"THE AMERICAN HAS DWINDLED INTO AN ODD FELLOW"

2016 Annus horribilis - there can be no question that the 24th of June and the 8th of November have given voice to an extraordinary number of discontented, dissatisfied and hostile people on both sides of the Atlantic. The deep seated racism and bigotry that has oozed out from the so called common citizen is horrifying. A distinct side step from a natural evolution towards a more civilised society. As long as humans grew in prosperity and education, and improved the quality of their lives through common endeavour and enterprise, towards a more inclusive and caring society, respecting the principles of the duty of care - the foundation of our rule of law - to each and every citizen, things appeared to be moving along quite nicely. But conservative laissez faire economics of the 1980's laid the foundations for greed accompanied by bullying and acute selfishness. We were riding high of what appeared to be a float of cash which seemed unending but in the end turned out to be quicksand. Those people, who for years have been struggling out of the quicksand, have turned to someone who appears to have risen above the mire and promises to end their struggles and bring them up to the promised land he holds. They believe he can do that. His lies of being the 'self made' billionaire who owes no allegiance to anyone, who can protect them from the world, from the encroaching hordes from below and over the sea, has been music to their ears. They believe he can change their lot and bring them back to solid ground. They do not see it as bluster and smoke. He says he can make deals that will bring them the wealth, recognition and prosperity that he has. It is nothing but a shell game, but a shell game without the pea. Who will help them when it eventually dawns that it is in fact a sham?

For my class in Paris I have been reading, again, Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. I should have been paying more attention all along. In it, there are two paragraphs which seem relevant in the current circumstance:

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

and 

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of this wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. O for a man who is a man, and, and my neighbor says, has a bone is his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in the country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow--one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the almshouses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund to the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently. 

There is something in that last sentence which strikes me as appropriate to the current citizenry of the United States. They appear to have regressed to the 19th century. It may well take another two centuries to recover from this current blow to civilisation.