The Present and Future of America

I am reading David Simon's Tony Soprano's America. Simon teaches sociology at the Unversity of California - Berkley in San Francisco.

He claims America as a society, a whole, has ceased to believe in a positive, better future, and the existence of persons or leaders who can take us there. We no longer trust the systems in which we live. The result is alienation and lack of authenticity. Simon pinpoints the collapse of the middle class as a major driver of this pessimism about the future.

Simon uses the TV series as a mirror on American society. "Life in effect imitates art", as the old saying goes. Or art is successful - a TV hit with viewers in this case - because it reflects the life and speaks to the concerns of the audience.

The author makes a convincing connection between trends and the content of this TV series. My wife and I in fact have watched every episode of this series, which ran for three seasons. Simon's analysis explains why the series has fascinated us.

In August (2009), we spent several weeks in Canada. In Toronto, I told friends that more and more Americans need to think and behave like gangsters because of the systems in which they live. The vampires on Wall Street and in Washington leave us no option. Or as Tony Soprano noted in one episode, "Forget duty and honor. Manuever."

This amorality has poisoned American society - from the top down. Simon says this toxic "scamming of the system" by our elites is causing a severe disconnect between the people of this land and their institutions. We are risking institutional failure, to use another concept, because of this lasck of trust and the pessimism it is breeding.

The late American historian Barbara Tuchman, who died in 1984, noted toward the end of her life that America was - and is - risking institutional failure. Until we recover the concept of honor, she said, we will not be able to reverse decline.

Dr. Paul Rux