An American Ideological Bankruptcy?
Baku, Azerbaijan, September 16th, 2017
Salaroche

The American of Japanese extraction Francis Fukuyama generated Tsunamis of controversy in 1992 with the argument he developed in his very famous book "The End of History and the Last Man".

Innumerable are the articles that were published and the television interviews that were realized worldwide on that subject in the years immediately after that publication.

Putting it in a very succinct way, Fukuyama proposed that the political system known throughout the world as "Liberal Democracy," that is, the non-authoritarian democratic systems that have dominated Western political theaters since the end of WWII (including in the US), represented the ideological cusp of humanity

(Note that the term "Liberal Democracy" does NOT correspond to the concept of "liberal" in the ideologically-limited domestic politics of the US)

According to Fukuyama, Liberal Democracy was the one-and-only, non plus ultra concept achievable by human society. It was the only socio-econo-political system that could provide every individual in the world with the opportunity to attain to their full realization as human beings, meaning the full recognition from their peers as people of value in every sense: Moral, Economic and Political (see the realization of the "Spirit" according to Hegel, the triumph of Napoleon in Jena, 1806, etc.).

Since Fukuyama published his theory practically a few months after the Soviet Union's complete disintegration, it was to be expected that his thesis would be immediately incorporated into the ideological triumphalism which spread throughout the length and breadth of the West, particularly across the USA.

But alas! Not everyone agreed with that precept. Fukuyama's thesis did not include aspects of "Liberal Democracy" that had detrimental effects on other non-Western societies, so that September 11 not only brought down the World Trade Center, but also the theory of the "End of History".

"No such thing," said Osama bin Laden to Fukuyama, "the universalist cultural arrogance of your thesis does not smell like roses to us, so take this! And you know what you can do with your theory".

And what have we seen on the American socio-political landscape ever since? Whatever it is, progress is not what it looks like. The shameless deception of the Bush administration at the national level regarding the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction was only the beginning, Obama's political reticence and Trump's insidious, fallacious and racist insistence on Obama's Birth Certificate was the continuation, and Trump's undemocratic ascendance to the presidency has so far been the clearest indication of the ideological bankruptcy that currently plagues the country.

Can you imagine a candidate for the presidency of the United States that openly invites before the TV cameras a foreign hostile nuclear power to intervene in his favor in the presidential elections of the country?

(See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNa2B5zHfbQ)

What ideology could drive a candidate for the presidency to say that? Would not that be equivalent to an act of treason against the country?

Can you imagine a President of the United States who openly proposes before the TV cameras that the government allow millions of Americans to lose their health insurance just to continue pursuing his whim of dismantling the social work of his predecessor?

(See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WMLl71Nu4)

What kind of ideology could lead to such ranting proposition? Would not that be tantamount to a very clear act of lèse-majesté against the American people?

Let us be frank with ourselves, at this point in time there is no trace of ideology in the White House and the little that there is on Capitol Hill is shameful, not to mention the retrograde tendencies that very often influence the decisions of the Supreme Court, whose only “supreme” characteristic seems to be the supreme stupidity of some of its members.

Without a doubt, the Republican Party is currently in an almost total state of ideological bankruptcy. There is not much in their designs that is not guided by their stubborn, age-old desire to disable as much as possible the national government institutions so that they may eventually manage to install a Darwinist Authoritarian Plutocratic kingdom that may last for a thousand years.

For its part, the Democratic Party has emptied even deeper its ideological coffers. Those poor guys have no idea what the most viable political route to follow is. Those individuals are neither fish nor fowl. Republicans at least have the courage to openly proclaim their supremacist, classist, and racist ideas. And the Democrats?

Democrats are just a band of timid political dwarves who do not even have the courage to respond openly to the unending class warfare that Republicans continue to wage on the American people, especially with that super-risible, super-worn-out and super-false theory of "trickle-down economics". And to think that there are still people who believe in the nonexistent veracity of that deception.

The truth is that the ongoing ideological decline of the two major political parties points to a possible disintegration or at least a considerable transformation of both.

Many half-rational members of the Republican Party do not agree much or at all with the extreme right-wing nihilism of the Trumpist hordes and many "traditional" Democrats (i.e., Republicans in disguise) seriously fear that the left-wing "realists" of the Bernie Sanders clan may eventually take the leadership of the party.

In retrospect, from the outset, the United States has always been a right-wing country with proto-fascist tonalities whose intensity has fluctuated from mild to strong according to time and circumstance.

Since the creation of the Electoral College, with its clear initial purpose of putting a certain brake on the popular vote, through the Know-Nothing Party of the 1840s-50s, on to Jim Crow, the Red Scare of the 20s and the McCarthyism of the 50s, the country has always shown a latent proto-fascist streak and a tendency towards an ethnic elitism that still continues to show its incisive teeth today (see Charlottesville, August 2017)

Trump's arrival at the White House has only been one more opportunity for a large section of the American population (± 34%) to take up again the path of xenophobia and the fervent desire for Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Nothing new under the sun. The same story, only at a different point in time.

If the ongoing Trumpist proto-fascism can be called an ideology, then that has been the ideology most prevalent in the country since its inception. But if that is not an ideology, what is the current ideology of the country? What is the concept of civilization that guides the steps of the political party currently in power? What is the concept of civilization that guides the timid actions of the opposition party?

Recently, Trump has allied himself with the Democrats “Chuck and Nancy”, first to keep the government solvent for the next three months and then to try to find a solution to the DACA issue. That has been a sign of pragmatism very out of the ordinary from the part of the "President", which has also ignited the anger of some in the extreme right.

For many of us, pragmatic policies used to be a feature that characterized US politics, until the Republican Party recently decided to throw all pretense of rationality out the window, beginning with Ted Cruz’s tedious interventions a few years ago to the Party’s current almost unconditional support for a "President" who consistently insults them and the country both at home and abroad.

The Republican political platform is indeed in a state of ideological bankruptcy and that of the Democrats has proven for the moment to be practically non-existent.

Faced with this reality, perhaps the time has come to apply a good dose of "creative destruction" to US politics, but NOT of the nihilistic type represented in the person of Trump. In the long run, hardly anything good can come out of having in the White House an individual who does not hesitate for a second to request the intervention of a foreign nuclear power in the electoral process of the country just to increase his chances of reaching the presidency.

See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNa2B5zHfbQ

Ideology? Most likely Trump does not even have a vague notion of the meaning of that word. Ideological ignorance could lead certain presidents to steadily rule from a pragmatic perspective but, unfortunately, that possibility is not very applicable in the current US case.

In short, could the world afford to throw all ideologies out the window? What the world needs today are rulers who contemplate the progress of their countries with a view to benefiting their peoples in general and not just one social class over the other.

Francis Fukuyama may have been right in postulating that the concept of Liberal Democracy has characteristics that bring it perhaps the closest to a universal ideology than any of the other ideologies that exist or have existed in the past. But it is not difficult to see that there are millions, or perhaps even billions, of people who would disagree as to the universality of that concept.

As the ongoing political confusion in the US clearly demonstrates, there is a large number of Americans who seem to think that the freedoms and benefits emanating from the American version of Liberal Democracy should mostly be the preserve of some, not of all, thereby invalidating the universality that that concept was supposed to have.

For Liberal Democracies to stand the test of time there has to be a clear understanding from the part of the people that such socio-econo-political system is precious and needs to be cared-for and protected from any threats from undemocratic forces. But when the leaders of the nation lose sight of their own guiding principles, what kind of future can there be in store for the country?

Clearly, the problem with the US case is that a good majority of Republicans are stubbornly blind to certain crucial realities of the country and a good majority of Democrats are all but a bunch of irresolute, duplicitous political weaklings.

So, what do we do now? Well, we could start by saying good morning to our own American Ideological Bankruptcy.

Salaroche