Quit Yer Whinin’

 

Quit Yer Whinin’

Truth, the Spiral Nature of Historical Cycles and the Decay of America

To any student of historical change, the United States is clearly repeating mega-mistakes of past dominant nations that led to their decline and marginalization… dooming its own status as a superpower. The reason I hold that “cyclical changes” throughout history are actually spirals (not true circles) is an acknowledgement that accelerating achievements in technology (adding today the impact of climate change plus social media) prevent the application of a simple circular pattern of repetition. But the metrics of American failure are everywhere. Simply in terms of standard of living and life expectancy, according to a March 24th analysis of The Economist, the numbers are not subtle.

We’ve slipped to 20th in terms of our overall standard of living (behind the UAE and S Korea), and even China, Thailand, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Croatia have longer life expectancies. History’s lessons? Holland dominated the earth in just about every metric imaginable – military power, economic success, innovation, stability and an overall higher quality of life – for two centuries ending in the mid-1700s. Why? Holland (the Netherlands aka the Dutch) did not have the fierce delineation between the noble classes and everyone else, feudalism had faded, success was not limited to the capital city, they aggregated risk and investment with the precursor of modern corporations, and wind power supported their manufacturing and export values. While the rest of Europe was consumed with battling itself, Holland maintained its military primarily to protect its trade and to support its colonial expansion to secure raw materials. An entrepreneurial class was rich with invention and innovation, and religion no longer determined political power.

But in order to protect its incumbent advantage, Holland’s guilds slowly became very exclusionary and based on heredity. They opted for trade barriers over enhancing their competitive advantage. Instead of embracing as well as investing in accelerating technology and fostering the competition of entrepreneurial excellence, they relied on the past; they just watched as England’s coal resources create a vastly more productive and predictable source of industrial power: steam. England’s growth was not simply centered in London; Manchester became the new major manufacturing hub, and additional cities joined that club. And as Holland began to close its doors, Britain benefitted from Holland’s lessons… from a Dutch king.

William III (better known as William of Orange) was born on 4th November 1650. A Dutchman by birth, part of the House of Orange, he would later reign as King of England, Scotland and Ireland until his death in 1702. William's reign came at a precarious time in Europe when religious divide dominated international relations. Supported by a group of influential British political and religious leaders, in 1688 William invaded England in what became known as the Glorious Revolution.

A highly educated monarch, having survived military conflicts in mainland Europe, William began layering in the success lessons of earlier Holland into Britain. That was the basis for Britain’s eventual rise as the dominant colonial power with the largest and most modern navy on earth (whose main job was to protect trade routes from pirates and marauding wannabe nations leering at her colonial wealth). Britain replicated the corporate aggregation of investment capital, spread the miracle all across England… and after the merger, with Scotland and Wales. And yes, slavery was a fundamental part of that colonial effort, a historical black spot for sure.

But Britain was ready for that ascent, and William set in motion an unstoppable force. That was quite the opposite from France at the time. With almost all its minor economic success focused on Paris and her environs, with class distinction on steroids and never-ending religious animosity (protestants – Huguenots – escaped to Britian and later to America) that culminated in the disastrous and ultra-violent French Revolution in 1789. Bankrupt from her tremendous support of the American Revolution (fighting France’s traditional UK enemy) and still mired in the vestiges of feudalism, populism under the notorious Maximillien Robespierre (middle picture above), literally destroyed the nation.

The guillotine was the symbol of Robespierre’s vector of retribution, known as the Reign of Terror. The noble intention to form a functional and representational republic died in an orgy of blood. The next rising powers relied on a nondescript French general, an artillery genius, to provide the power they needed to stabilize the nation. It seems they underestimated his ambitions, and a monarch took over. Napoleon Bonaparte soon no longer reported to those who appointed him.

The parallels from the above, and many other historical realities (I’ve only selected a few), are mirrored in the currents spate of American trends that do not portend well. Our rising antipathy, a MAGA basic, against “educated” elites, science and medicine, along with a rising proclivity to install trade barriers and sanctions, seem to replicate the demise of mega-powerful Holland to the status of an also-ran. Britain then embraced science and modernity to become the most powerful nation on earth.

The erosion of our middle class, with the worst income inequality in the developed world, seems to look like the revulsion of the French Revolution in 1789 (which unlike Holland and Britain did not have much of a middle class… but lots of peasants). After a spate of retribution-driven populism plus the installation and defeat of a “Make France Great Again” autocrat, France was once again relegated to an also-ran run-of-the-mill European nation, leading up to a “war to end all wars” that didn’t: WWI. The United States, with vast natural resources, a rising middle class and an economic structure devoted to growth and an influx of immigrants whose hard work built the most powerful nation on earth.

The last time the United States focused on building a stronger nation – the post WWII era where the GI bill ignited a cadre of educated experts, with science and engineering becoming the new priorities, particularly after the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 – is long gone. Americans are living off the investments of that past era with little inclination today to accept investing in the vital basics of education, infrastructure and engineering over an inane desire to keep taxes for the rich low and allow deficits to skyrocket as a result. Upward mobility – the American dream – has left the building.

Even as our incumbent population is shrinking, there is a newfound loathing of immigrants… the very people whose hard work built our nation. “Make America Great Again” with a trashing of education, science and investment in ourselves – and a large dose of retribution to reinstall an under-educated racial elite to a perceived return to glory days (that really never existed… notwithstanding conspiracy theories to the contrary) – is beyond a set of historically failed policies with obvious and foreseeable consequences.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if those MAGA voters succeed in their election hopes and dreams, the only certainty is that the world that they create for themselves will be a precipitous and irreversible decline from what they have even now.