There was a perfectly reasonable article today in Foreign Affairs: “Afghanistan’s Corruption Was Made in America”. Reasonable except for the surprise at what happened. Afghanistan was a case of colonial corruption—whether we want to call it that or not—and the mechanisms of colonial corruption have been well-documented. The classic work on the subject, which got just about everything right, was written in 1860. The only problem is that for all the intervening years many societies, including ours, have tried hard to avoid learning.
That blind spot brings up the subject of Civics—what is it that we all ought to know? That’s despite the fact that it’s hard to say the word Civics without wincing. My high school Civics course was a giddy paen to American democracy and its perfections. One sentence sticks in my mind: “Propaganda is a neutral term despite its unfavorable connotation; what makes it good or bad is what is propagated.” Take that for wisdom.
But it strikes me that we can point to a few things that belong in a real Civics course. I’m going to give three titles. I’ll start with Max Havelaar (the just-mentioned 1860 classic) for international relations, to disabuse people of the notion that we can be white knights to go fix the rest of the world. This is not a plea for isolationism, but for recognition that our interests will dominate and corruption will likely follow. At the very least we should be suspicious about our motives and about the reality of what we create.
A second title is Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. This book has been around since 2016 and has had nowhere near the impact it should have. It documents the very successful effort of the Koch organization to take over the political system in United States and reorient it to their objectives. It explains most of what passes for incomprehensible in the press today—why the country has become ungovernable, why democracy is at risk, and how we got saddled with a mind-boggling Supreme Court. All of that was the plan from the beginning, and unless we’re clear on what happened, we’re not likely to be able to change it.
A third title is Heather McGhee’s book The Sum of Us. This book has some issues from trying to satisfy multiple constituencies, but its main message is clear: the different racial and other groups in this country have been turned against each other in a deliberate campaign of divide and conquer. And the only way to counter that is to recognize common interest and act for the common good. This was deliberate policy for Martin Luther King among others, but it’s not easy to do–group militancy will always fight it. However there is no alternative in taking on the powerful forces described in Dark Money.
Those books alone could give a big dose of reality to our political process. We can contrast that with what passes for Civics in public discourse today.
Most of what we hear about Civics today comes from the far right, where it’s back to the future–the contemporary version of what I had all those years ago with the John Birch Society. In the interim it hasn’t gotten better: this is still God’s country, above criticism and chosen to rule in His name. One particular feature worth noting is the weakness of the support for democracy. Democracy is defined as whatever it is that we’re doing, and it’s good because it’s ours.
On the left the world view is different, but fragmented. One person who does talk about Civics is the strange and (I find) worrisome figure of Danielle Allen. Ms. Allen presents herself as standing above the messy political discussions of the day and as a pure advocate for civic virtue. But her Civics lives in a world where there are no bad actors, and the primary issue is alienation of voters from the political system. In that world, the monumental importance of the 2024 election is hidden behind tales of civic involvement that ignore the real forces at work. In the end she’s cover for the people who have put us where we are.
For today, the kind of Civics outlined here doesn’t exist. But it’s worth recognizing that a real, substanitive Civics course is not so hard to describe. Maybe someday it could happen.
on the outside 