An American Spring?

Everyone is, of course, familiar by now with the Arab Spring. In fact, it’s been hard to get away from it. But what not so many know is that other unlikely places are having springs too.

The essence of the Arab phenomenon has been the spontaneity of the uprisings coupled with their relatively non-ideological character. As an Israeli friend of mine, who just happened to find himself in Tahrir Square at the time of the Egyptian uprising, noted that people in the square were not shouting "down with America or down with Israel." Instead, they were demanding justice and the opportunity for a decent life for themselves. They weren’t Islamists, or communists, or neo-cons. Rather they were just people who wanted a future.

In Japan, Hiromi Murakami, Vice President for Asia of the Economic Strategy Institute, has written a compelling editorial calling for a Japanese Spring. As I traveled through Tokyo last week, it became apparent that she is not alone in her thinking. The long suffering, everyday Japanese people are hitting their limit. They don’t care much about 90 percent of the debate that takes place in the Diet and the media. They would just like an end to two decades of quasi-deflation, increasing job insecurity, and sky high prices for living quarters that are little more than rabbit hutches.  They are not politically oriented or motivated. They just want a future and are beginning to demand an end to politics as usual and a beginning of government for the people.

A few days later in Amman, Jordan, my cab driver told me Jordanians are sick to death of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of calls for jihad, and of the corrupt politics as usual. Said he, they just want a life — to be able to rent a decent apartment and get the children a decent education.

From Amman, I traveled to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But at first I wondered if I had just traveled in a circle. The talk in Israel was the same as in Amman and Tokyo. Indeed, thousands of Israelis had set up tents in the main streets of Tel Aviv in protest against sky high rents, food, and gasoline prices that no one can afford to pay. Last Saturday, 300,000 people took to the streets of Tel Aviv to demand that the government stop playing the politics of special interests and ideological and religious agendas and start playing the politics of responding to the real, everyday needs of the people. Indeed, the Israeli demonstrators have insisted that no politicians join them in their tents or attempt to make political capital out of their protests.

Indeed, even in Zurich, the citadel of the eponymous gnomes, the people I spoke with seemed preoccupied with the burdens of everyday life. It would be too much to speak of a Swiss spring, but certainly I detected some green shoots.

As my plane landed at Dulles yesterday, I suddenly wondered if it might be possible for spring to break out in America. Reading in the plane’s collection of newspapers about the sorry debate over raising the debt ceiling had been depressing. I was reminded of World War II General "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell who headed U.S. forces in the China theater and whose nickname for then Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek was "peanut." I realized that Stilwell had the right name. He was just applying it to the wrong guy. Not that Chiang deserved any special respect, but the real peanuts are clearly Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House  John Boehner. Moreover, President Obama, while not exactly a peanut, is certainly no more than a cashew. Indeed, that could be worse than being a peanut because if not treated properly cashews can become poisonous to their own hearlth.

Recent polls show that  80 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job and only 40 percent approve of the way Obama is doing his job. The problem is that the jobs these players are doing have little to do with actually creating the jobs that are the main, nay, virtually the only concern of the people. 

In other countries the people are standing up (in Syria they run out into the streets in the face of certain death) and demanding that the governments be of, by, and for the people, or at least cognizant of some responsibility to the people. What a novel idea. Do you think America could really ask for something like that?