It
is always important to be willing to revise one’s opinions. It is equally
important to be critical of views with which one agrees but which seem to evolve
from points of view with which one disagrees.
In
my browsing through news media, I came across an opinion piece by Tom Nichols,
published on USA Today, entitled “Trump is not ruining democracy, we
are. And it's been anguishing to confront”. In it, he writes (inter
alia):
The
people I have always counted on to be patriotic, sensible, and steady – like
our ancestors had been under far more trying circumstances than our own – were
now sirens of drama and complaint. Everything, they said, is as bad as it’s
ever been. These, they were sure, are the worst times ever. We are all victims.
Someone must pay……
We,
ourselves, have become unwilling to engage in civic life at even the most basic
level of regular voting. We, ourselves, have embraced consumerism that demands
ever better and ever cheaper products no matter what the cost to our own
economy. We, ourselves, have chosen to be solitary viewers of television and
social media, and then to express ourselves in public only with performative
and childish rage…….
What’s
going on? Ironically, this growing illiberalism is not the product of bad
times, but of a long trend of rising narcissism and a sense of entitlement that
was enabled by peace, prosperity, and rapidly improving living standards. The
United States and other democracies have real problems, but the rise of a sour
and selfish abandonment of democracy is not happening because of social
injustice or “economic anxiety.” Worse, our democracy now practically must run
on autopilot independently of a public that is happily and wilfully ignorant of
the issues and wants nothing to do with the dreary business of governing. And
with increasing frequency, our form of government is under attack by bored
working and middle-class citizens – led by clever political and television
figures – who have no use for democracy other than as slogans and
window-dressing around their need to be the constant centre of their own
reality show…..
This is
not the America in which I was raised. Something was wrong, and I wanted to
know why millions of the citizens of my own nation – some of them near and dear
to me – were now, astonishingly, embracing illiberalism and authoritarianism…..
The
January 6 rioters were the most extreme example of this stupefying level of
narcissism. These insurrectionists were not disenfranchised or oppressed people
trying to engage in a peaceful assembly. They could barely express a coherent political
thought. Rather, the whole event was a day-camp outing for middle-aged,
middle-class, gainfully employed Americans who wanted to be heroes storming
Congress – and perhaps lynching the vice president in the process – and then go
back home to sell real estate, attend work retreats in Mexico, and brag about
it all on Instagram.
Over a
half-century ago, the writer Eric Hoffer presciently saw the way such madness
might overtake the democracies when he warned that anti-democratic mass
movements begin not with deprivation and suffering, but with boredom and
plenty. “Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when
we have nothing and want some,” he wrote in 1951. “To a deliberate fomenter of
mass upheavals, the report that people are bored stiff should be at least as
encouraging as that they are suffering from intolerable economic or political
abuses.”
The
United States has fallen into this very trap. Our parents and grandparents had
the fortitude to endure the 20th century, with two world wars and an economic
disaster. In the 21st century, we lack the resilience even to overcome a
pandemic, much less the great trials of a war or a depression. Worse, we are
not mature or stoic enough even to endure the prosaic and often dull routines
that are part of daily life.
We are
suffering because we are successful. We are unhappy because we have what we want.
Time is
running out. If we are to recapture our civic life and reinvigorate our liberal
and constitutional inheritance, we must stop, right now, and – unpleasant and
searing though it will be – take stock of ourselves and our own role in the
decline of our democracy.
After reading that, perhaps,
you can see my problem. Whilst I agree that Americans are embracing
illiberalism and authoritarianism, to suggest that it is due to success and
freedom from want, and that the January the 6th rioters were middle-aged,
middle-class, gainfully employed narcissists on a day camp outing, is as bizarre
an analysis as one can imagine. The Hoffer quote is equally ridiculous, “Our frustration is greater when we have much
and want more than when we have nothing and want some,”
It is the sort of comment that an Oscar Wilde imitator might suggest in a rogue
performance of the Importance of Being Earnest.
In a Wikipedia entry, Mr Nichols apparently describes
himself as a Never Trump conservative.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Nichols argued that conservatives should
vote for Hilary Clinton, whom he detested, because Trump was "too mentally
unstable" to serve as commander-in-chief. Nichols continued that argument
for the 2018 midterm elections.. After the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to
the Supreme Court of the United States, Nichols announced on October 7, 2018,
that he would leave the Republican Party and become an independent and claimed
that Senator Susan Collin’s yes vote on the confirmation convinced him that the
Republican Party exists to exercise raw political power. He also criticized the
Democratic Party for being "torn between totalitarian instincts on one
side and complete political malpractice on the other" and said that the
party's behaviour during the Kavanaugh hearings, with the exception of Senators
Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar, was execrable but that the
Republicans have become a threat to the rule of law and to constitutional norms.
In an opinion column, Nichols cited the Mueller Report to argue that Trump
failed in his role as a citizen and then as commander-in-chief by not doing
more to prevent and punish the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential
election.
I am in complete agreement with Mr Nichols about
the Republican Party having become a threat to the rule of law and to
constitutional norms, nonetheless his political analysis of the American State
of affairs is just that, an insular view overlooking the fact that there are
more countries with allegedly democratic governments in the rest of the world.
In that world outside of the United States, there is an equal trend towards illiberalism
and authoritarianism, and in some cases towards confusion and muddle. I refer
in particular to the United Kingdom which has a group of amateurs operating Her
Majesties Government as if it were a part time job. They faff around talking of
levelling up, fantasy growth, mixed messaging social order and immigration without
any cohesion or sense of integrity. A Punch and Judy prime minister in charge
who delegates any form of responsibility to people incapable of managing to
even make a phone call.
Does that have anything to do with them being successful
and having what they want or a stupefying level of narcissism? I wonder.
As to other ‘democracies’ turning towards the
right, I again cite Professor Henry Giroux:
The ghosts of a fascist past
are with us once again, resurrecting the discourses of hatred, exclusion and
ultra-nationalism in countries such as the United States, Hungary, Brazil,
Poland, Turkey and the Philippines. In addition, right-wing extremist parties
are on the move politically in Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Germany. The
designers of a new breed of fascism increasingly dominate major political
formations and other commanding political and economic institutions across the
globe. They have infused a fascist ideology with new energy through a
right-wing populism that constructs the nation through a series of racist and
nativist exclusions, all the while feeding off the chaos produced by
neoliberalism.”
I am more inclined to consider Mr
Giroux’s view of this seemingly global trend towards authoritarian regimes;
however, one cannot discount the energy of fundamentalists in following this
trend. The twenty years of maintaining some form of order and new
democratisation in Afghanistan, have seemingly come to nought. One could quite
naturally assume that after twenty years of propping up an Afghan Government
and defence force both military and civilian, that these nascent institutions
would be sufficiently independent and capable of some resilience and strength,
to sustain a new regime; yet, with surprising rapidity, Afghanistan fell back
into the grip of the orthodox Taliban and Sharia Law. This is such an extreme view
of the rule of law that not only dictates behaviour but thought. It is a
religious straight jacket that has nothing to do with civilised civilian
governance, and perhaps Mr Nichols view is correct in identifying it as a stupefying
level of narcissism.
There did not seem to be even an
attempt by the Afghan forces to stop the Taliban from rolling in. It seems they just threw down their weapons and changed out of their uniforms. Perhaps they
felt that what they have built over that past twenty years was not worth dying
for. The level of commitment to a
country by its citizens is always open to question and debate. The people of
Myanmar and Belarus would know much more about that than I.
