OPINION:
President Trump’s imbroglios with the NBA and NFL, more than examples of incivility on both sides, illustrate the deep divisions within the nation and why it is so tough for any occupant of the Oval Office to get something done.
Presidents Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes were able to work with their opposition parties — for example, the Gipper’s tax cuts passed through a Democratic House.
Nowadays, the liberal media — pandering for ratings — encourage Democrats to oppose en bloc any White House proposal. Saddled with narrow majorities in Congress, Mr. Trump must navigate severe ideological divisions within the Republican Party.
Globalization has created two Americas — one with elite education, urban and equipped to compete — and the rest of America — in cities and rural communities that once relied on manufacturing and resource industries, other than petroleum and agriculture, for prosperity.
The latter has been poorly served by left-wing-dominated, second-rate schools and universities that teach allegiance to the theology of identity politics as a substitute for impartial critical thinking and marketable skills.
Beyond churning out career-challenged, pseudo-educated graduates, the vast educational industrial complex — most universities, the liberal media and many mainstream churches and synagogues — on one side, and similarly intolerant institutions on the right, fracture the nation beyond intelligent discussion of what is really wrong.
Economists have long observed that culture is as important as access to education, capital and technology for driving the progress of emerging nations. Talented young people can be sent abroad for training, and foreign companies can be attracted to bring money and know-how, but local governments and culture must encourage hard work and individual accountability, and eschew citizens from self-pity and self-destructive habits.
In a recent opinion piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Professors Amy Wax at the University of Pennsylvania and Larry Alexander at the University of San Diego School of Law argue the decline of the unifying “bourgeois culture” of the 1940s though 1960s — an emphasis on hard work, self-discipline, marriage, service to employers and community and respect for authority — and the rise of a single-parent, antisocial behavior, anti-assimilation values in many working-class white and minority communities contribute greatly to their high levels of unemployment, drug abuse and generally poor economic conditions.
This article was greeted by colleagues with a firestorm of attacks led by their deans, who never sought to address its premise or reasoning. Instead, the usual invectives of racism and bigotry were levied.
I know from hard experience the so-called objective processes of faculty evaluation — and the bureaucracy that assigns classes, doles out pay raises and other necessities for academic survival — will short-ration Professors Wax and Alexander.
Unwritten in all of this is an indictment of the theology of identity politics.
When whites males do better at something — for example, science and engineering programs graduate more men than women and more whites than blacks — an explicit or implicit bias must be the culprit — rather than gender differences in preferences for kinds of employment or values regarding hard work and sense of entitlement.
Of course, the fact that colleges grant significantly more diplomas overall to women than men is considered just a function of girls being better suited for school. The enlightened liberal intelligentsia would never admit to tipping the scales against males.
Such hysterical divisions and intolerance abound in our society — from discussions of the minimum wage to how to provide affordable health care to how to define a just and competitive tax code — and are reflected in Congress.
It’s really the only way I can explain the inflexible and intolerant behavior of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders on the left, Sen. Rand Paul and the House Freedom Caucus on the right, and many others.
I doubt Mr. Trump has fully considered how much his colleagues on the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. are clinging to false ideas, wrapped in platitudes about “competitiveness” or “fairness,” and how much the nation needs presidential leadership that lays bare the facts and moves the dialogue to a more constructive place.
Instead of engaging in tweets and exchanges that seem to further inflame controversial issues, the president should give some thought to engaging the nation in a fact-based dialogue of what is broken — and why various contestants on issues are so upset and at odds — to improve mutual respect and understanding.
With that, we can seek solutions. That’s the kind of leadership the president needs to provide to better unite and move the nation forward.
• Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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