By Julian McCall, Staff Writer
Artwork by Haejin An, Design Lead

The United States of America is undoubtedly going through a rough patch on multiple fronts. Half a million lie dead from a botched response to COVID. Racial unrest reached a boiling point over the past summer, a tension that has continued to simmer ever since. After a reprieve due to COVID restrictions, mass shootings are back in full swing. On top of all that, we are not even three months removed from an attempt by Donald Trump supporters to overthrow the results of a democratic election. 

That the shining city upon a hill may be on fire is deeply upsetting to the American consciousness. We compare scenes of carnage in grocery stores and images of a smoldering Capitol to Baghdad or Kabul, or some other city of brown people that we’ve bombed, because this type of dysfunction only happens to them. Something must have gone horribly wrong for this to happen in America, we tell ourselves. If viewing this moment in historical isolation, it can appear as if we’re experiencing a uniquely American tragedy. However, from a long-term perspective, we may be re-living the pains of economic and cultural change that societies before ours have endured. 

For much of American history, this country’s identity was firmly rooted in Protestant Christian values, and has been dominated by white males. The blood of black bodies fertilized the soil from which the American empire grew, thanks to the God-ordained institution of slavery. Women, Muslims, and anyone else who didn’t fit into this vision were excluded from the early fruits of American power. This America existed through the mid-20th century. By then, America was a bonafide superpower, especially after WWII when the United States became the world’s premier industrial power while much of Europe and Asia lay in ruins.

Industrial power was integral to America’s rise to becoming the world’s most powerful country and served as the primary organizer of society. The Industrial Revolution not only reconfigured our economic systems, but also profoundly impacted our political, cultural, and social lives.

This Revolution was a quantum leap in human evolution, and alienation often acc-ompanied the breakneck speed of industrialization, as the centrality of the family was diminished within just a couple of generations. Suddenly disenfranchised from common farming areas and family production, many people became factory workers and wage earners, entrusting family survival to external structures. The family’s responsibilities also diminished due to industrialization’s twin process, individualization. In pre-industrial society, the family was responsible for production, consumption, socialization, and decision-making. Now, as people began earning their own wages and purchasing their own goods, and the government began providing social welfare for those unable to work, the family’s role was reduced to “little more than child-rearing, and even here it has to compete with the school, peer groups, and child-care agencies.” In just a few generations, industrialization completely changed social structures. 

Alienation and social change have consequences. During the 19th and 20th centuries, instability and revolution swept through Europe. Though their causes were complex, the ineptitude of pre-industrial government at managing industrial societies was influential in regime changes like the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. 

We are currently living through a major transformation of American society. Econ- omically, we’ve been shifting from an industrial to a post-industrial society for decades. 1979 represented peak American manufacturing-since then, manufacturing jobs have cratered. This represents not just a loss of a paycheck for millions of Americans, but also of a sense of identity. Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s Death of Despair and the Future of Capitalism explores this loss and a peculiar demographic phenomenon occurring amongst former manufacturers. The life expectancy of working-age whites without college deg- rees is declining thanks to “deaths of despair” - suicides, opioid overdoses, and alcohol-related diseases. They observe, “destroy work and, in the end, working- class life cannot survive. It is the loss of meaning, of dignity, of pride, and of self-respect that comes with the loss of marriage and of community that brings on despair, not just or even primarily the loss of money.”

Culturally, America is undergoing a deep transition from a Christian, white-male- dominated society to a more inclusive, post-Christian one. A country that owned African slaves recently had a biracial man as president. In just 20 years, the United States will be a white minority country. The old moral framework prioritizing individual freedom and personal responsibility is now challenged by an ethos emphasizing equity and inclusion. The former vanguards of America, namely white Christian men, have waged war against their societal demotion, a fight that’s made White Nationalism the top domestic terrorism threat and added Donald Trump to our list of presidents. The process of societal evolution is an inherently destabilizing one, and the uncertainty in current American life can be thought of as the growing pains of a changing society.