These are the ones who have heard the distant roar of surging wealth and assume that the rising tide will lift them, too which may explain the record level of consumer debt. Even in 1992, with the nation mired in recession, political engagement was grudging. But there was no sense of moral urgency. It was simply time to replace old management with new. Some people will say we don't need a vital politics to be a vital society.
Commentators rightly stress the importance of such civic engagement.
But they make a serious mistake labeling it as an alternative to politics. Throughout our history, civic activism has been the precursor, and the propellant, of political movements. As today, the economy was booming, jobs were plentiful and vast fortunes were being accumulated. Yet real wages had stopped growing, and the gulf between rich and poor was widening into a chasm. Wall Street magnates were consolidating their empires.