America in 2024: Blind, blundering Colossus on a downward slide

The world which is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the remains of the world which is waning into decay; and amidst the vast perplexity of human affairs, none can say how much of ancient institutions and former manners will remain, or how much will completely disappear… Although the revolution which is taking place in the social condition, the laws, the opinions, and the feelings of men, is still very far from being terminated, yet its results already admit of no comparison with anything that the world has ever before witnessed. I go back from age to age up to the remotest antiquity; but I find no parallel to what is occurring before my eyes: as the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.. Alexis de Toqueville; Democracy in America, (1840)

By ANDREW O’HEHIR

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed 175 years ago, Americans always think it’s all about them. OK, he didn’t put it exactly that way. But he did say that for all the remarkable qualities of American democracy, it tended to enforce mediocrity and stupidity, and that he knew of no other country with “less independence of mind, and true freedom of discussion,” than the United States.

At a moment of obvious domestic and international crisis — much of it invisible to most Americans, or deliberately ignored — that national narcissism or constitutional blindness, which was baked into the American project from its earliest days, is starting to feel like a terminal disease.

Chronically online media consumers, especially on the center-left, are understandably obsessed with the torturous progress of Donald Trump’s multiple prosecutions, and with an impending presidential election between two widely disliked candidates with a cumulative age of 160, neither of whom is generally perceived as competent to hold office. Beneath all that poll-gnawing anxiety and rending of virtual garments, I suspect, lies the slow-dawning awareness that from even half a step back, and from most of the world, the current condition of the last global superpower and the self-appointed guardian of democracy looks like a cruel, baffling joke….

https://www.salon.com/2024/03/04/america-in-2024-blind-blundering-colossus-on-a-downward-slide

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