The last years of the life of American hegemony, what better personifies the decline of America than a decrepit president every day?
This question is asked by the author of an article in The Nation. In his opinion, the country is bursting at the seams, and Biden and his bureaucrats are living to the fullest and recreating the Cold War.
Tom EngelhardtI don't see anything strange in the fact that Joe Biden (at 80, the oldest president in our history) plans to run again in 2024.
After all, who would voluntarily give up a place in the book of records? If he nominates from his party, and then defeats the aging Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron Desantis, or even the ever-popular host Tucker Carlson from Fox News, he will stay in the White House until 86 years.
Honestly, isn't it perfect in its own way? I want to say: what better personifies the decline of America than a decrepit president every day?
No matter what the Republican National Committee video says, Joe Biden was accompanied on the red carpet in Israel not because he is a good—for-nothing old man. But still…
I really understand everything. Believe me. After all, I've just turned 78 myself, which means I'm only a year and four months behind Joe Biden. And believe me, at our age, no matter what the representatives of the White House say, decline is second nature. I do find myself shoulder to shoulder with Joe on that carpet whenever it comes to a movie or a book that I watched or read many years ago (or last month?), but I don't remember a damn thing. Therefore, to everyone who is in favor, including Joe himself, I say: welcome to the club!
It is strange, if not creepy, from the fact that the decline of my country — once the "only superpower" on planet Earth - coincided with my own (even if Fox News does not walk on me). And even with my current forgetfulness, there is something painfully familiar about this scenario of decline and collapse - that I still remember. The country is bursting at the seams, and Joe and his bureaucrats are living to the fullest and carefully recreating the Cold War that ended three decades ago.So here's what I can say: welcome to a more lousy version of the past (in case you're too young and haven't caught it).
Tell me, isn't the decline the main event in history since the disappearance of the Neanderthals and our appearance? After all, even a child knows: what took off will definitely fall. You can not even finish this sentence, and so it is clear. Therefore, in a sense, decline and collapse is the second oldest history of mankind after the rise and flourishing.
Just ask the last emperors of the Chinese Han dynasty, the kings of Sparta or Romulus Augustulus, the last ruler of the Roman Empire (thank you, Nero!). But today, in the third decade of the XXI century, this ancient fairy tale has received a completely new twist. After such a long era of prosperity, even if it is habitually bloody and cruel, who would want to discuss the extinction of species, the destruction of the environment or terrifying weather disasters, even though they occur more often? This is not my personal decline and not the decline of America, but ... everything in general. And do not think that this cup is China, supposedly the next superpower. Today, it emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere much more than all the others — and, accordingly, it also suffers (even if the weakening superpower of the United States will not concede the palm in carbon emissions for all time).
So if we, humanity, do not change our behavior as soon as possible, then only half of our history will remain.
Personally, I can say that I am experiencing three versions of the end at the same time: my own demise, the collapse of my country and the death of an overheating planet that is becoming less habitable. Let me take you on a little journey through three intricately intertwined stories, starting with my own.
I was born in July 1944 in America, which rose from a terrible depression — "Great", as it was called then, and during the Second World War turned into a first-rate military and economic power. (My father participated in that war, as well as, in his own way, my mother). This global conflict, which mobilized our nation, ended just a year later, when two American B-29s dropped newly invented weapons of catastrophic destructive power on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, practically wiping them off the face of the earth. This was the first foretaste of the end of humanity in history, which had previously been the lot of Providence. In other words, the Victory Day over Japan immediately had an ominous underside.
Thus, I was born into a newly created empire that has already demonstrated unprecedented global power. Soon she was facing a worldwide struggle, initially focused on the Eurasian continent, against another emerging superpower — the Soviet Union (and its Chinese ally, which had recently embarked on the path of communism). Of course, it was not exactly a world war (just thanks to the threat of nuclear weapons, multiplied and improved many times), but a cold one. The so-called "free world", although some countries were infinitely far from any kind of freedom, and the rest of the United States was deprived of even this by hook or by crook, was opposed to the same communist world, which for some reason was considered "slave".
Despite the fear of nuclear conflict, because of which my classmates and I hid under school desks in civil defense classes, the American economy was working to the fullest. Society was getting rich and, as President Lyndon Johnson declared in 1964, it had turned from glorious to "great." Despite the "hunt for reds" and the like, the lives of many Americans, including blacks, improved, and the civil rights movement put an end to the Jim Crow segregation that replaced slavery.
In parallel, the United States lowered the worldwide iron curtain around the lands controlled by the Soviet Union. America has built military bases on all continents except Antarctica, and concluded all kinds of alliances, from NATO in Europe to SEATO in Southeast Asia, and also deployed a secret CIA network around the globe.
As for me personally, I was also rising then — first as a journalist, then as an editor (sometimes, however, as in the Vietnam years, rebelling against what my country was doing). I even told my own version of the history of that time in a book I called "The End of the Culture of Victory: Cold War America and the Disappointment of an Entire Generation." I didn't know then what a disappointment the world we were creating would be. Meanwhile, in the 1980s and 1990s, during the so-called "triumph of neoliberalism" under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, the country experienced an upsurge of a completely different kind. Corporate wealth and power surged, and with them unprecedented inequality.
In 1991, when I was 47, the Cold War suddenly ended. In 1989, the Red Army hobbled home after a decade-long disaster in Afghanistan (and Washington, of course, learned nothing from its mistakes), and soon the Soviet Union collapsed. Miracle of miracles: after almost half a century, the United States remained in proud solitude — the only seemingly superpower on planet Earth.
The former bipolar world order has disappeared and, in the words of the conservative columnist of The Washington Post Charles Krauthammer, a "unipolar moment" has come. There is only one superpower left on the entire planet. Krauthammer himself did not expect this moment to last long, but too many politicians in Washington thought otherwise. It turned out that senior officials in the Bush Sr. and then Bush Jr. administrations are determined to turn this fleeting moment of unprecedented global triumph into eternity. Wars, invasions and all kinds of conflicts followed, designed to strengthen the new world order. The first of them in 1991 was Bush Sr.'s operation "Desert Storm" in Iraq against Saddam Hussein - the so—called First Gulf War.
Everyone was waiting for the "peace dividends" promised to the Americans after the end of the Cold War. However, after the onset of "peace", there was an irresistible desire to pour more tax dollars into the Pentagon, the already bloated "defense" budget and corporations of the military-industrial complex — regardless of the real capabilities of the American military.
It was supposed to be the world heritage of the "only superpower", because its leaders worked tirelessly to ensure that it remained so until the end of time. A decade later, fearing the reaction of Bush Jr. and his officials to the September 11 attacks, I created TomDispatch, a website that might outlive me.
In addition, in those years of alleged triumph, the third story of decline and collapse began to gain momentum. As we now know, climate change was first brought to the attention of President Lyndon Johnson back in 1965. In 1977, the chief scientific adviser warned President Jimmy Carter about "catastrophic climate change" — two years later, he would install solar panels in the White House (although Ronald Reagan would remove them in 1986). However, over the following years, the "only superpower" has done strikingly little, although President Barack Obama played a key role in the negotiations on the Paris climate Agreement (from which Donald Trump came out with a scandal).
In its own way, Trump's victory in 2016 summed up the unipolar moment. His triumph became a kind of cry of pain and protest against the fact that over the life of several generations the country has turned from "great" into something even darker — almost a descent into hell.
This narcissistic billionaire, crook and inadequate person somehow mysteriously survived bankruptcy after bankruptcy and ended up at the very top. It is more difficult to find a more appropriate symbol and symptom of troubled times, decline and rage. In the end, the fact that a candidate won the election under the slogan "Let's return America to its former greatness" is hardly an accident. Unlike other politicians of his era, he was ready to admit that for many Americans this country has become anything but great.
Of course, under Donald Trump, domestic inequality and the global recession have only intensified. Even worse, under his leadership, not only our superpower was already declining (by the way, with the rise of China, it is no longer "the only one"). The whole planet moved in the same direction. The US military has repeatedly demonstrated that they are incapable of victory, and victory over Japan will not happen again — in any form.
Meanwhile, the political elite was falling apart even faster. One party, the Republicans, generally denies the very nature of our world. In normal times, it would have ended badly for them in the first place. However, today it is fraught with disaster for all of us — especially for those who are younger.
Yes, in exchange for sweet "buns" from donors from the oil and gas industry, the coal magnate from West Virginia Joe Manchin (Joe Manchin) cast a vote, but the country that once created the Manhattan project and atomic bombs does not recognize itself. During World War II, the government spent huge sums of money on this, dispatching a whole crowd of leading scientists to create nuclear weapons that would destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The country is still spending staggering amounts and efforts on the "modernization" of the American nuclear arsenal.
As for saving the world, not destroying it, today Washington cannot even think of a modern version of the Manhattan Project — to find a way to fight climate change. It is much easier to re-unleash the ancient cold war than to fight the real decline and collapse that threatens not only our country, but our entire civilization.
Although I wrote about global warming back in the 1990s, I fully realized its scale only in this century, when my own decline began (and at first almost imperceptibly). With all the fiery articles about climate change on the pages of TomDispatch, I must admit that I did not even imagine such a sizzling summer as in 2022 — when disastrous fires, floods, droughts and storms became commonplace. I must admit, I did not think that in the future this could lead humanity to the final in the most literal sense of the word. Some scientists call it a "climate endgame" — in other words, it's a complete extinction.
And here we are. Our democracy has been under incredible pressure, and the gigantic armed forces of our country (backed by the military-industrial complex of unimaginable size and power) have proved their utter inability to win anything significant, despite funding, unthinkable even in wartime. In a sense, our only "success" is our amazing ability to whet the world's appetite for fossil fuels. In other words, our America is bursting at the seams, and the oldest history of mankind may change beyond recognition, because we are threatened with the decline and collapse of everything in general.
One thing is for sure: my own decline and collapse is final and not subject to appeal —just like everyone else's. However, as for the history of our country and the whole world, the end of history has not yet been written. The question is, can we write it so that with the collapse of our empire, the whole of humanity does not collapse?
Tom Engelhardt — creator and researcher of the project Tomdispatch.com . His book "A Nation Destroyed by War" will be released at the end of August
