I watched with interest the inauguration today of Joe Biden as President of the USA. My response to the occasion was many-sided, but after some time one impression emerged very strongly. Understandably the theme of unity dominated the occasion, but it did strike me that there was an important aspect of this theme that went almost without note, despite its enormous significance as a contributor to the current social and cultural disunity in the USA. “Unity” was construed very much in terms of race, culture and party difference. Somehow nobody thought to mention the large range of economic inequality that characterises the USA.
I would hazard a guess that a good deal of the social unrest and sense of exclusion that divides the country at the moment has its roots in poverty, whether absolute or relative. Surely the phenomenon of Donald Trump had its origins in the depth of economic division. Trump has gone, but simply expecting that by some effort to understand cultural differences, and to “heal” divisions is not going to wipe the political slate clean. The causes of the sense of exclusion and distress that fuelled Trump’s rise to power are still there. One brief mention was made of poverty, briefly, in the concluding prayer by the presidential chaplain, but this is hardly an adequate acknowledgement of the magnitude of the underlying problem.
Radical differences of economic wellbeing, rooted in differences of income, economic opportunity and wealth, were the elephant in the room that nobody wished to mention. Unless Joe Biden has some response to these things then “Trumpism” will be back, if not led by “The Donald” then in some other. and probably similar, form. I fear that the general sense of optimism in which the inauguration was clothed might well be founded in a temporary self-deception.