14 July 2018

All good/bad things come to an end. It was 229 years ago today that the French revolutionaries, fueled by the principles of The Enlightenment (and the American Revolution), stormed the Bastille Prison in Paris, marking the beginning of the end King Louis XVI of the old regime. I’m on a train to London, watching the ripples of the Trump visit, which includes his slamming the Prime Minister and almost running over the queen to get his photo op. At least 250,000 people filled the streets of London to protest Trump but it seems almost pointless. Nobody has done more to overthrow King Donald of Orange than Donald J. Trump. I have a meeting at the U.S. Embassy on Monday and I just hope they’ve steam-cleaned the carpets.

As we mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I in November, we will also be marking the beginning of the American Century. Centuries last one hundred years, so ours seems to be winding down quite nicely. We should have it wrapped up by November 11. They used to say the sun never sets on the British Empire and now what have they got left? Bermuda? All empires end and the world is watching the fading of America. The only remaining question is whether or not Trump will salute Putin on Monday when they meet in Helsinki. (After all, he saluted a North Korean general so why the hell not?)

I may be being a bit overdramatic. I’ve just seen the U.S. president floating through the air as a giant baby in a diaper. My emotions might be more in charge than my insight as a political scientist, but there is a theory at work here.

My very first academic publication was in the area of World Systems Theory. WST looks at the impact of the rise and fall of the global economy over centuries. Before I began studying Nazi skinheads, I was studying the birth of the world market by running complex statistical analyses of Dutch shipping records from the early 1600s. (I can’t begin to tell you how boring that was – Thank you, Nazi skinheads!) This theory sees global economic class devisions. Imagine “third world” countries as the workers of the world, selling their labor in the earth’s great factory, making shit for the enjoyment of those in the first world, known as the “core.”

At the top of the ladder is the global hegemon, the top dog of both wealth and political influence. The top dog changes about every 100 years. In the 1600s it was Spain. In the 1900s it was the USA. Fairly accurately, World Systems Theory predicts that a country gets about a century at the top and then there is some global economic shake-up. Suddenly there is a new sheriff in town. The end of WWI saw the demotion of Britain as America and her mighty industrial economy (driven by some serious “Gilded Age” corruption, by the way) stormed through the clouds like Eddie Rickenbacker.

The United States of America won’t last forever. Other than China, most nations have a relatively short life-span. Germany only goes back to 1871. Yugoslavia ceased to exist in 2003. Whether or not you think God likes you best, there is no guarantee of a nation’s permanence. Even less sure is a nation’s dominance on the world stage. With our current buffoonery creating a vacuum of world leadership and only division at home, it appears the writing is on the wall for the once exalted “land of the free.” America first!

There is a feeling of doom in the United States but it’s even more depressing witnessing it from abroad. I was having a pint in a pub in Luton, England last night. A patron, hearing my accent, asked, “What the fuck’s happened to your country?” I could only cry in my beer and try to assure him that good people will rally against this tyrant like we did against theirs two centuries ago. (They’ve got their own questions to ask about the passage of Brexit, which is already dismantling their stability. Maybe we can be buddies as the world watches us go down the toilet.) Trump is an embarrassment to us Yanks abroad. There were plenty of Americans in the streets on London yesterday (and up in Scotland today). As I changed my dollars to pounds and saw the devaluing of the buck to the bob, I figured the end might come sooner than we expect. Economists have been predicting that the Obama recovery looks to implode into a Trump recession at any minute. America first! the said as the ship sank.

Who the next global hegemon will be is anyone’s guess. WST predicts that it’s typically the ascendent economic power, so we might best learn how to speak Chinese. But Russia is in the running and with the recent indictments further linking Trump’s presidency to Putin’s power, my money is on the Ruskies. What will Vlad and Don talk about in that closed door session in Finland? Maybe where Trump will leave the keys to the White House in exchange for his new job as a Russian oligarch (and wife #4!). Russia first!

Sociologists are fond of saying that a fish doesn’t know it’s in water until you take it out. It’s hard for us to see the end of American dominance while the illusion of it still surrounds us. Both the Romans and the Nazis thought their reign was unbound by time. America might still have a few good years in it if we can replace the current kakistocracy with a vibrant participatory democracy, but odds are the Democrats will turn a cake walk into a mud bath. So you might be best served by thinking of options outside the USA! USA! Investing in rubles, perhaps.

When historians write about the madness of King Don, they will talk about how he drove a once great nation into the ditch, like a rich chauffeured brat who demands the keys to the car he has never driven. But he didn’t do it all by himself. We encouraged him because we thought it would be entertaining. And it was, until it wasn’t.