Why is America Great?

I am a natural Leftist of the Old School: Marx, Lenin, Gramsci. And as such I have to side with those who voted for Trump in the nightmarish election just passed. That does not mean that I am in any way a supporter of Trump. It means that in this election I sided with the White Proletariat — those dispossessed of security and stability by industrial decline and globalisation, those decried, derided and ignored by Republicans and Democrats alike. I am for the underdog. Always.

Trump has captured their votes by understanding what it was they needed to hear and then telling it to them. And true to the nature of the class that gave him birth, his fundamental greed and his crass stupidity, means that he will betray them. And in the doing of it he might, he just might, prove to be the catalyst that opens the eyes of American workers to the deceits perpetrated against them since at least the end of WWI.

One of those deceits is that aspect of modern Capitalism’s cultural hegemony (hello Lenin, hello Gramsci) that states that wealth, in and of itself, is a marker of the ‘greatness’ of a Nation. It is certainly a fundamental marker of, if not the sole foundation of, Trump’s definition of the ‘greatness’ of his America.

Never once, throughout the whole of his campaign, was he asked to make clear what it was thought made America ‘great’. Neither was his opponent, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Clinton.

What of her definition of America’s ‘greatness’? It can be nothing more than America’s ability and willingness to intervene in the lives of other Nations in pursuit of whatever, at any given moment, comprised her definition of the ‘good’.

Whether that was the political ‘good’ of her philandering and ridiculous husband (as in relation to Haiti in 1994, where she opposed intervention because it could only add to his then political woes); or Iraq, in 2002, where she enthusiastically supported invasion in order to ensure Bush was in the strongest possible position to wage war.

Or in Pakistan, during her tenure as Secretary of State, where her opposition to Obama’s drone wars was made manifest only by its absence; or Libya, in 2011, where her definition of the ‘good’ was, simply, the ‘national interests’ of Britain and France, (they were, after all, our good buddies) and the almost inconsequential consideration that Regime change in Libya could only be good for the Libyan people, under the so-called ‘principle of R2P’ — the ‘right to protect’, which lead to the ludicrous situation in which we killed Libyans in order to prevent Libyans from killing Libyans.

Really? Really?

Clinton would have lead us into war on the basis of a vague, diffuse and inconsistent morality that amounts to no more than ‘oh they’re being mean to babies. Let’s go kill them’ (not caring how many babies ‘we’ killed in the process). Trump will lead us into war in the simple furtherance of his greed and on behalf of the idea that those own the country should (continue to) run the country.

And neither of these grotesque positions has anything to do with the true greatness of America.

As any fool ought to know, America is a political experiment, perhaps the greatest and strangest political experiment there has ever been. The fact that it is deeply flawed and fallible in practice takes not one whit away from its greatness in principle. It is the sole representative and exemplar of the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, an English thinker of the Seventeenth Century, who argued that political peace and stability could only be achieved by the erection of a Sovereign Power. All those who wished to live in peace and security would consent to be ruled by this Sovereign, whom they themselves had created by an act of pure political will.

The creation of the Constitution of the United States of America is the single solitary example of such an act of political will in the history of human civilization.

It is this act of will, in conjunction with the idea that America is a Nation of Laws, founded on law and governed by law, that constitutes the greatness of America. It is this idea, that all citizens are equal before the law, that even the wealthiest and most powerful can and will be held to account before the law, that has drawn millions to America throughout its brief history.

The fact that this idea is far more often honored in the breach than in the observance is neither here nor there. The idea exists and continues to exert an existential magnetism that cannot be denied.

It is this magnetism, this weight, that will undo the bigotry, the asinine stupidity, of the coming rule of the buffoon, the murderous clown, Trump. Real resistance to that rule can only be based on another idea that is singular to the American experiment: that citizen qua citizen is absolutely equal and no distinction in law can be made between them.

Black, White, Yellow, Red, Green with Little Pink Polka Dots; homosexual, heterosexual, or some tiny shard of the newly emergent array of sexual preference and practice: what is granted to one citizen, as a citizen, is granted to all citizens. It is on this foundation alone that the American people can stand in resistance to the horrors of bigotry and inequality that are to come.

As I have said, I think Trump to be a catalyst. And catalysts often cause violent reactions. Whether America survives his Presidency in its current form is a matter open to debate.

I hope not. I hope America, as a consequence of what is to come, transforms itself into a Nation that much more closely approximates to its ideals and its aspirations, that it becomes a Nation, and a people, worthy to be held up as an example to the world.

But I confess, I have my doubts.

Post A Comment