Ideas Whose Time Has Come. Part I: The Middle Kingdom, Democracy, Globalism, and Islam

“May you live in interesting times.” Thus, an ancient Chinese curse. Yes, a curse – the idea being that life is better without wars and strife and contention, and that the alternative is much less desirable. Of course, the “Middle Kingdom” prided itself – as it continues to do to this day – on being a center of stability and predictability, especially where government is concerned. This is, of course, a long-term goal, and the occasional punctuation of revolutions, the Red Guard, the Great Leap Forward, and “continuous revolution” are the exceptions rather than the rule. One might say that the Chinese are better at consolidation than they are at revolution. Add to this the fact that China has been – perhaps uniquely among large and developed societies – less than enthusiastic about establishing and maintaining overseas empires. That particular virus has only infected them to the extent of supporting North Korea and North Vietnam, which, after all, do border on China; contrast that with the European empires of old, and the American empire of the present day, for which no place on the planet is too remote, or too lacking in value, to be a candidate for imperialism and empire-building. Aside from North Korea, the focus of China at this point seems to be limited to the South China Sea – a non-trivial matter but still no match for our own lust for the Near East, Latin America, and other regions – and, once again, at least on its own border.

Imagine, if you will, a large and wealthy country stable enough, and content enough, to mind its own business. Unheard of! And yet China has been pulling it off for millennia – once again with occasional exceptions. The concept of empire, which, in our time, means an overseas empire, seems almost universal by comparison. The European powers tried it, and succeeded – for quite a long time, but eventually gave up on the idea, through sheer fatigue and through finally getting real about the true economic and social costs. We have not yet reached that stage, and Russia is giving it another shot, although quite modest compared to the Iron Curtain and international communism of the 20^th Century.

Of course it can be argued that the empire urge is no longer characterized mainly by military attack, conquest, and occupation, but is now more along economic lines. And by this criterion, the Chinese have, in fact, established, and are vigorously pursuing, an economic empire, which has crossed our doorstep and is firmly ensconced in our own economy. And the American Empire is, likewise, much more than military, and is also largely economic – and yet, there is a military aspect to it as well. When economic activity doesn't suffice, then we have the military as a kind of Plan B. But what is at least as common is that the military is Plan A, and economic consolidation is Plan B, with diplomacy constantly running to catch up with the status quo. Diplomacy is, if you will, in charge of rationalization of actions already taken and having succeeded up to a point. Diplomacy is, in other words, a tool of the consolidation stage, where the big battles (if not the war) have already been won. And yet there is always a residual military aspect to things, which, I guess, amounts to a reminder of what can happen if diplomacy fails. Why else would we still have troops stationed in all of the defeated nations we fought against in World War II – Germany, Japan, and Italy?

So yes, these can be considered “interesting times”, and no time in American history has been as interesting as the very present, i.e. the Trump administration. Search all you like through books on American history, and you'll fail to find a case where an elected, sitting president was accused of treason. Not acting in the best interests of the Republic (as defined by whoever is trying to make the case), fine – that's nothing new. But actual treason – being on the side of the enemy (real or alleged) – this is something truly new under the sun. And yet, not only has this been the theme of mainstream media coverage for more than two years, it seems to be believed by a goodly portion of the American public. And the fact that it's outrageous – that it's straight out of La-La Land – doesn't seem to deter those who promote the idea.

But the real question is not so much about the facts of the matter, but about why this idea has been widely accepted. Or, to put it another way, why it has been promoted by people who may or may not actually believe it, and then widely accepted by people who really do believe it (the classic model of propaganda, by the way). There are many reasons to consider this as a milestone of sorts, and the most compelling one is that it may well signal the end of democracy as we have come to know it, and the beginning of contention (that word again) among nothing more than warring parties, interest groups, victim groups, people with a “cause”, and people with a vested interest in totalitarianism. Because the strategy and tactics of the “opposition” do not differ, in any significant way, from the strategy and tactics of totalitarian movements of the 20^th Century, to include communism, fascism (the real kind), and Nazism. It has become the dream of Friedrich Nietzsche, who – having despaired of all alternatives – declared that power, and the lust for power, were the only real, and genuine, and desirable, characteristics of the human condition, everything else being illusion, misguided idealism, weakness, and plain foolishness. We are, in a sense, at the portal of a Nietzschean world, where it's all about power and nothing else, and that all of the pretenses and cloaks (e.g. of “democracy” and “freedom”) are only that – food for fools, for the duped and the ignorant, who prefer their illusions to reality.

And this argument is easy to make! We venture overseas in order to spread, or defend, “democracy”, and the result is, more often than not, death and destruction, and nothing even remotely resembling democracy as we have known or understand it. But what does this mean? That democracy is an illusion after all? That it's just a cover for some other kind of tyranny? That it is, to steal a phrase from Karl Marx, the true “opiate of the people” (given that pure communism was too strong a dose – a fatal one, in many cases)? But this would be to oversimplify, since it can be shown that, in fact, pretty much any form of government works, up to a point, for someone, and that no form of government works for everyone at all times and in all places. But why is this? It gets back to – as I've pointed out before – national character – you know, that elusive thing that makes some political systems succeed and others fail depending on where, and how, and when, they are implemented. There are places in the world where any form of democracy is doomed from the start, and it may have something to do with economics in the abstract sense, but is much more dependent on culture – on people's world view, on their concept of government and of authority, on their willingness to negotiate and compromise, but most of all on loyalty. Loyalty not to political ideas imported from elsewhere, but to family, tribe, ethnic group, religion – you know, all those annoying things that the globalists abhor and are trying their best to wipe out.

But globalism is a belief system as well, every bit as much as other materialistic belief systems were and are. Communism was originally meant, in theory, to be applicable to any country, any culture, anywhere on the planet – and it has certainly, over time, made inroads pretty much everywhere, with varying degrees of success. But even communism, as monolithic as it seems (or would like to be), has taken on a multitude of characteristics depending on where it crops up and where it is implemented (or imposed). There is not just one “flavor” of communism – it is far more dependent on those “eternal verities” (family, ethnicity, religion) than its promoters would like to admit. But the same thing is true of democracy. So the “world war of ideas”, if you will, is forever being fought on one level, while the substrate of culture remains (either openly or underground).

The globalists would like to claim that, when it comes to government, one size fits all – and that anyone who objects, or resists, is simply not with the program – is ignorant, is not enlightened, is too stuck in the past, is “clinging” (to use the word of a famous globalist) to old and ancient forms of human society and organization. And this is our misconception as well. If “democracy” worked so well in the United States, there is no reason why it should not work equally well anywhere else on the planet.  (And even if democracy in America had, and continues to have, its flaws, it's still preferable to any of the known alternatives -- you know, things like monarchy and theocracy, etc.)

But this would be to miss something that is seldom pointed out. In a sense, America as a society started out as a kind of tabula rasa – a blank slate – a platform, if you will, upon which any form of governance could be tried, because the populace was, to a considerable extent, deracinated – i.e. deprived (either voluntarily or by accident) of any sort of roots, or connections, to enduring cultures. It has been said (and mostly in a tone of approval) that America was, and is, an “experiment” – that's it's something new under the sun, and a golden opportunity to establish, and maintain, a government that is based on principles and ideals rather than old ways, traditions, habits, and superstitions. We cherish our self-image as a free people, gifted with a new continent upon which to make our mark, and in which anything that occurs to the mind of man is not only possible, but desirable, and (by logical extension) worth fighting for, and (by further logical extension) worth “spreading”, through whatever means necessary, to the relatively benighted regions of the planet which have not been so blessed.

All of which would be highly commendable, except for that pesky thing called human nature. It followed the Pilgrims to Massachusetts Bay, and continues to beset us 400 years (as of next year) later. It's the very imperfectibility of man that dictates that human societies will, likewise, be imperfectible – and that any attempt to do otherwise will inevitably result in tyranny. And this is not to say that “Utopias”, on a limited scale, cannot exist, because they can exist, and have, and continue to exist, but only in a very limited and specialized way. Any ideal can be realized, at least for a time, on a small enough scale. It's when we try to convert an entire nation, or continent, that we run into trouble – and regardless of the nobility of intent, these attempts are doomed to failure, if not totally then at least to a significant degree. Thus, we cannot, without pulling up the plant by its roots, “democratize” foreign cultures, and we are having an increasingly hard time democratizing our own culture (such as it is – “culture” implying something that is uniform and stable, which ours most definitely is not).

It can be argued – counterintuitively – that “democracy” and “diversity” are profoundly incompatible, and we see evidence for this on a daily basis. How can we “spread democracy” if we can't figure out how to make it work here? The answer is, we can't. So what we wind up spreading is not a political ideal, but an empire of hypocrisy and pretense. We can talk or coerce people in foreign lands into going through the motions – into putting on a show – but the result is something that we would never tolerate here... except even that is no longer the case. If democracy never “took hold” in any meaningful way in most of the world, despite our best efforts, the real tragedy is that if it ever took hold here, it's been sufficiently compromised and corrupted that it, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. An ideal which had its day in the sun has become an illusion, and yet we cling (that word again!) to the language, and the rituals, and the structures, as if it still functions in any sort of meaningful way. (Perhaps living with illusions is preferable to facing reality. Certainly most people have already chosen which way to go, even if unconsciously.)

And this is the true tragedy of America. We were, and are, an “ideational” nation, but those ideas have become compromised, co-opted, and shopworn over time almost to the point where they may as well never have existed at all, except as faded writing on brittle parchment in dusty libraries. And one reason – the main one, perhaps – is that ideas and culture have very little to do with each other. Ideas are abstractions, whereas culture is real. Culture persists even in the worst of times, whereas ideas can come and go, and can ultimately be blown away like chaff, not that they might never reappear in a new and often distorted and inferior form. This is what we are facing now, in these times – when power, that age-old fact of life in the affairs of men, has become so predominant and so overwhelming that ideas, and ideals, wilt under a scorching sun.

You may have noticed that nowhere in this discussion have I dwelt at any length on the subject of politics, political parties, or Donald Trump and his administration and its opponents. That's because these are all superficial, symptomatic, and epiphemonenal. Our current crop of politicians and “leaders”, as well as their facilitators and opponents in the larger culture, may feel that they're making history, but the fact is that they are history, and a relatively trivial part of it at that. They are like a man riding a raging bull or a large whale, imagining that they are in charge, whereas they are, if anything, victims of historical forces that are totally out of their control. Even the people who really are in charge – whoever they are and wherever they may be – are part of history. It can be said that, for the last century at least, America has been in the driver's seat – but the same can just as readily be said of Russia (at least in the Soviet era). It's all in the point of view. In the global pecking order, it seems that the E.U., despite all of its problems, has an edge over the U.S. But in the meantime, China is on the move and Russia (post-Soviet) is watching and waiting. And then you have the rise of Muslim militancy, and mass migrations from the “third world” into the “first world”. So there are “top-down” factors in play, and “bottom-up” factors in play as well. And make no mistake, the “first world” is trying its best to cope with grass-roots uprisings elsewhere on the planet, but it may turn out, after all, that demographics really is destiny... that sheer numbers of humanity can conquer the global elites, at least in some respects. Empires have fallen over the course of millennia, but human migration seems to be a constant, and to be pretty much irresistible.

And if the American Empire, and the E.U., are a force for globalism and deracination, the mass movement of people is the opposite – it's a movement for, once again, identity – race, ethnicity, religion. The leading edge of all this in our time is, of course, Islam – and nothing can be less deracinated than a mass movement of people who share one religion (despite the conflicts within the Islamic world) which serves as a unifying factor for ethnic, linguistic, and even racial groups. The empires of our time have no answer for this – not us, not the E.U., not Russia, not even China (although they are doing their best).

Historical ironies abound, of course. The Ottoman Empire came to a bitter end as a result of World War I, and much of its territory was turned into colonies by the European powers. So Islam became a sleeping giant for a time, until much of it threw off the colonial powers, and in short order it was even more fully awakened by the establishment of the State of Israel (a creation of those same colonial powers). Everything we now see happening in the Islamic world (and its extensions into Europe and the U.S.) can be traced to either a reaction against colonialism (or its extension, namely economic colonialism) or a reaction against Israel. Islam has a new lease on life – a new energy – a new determination – a new mission. And by comparison, our shopworn democracy cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, but is driven to brute force... and the E.U. simply dithers. They fume and bluster about resurgent “nationalism” in Eastern Europe (and in the U.S.) but what do they have to offer as an alternative? Submission to a bunch of boring guys in horn-rimmed glasses and baggy suits with bad haircuts in Brussels? Please. And what energizes Islam is not only religion per se, but that it's an international movement – not unlike, guess what, communism. So if there's a new Cold War being fought, it's between, as before, two international movements – “democracy”, which means globalism, and Islam. And, by the way, between secularism and religion. And the history of secularism is relatively short – I'll trace it to the French Revolution – whereas the history of religion, basically, goes back to pre-history. So which one has proven to be more durable? This is something that should worry the globalists (both here and elsewhere).