Is America The Last Domino?
A Trump White House staffer releases a book with more substance than dirt. And it might just hold the key to making America great.
My primary school education seems to have been filled with metaphors. The classic three-legged stool represents the three distinct parts of the US government with Legislative, Judicial, and Executive all holding up the union. Apparently right now one or two of those legs are broken or different slightly sizes which explains our country’s general wobbliness, but I digress. The one metaphor that always struck me was the Domino theory.
Under this scenario, democracy itself was under a great threat as the Soviet Union and other Communist countries converted smaller nations to their Marxist financial systems. Everyone from political leaders to high school teachers warned of each nation that fell under a communist leader was essential a domino falling and eventually if left unchecked all countries would soon fall and capitalism, the apparent opposite of Communism, would cease to exist. It too would tumble in due time.
The Domino theory was the incentive for America’s wars for about five decades including most violently Korea and Viet Nam. It was said we must not allow a single domino to fall or they all will fall. Since then, you rarely see the domino theory mentioned except as a theme for the final Genesis tour. That being said, is it because so many dominoes have fallen that we have given up on stopping them?
That is essentially what Anne Applebaum was getting at in her most recent cover story for The Atlantic, “Autocracy is Winning.” And that’s bad enough except that Fiona Hill, yes, that Fiona Hill who testified in front of Congress in one of Donald Trump’s impeachment trials, argues it’s even worse. That with its current trajectory, America, is headed for autocratic rule along the lines of Russia and other countries where democracy has flown the coop.
Hill states her claims in her lengthy new book, “There Is Nothing For You Here- Finding Opportunity In the 21st Century.” Hill’s extraordinary personal history of picking up from her bootstraps from a poverty-ridden community in the United Kingdom to the National Security Council position working in the White House is an engaging tale in itself. The point that she then ends up testifying as to the Trump’s administrations potential dabbling with Ukraine illegally concerning Joe Biden’s son, only adds to the intrigue of this memoir/guidebook.
Hill may be attempting to do too much with this book and there are definitely times when it seems like material is being repeated, in the end, it’s an important book with helpful suggestions on how America can move forward, toward a more democratic nation and not slip into an autocratic state or even communist rule. Which we apparently, are very close to doing.
Hill lays out her engaging theory in the early pages with great aplomb. She offers her unique perspective from a woman on the street level as she grows up in a region of the UK that time had apparently forgotten or at least the government of England had. Hill’s hometown of Bishop Aukland might as well be eastern Pennsylvania in its comparisons to steel and mining company towns that have deteriorated to near hopeless bastions of corporate greed and irresponsibility. Hill credits individuals and a few government programs with giving her a helping hand and suggests if America is not ready to the very least- provide quality education and simple social support structures to all its citizens- the whole country may find itself being led by an autocratic leader for life.
Just like Putin’s Russia. Which, it turns out, Hill also has significant credentials to speak on as well. As a specialist in Russia studies primarily with The Brookings Institute and other think tanks, Hill wrote “Mr. Putin: Operative in The Kremlin.” A ‘How To’ on understanding today’s modern Russia. From that book in 2015, Hill has established herself as a credible, intelligent asset for American diplomacy especially when it comes to Russia. Until of course, she ended up in the Trump White House.
Hill spends only a fraction of this book on the Trump years and for that, I must commend her. Though clearly in the marketing for the book, her presence in the room when key faux pas were committed by Trump himself, is trumpeted. Hill, to her credit, doesn’t mire this book in the muck of that time. It’s an important aspect, but only in how it speaks to the bigger issue of preventing America’s potential fall into the hands of a future autocrat.
The early pages of this book set up an interesting theory of how the United States and the United Kingdom already are showing early warning signs of a nation on the path to self-destruction. In using her up-close perspective on Russia’s collapse into a despotic state after Gorbachev had opened the country to capitalistic reforms and before Putin took advantage of poor governmental management of said revolution, Hill begins to develop the case for how the UK and USA might be the next dominoes to fall.
Hill draws on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as the beginning of the slide with their destabilizing economic policies and the mismanagement of their nations’ assets. She is particularly critical of Thatcher’s reign as England’s Prime Minister since she had a front-row seat to her administrations by witnessing their impact on her hometown. In Viva Bish, as she affectionally refers to her birthplace, everyone she knew worked in mines and was now left on the vine to rot. Hill effectively draws parallels to Russia and the emergence of Putin with the likes of Boris Johnson in the UK and then of course the emergence of Donald Trump in America.
This is where Hill slows down in the book and drops the ball. It’s an intriguing theory-America slowly slipping into chaos and eventually, an autocratic ruler and what brought me to the book in the first place- however, after building up the case, Hill seems to abandon the theory for more mundane thoughts on fixing the public health school system and righting gender inequities in the workplace. Now those are very important ideas and Hill pursues them with rigor and insight. She is a highly educated individual with the experience chops to speak on said topics; however, it makes this book tends to lose its focus.
Hill does bring the tale around near the end of the book by explaining how and what leaders and even school teachers and retired folks can do to help stem the tide of America slipping, but by then I was running out of energy to finish this book. It’s an important book and Hill should be commended for forging ahead with this project even though I am sure editors were asking for more dirt on the Trump machinations inside the Oval Office. Hill’s is a heck of a personal story and her ascent into the highest rank of public service should be commended. You should read this book and talk through its themes with intelligent people at dinner.
Then take some of her rampant advice at the end of the book and keep the dominoes from falling.
