I’m an optimist. In fact, my wife tells friends that one of the reasons we were attracted to one another was that we were both optimists. But after we got married, she realized that one of us was going to have to become a realist, and it wasn’t going to be me! Yet as I go deeper into retirement, contemplate my narrowing relevance in the world, and reflect on the excruciating events of 2020, realism has crept in.
And then I’m having this separate thought-process: We all have good days and bad days; the stock market goes up and down; sports must have losers in order to have winners; people, fads, companies, cities and countries grow, hit a peak, fade; great powers rise and fall. In other words, change is inevitable. Because we humans are very familiar with these inevitable ebbs and flow, we come to terms with them, make new plans, and then move forward. The problem is that right now we Americans are not being realistic, we are not making new plans, and we are therefore not being able to move forward. We are stuck in a deep hole. We want and need to get out of it. But we’re pulling each other down as we strive to do so.
I’ve had the privilege of living and working in many communities and countries around the world. Of course, the cultures and economic details are different. However again and again I have encountered similar patterns in so many of the places I’ve lived and worked. Major industries begin to decline as they lose their competitive advantage in ever-changing regional, national and global economies. Wages stagnate; then lay-offs become more prevalent; debt grows; infrastructure gets old and isn’t maintained; people — especially young people — move away as parts of their community, or country, deteriorate; those who stay often do so because they cannot do otherwise or refuse to do so. Life is hard, draining, sometimes scary. People develop a rougher edge, become testier with one another, and envious of those they perceive are doing better than themselves.
Consider Lewiston, Maine’s second-largest city, where we landed in 1974 when we decided to make Maine our home. It was a wonderful city to live in, with rich and diverse cultural traditions, top-ranked Bates College, stately New England industrial and residential architecture stretching along the bank of the mighty Androscoggin River. But the textile industries that were fueled by river power and had been built in the late 1800s had mostly departed for the cheaper labor and more readily available natural resources in warmer lands to the south. Left behind were families without the jobs that had propelled them into the American middle class — the great majority being Franco-Americans who came south from Canada for textile jobs, and also those in the leather and shoe industry. When we arrived, it was a hard time. Infrastructure was old. The unemployment rate was the state’s highest. New suburban malls were decimating downtown retail businesses. Other Mainers, predominantly presbyterian and tied to the land, often seemed to look down on urban Lewiston and its largely Catholic Franco-American citizenry. For their part, Lewiston citizens often expressed how different they felt from folks in the rest of Maine with its classic coastline, mountains, lakes and outdoor heritage. They were angry; felt abused; sometimes told each other self-deprecating jokes about their heritage.
Then consider Cape Coast, Ghana, West Africa, where we landed in 1987 for a multi-year assignment. In its heyday, Cape Coast was the capital of the Gold Coast colony, a jewel in the crown of Great Britain’s worldwide trading empire. The British seat of government was housed in Cape Coast Castle, today a UNESCO World Heritage Monument. Around the Castle, traders built two-and three-story mansions. British-style boarding schools emerged, business was booming and life was good. But trading — originally in ivory and gold — later focused on slaves which of course was not sustainable. Furthermore, Ghanaians grew increasingly resentful of their colonial masters and in 1957 Ghana became the first African nation to win its independence. In one of his first actions, the new President, Kwame Nkrumah, moved the capital city 120 kilometers away from Cape Coast to the current capital of Accra. When we arrived, Cape Coast was a poor, crumbling, former capital city, over-populated with older folks. Nothing much good had happened since 1957, and you could just feel the hopelessness, anger and frustration. There’s a sculpture in the middle of downtown Cape Coast consisting of a large cauldron filled with sculpted crabs, some of which are perched just below the top. The standing joke was that Cape Coast is like a giant, warming pot of live crabs — all trying to get out, but not being able to because the other crabs — their brothers and sisters — are pulling them back down into the pot. Beyond Cape Coast in other parts of what was then a very poor nation, that image was reinforced by the often-heard Ghanaian “PhD” expression, which stands for “pull him (or her) down.”
And now here we are, America. We are the militarily strongest nation on earth. But we’re struggling to maintain our leadership role. We’re a nation torn apart by partisan divide in the wake of decades during which industry has departed for other lands because capital is easily transmitted, labor is cheaper, regulation lighter, raw materials closer at-hand. I strongly believe that the economic, political, and social angst we’re seeing in America is really the same thing I experienced in Lewiston, Maine, and then in Cape Coast, Ghana. A great many formerly wealthy American industrial communities like Lewiston have seen great decline. Millions of American families have been forced to reckon with this new reality, the gap between rich and poor has grown, and the middle class is under great stress. Furthermore, a disproportionate number of hurting Americans are people of color–granted their civil rights by a capitalist nation, but not given any national capital.
When human beings are in the middle of this kind of chronic decline, it is very disconcerting, emotionally draining, and sometimes scary. We’ve lost so much of the sense of hope, promise, opportunity and self-confidence that characterized us from the end of the Second World War until relatively recently. For many, the American dream no longer works. We’re upset and angry. We lash out at enemies — real and imagined — and find it increasingly hard to “go high.” We pull each other down instead.
What to do? How to recover? What direction to take? How to build the new economic and political alliances that will lead to a recovered prosperity during the rest of the 21st century? These questions hung in the air in Lewiston, and in Cape Coast, and they hang in the air for us today in America. Building back is very, very hard because it requires so much concerted work by so many people. It also requires — on the part of all of us — that we admit we have a serious problem we must address head-on. Great Britain learned to live with its new place in the world. Ghana has re-emerged as a strong, vibrant African nation following decades of great poverty and political unrest. Lewiston is re-emerging as a proud, multi-ethnic American city; Cape Coast is re-emerging as an international tourist destination (visited by President Obama and his family in 2009). But we cannot “make America great again” by simply trying to go back to what we once were. Neither can we “build back better” by simply saying it. We must study and learn the lessons of once stronger places. To truly move forward, we must recognize and acknowledge the reality of our situation, rediscover our American optimism, and work together to build a new American vision for a great nation in a very changed world. We can do it, we must do it.
Nate Bowditch is the former commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, former president of the Maine Development Foundation and former director of Planning and Community Development in Lewiston. He lives in Topsham.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
