When the Tunisian street merchant Mohamad Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010 in protest of his government’s brutality and corruption, he set in motion a series of events that rocked the Muslim world over the next several months culminating in the toppling of governments (Tunisia, Egypt), civil wars (Libya, Syria, Yemen), brutal repression (Bahrain) and some mild reforms (Jordan, Morocco). And even though Bouazizi lit the match, he wasn’t responsible for the powder keg. The explosives themselves were slowly built up over time in the form of extreme income inequality, high youth unemployment and endless intransigent autocratic government. Reaction to the uprising varied in the West and depended on whether you were just an ordinary person on the street or someone whose vocation was directly tied to the events unfolding there, such as those working in the world of finance, government and the military. This was the so-called Arab Spring of 2011 and one may argue that in 2016 the United States of America is witnessing something in its own backyard that is eerily similar to the Arab Spring and which is giving rise to our own American Spring.
The explosive combination that set the Muslim world afire has the same key ingredients right here as well; income inequality at its highest levels, unending inner city youth unemployment and a long-standing political duopoly exercising total control over state and federal governments. There are other similarities such as inattention to crumbling infrastructures, increasing racial and religious discrimination, rising barriers to educational opportunities and the continuous militaristic responses to domestic and international crises. We may not see someone self-immolate here in the U.S. over the government’s seemingly inattentiveness to its economic irregularities and political stagnation, but there have been isolated incidents of late that strikingly mirror the desperate actions by a single person and which government leaders are frustratingly unable to explain; mass shootings by lone gunmen and suicides among veterans. And again, depending on where one sees themselves situated economically, socially and politically the reactions to all of these events are varied. There are those that simply refuse to see what all the fuss is about and vigorously maintain that piece meal and orderly changes are the appropriate response to many of the problems the U.S. faces because their overall situation has improved or maintained and they feel comfortable with the direction the U.S. government has taken. But there is at least an equal or greater number who have found themselves falling further behind financially and who are feeling desperate and want nothing more than someone to lead them.
And that is why in the midst of this American Spring we see an increasingly toxic national political election in which the campaigns by political outsiders such as Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are giving voice to the disenfranchised electorate who has felt ignored and isolated for a generation or more by their respective political establishments. One common emotion shared by the outside forces of the left and right is an unrepentant hatred of those representing the status quo and a joined realization that if the political establishment remains in control of Congress and the White House in the near term then nothing of consequence will change for the long term either. Having said that, whatever the outcome in the upcoming elections, the underlying current of vitriol will not subside anytime soon.
The powder keg of present-day U.S. politics was lit generations ago yet it has had a stubbornly long fuse. At various times, the political establishment on both sides of the aisle has sought to extinguish it by employing different tactics such as voter suppression, gerrymandering, endless international crises, incessant use of red herring issues such as abortion, gun control and immigration and the subliminal messaging by the mass media in tamping down such simmering emotions. However, poll after poll show that the economy ranks at the top of concerns for the ostracized left and right and their continued exclusion from it. And just as in the case of the Arab Spring wherein social media greatly assisted in the spread of the political firestorm, so it is here too in the American Spring that social media has kept alive the burning coals of rage shared by large but disparate segments of our population who only yearn to be finally heard. And if they choose to stay the course or only employ superficial and temporary fixes to the myriad problems here, then the political establishment ignores them at their peril.