Our America: Egypt

- By Max Page

This post is not meant to be optimistic.  It feels almost dirty to be optimistic at this moment.

I came of age politically when Ronald Reagan was elected. I was depressed for weeks.  And I was right to be — what he launched was thirty years of neoliberal economics and social meanness that we have only begun to unravel.  I grew up in that shadow.  And now, having just turned 50, I feel that I’ll spend the rest of my life working with allies to undo the damage of what is about to occur.

Another layer of awful is that this was and is a populist moment.  The populism of Bernie Sanders was angry at the right culprits, welcoming of all who shared a desire to reclaim a more fair and equal nation.   But there is a long history in this country of a different populism, one fed and sustained by resentment — of African-Americans, of immigrants (switching easy from Jews to Italians to the Irish, and on and on), of LGBTGQ citizens, of people with special needs.  I truly feel like millions might have been drawn toward a welcoming, capacious populism had we had an authentic bearer of that message and plan. Instead, the worst angels of our our political culture were deployed and exploited. 

Achieving our country, in Richard Rorty’s words, feels further away than ever — which just might mean that the journey will be that much longer, and require more comrades.  I keep coming back to the words of Michael Walzer, at the end of Exodus and Revolution, that seem as relevant as ever.  He writes that we must believe,

“first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt”; “second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land”; “and third, that ‘the way to the land is through the wilderness.’  There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.”

Max Page is Professor of Architecture and History at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

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