Shifting Winds

I have a feeling that something significant is going to happen in America. I get a feeling of forces gathering, of a society that is taking a deep breath before stepping out into a time of change. It’s not any one event that makes me feel that way, it’s more an accumulation of occurrences.

The obvious one is the election of Barack Obama as president. Perhaps my view is coloured by living in Massachusetts, a state so liberal that it was the only state that did not vote for Nixon when he ran for President in 1972. And you have to worry about the weight of expectations on him when 2 out of 3 Americans said in a recent poll that they expect the country to be better off by the end of his term. But I think it’s got to the point that this expectation will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In any case, there is more to the gathering storm than the tailwind that propelled Obama on his trajectory to the White House.

There’s the current economic situation and all that that could lead to. It’ll lead to job losses of course, and hardship for many. In just the past few weeks it’s got to the stage where I can see local businesses shutting down around me, and people losing jobs as a result. But there’s more. It feels like the country is poised to change its consumption patterns. A year ago restaurants were advertising the great deals you could get on extra-large portions. That's changed. Today I saw a TGIF ad promoting "the right-sized portion at the right price", and that's only the most recent of the small-portion / low-price ads I've seen on the television.

That's just the beginning. Imagine what could happen if the big American car companies do go bankrupt (as many fear they will soon), and credit remains expensive, and so does fuel. Will American decrease their usage of cars? Will we see the demographic momentum reverse direction and move from the suburbs back towards urban centers? If it does, that would be a profound social and cultural change.

And that’s not the only social and cultural change in the offing. Apart from voting for Presidential and Congressional candidates, voters in 3 American states voted against legalizing same-sex marriages. Ironically, that seems to have sparked a tremendous burst of support for a movement in favour of such marriages. The demonstrations across the country in the past week suggest to me that it’s only a matter of time before same-sex marriages are recognized across the country, and it may not be a matter of very much time at that.

So what do a change of Presidency, an economic recession, and a challenge to social norms have to do with each other? Absolutely nothing, except that they are simultaneous in time and place, and therefore they cannot help but affect each other.

This has happened before, and not too long ago. In 1990 it was the Soviet Union which swore in a new head of state, Mikhail Gorbachev. Movements for democracy and independence from the USSR spread like wildfire across Eastern Europe. Saddam Hussein ordered his troops into Kuwait, sparking American intervention. And just like that we saw the end of the cold war and the making of a new world order.

It is, of course, impossible to say that that’s the sort of momentous change that awaits the world now. But there is one thing that I think is clear: we have some exciting times ahead.