The Forecast...

The American Creed

Serious sailors--inland and offshore-- are also amateur meteorologists. Anyone who depends on the weather that much eventually figures out that they are going to need to pay attention. Professional forecasts often have an uneasy relationship with future conditions. One sailor I know calls them “weather guessers.” University of Washington meteorology professor Cliff Mass tells us that this is because the computer models assisting with forecasts operate under different probability assumptions.

My marine weather app enables me to examine what a list of differing weather models predict for a location I specify. I have favorite models (the European One ranks high), and I can see how they overlap and differ. We all know that forecast reliability usually deteriorates in direct proportion to future time. A two-day forecast is likely more accurate than a seven-day forecast.

Social, political, and economic forecasts have similar restrictions on reliability.

But I do want to suggest an overview of what’s going on, why it’s happening, and where we seem to be headed as a nation and a people. I’d like to get a bit more detailed than the obvious “it’s going to get more disordered before we even get a chance to re-order.” (That’s like a Pacific Northwest forecaster saying “there’s a chance of rain.”)

So in the next few posts, I’ll do what I do when I’m sailing: Examine different models, and see if we can arrive at some outcomes. Then we might know how we can set sail and navigate.

courtesy Nano Bananna

My first model is taken from Samuel L. Huntington’s 1984 book “The Politics of Disharmony.” Huntington was a professor of history at Harvard University. His book explores a fundamental tension at the heart of the American identity, arguing that America’s unique stress is not based in a class struggle, but originates from the gap between its ideals and its institutional reality.

Huntington posits that Americans share a core set of values known as the “American Creed”: liberty, equality, individualism, democracy, and the rule of law. However, by their very nature, human institutions (governments, bureaucracies, and hierarchies) are often unequal, coercive, and restrictive.

Perhaps you have noticed that the “Swamp” that Donald Trump promised to drain has become more like a swampland- MireALago.

The idea of “draining the swamp” is not new. The “American Creed” is by definition anti-authoritarian, it will therefore always be in conflict with the reality of the US Government. This conflict leads to the ongoing paradox in our history: The more the government tries to govern effectively, the more it violates the American Creed, by becoming unequal, coercive, and restrictive. And that leads us to become cynical about our government.

This is why history professor Heather Cox Richardson keeps telling us that we’ve been here before. Huntington might respond, “and we shall be again.” Americans have reacted to this paradox in a number of ways. See how many of these have affected you:

• Moralism | An intense effort to eliminate the gap by reforming institutions to match the Creed (the “Creedal Passion” periods).

• Cynicism | Acknowledging the gap but losing faith in the ideals altogether.

• Complacency | Ignoring the gap and remaining indifferent to the discrepancy.

• Hypocrisy | Denying that a gap exists and insisting that institutions perfectly embody the Creed.

In between the Disharmony periods of our history, we have periods of “Creedal Passion,” times when Americans attempt to force their institutions back in line with the Creed. These periods are usually lead by the youth, involve a surge in political participation, and are deeply hostile to “big” power (government, corporations, oligarchs, etc.). People my age will immediately think of the Civil Rights Movement, or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

It will not surprise you that Huntington observes that these cycles occur roughly every 60 years.

This is the decade it comes due.

Huntington argues that the US is in a unique position among the nations. We’re not held together by ancestry, ethnic purity, or allegiance to a royal family. The Creed is the only thing that keeps us functioning together, the lump in our throat when we pledge allegiance to the flag, “with Liberty and Justice for all.”

So when the Regime removes checks and balances, flouts the rule of law, and allows federal agents to illegally detain and murder citizens in our streets, the country begins to fragment under that disharmony.

But Huntington argues that the Disharmony period is a functional necessity for our country. If Americans ever fully accepted their institutions as they are, they would lose their identity. If they ever perfectly achieved their ideals, the government would likely collapse from a lack of authority. The navigation of the gap between the ideals and the reality IS the non-dual work that is our calling.

America is not a lie; it is a disappointment.

But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.

-Samuel L. Huntington

During former periods of Disharmony, conservatives and liberals disagreed on how to achieve common creedal ideals, and eventually navigated a way forward.

But those who apply Huntington’s theories to our current situation argue that this time around, the disharmony is dangerous, because our former common Creed has been fundamentally fragmented. Left and Right political factions each have their own definitions of Liberty and Equality, for example. The Right is arguing for a uni-racial America. The Left is arguing for a more fluid acceptance of gender. Shall the twain ever meet? On what ground?

The medium of the Internet and the modalities of social media only heighten and emotionally charge both our disappointment in our domestic situation and our embarrassment on the world stage.

Huntington wrote, “The promise of American politics is not the elimination of the gap, but the perpetual striving to close it.”

This is one of the models. It has a lot of history to recommend it. But however familiar it seems, maybe it’s not equal to fully explaining our current conditions, or posing a viable solution.

The astute reader will have already identified some of these unexplained items.

It’s like watching the barometer over my ship’s navigation table start to fall, when the forecast I just read is for fair weather.

Next post: We’ll go to another model seeking to explain and predict, and see if the two models can get us a better grip on what’s happening now, and maybe.... what’s likely to happen next.