While preparing for the 1941 State of the Union address, President Franklin Roosevelt used the phrase “everywhere in the world” to describe where freedom should exist. Roosevelt’s close advisor Harry Hopkins reportedly recoiled at the statement, saying, “No American gives a damn about whether there’s freedom in Java.”
Roosevelt replied, “Well, Harry, the world’s getting so small, they’re gonna have to give a damn about Java.”
America finds itself once again in the crosshairs of Roosevelt’s retort. As much as the Midterm Elections are being driven by personal economic angst, other factors must be considered.
If gas and food prices were not climbing exponentially, would Americans care that the president is running roughshod over the First Amendment or heading a Gestapo-like organization that invokes a version of law enforcement not seen since Judge Roy Bean?
Though I would like to believe otherwise, I fear that Hopkins was correct. Our “Java” is anything that does not fall within the individual sphere of concern.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center recently found that many United States adults lack basic civic knowledge. One-third, according to the survey, could not name all three branches of the federal government. Ignorance in a free society is dangerous. It is easy to take democratic norms for granted and instead align one’s support with one's political team. The post-truth world is presenting a bill that will be difficult to pay.
As I offered in my latest book, Liberty and Equality in America, post-truth is merely an emotion-laden set of signposts that tell us to “Yield,” “Stop,” and that “U-Turns are permissible,” but rarely offers a direction that makes us better by moving forward. How do we push back on this unfortunate phenomenon? Should we accept the inevitable? Do we naively assume there is a primary culprit?
The post truth-world operates in a political vacuum, viewing the side it supports and that which is opposed with unrealistic naivety. Throughout its history, America has flirted with post-truth. But the convergence of America’s 21st century fears that lead to our seeking the silos of our convenience, along with broad access to information, has pushed the flirtation toward a committed relationship.
Post-truth is the precursor to accepting authoritarian forms of rule, tantalized almost exclusively by the rhetoric of our choosing. It is the stimulant that cultivates concerns that George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” will come to fruition. Its implications are much wider than debating the current issue.
It threatens our democratic-republic form of government because it delegitimizes the authority of our sacred institutions and documents. The growing influence of the post-truth world causes us to take our eyes away from the values of liberty and equality, leaving only a binary choice between competing political orthodoxies. If we are only critical of the side we oppose, we’ve fallen short of our democratic responsibilities as citizens. Though I refuse to accept that this dreadful trend cannot be restrained, a democratic nation that loses the desires of inquiry, dissent, and curiosity becomes a democracy in name only.
The answers to those questions are just beyond the transactional terrain where one realizes immediate gratification. Though Hopkins may have been metaphorically correct, Roosevelt’s analysis serves as America’s way out of its current malaise. In America’s pluralistic culture, “no man is an island entire of itself,” as John Donne offered. Everyone is a piece of the continent, part of the main. America no longer possesses the luxury to view life exclusively through a myopic lens of self-interest.
It doesn’t matter if one supports or opposes a specific issue. What matters is whether the underlying issue violates the values that undergird society.
Therefore, one cannot be silent when the president bans certain news organizations because they do not support those outlets. The First Amendment specifically, and the Constitution more broadly, is larger than the perspective on a specific issue. Nothing erodes trust in public institutions more than the president, by executive fiat, deciding who has constitutional protections.
Not liking the concept of birthright citizenship does not allow the president to invoke a line-item veto on the 14th Amendment, though four members of the Supreme Court felt otherwise.
If gas prices are affordable, why should one care if the president and his family enrich themselves by billions and a Russian oligarch contributed to Donald Trump Jr’s. wedding? Should Qatar be allowed to blow through the Constitution’s Emoluments clause by giving the president a new Air Force One? Does it matter that the majority of the president’s cabinet is less qualified for the office they hold than Bill Cosby is to be a bartender at a women’s-only club?
As Roosevelt said, we’re gonna have to give a damn about “Java” if the goal is to move closer to that more perfect union
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