I hope that early morning dreams aren’t some indication of one’s overall state of mind. Mine the other morning was of sitting on a bridge over a creek in my hometown and shooting at rats down below with my BB gun.
It is the case that empires that are unable to address effectively their inherent major problems are likely to collapse after a while. This was true of the Romans, and, more recently in history, of the Ottomans, the Russians and the Austro-Hungarians. It is arguable that the scrap in the United Kingdom over its departure from the European Union constitutes the final death throes of the British Empire. There we have come from Elizabeth I to Victoria to Theresa May and Boris Johnson. Fix me a gin and tonic, quickly.
The post-World War II American empire as we have it now has severe, quite possibly fatal flaws. These include a plague of guns and mass murders, seemingly ineradicable racism in practice, a heavy spending emphasis on militarism instead of on domestic problems, and increasingly catastrophic economic inequality in our society.
The gun thing is insane. One more time, Americans learn that a red-eyed nutcase armed with weapons equivalent to battlefield machine guns has killed 58 country-music fans in Las Vegas. And neither America’s loopy president nor its Congress, bought and paid for by the arms manufacturing companies behind the National Rifle Association, are going to do anything about it. I did think that the slaughter of first-graders in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 would lead to something useful, but it didn’t.
If we as Americans do not address this problem, it will get us in the end. With long-range rapid-firing weapons, no crowd is safe anywhere.
The alacrity with which President Donald Trump is undoing every useful thing that his predecessor, Barack Obama, did is one piece of clear evidence of the racism inherent in American society. The problems in American education, tied firmly to neighborhoods as they quite normally are, are another mark of stubborn American racism. An American fall parade with high school bands, or an American city high school football game, rubs it in again. Or, how about the fact that if someone isn’t clearly all-white, he is considered to be black? Other societies are much more inclined than America’s to deal with someone on the basis of his abilities, rather than his skin color. Could a term like “pass” live anywhere other than in America?
Third problem, the all-pervasiveness of attempted military solutions to America’s problems with other countries. We have underway wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. What is troubling the sleep of many Americans is that an unhinged president will launch us into a war with a heavyweight country such as Iran or North Korea, possibly in the name of perpetuating his presidency into a second term as a “war president.” We aren’t even especially good at it, perhaps a real tribute to the mentality of our people. The last times we won clearly were in Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. The 1991 Iraq war was very much an allied effort, winning it and paying for it.
In the meantime, core American problems go unresolved. These include public education, health care and infrastructure. Mr. Trump as a candidate promised to address the infrastructure issue, both fixing it and creating jobs in the process, thus kick-starting the economy. But now his focus has shifted to tax “reform,” which means cutting taxes for the rich and, in the process, either shifting the burden to the poor and middle class, or pushing the national debt from $20 trillion even further into the stratosphere.
I frankly don’t know how America’s leaders get away with the growing, glaring level of economic inequality, particularly with the members of Congress, Cabinet members and the first family so clearly residing in the 0.1 percent at the top of the heap. Does anyone know any ordinary American who doesn’t know that the cost of his health care is going to rise? Is anyone aware that the Federal Reserve’s response to the recession that started in 2007 was to give the banks trillions of dollars in “quantitative easing” walking-around money? Is one aware that what our economic geniuses are worried about now is that inflation isn’t going up as much as they would like it to? Inflation means that one’s savings buy less and less.
Put this apart from obscenities such as Mar-a-Lago, Secret Service protection for Mr. Trump’s large, money-seeking family, the unethical “remuneration” he is receiving as president from various Trump towers, and the assaults on the environment, public education and health care that his minions are carrying out.
I am able to take some comfort, like the boxer in the old Simon and Garfunkel song, from some developments. In particular, there is some satisfying pushback from some of Congress, some states, some cities and some courts. But I am very tired of taking comfort from triumphs of playing defense. Interceptions are great, but I would now like to see some run-backs for touchdowns from them. The resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price for his expenditures for private plane trips helped.
But I would like to think that the big stuff is yet to come, say, for example, when special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings come out. Russian meddling in U.S. elections cannot be allowed to stand; nor can Mr. Trump’s continuing refusal to make his tax returns public. Those two issues still have the potential to put him under the bridge with the pellets flying.
Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1976).
First Published: October 18, 2017, 4:15 a.m.
