The Trump/Clinton phenomenon in our current American political scene is a fascinating one. My view is that it is more fascinating, if one steps back from the admittedly colorful players and looks a bit deeper. What on earth is going on? Has the US gone mad? Has the whole country succumbed to the ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times"? I wanted to share a few thoughts that may be too extensive, but it is hard to be concise about this complex topic. At the risk of boring, herewith are my thoughts"
Regarding the interesting times in which we live - and they are indeed interesting! - it is very challenging to sort it all out and to make sense of the "noise and confusion", as well as the competing views about the state of the nation. Are we in good shape, or on the brink? The press/media deluge us with many highly colored, 'ad hominem' tabloid dramas. Everything seems reduced to polarized contests between good guys and bad, or bad guys and bad guys. All of this colorful coverage never seems to ask why - or why now?
Being in the throes of reading Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I am inclined to think (after Gibbon) that our present (US election) symptoms portend something bigger than two decadent personages competing for the US presidency. There seems to be a huge socio-cultural shift in the US (and the world) that goes beyond mere elections. The outcome of this US election (or any election) is unlikely to alter the socio-cultural trajectory that we are on. One factor, social media, alters (smashes?) all sorts of "boundaries" and reaches all sorts of people. Social media involve everyone in public discourse, if they feel so inclined. Suddenly, people who have never spoken "in public" have a "soap box" and their opinions appear as comments in electronic fora. Mobs can be put together electronically, and they can be motivated to take action. It has to require a certain toughness (hardness?) of character to play politics in this highly visible, highly volatile game.
Edward Gibbon saw the loss of "civic virtue" as the central cause of the Romans' "decline and fall". It played out in many ways getting worse over time. There was the adoption of an increasingly soft, luxurious lifestyle, the loss of patriotism and a shift from public service as a form of highly regarded duty, to public service as personal opportunity for material advancement. In the declining days of the Roman empire, those who could avoid military service for themselves, or their children, did so. Initially, they yielded military service to the lower classes; then, used mercenaries to spare Roman lives. Religion and family life were given lip service, but were a less powerful force in the state.
For us, as for the Romans, there has been the growing problem of effectively governing a huge - and ever growing - increasingly diverse country. The size, scope and complexity of the issues urgently needing to be dealt with, challenge the political structure and functioning of our federal republic. The US Constitution, designed when we were a recently liberated collection of small former English colonies with a relatively homogeneous anglo saxon population, is stretched to the breaking point. Consensus on anything is hard (nearly impossible?) to achieve, and conflict gets increasingly polarized. President Obama has "experimented" with bypassing Congress and ruling by presidential decree on a number of pressing issues, like immigration. It is arguably a clear violation of our Constitution; it sets dangerous precedents, it changes the constitutional foundation of our rule of law. It solves problems, but… at what cost? And it guarantees challenge in the courts as to its constitutionality. Might one see this sort of presidential move is as a baby step towards future presidential autocracy, dictatorship, Caesarian power? Were similar sorts of dynamic forces at play in Rome on the eve of Julius Caesar.
There is the problem of taxation. Who gets taxed? For what? For whose benefit? Huge disputes: "bread and circuses" vs "my wealth". How are the rich and poor to be accommodated? Compromise is increasingly fraught in an Internet age when there is no place to hide for long. With social media onlookers wanting to see EVERYTHING, previously backroom political disputes disputes, where things got sorted out privately, today, with Internet players "supervising" can become a war against "enemies"; not a compromise between opponents in the course of parliamentary processes.
Like the later Rome described by Gibbons our population has become increasingly diverse. Roman citizenship became a near universal in the Roman Empire with a noticeable impact on previously shared values and standards of civic virtue. One of our political problems is with the social integration of immigrants, who are arriving too fast to allow for the "melting pot" to "melt" them into an American identity of any sort. More turmoil, more social unrest, no common values, more fragmentation more splits. There is also the variable economic impact of immigrants on lower middle and working class US citizens. Industrialists love them as cheap labor, non-union labor and make a virtue of "diversity". Native workers see them as lowering the price of labor; thereby, lowering their standard of life, etc. Free trade is a similar issue. Apart from slogans that market diversity, for whose benefit does it work and how?
Rome was able to integrate foreign religions into their existing pantheon of gods. The US handles this problem by the promotion of of "politically correct", which tends to supersede religion. All religions are of less importance than social "rights" - even if these "rights" challenge freedom of religion. Government enforcement of social rights is in danger of becoming the new "state religion".
Into this caldron of turmoil, we inject two extremely defective candidates for presidency. Are they the result of the complex recipe for the "stew" that we've been cooking? Who but a severely compromised person would subject themselves to the human torture of being the center of a US presidential campaign? On a much larger scale, it resembles the politics of so-called "banana republics"! How it will end is impossible to say, but the actual election of either candidate is worrying. Can the US Constitution prevail despite dysfunction of the head of one of the three branches of government?
I may not have all of the "moving parts" in this scenario in the correct proportions, but I would suggest that any assessment that looked at these- or alternative dynamics might be of some interest, and worthy of thought.
