The Eclipse of the Modern American Public

There may be no better word to describe the current climate in the United States than ‘divided.’ Poll after poll and study after study reflects these perceptions among both analysts and the general public. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey conducted in October 2018, 80% of respondents said they believe the country is “mainly” or “totally” divided. These figures are consistent across party lines as well as urban and rural communities, and a staggering 90% of those polled see this division as posing a serious problem.

Popular sentiments don’t always track with reality, though. Our country has certainly been divided before, and there have also been times where divisions have felt more potent than they actually are. However, in this case the data seems clear. A 2017 study by the Pew Research Center found that sharp divides among Democrats and Republicans on values such as government, race, immigration, national security, environmental protection, and other subjects have been increasing over time. Another study done in 2018 by Zachary Neal found similarly increasing divisions in the U.S. Congress. A third study by Lilliana Mason distinguishes between what she terms “issue-based ideology” and “identity-based ideology,” discovering the latter to be an even stronger predictor of division than the former.

What exactly explains these divisions is a matter of no small debate. Since the 2016 election, countless books and papers have been produced in an attempt to elucidate the modern moment or situation we are living in, and it is telling that so many of these have spoken of our present moment as a crisis. But which among them might offer workable solutions without reproducing the problems already facing us in some form or other is an important question that makes few appearances in this literature. In times of crisis plagued by tribalism, partisan ideologies, and the like, it would be naive to pretend that some of these responses — probably even most — do not carry the same attitudes and interests with them that fuel and foster these divides.

Political Disillusionment

Nearly a century ago, the American philosopher John Dewey published a valuable but often overlooked essay on The Public and Its Problems. He begins his chapter on the eclipse of the public in a way that ought to resonate with us now.

Optimism about democracy is to-day under a cloud. We are familiar with denunciation and criticism which, however, often reveal their emotional source in their peevish and undiscriminating tone. Many of them suffer from the same error into which earlier laudations fell. They assume that democracy is the product of an idea, of a single and consistent intent. [1]

Dewey’s work is largely a response to Walter Lippmann’s 1922 book Public Opinion, though each text speaks to a number of issues and arguments still very relevant to today. Both were written following the end of WWI, during a time when belief in progress was waning and psychology was beginning to reveal cracks in many assumptions about the intellectual and political competency of the general public.

In Public Opinion, Lippmann outlines numerous ways in which the public can be ill-equipped to make informed decisions in popular government, with effective decision-making frequently relying on specialized knowledge as well as social and cultural influences steering the public to apply stereotypes to their environment to try and understand it. Dewey’s text finds a fair amount of common ground with Lippmann’s on some of this unfortunate diagnosis, but where Public Opinion expresses a strong sense of pessimism about the possibility of effective democracy in modern times, Dewey’s approach is more pragmatic and solution-oriented while nonetheless realistic and honest in its consideration of the problems confronting the public.

These days, we might well consider it an understatement to say that optimism about democracy is under a cloud. In a 2019 study by the Pew Research Center, a survey of 27 different countries found a dissatisfaction with democracy across multiple measures. A majority of respondents expressed concerns with the court system in their country, political corruption, the responsibility of elected officials to their constituents, and a lack of meaningful progress from political change. The study also found that those who believe the economy is in bad shape, that free speech is not protected, or that elected officials don’t care about ordinary citizens were more likely to express dissatisfaction with how democracy is working.

Often times when disillusionment is articulated, there is a quick response that this is nothing new. Indeed, such reasons for political disengagement have been given for a very long time now. While one might hope this would be even more motivation to take these problems seriously, the more common reply has largely been one of defeatism or reluctant acceptance. That is not to say that the changes people want to see are immediately obvious or easily accomplished, but neither is it terribly difficult to see how such an answer of helpless surrender feeds into the same problem of discontent and disengagement.

Another Pew survey from 2018 provides fascinating insight into how Americans perceive democracy in its ideal form as distinguished from its practical form. Although a majority of Americans believe it’s important that the rights and freedoms of all people are respected, that elected officials face serious consequences for misconduct, or that congressional districts are fairly drawn, these are areas where the reality is understood to be very different from the ideal. Six in ten respondents said that significant changes are needed in the fundamental design and structure of American government, although nearly the same number said that democracy is currently working “very well” or “somewhat well.” Perhaps most telling of all is that 56% of those surveyed reported having little or no confidence in the political wisdom of the American people. While this figure has dropped from 64% in 2016, it has steadily risen ever since 1997 when it was as low as 35%.

In his time, Dewey saw these and similar problems as emblematic of a phenomenon he called the eclipse of the public. As noted, the sense of disillusionment described above is not novel, it’s familiar. But what is significant about this is that familiarity has produced indifference, if not contempt. Indifference testifies to apathy, according to Dewey, and apathy testifies to the fact that the public is so confused that it cannot find itself. This is interesting to consider in light of the survey question on the level of confidence in the political wisdom of the American people. Another way of looking at this finding could describe it as showing that most of the American public does not trust its own political decision-making abilities. Naturally, some of these folks may say it’s “everyone else” they don’t trust, but this is the problem in its essence: who is the public?

The importance of this question will be made clearer by understanding more about the climate or conditions out of which American democracy developed.

Democracy Under Development

Following on from the exercept above, Dewey continues:

Political democracy as it exists today calls for adverse criticism in abundance. But the criticism is only an exhibition of querulousness and spleen or of a superiority complex, unless it takes cognizance of the conditions out of which popular government has issued. All intelligent political criticism is comparative. It deals not with all-or-none situations, but with practical alternatives; an absolutistic indiscriminate attitude, whether in praise or blame, testifies to the heat of feeling rather than the light of thought.

At the time Dewey was writing, a number of major technological and industrial developments already separated his era from the era in which our nation’s founding practices and ideas were shaped. Railways, the steam engine, the telephone, the telegraph, and other inventions had changed communication and association in substantial ways. When the American democratic polity was formed, it was under what Dewey describes as pioneer conditions: small, local communities where agriculture was the dominant industry and hand tools the primary means of production. The conditions of pioneer life made personal work vital, as well as skill, initiative, and adaptability. But neighborly sociability was also important in this picture, as the town meeting was the medium for political change.

Members of a community — probably all known to each other — would come together with as simple a goal as teaching their children reading, writing, and basic mathematics. Because private tutors were costly and rare, they would form a school district, have a schoolhouse built, and hire teachers to be paid with taxes collected from the community. Then towns grew larger, transportation expanded, school studies multiplied, and yet while the community underwent changes, even uniting with other cities and towns to form states, this pattern of association remained mostly stable until industrialization and certain technological advances altered the conditions of association.

The debate we continue to have in this country over the value of the Electoral College serves as a reminder of how far things have since come. Originally, it was assumed that Electors would be known and chosen locally according to their social and political proficiency. These Electors would then come together to exercise their own discernment in selecting from among the best candidates for president. It is hard to imagine that the architects of the Electoral College ever anticipated that the majority of voters wouldn’t even know the names of their Electors. The community and its deliberative engagement were central to this process, indicated also by the protests James Madison and Alexander Hamilton are known to have made to the adoption of the general ticket years later.

Of course, even within these small, localized communities all persons and voices were not included. Some of the very same men that emphasized rule by the people and inalienable, God-given rights excluded women from much of the political square and denied African slaves their freedom. There is also the usurpation of Native American lands by early settlers. This is all part of the origin story of popular government in the United States, and in asking ourselves what constitutes the people or the public today, this broader picture is worth taking into account. The point is not to idolize the past or mourn the loss of small-town values that were never as wholesome as they were represented to be, but to understand where we’ve come from in order to see how we’ve arrived at where we find ourselves now.

As Dewey puts it, we are inheritors of “local town-meeting practices and ideas. But we live and act and have our being in a continental national state. We are held together by non-political bonds, and the political forms are stretched and legal institutions patched in an ad hoc and improvised manner to do the work they have to do.” [2] Whether we are looking for stability or change, we are doing so within an environment that is drastically different in some major ways from the one our particular form of government grew out of. Even the old political principles don’t seem to have practical application anymore, persisting now as emotional cries, Dewey says, rather than reasoned ideas. We will not be able to go back in time or undo some of these changes to our conditions, but once we realize this we may be able to find our way to problems and solutions of more practical weight.

What is a Public?

Dewey begins his discussion on the formation of the public from simple propositions. Human actions have consequences. Some of these consequences are perceived, and this leads to efforts to control actions in order to secure or avoid certain consequences. Direct consequences between parties tend to be private affairs, which can be more or less addressed between those parties. Indirect consequences, on the other hand, extend beyond those immediately involved and can become of public concern when they are perceived. The attempt to regulate indirect consequences is what brings about the state.

“Indirect, extensive, enduring and serious consequences of conjoint and interacting behavior call a public into existence having a common interest in controlling these consequences,” writes Dewey. It’s worth noting here that what he refers to usually as the public is not as homogeneous as it may imply. The public in Dewey’s view is made up of various and distinctive groups looking to unite in order to use state power to effect change. Thus, the public is not synonymous with governmental institutions, nor is it merely identical to civil society.

After industrialization and numerous technological changes to our forms of communication and association, the scope of these indirect consequences has been greatly expanded, multiplied, intensified, and complicated. Actions are consolidated and unified in immense but impersonal ways, no longer formed on the basis of the community and its needs. Economic, bureaucratic, and psychological obstacles also stand in the way of many citizens discerning these consequences. The outcome of all this has been that the resultant public is unable to identify and distinguish itself, since there are now “too many publics and too much of public concern for our existing resources to cope with.”

As I see it, there are three primary questions for us that emerge from Dewey’s discussion on the eclipse of the public. First, how can we see this concept applying to our situation today? I have tried to answer this already in the preceding sections of this essay, but it will hopefully become even more apparent below. Following from this first question, we might ask if there is still a public worth saving. And finally, how can the modern public find itself again?

Before any effective organization can take place on the part of the public, the public must first identify and distinguish itself. This means, in part, that indirect consequences need to be perceived and it must be possible to trace their origins through a chain of events. Dewey believed that in his day many indirect consequences were felt rather than perceived; that is, they are suffered, but cannot really be said to be known.

Some who have commented on our modern moment have spoken of it as being dominated by something like a politics of victimhood or resentment. In Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Francis Fukuyama characterizes it thusly:

In a wide variety of cases, a political leader has mobilized followers around the perception that the group’s dignity had been affronted, disparaged, or otherwise disregarded. This resentment engenders demands for public recognition of the dignity of the group in question. A humiliated group seeking restitution of its dignity carries far more emotional weight than people simply pursuing their economic advantage. [3]

There is also ample research, as Jason Stanley notes, to show that increased representation of traditional minority groups is experienced as threatening to dominant social groups. [4] While there are certainly marginalized groups who have endured real oppression and have legitimate claims to restitution, there are other narratives and experiences of aggrieved victimhood that are questionable, as well as some that may be downright disingenuous. Moreover, there are politicians and leaders, many with fascistic leanings as Stanley points out, who are all too eager to exploit resentments around these issues in order to secure power and influence.

Envy often bleeds into blame. The politics of envy, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum describes it, may start out as “We want what they have” before being moralized into “They are bad people, they don’t deserve what they have.” [5] Societies based around competition and mobility open the door to envy, she says. At the same time, though, many of the fears we harbor about the loss of control or the death of the American dream have their roots in real problems. Income stagnation, health declines, the cost of higher education, and other issues are real issues confronting the lower middle class and the economically disadvantaged.

The impact of these problems is felt, as Dewey suggests, and it is felt strongly. What is less evident is the ability of the public to discern the causes of their suffering and act accordingly. But in the often cacophonous social and political milieu of today, this should not be taken as proof of some general gullibility or inherent incompetency on the part of the public. “When the public is as uncertain and obscure as it is to-day, and hence as remote from government,” Dewey explains, “bosses with their political machines fill the void between government and the public.” [6]

One thing that I believe is especially noteworthy in Dewey’s analysis is the attention he gives to the role of technology in altering the political landscape. There is an interesting and common phenomenon to witness in reaction to this force, where some assume it to be almost universally beneficial or benign, and others assume it to be almost universally destructive or harmful. In Dewey’s view, however, the real problem comes from the ideas or absence of ideas surrounding the consequences of technology. Our mental and moral beliefs change more slowly than outward conditions, and so the ideals and standards that emerge without regard for these factors end up being “thin and wavering.” I would argue that all of this is part of what causes extreme reactions to technology. There is an element of the unknown in the disconnection we have between the advancement of technology and the advancement of our ideas and thoughts in relation to it. And the unknown, as always, can be either exciting or frightening.

What is undeniable, though, is that technology does change the way we connect with and associate with one another, and one form of that is political association. Technology has facilitated rapid and easy circulation of information and opinions, such that it has changed political association through what Dewey refers to as the elimination of distance. In 1927, Dewey saw this occurring on an unprecedented scale, and in 2019 we are talking about technologies that allow foreign governments to hack domestic elections, and struggling to come to grips with social media platforms that can sell private information in secret to just about anyone, or be used to whip up social furor and support in measures that were surely unimaginable only a few decades ago.

Much of the popular rhetoric on the role of social media in politics revolves around the presence of echo chambers and filter bubbles. If this is really what’s to blame for polarization it would imply that isolation is the prevailing factor rather than the elimination of distance. Yet it’s possible that people seek out these spaces for other reasons, one of which may be that they feel they have too little privacy or distance between those they disagree with. One recent study by Christopher Bail and colleagues appears to show that exposure to other views can increase polarization. Twitter users were asked to follow a Twitter bot that would post messages from the other side of the political spectrum, and while the change in attitude among Democrats was not statistically significant, Republicans became substantially more conservative as a result. If we look at this alongside Mason’s research on identity-based ideology in the beginning of this article, we can begin to see how technology, while bringing us together in a literal sense, may also intensify certain kinds of divisions instead of reducing them. A thorough consideration of how modern technology has contributed to the eclipse of the public is an article all its own. But this is one of the more prescient questions Dewey asks, about why the machine age could produce the Great Society without also generating a Great Community.

A Public in Crisis

In light of the above, some may conclude that democracy in the traditional sense is no longer viable. This seems to have been Walter Lippmann’s conclusion in Public Opinion, to which Dewey was responding. Lippmann argued that the public was too bewildered, too fractured, to effectively organize itself anymore, and believed that public opinion was essentially given to the public by powerful elites and the media. Now, when it’s increasingly common to hear even the media and influential politicians talking about how the ‘old rules’ don’t apply anymore, it may look as if the public is lost beyond recovery.

There do indeed appear to be too many publics today also, as Dewey remarked. Identity politics is a phrase that has become almost as ambiguous as political correctness. The right has used it to describe (and dismiss) different social movements and actions calling for greater equality along lines of race, gender, and sexual orientation, among similar concerns. The left in turn has taken to labeling a variety of right-leaning social concerns as white identity politics, typically with the suggestion that these are just the complaints of a long privileged majority losing status. But perhaps it is not too controversial to say that identity politics is a conceptual tool like any other, and as such it is just as liable to be used and misused by certain groups whenever politically convenient. It does describe something, though that something may be very different from what it is taken to mean in specific political and social circles.

The 19th century German philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel proposed that we only reach full self-consciousness through interaction and mutual recognition with other consciousnesses. Initially, we treat the others we encounter as if we are encountering an object, and do not recognize the other person as a unique self. Some of us may demand or force recognition from another, but even in this scenario we are dependent on them for that recognition. Only by mutually recognizing one another as unique selves do we reach full self-consciousness. Hegel’s view might sound a bit esoteric today, but it illustrates how individuality emerges out of social interaction rather than standing atomistically by itself. After all, what makes for a unique individual or self if there is nothing for it to be compared to?

Identity has been a factor in world politics for as long as politics has existed, stretching back to the origins of the polis in ancient Greece. Undoubtedly, it has been conceptualized differently at different times in history, but religious, ethnic, and gender identities all have deep roots in the politics of various corners of the globe. Francis Fukuyama is surely right as well when he notes that a great deal of what has normally passed for economic motivation is “actually rooted in the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means.” [7] Even the Bill of Rights, for example, is intended to protect more than just the economic opportunity of its citizens. It strives to protect specific rights of conscience and identity, such as the right to freely exercise one’s religious beliefs or to organize in protest.

Even so, it has been argued by some that we place too much emphasis on distinctive identities in modern times. This may have a polarizing effect by shifting attention among too many different interest groups, so the argument goes, which makes it increasingly difficult to pull together and effectively organize in order to make real change happen. The incredible book Identity Crisis by John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck is possibly the best post-election analysis of the political climate in America in terms of research alone. Sides and his colleagues reveal a country that is divided, with divisions over race, gender, and immigration that were sown years before Trump arrived on scene. While this should not come as a shock, what is more interesting is how their findings show that these attitudes have changed very little over the past few decades. What has changed is that political actors on both sides of the aisle have begun incorporating more of these divisive issues into their rhetoric and campaigning, which has made them more salient to voters and thereby exacerbated partisan polarization.

There are many reasons for this. Identity Crisis explains how partisan loyalty has been gradually rising and remaining more stable since the 1990s. [8] The percentage of voters who were “consistent partisans” between one election and the next was 83% from 2012–2016. From 2008 to 2012, it was 80%; from 2000–2004, 85%. That number was as low as 77% between 1992 and 1996, and 72% from 1972 to 1976. The authors also found that perceived differences between the two parties and candidates were more potent in 2016, citing multiple surveys showing that “attitudes about race and ethnicity were more strongly correlated to vote choice in 2016 than they were in 2008 and 2012 — even after accounting for people’s partisanship and their overall political ideology on the left-right scale, which themselves had become increasingly intertwined with attitudes about race, ethnicity, and religion.” [9] And finally, as alluded to before, issues like race, ethnicity, and gender were focuses of both campaigns in 2016, which further contributed to polarization.

There is a lot to think about here in how we treat identity politically. If we are looking to effect substantive and enduring change — change that won’t be undone as quickly as the next administration comes into office — then we will need to be realistic in how we go about working for it. Identity can be a strong motivator in seeking and achieving social change. As suggested above, its presence in politics is not always dishonest or divisive.

On the other hand, if the various and intersecting identities we embody and care about are socially constructed, it may just as well be worth remembering that they are as transient as the conditions that give rise to them. It’s extremely unlikely that these conditions will ever be affected in lasting ways through piecemeal, disorganized efforts, but it’s far more likely that those “bosses with their political machines” will remain content as we profess membership and loyalty to any number of varying identity groups. They may even voice their ‘support’ with campaign ads, product commercials, and fundraisers. Just as long as you know which party really supports the identities that matter the most to you.

Is there room for hope in this semi-cynical picture of contemporary American politics? I think so, and I believe we’ve already seen some indication of it. At the beginning of this essay, I referenced a survey showing that a large majority of Americans feel that we are currently a divided nation, and an even larger majority see this as a “serious” problem. Sides and his co-authors also found other indicators in their work:

In the American public writ large, there is also a definition of ‘acting like an American’ that is inclusive. It defines American identity by values — such as believing in the country’s ideals, working hard to achieve success, and contributing to your community — rather than by race, nationality, religion, or partisanship. [10]

In addition, they mention a 2016 voter survey that supports this claim, with the single caveat being that 56% of Republicans also believe being a Christian is important to American identity.

What this suggests, I would say, is that there is still room for dialogue. More than this, though, it suggests that there is room for dialogue on identity itself. Another way of viewing the emergence of, and backlash to, identity politics is to see it as part of this debate and dialogue. This is not a novel observation because it should be evident to many that we are living in a time where questions of self identity, social identity, political identity, and other forms predominate. Why this has put our democracy in a bit of a crisis is also obvious, being that it formed from and rests upon questions like these.

But if I had to offer yet a third way of viewing our present moment and the rise of identity politics, it would be that this is the public trying to find itself again. It is us feeling lost, estranged, not knowing where to look or where to turn. It is simultaneously our need for individual recognition and our need to belong. It is our expression of frustration and exhaustion from the sense of meaninglessness that attends our politics and the injustice that persists in our society. It is us struggling to catch up to a rapidly changing world that always manages to outpace our need to slow down, think things through, and do things right. It’s us scrambling around in the dark, trying to find a home — one that might have to be better than the one we left.

Finding Ourselves Again

The idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the state even at its best.

When is a system so broken that it’s not possible to repair it from within? This is a question raised in more radical political circles, but since the last election in the United States, many who follow and work in politics seem to be asking it, too. Some say to themselves that democracy was a fun experiment while it lasted. Others conflate it with capitalism and judge its apparent downfall to be salvation. Still others wait for the next election when democracy will finally be safe again.

Given the shape that our democratic institutions are in these days, who can fault such reactions? Education alone, which formerly played so pivotal a role in training the future leaders of the nation, is in a state it would be charitable to describe as sorry. Again, pointing this out is nothing new, and there’s only so much fruitless repetition a person can handle before they stop bothering altogether.

For Dewey, democracy is not limited to institutions or a particular form of government. Rather, it is an ethos, “the idea of community life itself.” As Melvin L. Rogers writes in his introduction to the text, democracy in Dewey’s meaning “entails a kind of openness in which its substantive meaning — what concerns it addresses and what ends it pursues — is always in the process of being determined.” [11] Thus, the ability of the public to organize and deliberate over its own affairs is of central importance.

This puts Dewey’s view at odds with alternative accounts of democracy that tie into ungrounded idealisms or systematic forms of oppression. It is not about attaining a preconceived goal, which distinguishes it from communism, capitalism, and fascism. Democracy is non-utopian only when we start from a community as a fact. “Fraternity, liberty and equality isolated from communal life are hopeless abstractions,” Dewey says. “Their separate assertion leads to mushy sentimentalism or else to extravagant and fanatical violence which in the end defeats its own aims.” Equality on this view is not an abstract sort, but one where effective regard may still be given for whatever is distinctive and unique.

Recognition is also given to the fact that, at certain times, the public has to “break existing political forms” in order to form itself. Some political forms do persist of their own momentum once established, and these can interfere with the emergence of new publics and forms of the state. This is then an example of how this account of democracy operates ‘outside’ the system, whether one wants to call that system capitalism or white supremacy. Dewey even goes beyond this to consider an extension of it which democracy in this country has not realized since its inception. A truly experimental social method, he says, would probably surrender pursuit of preconceived goals first of all. Then,

Every care would be taken to surround the young with the physical and social conditions which best conduce, as far as freed knowledge extends, to release of personal potentialities. The habits thus formed would have entrusted to them the meeting of future social requirements and the development of the future state of society. Then and only then would all social agencies that are available operate as resources in behalf of a bettered community life. [12]

Are we still even capable of imagining such a world where we meaningfully prepare our children for the future and entrust it to them? Or have we surrendered that notion a long time ago along with derisive laughter about these young people raised in our communities and how irresponsible and poorly informed they are? Have we contentedly allowed them to excuse themselves from the political square because of our own insecurities and need for control?

Dewey believed that the Great Society had the capacity to become the Great Community, but one of the things he was most adamant about was that even at its best, the Great Community would not be able to replace all of the richness and benefit of local community life. “That happiness which is full of content and peace is found only in enduring ties with others,” he writes, “which reach to such depths that they go below the surface of conscious experience to form its undisturbed foundation.” The changes to our conditions that he speaks of at length, brought about by industrialization, technology, and other factors, are spelled out in the significant declines in local community institutions like the family, the neighborhood, and the church. Even today we are seeing some of the few remaining centers of communal gathering violently assaulted in the form of mass shootings at schools, concerts, and shopping malls.

For the public to be able to find itself again and take on its proper role in politics, Dewey said, local communal life must be restored. In many examinations of the ills of modernity, calls to return to insular communities and small-town living are often in denunciation of wider society, critical of cultural pluralism, and indicative of nationalistic sympathies. However, Dewey’s focus on local communal life is very different in nature. He does not encourage isolation, openly embraces cultural pluralism, and, perhaps most importantly, his discussion of the value of local communities is part of his larger endeavor to restore the public and progress towards the Great Community. Dewey believes that the bonds necessary to accomplish this must be formed through the strong foundation of face-to-face communication and interaction that only local communal life can bring. Or as he puts it, “Democracy must begin at home.”

How exactly we can restore local communal life when commerce has abandoned many small communities and the Internet has eliminated the need to travel outside the home for most things is difficult to say. Perhaps it could begin somewhere with the way we look after younger generations and entrust the future to them, as already suggested. Perhaps it starts in identifying the needs of one’s local community and organizing to support them. Or perhaps it would require something new and radical to breathe life back into local institutions. Unfortunately, all these proposals seem like very temporary solutions to patch a problem that’s so big it’s often a challenge to get one’s head around it in the first place.

Nevertheless, we have seen that there are those out there hungering for deeper connections, searching for meaning, hope, and identity. The Great Society of Dewey’s time did not satiate these hungers, nor does it seem as if the Information Age has done the job. The clouds eclipsing us at present may seem dark and ominous from where we are standing, but we may also reflect and remember that we are not the first ones to stand here, and we are not standing alone even now. In revisiting the problems of identity and recognition that occupy our modern moment, perhaps we can take inspiration from Dewey and rediscover the worth and value of both distinctive, heterogeneous identities and a broader American identity distinguished not by racial, ethnic, or gendered lines, but by its inclusivity and acknowledgement of the vast array of problems and consequences confronting us today as Americans.

It could be time for those of us in the United States, whether we are religious or not, to finally take to heart the words of Isaiah in 2 Kings 20:1 and set our house in order.

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Citations:

1. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Athens: Swallow Press, 2016), p. 144.
2. Ibid, 147.
3. Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), p. 7.
4. Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (New York: Random House, 2018), p. 94.
5. Martha Nussbaum, The Monarchy of Fear (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), p. 145.
6. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 152.
7. Fukuyama, Identity, xv.
8. John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck, Identity Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 158–159.
9. Ibid, 169.
10. Ibid, 219.
11. Melvin L. Rogers, in John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 35.
12. Ibid, 219.