History sometimes comes on the stage with a Big Bang. Nukes over Japan in 1945 come to mind. So does the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Empire in 1991. But more often it creeps upon us with little cat feet…like the fog (with apologies to Carl Sandburg).
And sometimes it does both. Like now. The Tea Party movement largely triumphed in last week’s elections. That qualifies as an electoral Big Bang. But there’s something else afoot…something creeping up on us with those little cat feet….
My buddy Frank has argued that "the future of America is to be like South America." That is, our political/government/ruling classes are essentially following the 20th Century "Argentinian model," featuring the destruction of the middle classes through government overspending, which in turn destroys the national currency, which in turn destroys the standad of living for the middle classes. The rich upper classes survive quite nicely, thank-you-very-much, because they have the wherewithal to avoid the destruction (mostly through hiring experts to make it so). The bottom class doesn’t suffer much more than they already are, since they live on the "economic bottom" anyway. They are merely joined in their misery by what was formerly the middle class. Thus, an economy with a rich top class…a bottom class…and nothing in between. No middle.
The results of the elections may be giving us a glimpse what History has in store for us…and my buddy Frank may be right in his prediction.
After surveying the lay of the political and economic land after the elections, columnist (and TV commentator) Bill O’Reilly concludes that "[W]hile the rest of the country has thrown the big-spending rascals out, the liberal power structure holds on in select areas no matter how dismal the economy is…." Those "select areas" include the West Coast and the East Coast and big cities north of the Mason-Dixon line. In those areas, notes O’Reilly, "the ‘where’s mine’ culture has taken deep root…people want stuff from government, and deficits be damned."
The result? "[T]he United States is not really united anymore. We arre now a nation of coalitions."
Have we got any proof that the United States is starting to come apart, driven in some ways by the same dynamic that destroyed Argentina as a world-leading nation in the 20th Century? It would seem so. Here’s part of a column by Debra J. Sanders in Townhall Daily, commenting on the election results in California:
Already, the state is developing what Chapman University fellow Joel Kotkin called in this summer’s City Journal a "bifurcated social structure" — with lots of rich people, lots of poor people who can mow their lawns, but a thinning middle class.
California Lutheran University found that California suffered a steep decline — steeper than in other states — in households earning between $35,000 and $70,000. Unfortunately, new progressives — like Brown — "favor policies such as ‘smart growth’ and an insistence on ‘renewable’ energy sources" that, Kotkin wrote, could make certain areas "look like a gated-community."
Already, I’ve heard grumbling from folks who are making plans to pull up stakes because they feel as if they are being squeezed by California’s high taxes and declining standard of living. Sure, it’s probably just talk. But California can’t afford to lose a single one of the 140,000 households that earned more than $480,000 in 2008, and represent 1 percent of tax filers, yet pay almost half of the state’s income taxes.
IS IT "just talk"? The American people are among the most mobile in the world, and we have no internal passports for travel among the states. Saunders reveals that Internet zillionaire Meg Whitman—who Jerry Brown beat in the election for governor of California—"told me in March that if she had to start eBay all over again, she’d probably locate in Texas."
The old saying: "As goes California, so goes America." That is, it all starts there. And today, California is Argentina in the early 20th Century.
To mix a full set of metaphors, California is also a canary in the coal mine of America. The canary is being stalked by that historical cat…the one who creeps upon us with little cat feet.
Watch California.