The United States – as gleaned from ‘mainstream’ media and the hullabaloo raised thereof - appears to be in crisis mode, almost on the verge of decline, taken over by the forces of irrationality. But this is a caricature – even from afar. The proverbial marrow of the problem appears to lie in a mélange of ideological and extreme form of liberalism, the concept and idea of man (woman) that emerges from this-classical and modern, and variants of nationalism elaborated upon by Herder, Rousseau and so on. To throw this broad assertion into sharp relief, consider extreme ideological liberalism and the concept(s) of man (woman).
This form of liberalism fawningly and grovelingly elaborated upon by a person of Francis Fukuyama fame, in his, ‘End of History’ thesis postulated that liberal democracy was the last bastion of mankind; this ideology reckoned that all peer competitors had died and there was no serious competitor to it.
And that a new man (woman) had emerged from liberal democracy’s ‘triumph’. Because of these, virtually, practically and philosophically history had ended. The ‘new’ man (woman) was a modern one, not encumbered by the ‘detritus’ of tradition, custom or any other ‘baggage’.
Undercutting the western classical concept and idea of man (woman), which held the human being to be defined by purpose whose goal was the cultivation of virtue, this concept reduced humans to a bundle of ‘utils’ driven merely by utilitarian urges (pleasure maximization and pain minimization), emotional ‘baggage’, social influences and socialization into these (so-called ‘nurture versus ‘nature’) and other assorted ‘prejudices’.
The ideology of extreme liberalism preened and postulated that it would liberate mankind from these. Inhering in the pretenses of liberal democracy was universalism best reflected in Fukuyama’s assertions (paraphrased here) that ‘even though it was in America that Liberal democracy had reached its apogee, the rest of the mankind would follow with both the push and pull factors.’
This universalism could, after being given a jolt or a push, would resonate in and among all peoples of the world. It would appear that in reified form liberal democracy’s push was globalism – another ideology where economics and its vision of man (woman) came to rule the proverbial roost.
Allied to a narrow vision and idea of nationalism where Rousseau’s ‘general will’ was wed with it, the globalist experiment began in the United States, leaving its mark on all spheres of life. Thus began the dissipation of the ‘organic’ concept of the nation and nationalism adumbrated by Johanne Herder, and the privileging of ‘homo economics’ – bound together in a spaghetti bowl of ‘multiculturalism’.
In this schema, the liberal canards were apparently held together by multi-culturalism with open immigration policies. The larger idea seemed that in the sphere of immediacy, cultures that migrated to the US would retain their power. But in the ‘long duree’ scheme these too would dissolve in the liberal mush.
All this is not to demean liberalism which has some really redeeming features like tolerance and toleration but to put extreme liberalism into perspective. When the ‘general will’ was elevated to the position of the sovereign, nationalism in the US lost its ‘sting’. But humans being human need an anchor to give sense and meaning and even stability to their lives.
To give people that, in the US, extreme liberals concocted and conjured the idea of ‘civic nationalism’. While in the ‘roaring nineties’, the end of the cold war (which had given people in the US some degree of stable expectations), and the heyday of globalization, the occlusion of Herder’s idea of organic nationalism, the elevation of ‘the general will into a sovereign status’ and fetishizing ‘civic nationalism’, undercurrents of resistance to these remained obscure.
But gradually, these came to the fore when the ‘vox’ (people) of the US saw their world-familiar, stable and known- dissipate. (It may be that the 2008 financial crisis was the proverbial crisis that opened the pandoras box). In any nation other than America, the resistance would have taken the form of revolution; but in the US it took the form and shape of ‘populism’ emblematized by Donald Trump.
Parsed and pared to essence then, this populist yearning, was a crie de la couer by Americans to revert to a past or an age where Americanness was not dissolved in globalism (no matter the window dressing and gloss imparted to it), where the nation gave meaning to people’s lives and an economic paradigm gave society stability and structure.
In combination, reversion to an organic concept of nation, where economics is not unmoored leading to the financialization of the economy, where identity is not collapsed in the vortex of civic nationalism and the ‘general will’, are the explanatory variables of Trumpism- a movement that is not going anywhere after Donald Trump’s presidential term is over.
From a power political perspective and a political party one, it was the democrats who embraced extreme liberalism lock stock and barrel – embracing, for example, identity politics over say bread and butter issues for ‘ordinary’ Americans and foreign policies where other countries had voice and even veto on these.
The Democrats probably believed that the pain was short term and the attendant price to be paid not a great one. But the tides of history and the future have their own ‘logic’. It was ordinary’ Americans that resisted and showed their power with gusto in 2016 and 2024.
Will, the question, is America be, in this ‘inflection point’ be turbulent and ‘chaotic’. I doubt. The country will, in all likelihood, revert to a ‘golden mean’ that is best for its people and their interests. That is, peoples’ interests, and the nation’s interest will become aligned and congruent. What about the country’s foreign policy? The same could be said for it. If these realignments take root, what is the rest of the world to do? Adjust and realign their peoples’ and state’s welfare.
The world is in the midst of a transition- brought about a multitude of forces that include Donald Trump’s use of American power. The attendant ‘disruption’ need not be deleterious; it can indeed be a force for general good- only when and if countries across the world re-adjust and think of their people first!
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