Like a crazy monsoon

This post follows on from one made in the winter of 2018 (‘The left-right tango is dead’) in which I predicted something worse than Trump in the future, and it seems like my hunch was accurate. Not only has Trump refused to concede defeat in the 2020 presidential election, but some people on the right are redefining what America means. In fact, they’re redefining words used to describe it.

At 2.31pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT) an account called Turning Point USA tweeted an image that contained these words:

We are not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic, it’s a huge difference. – Charlie Kirk

The image had the face of a young man on it, a man probably in his late 20s or early 30s. His smile was slight, a mere line of the lips to indicate something like thought was going on in his head. His eyes looked straight out at the viewer – challenging the viewer to look back, into his eyes (if someone looked at you on the street like this you’d probably look away) – and at the bottom of the image, in the left-hand corner, was the organisation’s name. 

This was a branded statement of belief, like a prayer. My brother (who lives in the US) tweeted in response:

"republic" means is the source of authority is not a monarchy. The archetypal Democracy was literally a Republic, the Athenian Republic. The biggest Republics today are "Peoples Republics".

There were a few logical and orthographic problems with his statement, but I understood where he was coming from. In reply to him I tweeted:

Wow ... Amazing! This kind of redefinition of the meaning of words is Orwellian. It's like the Soviets in the 50s.

This prompted a response by an anonymous user: “Lol what. You okay?” The rise of China – the archetypal contemporary dictatorship – was rearranging the world in curious ways, ways that Bill Clinton, when he granted Most-Favored Nation status to China in 2000, could never have anticipated. 

China had begun to remould the planet in its image and the disaffected in America were helping President Xi and his ilk to question the very basis of democracy – elections and the processes that entails – with Trump and his acolytes assisting with seemingly gay abandon, not wanting to share power with anyone apart from people who think the same as they do. 

From history, it’s pretty clear where this trend can lead. The only questions is whether there’s a circuit breaker that can stop the decline. Once America is infected, how to stop the spread? Perhaps a war – but who would wish that on anyone – might reset the scale to true, or perhaps a new North Korea – a nation isolated socioeconomically from the rest of the world so that ideas do not get in and exports do not get out – might emerge to terrorise little pluralistic democracies in the free world.

Prognostications are difficult because of the rigid structure of the universe (we can only see things in hindsight, not in advance). It might be unwise to predict global catastrophe but, on the other hand, the astute take advice from a wide range of sources. Even bloggers, who participate enthusiastically in producing an impossible quantity of images and texts mesmerising or dismaying in its scope. How to deal with the unceasing avalanche of expressions of desire, of statements of belief, of vocalisations of honour and shame and regret, the cascade of promises, of wishes, and prayers? In this fuzzy, entangled environment it's even harder than it was a generation ago to work out where you end and the next person starts. And since we're social animals, the yells, cries, and sobs we hear are sometimes intensely personal. We must GIRD ourselves with passion and principle to cope with the onslaught. 

Hence the new generation is a committed and motivated one, one that brings its personal concerns to the workplace. They want to change things, and they will but, as we’ve seen, there is already a reaction (I’ll talk more about this later on in this piece). The challenge is not just to bring about a more just and equitable society. The challenge now is to stamp onto a coin of the most noble metal the face of, indeed, the very system of government we use to afford progress. It’s clear, having said this, that extreme views predominate today, and this compounds the problem of communication. For even though getting a single-payer healthcare scheme is important for Millennials living in the United States of America, for everyone in the world the more pressing issue is how to preserve democracy in the face of forces that want to destroy it. 

The only way for them to stop the tide of liberalisation is to tear down the very system of government the fascists overseas, with their very beings, hate so much. David Bowie sang of “young Americans” but, today, his understated anthem of hope never sounded so poignant, as evil forces line up against them in serried ranks like some dauntless horde in a Peter Jackson movie. As country after country veers sharply to the right and denies communities the voices they yearn to wield, young Americans stand in the teeth of the gale that blows across both hemispheres like a crazy monsoon.

And just as it’s important, for the sake of accuracy, not to simplistically generalise from the appearances of one example in order to try to understand the causes of the shifts that are happening in the world today, it’s also incumbent on progressives not to damage their brand by adopting as a sacred vow every stray idea that reaches its feelers across their cerebellums. Not every cause is a noble one. Not every project is worth fighting for. In fact, by spreading themselves too thinly, today’s liberal voters risk undermining the entire program. If you discredit your judgement by backing some whacky scheme to outlaw this or ban that, then you will find it harder to bring along with you the critical centre of the community. 

But, then again, you have to do what you think is right. As a consequence, progress, when it comes, will be slow and not every step forward will be followed by another one.