Via Edelweiss Journal,
Reflections on Trump’s America
That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun.
Perhaps it was inevitable that a man like Mr Trump would some day end up in the White House. Immodesty notwithstanding, he is intelligent, patriotic, and richly endowed with that American can do disposition. His election, at least within the context of financial markets both in America and elsewhere, has been greeted thus far with the exuberance and fervour reserved for the second coming of an industrial revolution. Yet, even as one ought to welcome Mr Trump’s businesslike ideas for a country that has veered further and further into an economic unknown, there is scant reason for the boundless euphoria of anticipated greatness—the subject of this brief essay.
To some folks, Mr Trump’s words and promise to “make America great again” resonated with those of the late President Reagan. On one hand, it seems that he understands what’s what. In a September interview with Reuters, he accused the Fed of having created a “false economy” (true) and “keeping the rates down so that everything else doesn’t go down” (also true). Responding to claims of alleged economic robustness, he said: “The only thing that is strong is the artificial stock market.” On the other hand, the grandiose economic policies and promises he has outlined demand a cheap dollar and even greater deficits and debt creation. His administration faces a federal debt of $20 trillion, unfunded liabilities of more than $100 trillion and 50% of a population dependent on (most, in fact, feel entitled to) some kind of government spending, which translates to the fact that much more credit/debt is a necessity and not an option. When Mr Reagan took office, circumstances were a lot different. Thus, the euphoria among financial and political pundits is unlikely to last long. The exuberance of the moment, no matter the soundness of expectations, may, for a while, give rise to higher share and dollar prices, but its consequences are trivial.
It’s hard to know what Mr Trump means with the words “Make America Great Again.” No one seems to have asked him. The first three words could well refer to some artificial conditions that merely generate confidence, enthusiasm—and retail sales. It is the again that holds the clues as to his understanding and motivation. If America was great, what was it that made it so? This isn’t a subject for short essays.
Most Americans over the age of fifty would concur with the description of America today by Strauss and Howe:
The America of today feels worse, in its fundamentals, than the one many of us remember from youth, a society presided over by those of supposedly lesser consciousness. Wherever we look ... we see paths to a foreboding future. We yearn for civic character but satisfy ourselves with symbolic gestures and celebrity circuses. We perceive no greatness in our leaders, a new meanness in ourselves. Small wonder that each new election brings a new jolt, its aftermath a new disappointment.
The authors are not alone in this description. In Leonard Cohen’s words, everybody knows. But while we agree that something has changed (for the worse), we are likely to find considerable discord among sociologists, historians, economists and theologians as to the nature of the greatness that America may have once possessed. Mr Trump does not tell us what the great in his slogan is. One suspects that his definition is similar to the one he would generously bestow on himself. But it can’t be so. From Strauss & Howe again:
Not long ago, America was more than the sum of its parts. Now it is less. Around World War II, we were proud as a people but modest as individuals ... Where we once thought of ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as individually entitled ... Popular trust in virtually every American institution—from business and governments to churches and newspapers—keeps falling to new lows. Public debts soar, the middle class shrinks, welfare dependencies deepen, and cultural arguments worsen by the year.
And on the subject of the much admired American sense of optimism:
Optimism still attaches to self, but no longer to family or community. Most Americans express more hope for their own prospects than for their children’s—or their nation’s. Parents widely fear that the American Dream, which was there (solidly) for their parents and still there (barely) for them, will not be there for their kids. Young householders are reaching their midthirties never having known a time when America seemed to be on the right track. Middle-aged people look at their thin savings accounts and slim-to-none pensions, scoff at an illusory Social Security trust fund, and try not to dwell on what a burden their old age could become.
Honesty compels us to agree, but it also demands we temper the exaggerated optimism for political remedies. “The basis for optimism is sheer terror,” wrote Oscar Wilde. Indeed, judging only by the vigour of the animal spirits unleashed on Wall Street, we want to believe that the advent of a new American president will miraculously chart a road to some illdefined greatness whilst avoiding the accumulated and compounded consequences of decades of folly.
Generally, financial problems, whether in a family, corporation or a country, are symptoms of a larger underlying problem. Greece is a perfect illustration. Even in the European scene at large, an astute observer can easily discern that the financial problems of today are largely rooted in the idiotic ideas of a common currency, Pax Europa and the utter chaos they have spawned. The American situation is distinctly more complex insofar as it also embodies elements of a societal disintegration. From Strauss & Howe:
We perceive our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik’s Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can’t do that without fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing the inner cities, and that’s impossible unless we fix crime. There is no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted—but that’s an awareness we supress. As a nation, we’re in deep denial ... individually focused yet collectively adrift ...
At the heart of the matter lies the undefined “greatness” being promised by Mr Trump—an oblique reference to the political and moral marvel of the Founding Fathers—as perceived within the ruins of a republic which has disintegrated into a system of soft-despotism from which there is no peaceful escape in the short-term.
Thus, the election of Mr Trump, however better he may be perceived by some as against his opponent, is of no real significance. Putting aside personalities and the superficial political distinctions that divide them, over a longer perspective, Trump’s America will be no different than Obama’s America or Bush’s America or what would have been Hillary Clinton’s America in that it retains the illusion that the people are in control, when in fact they have no say over anything of any consequence.
Soft-despotism was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19th century French diplomat, historian and author of the remarkable Democracy in America, published in 1835 as a treatise on the social consequences of unchecked democracy and advice as to arresting its demise. Soft-despotism is a state in which people live obliviously in a mild sort of obscured tyranny despite the existence of external cursory forms of liberty and rights to property. Tocqueville’s words from 180 years ago appropriately describe the status quo and the elusive pursuit of an uncertain greatness:
Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain …[Emphasis added]
By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience …[Emphasis added]
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is theshepherd.
This is the present state of America and the whole of our western world, more or less. The Soviets were better at it. They managed something not wholly different, except with less overhead. Man does have a strong desire to be led. It’s so much easier to have someone else direct his actions. He only pursues liberty after being ruined by a long courtship with serfdom. This is indeed why the American Founding Fathers did not refer to leaders—a modern political rank whose antecedents are rooted in tyrannical regimes.
Without doubt, these reflections may be altogether pointless to those unburdened by a principled and moral framework in political economy, or those for whom the pursuit of short-term gain holds priority. To others, ourselves included, anxious as to the long-term implications for the soundness of our savings, the patrimony we are to leave another generation or merely the rights we barely hold as to our own property and its disposition, proper reflection is an indispensable component of critical action.