I have followed you with piqued interest for sometime now. The points you make regarding empire and economy are particularly salient. But the commentary today dovetailed closely with my own perceptions. I think sir you are a victim of your own keen desire to understand why the opportunity embedded in the american experiment has run afoul of the limitations imposed by its own control group.
That control group is, of course, is its own people. The initial concepts of American empire and American economy were visionary. Imperfect, mind you, but at least conceived on principals that attempted to reconcile the differences between individual freedoms (capitalism) and social/emotional responsibility (socialism). This was done through a set a of rules that described a political system that promoted both, allowing its people to choose which way the wind blew, and set a course.
It was never the intent that our political process become a competition between two opposing viewpoints. As you point out in your other writings, neither one can survive for long without the other. What that implies is that each point of view must include something of the other to maintain its viability.
This is the hope I see in the Trump presidency, in spite of its apparent desire to undermine critical thought by demeaning all voices that don’t express loyalty. The emotional chaos that you describe is only the voice of the American people: it is restorative only because it provides a window of opportunity. In my opinion, it is a reaction to the the lack of vision that American leadership has shown since the globalization of capitalism. That has been the most significant event of my 68 years, utilizing the innovative curiosity of human thought to bring us all (the global all) closer to a present that demands an understanding of freedom and responsibility.
For America, this present is asking vital questions about politics, education, religion, tribalism (known in the modern world as patriotism) and the purposes they serve going forward. To frame them all as economic questions is both limiting and short sighted, a vain attempt to hold onto an economic system that we no longer control. Capitalism is global: our needs are local. Are they economic? To some degree, of course they are. But what made the American Empire the admiration of the world wasn’t our ability to generate wealth (nevermind the sometimes dubious ways we went about that for the moment). That was just the product. The process was leadership, innovation, and the opportunity that individual freedom, tempered by social responsibility, provided. These remain imperative local needs.
Whether we can preserve them or not is the question that the Trump presidency presents us. On a national scale, these qualities are best put to use in new energy technologies, I believe. The economic incentive there should be obvious to anybody without some sort of misplaced pride in the past or agenda of denial about the future. But as individuals, these qualities challenge us all to accept that we -each of us- are responsible to maintain not just our freedom to be an individual, but the freedoms of others to be individuals too. This is the tipping point that America faces with the current president. To his credit, I do not believe he is blind to it. To his shame, he is too uncertain of his own place in the world to speak about it directly.
