Our polarized politics has reached an extreme in the Age of Trump, but the forces at play are eternal. Government is supposed to provide benefits to the governed. What do the people want? On the most rudimentary level, freedom to go about their business, protection from danger, access to the tools needed to prosper.
Almost immediately, divisions appear, as the founders discovered. Jefferson, the Virginian, believed in a country of yeomen farmers (and slaveholders). Hamilton, the New Yorker, believed in a country of manufactures. These implied different views of the importance of banking, infrastructure, trade, and tariffs.
Disagreement about ends produce political factions promising different means. Abolitionists wanted to free slaves on moral grounds. Slaveholders wanted to to be free to own them on economic grounds.
In the Gilded Age, as always but more so, money tended to talk. Industrialists wanted cheap labor they could exploit, trade policy that favored the bottom line, infrastructure to get raw materials to the factory and finished products to market. Workers wanted a minimum wage, union representations, better working conditions, shorter hours, pensions.
In such cases, political power decides which side prospers. The fat cats could buy politicians, but there were a lot more workers with votes than plutocrats. For a long time the plutocrats controlled power, but in the Progressive Era the lopsidedness became too great to ignore and the the power shifted enough to give some help to the working class.
In “The Last Hurrah” and The Godfather,” two depictions of street level politics are presented.
In the first, Frank Skeffington is an old-fashioned city mayor who heads a powerful machine. He has a man in every ward, particularly those of the Irish from which he rose. They listen to complaints, help iron out trouble with the landlord, see to the potholes, attend funerals, get help for the widow and orphan, and provide other constituent services in exchange for a vote.
The Godfather begins by providing many of the same services for a powerless, discriminated against immigrant class in the slums of a big city. They have no political clout, but they can have a godfather who will look after them in exchange for fealty. Pledge loyalty and your enemies will be become his enemies.
Though they appear similar on the surface, a service in exchange for a service, the Skeffingtons of the time began by actually caring about their people and aimed to redress an imbalance of power. Unfortunately, any political machine is all too subject to corruption. But the Godfather’s machine was a criminal enterprise that existed only to serve itself by any means necessary.
Often one party may exist to serve the needs of the business class through low taxes and regulation and friendly trade policies on the theory that what’s good for General Motors is good for America, as GM President “Engine” Charlie Wilson said when he was named Ike’s Secretary of Defense. A competing party may seek to meet the needs of labor or minorities, aiming to get people better wages, better schools, a cop on the beat, affordable healthcare. a social safety net.
When the system works well, a happy medium may be arrived at. A moderate middle can curb the excesses of the extremes. But when the polarization becomes too great, often in times of economic stress when the middle is hollowed out, compromise fails and “chaos is come again.”
Then the apocalyptic politician may arrive, one who thrives on raising fears of enemies real and imagined, and then promises to protect you from them, and the threat they pose to your well-being and way of life. History is filled with these awful moments and the horror to which they can lead: the concentration camp, the gas chamber, the pogram, coups, show trials, ethnic cleansing, re-education camps, the Gulag, blood in the streets.
It has happened here, too, of course, A Civil War, the trail of tears, the reign of Judge Lynch, the Red Scare, the McCarthyite witch hunt, blacklists, private armies shooting strikers, race riots, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the Klan, bigotry against every race, ethnicity, class and religion.
Fear empowers the tyrant and can make the law impotent. And any pretext can serve to inflame the gullible. We are living in such a time. Demagogues seek to gain or retain power by preaching against Jews, Muslims, immigrant caravans, a War on Christmas, forced abortions, open borders, the conspiracy of a global elite, the black helicopters, the deep state, the plot to repeal the Second Amendment, foreigners stealing American jobs. “Fake News,” “Build the Wall!” Lock her up!” “Knock the crap out of them!” “I alone can fix it!”
Count me as a sentimental old fool, but I’m hoping we can find a way to return to moderation, a balance of powers, checks and balances, constitutional government, the rule of law, comity, civility, compromise. It may seem cartoonishly naive to yearn for a time when we tried to believe in truth, justice and the American Way, but Frank Skeffington looks like a philosopher king and the godfather a minor nuisance compared to the polar opposite we seem to be careening towards. The triumph of the demagogue leads only to war, famine, pestilence, and death.