I visited America in 2005 – for an internship that was part of a program I was doing at a provincial, small town Danish University and then in 2007-2008 (both turned to be debacles but at the same time constituted steep learning curves for me or even a robust education).
The 2005 visit became the predicate for a fuller visit to America - essentially in the nature of gaining multiple vantage points on the country. The contextual backdrops to these visits were the 2001 attacks on the US homeland and the second Gulf War initiated by the US.
In fact, my Danish foray was my attempt to gain an understanding on social democracy - given the furore in America and the West about liberal democracy touted as the ‘panacea to the Muslim world’. My motivating premises were then twofold: one, I had developed an ‘anti-Americanism informed by the country’s ‘wars of choice’ in Afghanistan and Iraq’; in lieu of this I desired, as an engaged Muslim, to develop a thesis (or political theory) about Islam and the Muslim world.
‘European Alternative’
A corollary to this then was the ‘European alternative’ as opposed to the American liberal democratic variant (naivete combined with youthful idealism can sometimes be delusional). All this was underpinned by my Australian experience – a combination of the bold, beautiful and the ugly- where in a convoluted myself was reconstituted.
The Australian grid created a kind of a quasi – hybrid self where the west, the east and my Muslim self - sat at ease with each other. Informed by hybridity, idealism and youthful exuberance, I resolved to devote myself to dedicate my efforts to craft a better world!
First, given these experiences and after all these years, somewhat fuller insights about the West were revealed to me. Contra my initial understanding (stereotype), that the entire Western world would correspond to Australia (or the converse) turned to be a myth.
While there is a subsumption of values that undergird the West (as an idea than a geographical entity), the western world is defined by difference(s) that are stark and poignant.
Common Values of Europe
For example, Jensen or Poulsen from Denmark or Johanne and Heidi from Germany may be white, hold certain common values (say variants of individualism and so on), and they may relate more fully with each other in a non-western milieu, but very stark and poignant differences define them at the same time.
And say while in Australia, the US and to some extent the UK, as a ‘white -brown’ person who spoke good English and even comported to some extent like my host society members, I had some acceptance (more, in a lighter vein among women luckily), Europe - especially Scandinavia was a non-starter; it was cold in every sense of the term (again except female attention).
Grafting a common template to and on the West then turned out to be a mistake. Ultimately, I turned and veered intellectually to the ‘idea of the West’ as the west whose well springs were ‘Anglo Saxon’ - that was in tune with my ‘hybrid self’.
So, what is the West? And Is America representative of it?
The answer to the nature of the West question is so broad that this essay’s scope cannot do justice to it. Making a virtue out of necessity then, the ‘answer’ will be reductive.
If the West can be pigeonholed into its standout features, it is an idea that is defined by the rule of law, individualism (with its variants across the western world), the rights and values that flow from these - all undergirded by the cardinal feature: individual liberty. But then this or these features are ideal types.
Lived Experience of Western World
I have travelled across and lived in the breadth of the western world: nowhere have I found western societies gyrating to these in entirety. However, this ‘lived experience’ does not detract from these fundamental characteristics of the West. The most representative of these characteristics of the West appears to be the United States (at least, in theory).
In fact, from an elitist perspective, these themes and features may even have been hijacked by a certain class in the country: lawyers have turned rule of law in to rule by lawyers, corporate interests have hijacked public interest, extreme definition and of liberty and extreme rendering of the same have, contra Tocqueville, created an ‘uncivil society’ where men (women) ‘bowl alone’, and where trust – the glue that binds society has been a prime casualty and where politics devolved into ‘identity politics’ and ‘wokeism’.
Given the morphing, mutating and degenerating of characteristics of the West into discomfiting themes, and given that the US is representative of these, it is essential that the country either restore these values into their pristine form or impart some equilibrium to these constitutive elements.
And given America’s power, influence and reach, the equilibrium in contention would be ‘good’ for the world too. This is because trumpeting of ‘western values’ and integrating these as constitutive elements of American foreign policy create frisson and friction with the world - harking back to western colonialism in a neo-colonial avatar. Obiter dictum, this can only breed reaction in the non-west.
An equilibrium in the West (read the US) counterposed with equipoise would not only have domestic implications but also impact international relations. An inter -state relational grid defined by state interests and realistic competition between states would, from a normative standpoint led to a ‘balance of power’ (broadly defined) that would lead to peace among nations.
Restorative Justice of Americans
Domestically, within the US, equilibrium and equipoise, would lead to restoration and much needed healing. It is here Donald Trump and elements of his agenda come into play. If anything, the movement (Trumpism), pared to essence, appears to be a crie de la cour, by Americans for restorative justice (of sorts) for themselves – in an idiom of organic nationalism that manifests itself as populism.
This may be an accurate interpretation and assessment of Trumpism. If this holds, then Trumpism is a much-needed course correction in the US. The question or the issue may be that of ‘ratio and proportion’- that is, if Trumpism morphs into a disproportionate extreme, it can have insalubrious consequences.
But if it is channelized into a ‘ratio and proportion’ that moderates its extreme edges, it may lead to a condition of equilibrium whose ‘morning after’ effects may lead to an America where the proverbial playing field-political, economic, social and so on- will be level.
In this condition, political and policy competition will revert to mean – that is work to and for the welfare of America and Americans. Whether and how this condition pans out and denounces depends on the ‘man of the moment’ - the 47th president of the US, Donald Trump. The task, to say the least, and concomitantly, America’s future, is cut out for him!
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