The 20th century saw the emergence of three ideologies—communism, fascism, and National Socialism— which were designed to replace and/or reform extant political, social, and economic systems. In addition to the common denominator of micromanaging and/or mandating virtually all aspects of society, these ideologies promised to redress the travesties of history, which would improve ordinary people’s material circumstances.
In 21st-century America, emergent ideologies likewise seek to replace and/or reform the extant political, social, and economic order and redress the travesties of U.S. history. However, there is an interesting distinction.
In what can be described as a novel application of “American Exceptionalism,” 21st-century American ideologies do not promise to improve ordinary people’s material circumstances. Instead, they promise an across-the-board reduction of those circumstances.
The ideologues don’t seem to have considered the fact that the populace is accustomed to the on-demand availability of goods and services on a scale and scope without precedent. They tell people that their future will have less choice, fewer options, less mobility, less disposable income, less privacy, less heat/cooling, less energy, etc. It is a lengthy list.
Image: The good life in America, circa 1960, by AI (which really struggled with those chairs).
It should be noted that, in America, access to the material abundance of modernity is not restricted to the highest socioeconomic strata. Instead, it’s available to a large segment of the socioeconomic spectrum.
If the ruling class succeeds in contracting American abundance, the catalog of America’s historical travesties will experience considerable growth. According to modern ideologies, there is much to redress, but this form of redress may prove more problematic than the ideologues realize.
The fact is that the millions crossing the southern border and all those who have followed established immigration procedures aspire to enjoy the options, resources, and standard of living in America. They don’t care that this is a country allegedly built on slavery, genocide, theft, rape, white supremacy, misogyny, racism, discrimination, and environmental degradation.
By historical metrics, modern America is experiencing unprecedented material abundance. This is made possible by an unprecedented infrastructure of technology, production distribution, and synchronization. Most Americans do not contribute tangibly to this infrastructure; they just consume it. The more people are removed from the cause of material abundance and are familiar with only the amenities, the more they can be convinced that novel and exotic worldviews are enlightened progress.
In 2018, columnist Salena Zito introduced some Harvard students to the reality of America’s heartland. Her essay is an interesting and revealing read.
The takeaway is that the on-demand amenities/material abundance of modernity allow for an ideological worldview that is often at odds with reality. Zito commented of the students that “nearly all of them said they didn’t know what life was like outside the coastal cities and states.” Instead,
They admitted they had been fed a steady diet of stereotypes about small towns and their folk: “backwards,” “no longer useful,” “un- or under-educated,” “angry and filled with a trace of bigotry” were all phrases that come up.
It took a field trip for the self-described best and the brightest at one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning to be exposed to the manufacturing, industries, small businesses, and people who make their lifestyle possible. For these elite students, it was terra incognita.
The growing disconnect of the governing elite, academics, and technologists from the underpinning of modernity and those who make it possible does much to explain our current governance by the 21st-century iteration of leftist ideology. As an example, America’s electricity consumption, by all accounts, is projected to increase due to demand, not only from the manufacturing, service, and data segments but also from EV requirements too.
Simultaneously, there is a concerted effort to curtail extant sources of electrical generation before alternative sources have proven robust and reliable enough to shoulder the demand. Capability and demand are set to collide. The result will likely be that available energy is curtailed and costs significantly increase. We can see in Germany, once a manufacturing powerhouse, the inevitable negative impact on manufacturing when a nation puts ideology before practicality.
Ideology as the determinant for policy also includes some of the most well-known brands in America. Seemingly, for these brands, their consumers’ demographics are a secondary concern. Thanks to their ideological business plans, some have experienced losses in market share/consumption or ROI approaching a billion dollars. I will leave it up to the reader to determine if the cart before the horse policies in 21st-century America are the result of ideology or practicality. Pro tip: Cause and effect are not a social construct.
*These three ideologies are summed up in “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), the “Nazi Party 25 Points” (1920), “Mein Kampf” by Adolph Hitler (1925), and “The Doctrine of Fascism” by Benito Mussolini (1932).