I DON’T like to psychologize current events, but sometimes it’s the only way to make sense of things.
American politics is becoming increasingly unstable. But if you were too look deeper, most of the fury has little to do with police brutality, the suffering of African Americans or even Trump and his supporters.
In many ways, 2020 America is becoming like the Philippines in the early and mid-eighties – a time of increasing instability and the end of an era.
Americans are currently on the edge, mainly due to the upcoming presidential election this November. For both sides of the political divide, politics has become an existential issue, but for different reasons.
For the American right, it’s a question of holding on to their nation. The right wants to retain the Christian, predominantly European descended America with all of its culture and legacy. Basically, the American Right wants the same thing that all Nationalists want for their respective nations – holding on to their home.
The left, on the other hand, wants something more abstract and more subtle. For the American left, Trump and the right represent the death of their worldview. For them, Nationalism and Populism – particularly the Trumpist variety – represent the fall of American international liberalism, and therefore, must be stopped at all costs.
I believe this feeling is the source of the outrage of the American Left. Leftists may disagree with this assessment, arguing that their side is winning demographically and ideologically and there is some truth in that. However, it is the Internationalist, Globalized Left that is reliant on the world order; not the Isolationist, Nationalist Right.
The American Left could very well defeat the American Right; the Democrats defeat the Republicans, but they cannot defeat the passage of time. One day, the US dollar will no longer be the reserve currency. One day, America will no longer be able to afford its social welfare system. One day, America will no longer prop up the American world order.
And the American Left, as it is currently constituted, is based on American Power. It is American power which punishes “rogue” states. It is American pre-eminence that sustains liberal ideologies, like women’s rights, anti-racism and democratic principles.
It is the American military that keeps relatively authoritarian states, like China, Iran and Russia, in check. Without American power, therefore, liberal/leftist ideology becomes an interlude of history, as opposed to the arc of history.
If America loses its power, Americans will bear the brunt of changes but it will hurt the Left more than the Right. Can the American Left exist in a world without American Power? Probably not.
That’s why the American Left, from the highest political leaders to the lowest protesters, are so very excited right now. They think that Trump is their primary enemy. They don’t realize that it’s time that’s slowly destroying them.
This reminds me of a passage in a poem by the late Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”/PN
