April 22, 2024
(
Tomdispatch.com) – Let one old man deal with two others.
I turn 80 in
July, which makes me just over a year-and-a-half younger than Joe Biden and
almost two years older than Donald Trump. And, honestly, I know my limits. Yes,
I still walk — no small thing — six miles a day. And I work constantly. But I’m
also aware that, on my second walk of the day and then as night approaches, I
feel significantly more tired than I once did. I’m also aware that my brain,
still active indeed, does forget more than it once did. And all of this is
painfully normal. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing whatsoever.
I also know from
older friends that we humans can still be distinctly functional, thoughtful,
and capable at age 82 (when Donald Trump would leave his second term in office)
or even 86 (when Joe Biden would do the same). But honestly, what are the odds?
I’ll tell you one thing that couldn’t be more obvious — not as good as for
someone who’s, say, 55 or 60 years old, that’s for sure. Yes, there’s also the
reputed wisdom of old age — and it might indeed make Joe Biden a more
thoughtful president, were he to get a second term; Donald Trump, of course,
would be Donald Trump, at 60 or 82.
very possibility
of watching a televised debate between the two of them make you anxious? After
all, the oldest president to previously leave office was Ronald Reagan at 77
(and by then he may have had dementia). Before him, the oldest was Dwight D.
Eisenhower who ended his second term in 1961 at 70 years old, having had a
heart attack while in office. Third comes William Henry Harrison, who entered
the White House in 1841 at age 68 and died, possibly of pneumonia, 32 days
later. Now, it’s also a fact that we
Americans are generally lasting longer than once upon a time. But is that
really where you want to put your political money? I doubt it.
Still, all of
the above is too obvious to belabor, so here’s a question: Are there any other
implications we can draw from the upcoming battle between those two old men
that’s going to grab our attention and steal the headlines for all too many
months to come? The answer, I suspect, is yes. Sometimes in our world, the
symbolic is all too subtle, but every now and then it impolitely smacks you in
the face. And at least as far as I’m concerned, the second Biden-Trump election
campaign should more than qualify in that regard.
I mean, the
country that still passes for the greatest power on Planet Earth is going to
set a limping age record for president, no matter who wins, leaving China’s Xi
Jinping, now 70, and Russia’s Vladmir Putin, now 71, as relative youths in an
all-American world of absolute ancientness. And that should certainly tell you
something about the state of our country and this planet, too.
To be a little
clearer about just what, let me add one more factor to the equation. Joe Biden
and Donald Trump are preparing a fight to the wire to lead an America that, not
so many decades ago, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,
was considered the “sole superpower” on planet Earth. Doesn’t that tell you
something?
I think it does.
I think, quite bluntly (though I’ve seen no one discussing this amid the
endless media headlines and chatter about Trump and Biden), that those two old
codgers offer a stunning image of the all-too-literal decline and fall of —
yes! — the United States. They should make us consider where the country that
still likes to think of itself as the singularly most powerful and influential
one on this planet is really heading.
A World Without
Peace Dividends
As you might
imagine, there’s a prehistory to all of this. George H. W. Bush, president at
the moment when the Soviet Union went down in 1991, had that very year ordered
the U.S. military to launch Operation Desert Storm, which drove Iraqi autocrat
Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait. In its own fashion, it also launched
what would, in the century that followed, become a set of American military
operations around the globe. At the same time, with Russia in tatters and China
still a modestly rising power — with, that is, no true great-power enemies left
on Planet Earth — that sole superpower would do something rather surprising. It
would continue to pour ever more taxpayer dollars into the U.S.
military-industrial complex. Yes, there was talk then about a “peace dividend”
for this country and its people, but none ever arrived.
Thirty-two years
later, the Pentagon budget has almost hit the trillion-dollar mark annually,
while the overall national “security” (yes, it’s still called that!) budget
long ago soared well above the trillion-dollar mark. Meanwhile, in this
century, George H. W. Bush’s son, elected president in November 2000, would the
following September respond to the 9/11 attacks, planned and carried out by
Osama bin Laden and his small terror group, al-Qaeda, by launching what quickly
came to be known as “the Global War on Terror.” And all too global it would be
with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. It would also prove
a disaster of the first order for the last superpower, whose military would
leave literally millions dead across the planet, destroy countries, decimate
economies, and create tens of millions of refugees, while costing this country
a staggering $8 trillion and counting as, over more than 20 years, the U.S.
military lost wars, while terrorism as a phenomenon only grew.
Yes, in May
2011, Osama bin Laden would be killed in Pakistan by a team of U.S. Navy Seals.
Still, were he alive today, I suspect he would be pleased indeed. With next to
nothing other than his personal wealth, a small crew of followers, and some
hijacked airplanes, he managed to outmaneuver and outplay what was then the
greatest power on Planet Earth. Thanks to the slaughter of several thousand
Americans in New York and Washington, he also managed to draw this country into
an endless war against “terrorism” and, in the process, turn it into an
increasingly terrorized country, whose inhabitants are now, however
symbolically (and, in the future, possibly far more literally), at each other’s
throats.
In some eerie
fashion, both former President Trump and President Biden might be considered
creations of al-Qaeda. And so might the country itself today. I mean, could an
American of 1991 ever have imagined that, in 2024, polls would show the urge
for violence against fellow Americans reaching eerie highs here? Meanwhile,
approximately one in 20 of us is now armed with a military-style AR-15
semi-automatic rifle. Even young people can now possess a JR-15 (for “junior”)
child’s version of such weaponry that’s all too deadly.
Perhaps not
surprisingly, AR-15s have proven the weapon of choice in the worst of the mass
killings that have become commonplace in this country and, in recent years,
have been distinctly on the rise. They could indeed be considered “terrorist”
activities, involving as they do the repeated deaths of startling numbers of
us. And all of this is happening without an American-style al-Qaeda yet truly
in sight. Mind you, there are now an estimated almost 400 million weapons of
various kinds in the possession of American civilians, a stunning arsenal for
any country, no less one increasingly divided against itself. Meanwhile,
according to a recent NPR/News Hour/Marist poll, 3 in 10 Republicans (or 20
million of us) claim that “Americans may have to resort to violence to set
things straight” in this country, while, on the right, militarized terror-style
groups are ever more the order of the day.
Consider that a
brief summary of the increasingly divided and divisive American society over
which those two old men are now fighting, a domestic world that could, in the
end, rip apart whatever fantasies our leaders may still have about American
power on this planet.
Coming Apart at
the Seams?
As was true of
the Soviet Union until almost the moment it collapsed in a heap, the U.S. still
appears to be an imperial power of the first order. It has perhaps 750 military
bases scattered around the globe and continues to act like a power of one on a planet
that itself seems distinctly in crisis. It also continues to organize for a new
Cold (verging on Hot) War with China in the Pacific. That explains President
Biden’s recent highly publicized “summit” in Washington with the prime minister
of Japan and the president of the Philippines, just as it explains the way U.S.
special operations forces have only recently been “permanently” assigned to an
island only a few kilometers off China’s coast. Yes, as that recent meeting
with the Japanese and Filipino leaders and those commandos suggest, the Biden
administration is still dealing with China in particular as if this were indeed
a Cold War moment, and the sort of “containment” of a communist country the
president grew up with was still the order of the day for the globe’s greatest
power.
Unfortunately,
that’s truly an old man’s version of the world we now live in. I’m thinking
about the planet which, each month, sets a new heat record and where, despite
much talk about cutting fossil fuels, the U.S. in 2023 produced more oil (13.5
million barrels a day) than at any time in its history, while China’s
coal-power capacity grew more rapidly than ever. And that’s just to start down
a list of fossil-fuelized bad news. On a planet that itself looks as if it
might be going to hell, amid record heat, fires, storms, and the like, the urge
to put such effort into organizing alliances of nations in the Pacific (led by
Washington, of course) to “contain” China in an ever more warlike fashion
represents, it seems to me, folly of the first order.
It’s
increasingly an illusion (or do I mean delusion?) that this country has any
sort of genuine control over the rest of the planet (no less itself). And today
— with those two old men, one of whom is also bizarre beyond compare, wrestling
each other for the presidency — this country is threatening in its own odd
fashion, like the USSR in 1991, to come apart at the seams.
It’s strange to
think about just how distant the America I grew up in — the one that emerged
from World War II as the global powerhouse — now seems. If you had told anyone
then that more than three-quarters of a century later, there would be
well-armed private militias forming in a country armed to the teeth with
military-style weaponry or that one presidential candidate would already be
hinting at calling out the military to subdue his opponents if he ends up back
in the White House, who would have believed you? It wouldn’t have even seemed
like convincing science fiction.
And yet today,
the greatest country on Earth (or so its leaders still like to believe), the
one that continues to pour taxpayer dollars into a military funded like no
other, or even combination of others, the one that has been unable to win any
war of significance since 1945, seems to be threatening to come apart at the
seams. Yes, this presidential campaign could turn out to be about the decline
and fall of it all — and, of course, if Donald Trump (“drill, drill, drill“)
ends up back in the White House that decline and fall could happen in a fashion
almost beyond imagining.
The once-lone
superpower, and now perhaps the loneliest power of all, could even be heading
for previously unimaginable autocratic waters or who knows what else? If only
it were otherwise, but unfortunately, in the months to come, we’ll be watching
as an all-American world possibly spins slowly out of control, while the
leftovers of the American Century fight it out in a country where all too many
of us seem focused on anything but what matters.
As one old man
to two others, if only you could stand down, we could face the world we’re
actually in before it becomes too late.
No comments:
Post a Comment