If they don’t exactly feel like the end of the world, these days certainly feel like the end of something. American hegemony, perhaps, although, to be honest, I’m not sure what “hegemony” means. I would suggest perhaps it’s the end of American hubris, but that doesn’t seem right either because hubris is what we do. Without an overinflated sense of our own capabilities, what even are we?
Part of me roots for an American comeuppance, the same way I root for a snotty kid to get smacked across the head. Not because I think we’re “bad,” but because every Goliath needs to encounter a David now and again. Better if, unlike Goliath, we survive our encounter, but no nation ought to have the outsized impact on the globe as our own. And certainly no nation that has proven itself incapable of behaving responsibly. So much power concentrated in the hands of so few is, frankly, un-American.
When the Soviet Union fell, we celebrated “the end of history,” as the political scientist Francis Fukuyama put it. Western liberal democracy was supposed to take root and spread across the world as the endpoint of human ideological evolution. Not even thirty years later, Fukuyama looks like a goddamned fool.
Or, more likely, people like me who never actually read Fukuyama continually mischaracterize what he meant.
That said, I’m not convinced that democracy is the endpoint when, according to The Hill, 57% of Americans believe democracy isn’t working in America and a further 21% believe “democracy in the United States will end sometime in their life.” Democratic movements are being threatened everywhere. The “end of history” is looking suspiciously like the beginning of the end.
Then again, perhaps my bleak view is informed by my own psychological makeup. I’m temperamentally unsuited to live within the borders of a superpower. I’m an underdog kind of guy. I should live in an underdog country, but one with air-conditioning. When the United States clomps our muddy boots across the globe, I’m one of those people who feel the need to follow behind with a towel, apologizing for our uncouth manners. When I visited Italy this summer, the only phrase I mastered was mi dispiace. I’m sorry.
The world waits. They can read the actuarial tables as well as the rest of us—one advantage the rest of the world has over us is their collective memory. Many of our allied nations once ruled the roost themselves. They understand what it means to lose one’s starring role in world affairs. Surely, they’re watching our crack-up with a mixture of horror and bemusement. A bit, I suppose, like me.
Today, the headlines are bleak. Wars, disease, Katy Perry dating Justin Trudeau. But history has a curious way of turning. Good news may break out at any moment. I mean, I doubt it because, again, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist. That being said, I’ve seen our global biorhythms bounce up and down enough times to conclude that history doesn’t end. It oscillates.
We swing from high point to low and back. We squabble, then kiss and make up. We keep digging deeper holes, only to turn around and invent taller ladders. America represents the confoundment of our species as well as any and better than most. Within these borders is every shade and hue, every freak flag flying, every God. Within these borders is what Madeleine Albright called “the indispensable nation.” Not because our people are any better than any others but because we are blessed with an outsized concentration of money and might.
I don’t expect us to fully learn our lesson in the months and years that follow this moment. We’re too pigheaded for that. Our sense of self is too inflated for a single pin—no matter how orange—to pop it. So I don’t think we’ve arrived, again, at the end of history. But maybe we’re at the end of the part that crowned the USA “king of the world.” We might be better off for it.
We’re a nation founded, in part, as a rebuke to monarchy. Why, then, do we seek to rule the world by royal decree? A chastened U.S. will still command outsized influence on the world stage, but perhaps our touch will be a little lighter. Our ears, perhaps, opened a bit wider. Our tongues, perhaps, a little more given to silence. The end of history was always an exaggeration, but maybe in terms of our own nation, we’ve reached the end of adolescence. We may not grow wiser, but perhaps we’ll mature enough to realize the world doesn’t revolve around us.
Mi dispiace, world. Mi dispiace.
