consume, will be supplanted by the search
for abundance in things that truly matter and that bring happiness and
joy—family, friends, the natural world, meaningful work. Status and
recognition will go to those who earn trust and provide needed services.
Individuals and communities will enjoy a strong rebirth of reskilling,
crafts, and self-provisioning. Overconsumption will be replaced by new
investment in civic culture, natural amenities, ecological restoration,
education, and community development.
MORE TIME; SLOWER LIVES. Formal work hours will be cut back,
freeing up time for family, friends, hobbies, continuing education,
skills development, caregiving, volunteering, sports, outdoor
recreation, exploring nature, and participating in the arts. Life will
be slower, less frenetic; frugality and thrift prized and wastefulness
shunned; ostentatious displays of conspicuous consumption avoided;
mindfulness and living simply prized.
NEW GOODS AND SERVICES. Products will be more durable and
versatile and easy to repair, with components that can be reused or
recycled. Production systems will be designed to mimic biological ones,
with waste eliminated or turned into useful inputs elsewhere. The
provision of services will replace the purchase of many goods; sharing,
collaborative consumption, lending, and leasing will be commonplace.
RESONANCE WITH NATURE. Environmental protection regulations
will be tough and demanding, and energy used with maximum efficiency.
Zero discharge of traditional pollutants, toxics, and greenhouse gases
will be the norm. Directly or indirectly, prices will reflect the true
environmental costs. Schools will stress environmental education and
pursue “no child left inside” programs. Natural areas and zones of high
ecological significance will be protected. Green chemistry will replace
the use of toxics and hazardous substances. Organic farming will
eliminate pesticide and herbicide use. Environmental restoration and
cleanup programs will be major focuses of community concern. There will
be a palpable sense that economic and social activity is nested in the
natural world and that we are close kin to wild things.
MORE EQUALITY. Because large inequalities are at the root of
so many social and environmental problems, measures to ensure greater
equality—not only of opportunity but also of outcomes—will be in place.
Because life is simpler, more frugal, more caring, and less grasping,
and people will be less status conscious and possessive, there will be
more to go around and a high degree of economic equality. Special
programs will ensure that seniors have income protections and
opportunities to pursue their passions in second and third careers.
CHILDREN CENTERED, NOT GROWTH CENTERED. Overall economic
growth will not be seen as a priority, and GDP will be seen as a
misleading measure of well-being and progress. Instead, indicators of
community wealth creation—including measures of social and natural
capital—will be closely watched, and special attention will be given to
children and young people—their education and their right to loving
care, shelter, good nutrition, health care, a toxic-free environment,
and freedom from violence.
HUMAN SCALE AND RESILIENT. The economy and the enterprises
within it will not be too big to understand, appreciate, and manage
successfully. A key motivation will be to maintain resilience—the
capacity to absorb disturbance and outside shocks without disastrous
consequences. We can think of today’s American economy as a giant,
unitary system—highly complex and thoroughly integrated and
interdependent, so that the failure of one component such as banking
causes a cascade of failures throughout the system. The economy in
America the Possible is, by contrast, diverse and decentralized, a
collection of more self-reliant but interacting units that provide
redundancy and resilience.
GLOCALISM. Despite the many ways life will be more local, and
the resulting temptation toward parochialism and provincialism,
Americans will feel a sense of belonging and citizenship at larger
levels of social and political organization, and will support
global-level governance in the numerous areas where it is needed, such
as environmental issues.
DEMOCRACY REBORN
It is simply unimaginable that American politics as we know it today
will deliver the transformative changes needed. Political reform and
building a new and powerful progressive movement in America must be
priority number one. Above all else, we must build a new democratic
reality—a government truly of, by, and for the people.
A foundation of democracy is the principle that all citizens should have
a right to participate as equals in the actual process of governing.
All should have a right to vote, to have access to relevant information,
to speak up, associate with others, and participate. Votes should count
equally, the majority should prevail, subject to respect for basic
rights, and the issues taken up should be the important ones society
faces. These are ideals by which America’s current situation as well as
our political reform agenda should be judged. Viewed this way, we are
coming up far short on democracy and political equality. What we are
seeing instead is the steady emergence of plutocracy and corporatocracy.
That the list of most-needed reforms to our political system is so
long is testimony to how flawed the current system actually is.
- We need to both expand and protect the process of voting. Voter
registration should be the default position: upon reaching the age of
eighteen, citizens would be automatically registered, as is common in
advanced democracies. Once registered, voting can be made easier in a
number of ways: early voting should be extended; election day should be
made a national holiday; ballots should be made simpler and voting less
confusing; and campaigns to discourage and suppress voting through
intimidating and deceptive practices should be prohibited and penalized.
A national elections commission should be charged with providing for
election administration and monitoring by impartial and well-trained
election officials; for certification and testing of voting machines;
for voter-verified paper trails to serve as the official ballots for
recounts and audits; and generally for the integrity and accuracy of the
voting process.
- We need a constitutional amendment to provide for direct popular
election of the president. As long as that remains a bridge too far,
state legislatures should agree to assign all of a state’s electoral
votes to the candidate winning the national popular vote for president,
but only if and when enough states make the commitment to total at least
270 electoral votes (the number needed to win in the Electoral
College). Thus far nine states—including California, Hawai‘i, Illinois,
Maryland, New Jersey, Washington, and Massachusetts—with half the
electoral votes needed to win, have made such pledges. Another way to
bring more democracy to presidential elections would be to increase
House membership by 50 percent, a good idea in its own right.
- Reform of our current system of primary elections is also in order.
There are many possibilities here, but a key goal is to broaden
participation in primaries beyond each party’s core. One way to do that
is to have structured open primaries—where registered independents can
vote in either party’s primary.
- The partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts should be
stopped. District lines should be drawn by independent, nonpartisan
commissions.
- We need to break the two-party duopoly. To do that, we need a
process for voting that will encourage third parties without making them
spoilers, will ensure that every vote counts in the end result and is
not wasted, and will ensure that winners have the support of the
majority of voters. This would be accomplished by instant-runoff voting
(IRV), the process by which voters rank the candidates in order of
preference. Low-scoring candidates—often third-party ones—are eliminated
in the vote counting, and their voters’ second choices are added to
those that remain until one candidate has a majority. Even more
attractive, fusion voting allows a minority party to list as its
candidate on the ballot the candidate of another party. Fusion thus
allows third parties to bargain with the two major parties for the best
representation they can get.
- The Senate needs a host of reforms, including abolishing the
current practice of filibusters. Given the way filibusters are now
managed, senators representing a mere 11 percent of the U.S. population
can exercise effective control over legislation, at least in theory. And
there is another, but difficult, way to bring more democracy to the
Senate: with congressional approval, large states could decide to
subdivide into two or more smaller ones.
- The most important prodemocracy reform is to undermine the power of
money in our elections and in lobbying. The emphasis of campaign
finance reform should be on encouraging small donor contributions and
public funding of elections—the democratization of campaign finance
itself. The Fair Elections Now Act, introduced in Congress in April
2011, embodies this approach for congressional elections and has many
supporters in the House and Senate. Several states have already pursued
the approach with success. Candidates who participated in “clean” or
“fair” state election programs similar to Fair Elections Now hold about
85 percent of the legislative seats in Maine and around 75 percent in
Connecticut.
- Major efforts should be pursued to address the many problems created by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United,
which opened the floodgates to unrestricted campaign spending by
corporations and unions. Amending the Constitution should be a priority,
in the process depriving corporations of constitutional personhood. Or
Congress could regulate the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision, as
Democrats tried unsuccessfully to do in 2010 with the Disclose Act
proposal. At least it would have required disclosure of the source of
campaign spending. There are two other attractive ideas for regulation.
One would require that corporate boards, or even the shareholders
themselves, approve all campaign spending initiatives. A second
regulation would greatly strengthen the requirement that these corporate
contributions be truly independent—that is, not coordinated in any way
with the candidate being supported. And, of course, the court could
simply reverse itself, for example, if a new justice were appointed to
replace one of the five in the majority.
- Candidate access to the media should be enhanced, and the power of
money reduced, by ensuring that all carriers and service providers offer
full access to political speech at rates offered to the most favored
commercial customers and by requiring that broadcasters provide
candidates with a minimum amount of free airtime as a condition of
receiving their federal licenses.
- Much needs to be done to tighten regulation of lobbying. There
should be a ban on registered lobbyists engaging in campaign
fundraising—no contributions to campaigns from lobbyists, no lobbyist
bundling of multiple contributions, and no other form of lobbyist
fundraising for federal candidates. Connecticut enacted such a ban on
“pay to play” in 2005. “Strategic consulting” for congressional offices
should be classified as lobbying. Congressional staff should be further
professionalized, enlarged, and better paid in order to reduce the
current dependence on lobbyists’ information and analysis. The offices
serving Congress, such as the Congressional Research Service and the
Government Accountability Office, should be strengthened for these same
reasons. Appropriate restrictions should be placed on the lobbying
activities of large government contractors, and stricter revolving door
provisions should be adopted. As an extension of federal laws regulating
lobbying and requiring disclosure of lobbying expenditures,
organizations should be required to disclose expenditures pursuant to
major-issue campaigns aimed at affecting federal legislation, just as
narrowly defined “lobbying” expenses are now disclosed. Also, all
sponsors and direct or indirect funders of public-issue ads should be
required to be identified in those ads along with an announcement like
those in today’s campaign ads approving and taking responsibility for
the contents.
Beyond these changes in the rules of American politics, other changes
are needed to strengthen both journalism and government transparency,
to restore disinterest to the courts, to rebuild large membership
institutions like labor unions that can magnify the strength of the
otherwise isolated voter, and to rebuild competency in our oft-maligned
and now depleted civil services.
We won’t get far in addressing the challenges we now face unless we
are a competent nation with a competent government. And this competence
in turn requires, above all, education and public integrity. Education
is essential not just for building the skills needed in today’s
high-tech economy, but also for building a capacious understanding of
the world in which we live. Public integrity includes not just integrity
at the personal level, but also the capacity to elevate the public good
over private gain.
A UNIFIED MOVEMENT
When one considers all the ways in which our politics begs for change
and reform, it is easy to see why so little of what is needed is
actually accomplished. A prodemocracy agenda like the one described here
must move to top priority. Such an agenda should be a priority for all
progressive communities, and should draw support from Americans across
the political spectrum.
Let us never forget that faith in democracy and fighting for it are
acts of affirmation. In democracy, we affirm that we trust our fellow
citizens—that we count on each other. Whether we win or lose the coming
struggle for democracy in America, we claim that high ground.
But to drive real change in politics and in public policy, we need to
build a powerful, unified progressive movement. Few of the measures our
country needs are likely to get very far without a vigorous social and
political movement that we don’t now have. In today’s America,
progressive ideas are unlikely to be turned into action unless they are
promoted by powerful citizen demand.
Successful movements for serious change are launched in protest
against key features of the established order. They are nurtured on
outrage at the severe injustices being perpetrated, the core values
being threatened, or the undesirable future that is unfolding. And they
demand real change. Here one is reminded of Frederick Douglass’s famous
1857 statement about the challenge to slavery: “If there is no struggle
there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet
deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the
ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the
ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a
moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will.” If progressives hope to
succeed, then the movement must capture the spirit of Frederick
Douglass.
What must now be built with urgency is a unified progressive
community. The silos separating the various progressive communities must
be breached. To succeed, there must be a fusion of progressive causes,
the forging of a common agenda, and the building of a mighty force on
the ground, at the grass roots. Progressives of all stripes must come
together to build a true community of outlook, interest, and engagement,
as well as the organizational infrastructure to strengthen the
progressive movement on an ongoing basis.
Our best hope for real change is a movement created by a fusion of
people concerned about environment, social justice, true democracy, and
peace into one powerful progressive force. We have to recognize that we
are all communities of a shared fate. In particular, progressives must
focus on electoral politics far, far more than they have in the past.
The 2008 Obama campaign shows what can be done. For the progressive
movement to secure a powerful place in American politics, it will
require major efforts at grassroots organizing, strengthening groups
working at the state and community levels, reaching out to broaden
membership and participation, and developing motivational messages and
moral appeals. It will also require building partylike organizations,
creating political action committees (PACs), and fielding candidates.
Regarding the language we use and the messages we seek to convey, I
can see clearly now that we environmentalists have been too wonkish and
too focused on technical fixes. We have not developed well the capacity
to speak in a language that goes straight to the American heart,
resonates with both core moral values and common aspirations, and
projects a positive and compelling vision. Throughout my forty-odd years
in the environmental community, public discourse on environment has
been dominated by lawyers, scientists, and economists—people like me.
Now we need to hear a lot more from the preachers, the poets, the
psychologists, and the philosophers. And our message must be one that is
founded on hope and honest possibility.
Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is
local,” and a progressive movement must stress building locally, from
the bottom up. We all live local lives, and if more and more people are
to become engaged politically, engaging them locally is imperative. When
we add that most of the promising things happening in America today are
happening at the community level, the case is compelling for linking
progressive initiatives at the local level to building a national
progressive movement—community action melded to a national strategy.
Movements gather strength when people realize that they are being
victimized and that there are many others in the same boat, and it helps
when they are able to identify and point to those responsible—the
villains of the story. Many on the right work hard and with consummate
cynicism to raise the specter of “class warfare” when, for example,
efforts are launched to tax the rich a bit more. With admirable candor,
businessman Warren Buffett, an advocate for fairer taxes and one of the
wealthiest men in America, has said, “There’s class warfare, all right,
but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re
winning.” In 1936, Harold Lasswell wrote
Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How.
He declared that “the study of politics is the study of influence and
the influential . . . the influential are those who get the most of what
there is to get. . . . Those who get the most are elite; the rest are
mass.” Today, the elite have gotten about all there is to get, and the
great mass of people have gotten the shaft.
An invigorated American progressive movement must also embrace the
accumulated knowledge that generations of thoughtful scholars have made
possible. With the right seemingly disavowing good science at every
turn, it is doubly important that progressives draw heavily on the
contributions of our impressive scientific community. Nothing against
faith, but the scientific content of public policy issues is increasing
steadily, and progressives won’t be leading in the right directions
without such an embrace. And while progressives should both appeal to
moral values and kick up a ruckus, it remains important to ground
appeals and campaigns on solid analysis, accurate history, and facts.
They go together well. As Stephen Colbert has quipped, “The facts have a
well-known liberal bias.”
In the end, the most meaningful changes will almost certainly require
a large-scale rebirth of marches, protests, demonstrations, direct
action, and nonviolent civil disobedience. Protests are important to
dramatize issues, show the depth of concern, attract public and media
attention, build sympathetic support, raise public consciousness, and
put issues on the agenda. No one who followed events in Egypt or the
Wisconsin State House, or who remembers the civil rights and anti-war
protests of the 1960s and 1970s, can doubt their importance. Author and
social critic Chris Hedges urges that “civil disobedience, which will
entail hardship and suffering, which will be long and difficult, which
at its core means self-sacrifice, is the only mechanism left.” Those
words ring true to those who have worked for decades to elicit a
meaningful response to the existential threat of climate change and who
find, after all the effort, only ashes.
There are ongoing historical trends that require the development of
the progressive movement sought here. The widespread persistence of
relative poverty at home and absolute poverty abroad; the growth of
economic inequality now matching that of 1928; the rapid exhaustion of
the planet’s renewable and nonrenewable resources; the impossibility of
continuous exponential growth on a finite planet; the destruction of the
climate regime that has existed throughout human civilization; the
drift to militarism and endless war—these warn us that business as usual
is not an option.
America the Possible awaits us, if we are prepared to struggle—to put
it all on the line. If the future is to be one we wish for our
grandchildren, we had better get started building this progressive
movement without delay. Given the deplorable conditions on so many
fronts, the day will surely come when large numbers of Americans will
conclude, with Howard Beale’s character in Network, “I’m as mad as hell
and I’m not going to take this anymore!” The progressive movement must
not only be ready for that day, it must also hasten its arrival.
