THE AMERICAN THREAT TO THE WORLD
by
PETER McMILLAN
______________________________________________________________
Peter
McMillan is the author of Collected Essays on Political Economy
and Wartime Civil Liberties, 2002-2008, An Anthology
of Hardly 20/20 Flash! Fiction, and Missing Stories:
An Anthology of Hardly 20/20 Flash! Fiction.
Right
now, in the last third of July 2020, the most dangerous virus
in the world is not COVID-19 with nearly 15 million confirmed
cases and more than 600,000 confirmed deaths. No, the most dangerous
virus in today's world is Trumpery—glitter-covered worthless
nonsense and lies. It has infected approximately half the voting
population in America. Trumpery is the essence of the present
US Government that continues to exert a disproportionate and negative
influence on the rest of the world. Since very little good has
come from the Trump Administration, very little can be expected
in the future. Trumpery is the virus that the rest of the world
shouldn't have to suffer. It must be contained within its borders
and cured there.
We Americans
‘may’ have the opportunity to decide in a legitimate
election whether to return the President to the White House, but
if we refuse to re-elect him, there looms the possibility that
he will continue as President anyway, probably under a substantially-modified
constitutional regime. We Americans have the right of self-determination
and sovereignty—historically denied to lesser nations (especially
in the Western Hemisphere) and currently being denied to some
of our fellow Americans in concerted efforts to suppress the vote
through campaigns of voter disinformation and efforts to discredit
mail-in voting in the time of the COVID-19 global pandemic where
America leads the world in cases and deaths. Come November, we
Americans will have another chance to choose what kind of country
we want. However, as mentioned, do not expect the President to
concede even if he loses the election, the increasing likelihood
of which may oblige him to act pre-emptively: to either postpone
or cancel the election.
The rest
of the world will have to live with the consequences if the President
is fraudulently re-elected, illegally cancels the election, or
refuses to comply with an unfavourable election result, and quite
likely not just for four more years. (Expect a hereditary—not
necessarily a bloodline—transfer of power upon the President's
death).
The global
consequences are often lost on many Americans as our perspective
has historically been short-sighted, parochial and self-serving,
not unlike that of other peoples whose governments have ruled
large parts of the world. Perhaps a difference is the zealous
self-righteousness and moral tyranny that the US Government projects
mendaciously among its citizens and residents and throughout the
world, which non-Americans, and many of us Americans as well,
recognize as out-and-out hypocrisy, deception and perversion of
the ideals of charity, freedom and choice, which have been twisted
and corrupted by our government's interpretations of a secular
state, elected government and competitive markets.
The significance
of America's 'actually adhered to values' as opposed to its liturgically-recited
ideals is linked to the reality that America is still without
question the dominant nation in the world. It has the world's
largest and most powerful economy and military, which can project
its advantage unilaterally and anti-competitively vis-à-vis
other nations or other blocs of nations. It has a massive government
infrastructure that is relatively well coordinated within its
borders and across the globe. The vastness of the American bureaucratic
state is intermingled with the nominally 'private' corporate world
('free enterprise' being an American oxymoron), which thrives
on public grants, tax incentives, and market protections and develops
public policy in between elections, leveraging its industrial
and commercial wealth, connections and expertise.
Theoretically,
the legitimacy of the US Government's power derives from its charter
to protect life, liberty and property (pursuit of happiness,’
really?) not of everyone in America (that was never the intention
if we are honest about American history, and since the public
murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department we
are, for a time, being more forthright in our self-assessment)
and certainly not of the rest of the world's inhabitants, who
represent merely a theological burden. Fundamentally though, America's
power is coercive and therefore grounded in its authority, i.e.,
its ability to muster brute force to compel submission. Nevertheless,
inside the borders, the military has traditionally been kept out
of domestic affairs (though periodically ordered in to enforce
federal desegregation law or invited in by State governors to
keep the peace, e.g., after Rodney King's violent beating by the
Los Angeles Police Department and the subsequent acquittal of
the officers involved), but the world and even some of us Americans
are realizing that the perpetuated myth of American goodwill will
be mass-marketed as perfectly compatible with the continued slipping-off
of the constraints of liberal (limited) government and the enabling
of the idiosyncratic governance of its President, who has been
able to dominate the administrative machinery of government, the
Congress, the Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve Board, much of
the armed services, the federal police—from the Department
of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and perhaps the
State Department (CIA)—and State governments. This has been
accomplished by a coup that too few Americans have acknowledged—some
naively regarding these rollbacks as temporary and reversible
and attributable to an anomalous president.
As the
underlying power of the US government rests with law enforcement
and the military, with restraints removed, the policing of America
will be facilitated by the dumb, sycophantic or non-confrontational
pliancy of our American electorate who persist in the belief that
America is the just leader of and shining light for the world—those
ends justifying dubious means. Many in the American police and
military establishments have no doubt been rehearsing the Nuremburg
defense and are ready and willing to follow whatever orders the
commander-in-chief gives. Then, there are the secret police that
the world has seen in Portland, Oregon and the multitude of militias
that stand waiting in the wings to be called into service by the
President. That's all part of 'the [perverted] American way.'
"We don't want a king—but we'll take a dictator—we
do crave a leader to worship" as has been proven for all
the world and history to see. Whatever the President wants done
will be supported, or at least not opposed, by a frighteningly
large number of Americans, and it will be enforced through the
might and technological sophistication of the post-Eisenhower
military-industrial complex, sometimes overtly as in Lafayette
Square and cities across America, and sometimes covertly as in
Portland, quelling the protests (one day perhaps giving no quarter)
but raising the spectre of a police state wherein we may have
our own desaparacidos (disappeared).
The US
Government has extraordinary political, economic and military
influence around the world, and to the extent that a unified authoritarian
nation remains entrenched in Washington, D.C., the world has good
reason to be prepared to prevent the contagion of its illiberal
and anti-humanitarian policies. Actually, the first question is
what can the US Government do to the world by means of exercising
its unequalled global power? The answer: pretty much what it wants.
The next question is what will the US Government do to the world,
i.e., will it lead the world and treat other nations with charity
and fairness? The answer: don't bet on it.
American
exceptionalism is a global problem, but American exceptionalism
under the direction of a President, who may be variously described
as an incorrigible mobster or child-brained, should frighten the
daylights out of the world (and America), much more so than did
the Cuban Missile Crisis in those long October days in 1962. Don't
think that the President is inclined towards the calculus of proportionality
and don't believe that the voice of reason and wisdom will always
have the ear of the President in a crisis. This President is capable
of setting the world on fire to feed his vanity . . . and that
includes America from Wall Street to Highway 101 and all the Main
Streets in between.
While
we Americans ‘may’ be able to decide for ourselves
in November, what can other nations do? How can they protect themselves
against the ever-aggrandizing American autocracy, which to some
just means ‘a whole lot more of the same as what we've been
getting.’ As we Americans may not be able (or willing) to
deal with our own rogue president, nations around the world must
have a contingency plan to protect themselves against this unchained
monster.
This
would be no modern version of the 19th century Concert of Europe.
This time it must be a concert of the world—a global concert—committed
to countervail the authoritarian, anti-charitable, anti-democratic
and anticompetitive bulldozing of what exists solely for the purpose
of developing a beautiful, brand-new, perfect world neighbourhood
for the American elite and their hangers-on. Such a concerted
global effort would not simply be a coalition of nation-states
but a global consensus, uniting the sovereign and representative
functions of the nation-state with the transnational missions
of beneficent non-state actors to promote a multilateral, progressive
agenda for the world instead of the retrograde, self-serving agenda
of American exceptionalism and its asymmetric political economy
embodied in the Washington Consensus.
But,
this global concert cannot be led, directed, or controlled by
any existing or nascent autocracies or blocs thereof. What would
be the point of exchanging one autocracy for another?
Alas,
who will sponsor such a new world order? The Concert of Europe,
the League of Nations, the United Nations? What would be the next
evolutionary step? Does the UN Security Council have the remedy?
No, it does not, as each of the five permanent members (three
of whom are themselves arguably present-day hegemonic threats
to the world), possesses the ultimate secret weapon—the
veto of multilateral cooperation. So, what is to be done (And
not à la Lenin)?
As a
first step, the containment of monolithic world powers must be
addressed, and the US Government provides the immediate problem
for which a solution must be found. Separation of powers, checks
and balances . . . the world has listened to this ad nauseum.
Forget the scraps of paper once called the U.S. Constitution.
It's time for the rest of the world to step up and condemn American
exceptionalism and dissuade other hegemons waiting in the wings.
This is no time for the piously silent. The world must speak out.
The leadership
of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea will enjoy the ironic turn
of events and will easily be persuaded to join in. Let them, but
for humanity's sake, remember that one or more of these countries
would fill a power vacuum with alacrity and themselves emerge
as a greater threat than America now is.
America
must come around. We Americans must get rid of our dictator. America
must join the rest of the world, and it must assume a leading
role but not ‘the’ leading role. America's role must
fit in the context of global power-sharing among nations who would
eschew the dictatorship models of the Trump Administration or
the governments of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Is there
a utopia on the horizon? No. So, does the world stand idly by
waiting for the barbarians? No. Whatever can be devised will likely
fail at some point. However, it's better to acknowledge our fallibility,
and like Neurath's sailors out at sea, never cease making repairs
to our unseaworthy vessel to stay afloat. And so, Americans and
the world's nations must do the best we can, respectively, to
improve governance. We Americans must check the dictatorship in
our midst, and the international community must check American
exceptionalism. It's the best we can do for now.
It is
to be hoped that by calling out and challenging the excessive
abuses (criminal and unconstitutional) of the President, we Americans
will rally and defeat him at the ballot box and force him to accept
the verdict of America's citizenry. The world can help by calling
out and challenging these abuses. It is unnecessary and undesirable
for the world to intervene in the same way the US Government has
attempted and often achieved regime change during its storied
history of American foreign policy. The means to the end are still
important. Besides, there are millions of American patriots protesting
in the streets, speaking through the media, in public spaces and
among their friends, families, and neighbours—calling for
universal basic human rights in America—and they must not
be the innocent victims either of the President or the international
community.
