For today’s American lesson, let’s consider what’s left of Great Britain. That country has turned away from Europe and now sits alone at a way station, suitcase on the ground, while Boris Johnson and his Tories arrange the wording for a bill of divorcement.
The nationalists in Britain had to have an enemy. Brexiteers convinced voters that Europe was it, that they must “take back control” of their country, sever a marriage of six-decades with the continent.
This will ring familiar in the United States, its bend toward America First nationalism as proscribed by Trump and his Republican legions. The Trump Party treasures its sense of entitlement, charming the lower orders while hiding contempt for them. They do this at great rallies with their noise, their vulgarity and artlessness.
” One day somebody will explain to me,” the English writer John LeCarre said recently, “why it is that, at a time when science has never been wiser, or the truth more stark, or human knowledge more available, populists and liars are in such pressing demand.”
On this side of the pond, America begins another great fan dance, a presidential election campaign. In spite of all the rallies, the absurdities, the breathless media and spin of hype, Americans at large remain bored with the system – how we govern, how we pursue our lives. Bored, mainly, because the system seems to decide everything for us, and because it is so lacking in heart that we can’t find anything to cling to.
The malaise has given rise to a popularity of Eastern religions, a polarization in western lands and the growth of “fundamental” Christian movements. The terms “tribalism” and “cult” have come into the discourse, more fuel for the sloganeers, the makers of flags, T-shirts and ball caps.
Why? One explanation is that the American culture has lost its magic. It lacks intuition and imagination, with no place for reducing the malaise to simple talk.
We should try anyway. One key is that nowhere on the national scene is a real villain to hiss. For Donald Trump’s critics, the man has become a bore – one with some power, but it is the power of the absurd. His “base,” red-faced as it is, is set and there’s no point in trying to persuade its static membership that he is a 24-carat cheat.
On the other hand, there is no real hero to cheer. Not in government.
The circuses with which politicians once distracted the huddled masses have gone stale. Scandal is the only diversion, and as entertainment there are so many of them that they now prompt only the tiniest attention span.
The federal government, once to be of the people, has shut the people out. Actions are hidden, some deeds simply stamped “secret” and filed. Others are the property of special agencies which are often the worldly equivalent of the Inquisition. Note our continued imprisonment of immigrant children, our look the other way when Russian assassination squads go to work on the streets of an ally. Or our president’s blind shrug as friendly dictators explain away another kidnapping or murder. And we are told to believe him when he says everything is good, when he lets off another tweet storm.
Richard Nixon once identified the American people as children, to be treated that way. Our current president is close to that mark, not because we are really childlike, but because his administration has become so frenetic that it is like a parent who is everywhere around us, telling us what to do and what to believe and shouting at us or spanking our hands when we don’t do it or believe it.
Our “leaders,” if we can call them that today, talk and talk, and it is impossible to realize that it is us and our lives they are talking about. Their language is scripted, or statistical and abstract, designed to appeal to certain tribes or focus groups. Community gives way to power, naming winners and shaming losers; impulse rules and purpose withers.
The sum of it is that politics is at once the dullest and most threatening game in town. It has compounded a sense of frustration. It is no longer possible to believe an individual – or a lot of them – can beat the game. The game has become too unwieldy to play with any hope of winning.
Even England, a parent of our system, came up short after not one but two elections. Americans may yet believe in the power of the vote, but who controls the ballots?
