The Death of the Concept of ‘Enough’ in the U.S.
perpetrated, ironically, by the great ally of the cultural revolutionaries of the ’60’s: the pop culture-marketing complex
Make no mistake. There was a need for revolutionary cultural change in this country at that time. In the South, “Jim Crow” laws were still on the books. Those laws, along with the broader implications for life that they portended — not only in the South — were enforced by state-sanctioned terror: lynching and other forms of murder, rape, and the burning of houses and churches were crimes, but rarely enforced when it was Americans of Anglo-Saxon heritage perpetrating such crimes against Americans of African heritage. Other women and other minorities did not experience suffering as bad as those souls did, but anyone who wasn’t a male WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) was at an inherent disadvantage in any social situation compared to anyone who happened to have been born into that arbitrarily privileged cohort.
At that time, though, there was also in this nation the concept of ‘enough’. It was exemplified, believe it or not, in banking, in the so-called ‘3–6–3 rule’: borrow money at 3%, lend it at 6%, and be on the golf course by 3 P.M. — at a country club restricted to male WASPs and their families, no doubt.
Still, even for bankers there was at least a semblance of something more to life than ‘making money’. There was the idea of ‘enough’.
That same 100% markup was generally observed in retail sales. There were exceptions, of course. Groceries had less margin of profit (but a bigger constant demand) and luxury items had higher margins (with smaller demand). In the main, though, a 100% markup was thought to be enough.
The concept of enough was further reflected in income taxes. In the 1950’s the federal marginal tax rate got as high as 91% (on taxable income — after deductions — over $250,000, roughly equivalent to $3,000,000 today). Most tax revenue that wasn’t spent on defense was spent subsidizing the middle class — education, housing, transportation, energy, and even health care — making sure all had enough and thereby building it into a big, strong foundation on which a big, strong economy could stand (just as John Maynard Keynes had recommended). At the federal level much of that spending was in the form of the GI Bill that was available to millions of veterans of World War II (though there were insidious culturally mandated hurdles for those who weren’t a male WASP).
Actually, that war itself did much to undermine the male-WASPs-first social system. It was a hugely democratizing event, forcing people of different backgrounds into intimately personal relationships, forcing them to rely on one another, to trust one another to help one another.
Those circumstances also exposed any idea that the WASPs were in any way intrinsically exceptional human beings. It conditioned even some male WASPs to accept the potential demise of that cultural fiction and the material outcomes that followed from it. Unfortunately, at the same time that the cultural revolution that would, well, flower in the 1960’s would put an end to any idea of (legitimate) male WASP superiority, the very concept of ‘enough’ was also laid to waste.
The 1950’s saw the emergence of the pop culture-marketing complex as the dominant cultural force in this nation. I looked it up one time (decades ago) and have never forgotten that it was during that decade (maybe 1956?) that in this country expenditures by businesses on marketing exceeded for the first time their spending on ‘research and development’ (R&D) — never to be reversed. To be sure, pop culture and marketing had been growing in influence, through movies and radio, since the 1920's, but the emergence of television in the 1950’s threw that process into hyperdrive.
As far as I am concerned, in most ways that cultural force has been on the side of the angels. For instance, John Wayne is a conservative icon, but if you look at his movies his character was often defending the liberal value of respect: for indigenous peoples, individuals who were innocent but persecuted for being ‘different’, etc. In general, the pop culture-marketing complex has used its various platforms to promote the inclusion of diversity as well as a concern for Nature. It certainly did that at the start by promoting the music of the revolution in the 60's: rock (infused with blues and folk music flavorings).
The thing is, at the same time that it has been promoting liberal cultural values, the pop culture-marketing complex has destroyed the concept of ‘enough’. How could it not? It has always ultimately been about making as much money as possible. For that complex, when it comes to money there can be no such thing as enough.
To that end, while it has promoted liberal cultural values, it has ecstatically celebrated ‘excess’. This side of actually doing undeniable harm to people, there is no form of excess that the pop culture-marketing complex will not celebrate. The commodification of excess, its monetization, has created a bizarre cultural symbiosis in which ‘normality’ is but a refuge for ‘losers’. Being outrageous is a ticket to fame, fortune, and power.
One great irony is that — through radio, of all things — conservatives have learned how to capitalize on the celebration of excess with which that liberally oriented cultural force has imbued our nation. Indeed, the celebration of excess is all there is to today’s ‘conservative’ politics. It has become the ultimate ‘reality show’, where the contestants are (incessant) candidates for public office and to become a judge requires only demonstrating that one has become a rabid-enough fan of the show: the Republican mob: the vaunted Republican ‘base’. Anyone who thinks that membership in the base/mob/audience-judges might be limited to any particular demographic cohort(s) has failed entirely to grasp the impact of the pop culture-marketing complex on this nation.
Not just in terms of money, or politics, or even in terms of culture, or even spiritually — for the sakes of our souls — but at this point for mere physical survival we simply have no choice but to resurrect in the U.S. the idea of ‘enough’. If we do not, ALL [underlining unavailable] will be lost.