One of the most alarming aspects of the rise of Trump is (or should have been) his embrace of the Orwellian lie. This also cannot be normalized with a comforting “all politicians lie.” Of course they do. Lying is not telling the truth, or shaping a version of events with the intent to deceive. These things happen. Jimmy Carter promised he would “never lie to us.” Great. Nixon told so many lies it’s amazing he could keep track of them. But we are not talking about garden variety lying here — we are talking about the totalitarian lie: lies told, repeatedly, loudly and insistently, in direct confrontation with the indisputable truth. Lies purposefully designed to undermine the very capacity to make truth claims. Orwell was right to warn of this. But here we are.
Having spent three-quarters of a century fretting about enemies abroad, we have never fully processed a lesson of history: that great civilizations almost invariably collapse from within. We are Athens, we are Rome — we are, more than anything, Paris in the 1930s, another society divided against itself, living in what one historian described as “the age of unreason”. France then boasted the mightiest army on the continent, but the country was so hollowed out it simply collapsed when placed under stress, leading to defeat, occupation, humiliation. “Better Hitler than Blum”, many on the French right muttered, faced with the prospect of a Jewish Prime Minister — is “better Putin than Hillary” the 21st century equivalent?
Jonathan Kirshner
Great essay about the state of the United States after the election of Donald Trump and the likely consequences for the international order. It’s hard to share all the memorable quotes (I gathered 10 of them), so I encourage you to read the full article.
Worse still, even if we manage to endure the next four years and then oust him in the next election, from this point forward we will always be the country that elected Donald Trump as President. And as Albert Finney knew all too well in Under the Volcano, “some things, you just can’t apologize for.” This will be felt most acutely on the world stage. Keep in mind that in those areas where Trump departs from traditional Republican positions, such as those regarding trade and international security, Congressional power is much weaker. Trump can start a trade war or provoke an international crisis just by tweeting executive orders from the White House. And that damage will prove irreversible. Because from now on, and for a very long time, countries around the world will have to calculate their interests, expectations, and behavior with the understanding that this is America, or, at the very least, that this is what the American political system can plausibly produce. And so the election of Trump will come to mark the end of the international order that was built to avoid repeating the catastrophes of the first half the twentieth century, and which did so successfully — horrors that we like to imagine we have outgrown. It will not serve us well.
Jonathan Kirshner
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