It's Evening in America: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Part 8 of 8

Author’s note: I started the first draft of this essay in the summer of 2024, long before the election, and intended it to be a more circumspect and much shorter piece, garnished with the usual twist of humor, about how we became an empire, rose to pre-eminence in the world, and are now in gradual but definite decline. After the dizzying events of that summer and fall and the reinstallation of Donald Trump in the White House, however, and the wrecking ball he has taken to not just custom and civility in politics but the Constitution, rule of law, and democracy itself, it feels as if the American Empire is falling off a cliff. So I felt honor bound to write a very different ending to the essay, and since there’s nothing funny about this moment, it’s straight up with no twist.

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Can I tell you one last thing?

With apologies to Neo in The Matrix, I didn’t come here to tell you how it began – although I did – but I came here to tell you how it’s going to end. American historian, writer and activist Rebecca Solnit asserts that, “democracy is based in trust in strangers and a sense of having something in common with them, which is part of why xenophobia and fear of crime serve fascist agendas so well.” As does the notion that there is a ‘real America’ and such a thing as ‘real Americans’, meaning mainly white Christians with conservative social values, and that everyone else is to be vilified as either woke liberals out to destroy traditional culture, or foreigners out to poison the blood of America.

Unindicted and unconvicted former American president, John Adams, once observed, “there never was a democracy yet that didn’t commit suicide.” As I wrote a long time ago in this essay, there haven’t been that many of them but he’s right.

Chief Nazi propagandist and war criminal, Josef Goebbels, who did commit suicide, had a slightly different take and said, “the big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.” But when the mortal enemies are our own countrymen, and they hold the levers of power, the distinction between murder and suicide is meaningless. Whatever the case, it is now clear that democracy, the great strength of our empire – sorry, nation – is also our greatest weakness.

Hannah Arendt, who I cited earlier, was looking back at Nazi Germany, and squarely at the Soviet Union, not ahead to America when she wrote that, “totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all the first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of creativity is the best guarantee of their loyalty.” That’s exactly what’s happening today.

We are witnessing the hollowing out of the federal government by the people in charge of running it. The seat of that government, Washington D.C., is no longer the shining city on the hill but a brothel for billionaires who couldn’t care less about the common good and seek only to line their pockets with even more wealth. And what served once as a beacon of democracy for the whole world to behold, admire, and envy, is now a dark hole crawling with Trump toadies who eagerly kiss the ring.

As American democracy openly becomes a kleptocracy, even more chilling is its descent into autocracy. Flagrantly flaunting the Constitution and with callous disregard for human rights and dignity, the Trump Administration is systematically victimizing migrants, many of whom are here legally.

A dual state is being constructed – one being a capitalist economy governed by stable laws, and the other a domain where the rule of law does not apply, depriving people of due process and shipping them to foreign prisons. Most citizens still feel safe and secure so it doesn’t spark mass opposition, but if the black hole can swallow even one among us, it can swallow us all.

It is tempting to say we are rushing headlong into an Orwellian nightmare and America will be a totalitarian state where the government enjoys not just untrammeled power but eventually dictates all aspects of life including what is written, said publicly, and even thought. One that rules with an iron fist through fear and intimidation, violence and torture. One willing and able to obliterate the past if it serves their purpose and literally rewrite history and redraw the map. Or just rename what’s on the map.

My own dystopian vision for the future of the American Empire comes not from the book 1984 or The Matrix but a movie released back in 1968, Planet of the Apes. It won’t be today or tomorrow or the day after, but at some point a man resembling Charlton Heston will be on his knees, looking up at the half-buried remnant of a shattered Lady Liberty, pounding the sand and screaming, “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” Chuck liked to chew the scenery, but without the hysterical hyperbole, let’s look at where we’re at.

Today, nearly half the population believe another civil war is likely or very likely in their lifetimes. Stop to consider that for a moment.

I would argue that while it’s not a shooting war – yet – we are very much at war with ourselves, political solutions to our disagreements are increasingly impossible to find, and by many not even sought. W.E.B. DuBois, the great historian, activist, and founder of the NAACP, observed some 75 years ago that, “either the United States will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the United States.” It took a few decades to find the answer but now we know.

On the bright side, a hot civil war may not be necessary because we are slowly but surely self-segregating. Referred to by some as ‘The Big Sort’, more and more people are choosing to live in like-minded enclaves be they neighborhoods, towns, cities, or states.

And it’s easy to see why. Republicans or Democrats control the legislature in all but two states, and one party or the other has a supermajority in 28 of them. The result is that so-called ‘red states’ and ‘blue states’ have very different laws on their books representing and codifying either very conservative or very progressive values. One need only look at the post-Dobbs patchwork of abortion laws to understand we are living in two different countries.

Seeing the glass as half full, former Supreme Court Justice and deep thinker Louis Brandeis believed the Constitution was designed to allow the states to be the “laboratories of democracy.” But how’s that going to work when half the states don’t believe in science?

Sadly, a Divided States of America, with muscular state governments and a weak federal one abrogating most of its assumed responsibilities, may be our future. And maybe our only hope for one. Making it official would require an embarrassing explanation to the rest of the world, adding a seat at the United Nations – come to think of it, maybe they should rename that as well – reprinting money, documents, literature, etc., but we might at least coexist without shooting each other.

And would that unofficial arrangement be so bad? States can’t print money, but they can borrow it and as we careen down the ruinous road of tariffs and tax cuts, foreign investors may be more comfortable holding bonds insured by one stable state than the unhinged united ones.

Since California and New York have the fourth and eighth largest economies in the world respectively – you read that right – the Blue States of America would be fine thank you very much. Whereas the Red States of America, the vast majority of which rely heavily on subsidies from the federal government, would be subsisting on grapes of wrath.

Donald Trump and his nationalist party truly believe we’re on the verge of a return to greatness and a new Golden Age. Gilded certainly, but golden? I think not. He does seem to have empire in mind with his version of Manifest Destiny – retake the Panama Canal by force, bully Denmark and colonize Greenland, and make Canada accede to economic pressure to become the 51st state of the union. Many dismiss these proposals as madness and pure fantasy, and not surprisingly many of the many reside in Panama, Denmark, Greenland, and Canada.

The reality is that as Donald Trump leads us backwards into ignorance and isolation, it will be China that experiences a golden age of world power and influence.

Only the most addled and self-deluded MAGA maniacs truly believe the American Empire is on the rise again. As Canadian writer and columnist for Esquire magazine, Stephen Marche, recently observed, “America has never been weaker in our lifetimes. It has undergone a complete collapse of national solidarity with red voters pitted against blue. It doesn’t seem to understand it is under attack from both Russia and China in a hybrid war. Honestly? Canada isn’t afraid of America. We’re afraid for America.” Well, so am I.

Elon Musk – Trump’s now X Rasputin and the dark prince of solipsism – recently stated he thinks – does he? – that human empathy will be the downfall of Western Civilization. I believe the lack of it will, and the president and his acolytes bear responsibility for turning the nation’s once ample reserve of empathy to antipathy.

The late historian and philosopher, Arnold Toynbee, said, “Civilizations decline when their leaders stop responding creatively, and the civilizations then sink owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority.” He was merely relating history, but he too unknowingly prophesied our fate.

Democrats believe that politics can be an expression of love and acceptance – and yes, diversity, equality and inclusion – and have long sought creative solutions to America’s problems. Today’s Republican party and the millions who wallow in their awful anomie are truculent believers that politics is completely transactional, nothing more than the amassing and exercise of wealth and power, and that Democrats are snowflakes and everything they believe in is weak and woke.

But what I really want to tell you is this.

For all our sins as an empire, we have done great things. With a unified sense of and commitment to sacrifice, the United States marshaled its enormous latent economic and military power to save Western Civilization from a madman bent on total domination. Then, through the Marshall Plan we rebuilt a war-torn Europe and created a stable new world order, albeit one under the mushroom cloud of nuclear war. And we formed new armies of scientists and civilians to help underdeveloped countries address starvation and disease, demonstrating the incredible strength of so-called ‘soft power’.

Our leaders used to inspire us to ask what we could do for our country, not what it could do for them. Now we have a leader who asks only what we can do for him.

As this final part of the essay posts, Donald Trump has been the 47th President of the United States for 138 days. He followed through on his campaign promise trying to be a dictator on day one, and has tried every day since. With stunning speed and by shambolic method he has used every means at his disposal, most of which are not Constitutional, to consolidate power and rule as a despot.

There are many parallels between what he is doing and what led thirteen colonies to declare their independence from a mad despot some 250 years and seven posts ago. To wit, I would like to present a list of accusations directed at King George III of England penned by famous founding father, Thomas Jefferson. The list has been slightly abridged but otherwise unaltered, and you are free to draw any comparisons you feel might be apt to the current madman who would be king.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

A close reading of the complaints leveled against King George reveals that Wanna-be-King Donald has checked virtually all of the boxes which led to a Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and ultimately our freedom from tyranny. There have been some heartening demonstrations of resistance to the palace coup in progress, but with a plurality of the populace more concerned about the price of eggs than our precious democracy, and Congress controlled by a party terrified of and in complete thrall to Trump, I hold little hope that revolution is in the air.

So, is it evening in America? The high crimes and misdemeanors of a mad king once led to the birth of our nation, will those of another be the death of it? Will we let it die, or will we yell at the top of our lungs a resounding no to autocracy and fascism and wake up to a new morning in America? A rebirth of democracy.

As you might surmise from the Planet of the Apes scenario, I harbor a deep cynicism about human nature and the future of mankind, but I really don’t know our fate. I do know that the future of American democracy hangs in the balance.

As Neo did at the end of The Matrix, I will now hang up the phone and leave you to ponder the questions. And I will spare you any crappy sequels. What I will do is close with more wise words from the Declaration of Independence as a reminder of what we fought so hard for, and why. And why we should continue to do so.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Thanks for listening. Talk soon.