The last day of January, 2020 The Washington Post published a op-ed by James Comey, former FBI director during the term of Donald J. Trump. Comey is taking on the idea that we are at the end of democracy as we know it. He references the many different crisis during his lifetime and the latter part of mine: Vietnam, the assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, killing of his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and other events through the latter part of the 20^th Century that seemed be tearing this country apart.

Comey rightly makes the point that we did survive these stresses and suggests we have the capacity to survive the stresses put upon us by Trump. His point is that the middle in the past held and brought us through. He is assuming that that middle is still strong and will bring us through this current bad time.

Comey’s point is correct in that the moderate middle is important and has been our strength. Alexis de Tocqueville in his analysis of the young American Republic pointed to the size and importance of the rising middle class as the strength of the American experiment in democracy, and that made this experiment a unique success. The country did not have an entrenched landed aristocracy that shaped its social and political life. It did have a landed gentry in place but not yet established and in total control. There was and is a strong belief here in the importance of the middle class, folks who run small businesses, own and work family farms. From these independent people we gained our strength and unique qualities.

The growth and development of the United States, socially and economically has seen the reshaping of this middle class. Entrepreneurs and family farms have been replaced by corporations and agr-business. The middle class of independent business men and women has been replaced by middle managers, corporate employees often lacking in loyalty or fealty for the local community. Sociologists, political scientists and some economists have pointed to this trend as altering the nature of the middle de Tocqeville admired and viewed as the source of success for the American experiment.

Other changes have gradually reduced the middle income families. Middle income is now taken to be the sign of a middle class. By this criteria the middle class was now composed of a mix of white collar and well paid union workers in manufacturing. The white collar middle managers are still with us, but the well paid manufacturing employees are greatly diminished.

None of these new middle class members has the kind of independence and location in our communities that the small business owners and family farmers had. The current members of these latter groups do exist and have been attracted to the social and economic arguments made by conservative politicians. The great swaths of the country that are governed by the conservative politicians is comprised of these people. Since they are a fading part of the US body politic and their very existence seems to be challenged they appear to have been drawn to politicians like Donald Trump who are seen as their saviors.

These politicians and their supporters have given us an administration that is the source of so much of the dissatisfaction and anger that is the unspoken basis of Comey’s argument. His optimism rests with his belief that the traditional middle is still strong and will hold. He believes these will bring us back toward the center.

I hope that he is correct. However, for the reasons and trends I have drawn out above I am not so certain. The middle is diminished and what is left has been divided and polarized, perhaps beyond any ability to coalesce around less extreme political views. I see, hear and read articles, op-ed pieces, thoughts of friends and acquaintances that say we will recover and move on, perhaps to a more equitable center. I am among them, still, I am often unable to shake the pessimistic sense that we are kidding our selves.