In the seventies, when I returned to the US after ten years abroad, I was struck by the amount of ‘intelligence sophistication’ among America’s college graduates. At the same time, however, contrary to Europe, where it was a given, ideological literacy was strikingly absent. When the press accused George McGovern of being a socialist, -Democrats were unable to defend him, having only a vague idea of what that label could or should mean.
Recently democratic socialism entered the American lexicon, as black and white, young and old men and women, enter the race for the White House, every one of them bright and knowledgeable, and determined to go outside the centrist box to find solutions to America’s daunting problems. They come from twelve different states and range in age from thirty-eight to seventy-nine. Out of a total of twenty, only five are women; however, in a first, one is gay — and no sooner had he declared his candidacy than he flew to the top of the charts.
When Barack Obama announced his candidacy in February of 2007, audience reactions told me that he would enter the White House.
Under the fig leaf of Russian interference in the 2016 election lies the question of whether the US should continue to be the world hegemon or join with Russia, China, India and other major countries in a multi-polar condominium to keep the world from committing nuclear or climate suicide? The answer will be affected by the social attitude known as anything goes, which Russian President Vladimir Putin calls ‘Western degeneracy’. (The Russian Revolution briefly featured ‘free love’, but it was soon replaced by attitudes toward sexual relations similar to those that characterized the ‘Puritan’ United States.)