Is America Dying?

Or, How Political Economies Rise, Fall, and Reimagine Themselves

Every day, friends from around the world ask me. And I suppose many Americans are probably asking themselves, too. Is America dying?

The answer to that question goes like this. Yes. And. But we’re going to think about it rigorously and well, so that you learn something, particularly if you’re American.

Americans aren’t taught to think about the birth and death of societies well. That’s because of American exceptionalism, and in that mythology, America, and its constitution, systems and arrangements are where history ends. Full stop, game over. There’s little attention paid in American thinking to how modern societies actually live and die.

Because live and die they do.

The more sophisticated way to understand what’s happening to America is through the way that European thinking understands the issue of the life and death of societies.

And in that regard, the canonical example is France. France is on what’s known as it’s Fifth Republic. And that means that yes, there have been four previous ones.

Now. Here’s an interesting question for Americans. When do you think the Fifth Republic was established? Most Americans think it must date back centuries. But in fact, the Fifth Republic dates from the late 1950s. The Fourth Republic lasted from just 1946 to 1958, because it was plagued by chronic instability, and a chronic state of paralysis.

I highlight dates for you so that you can see that in fact, even in other modern, rich nations, the life and death of a society as a political form is very real. Other societies transform themselves politically—usually, in wealthy countries, in positiveways. It’s one of human history’s most profound and important accomplishments, in fact—the way that modern societies can reimagine and transform themselves.

And for that reason, it’s a very real tragedy that Americans aren’t taught about this, because it leaves them in the dark about this incredibly beautiful, rich, and crucial issue.

What changes when a nation establishes, then, a “new” Republic, for example? Institutions and constitutions do. The basic governing arrangements of a society. France’s Fifth Republic established the semi-Presidential system it uses to this day, for example—it altered the way that France was governed entirely.

Because, and this is the part that might make Americans really think, France’s current constitution was rewritten and adopted in 1958, too. Now. This is a major reason why European societies are so much more sophisticated than American ones: their constitutions are literally centuries more modern at this point.

So. Societies do in fact live and die. At least in terms of political economy. New “republics,” new forms, are a fact of life. New constitutions establish new institutions, and this is the project of social transformation. (It’s not just the culture war sort of nonsense it degenerates to in America, and all that only blinds Americans to this larger subject, and its importance and depth.)

Hence, this art of the life and death of societies is true everywhere…except in America.

And that is the first point to understand if you want to grasp how to think well about politics in the 21st century.

Now that we have a way to think about societies living and dying, we can answer the question in a much more considered way. If we think now about America, how many “republics” has it had? Maybe, if we’re generous, three—pre civil war, post civil war, and post segregation. But even that’s only in a soft way, because unlike nearly every other modern, rich society, America has never updated its most fundamental social arrangements, institutionally and constitutionally. We can’t really speak of a “new American republic.”

Until now.

Now, America really is on the verge of something like a new political order. And there are two possibilities before it, and the world.

The first is that Trump becomes dictator, if he isn’t already, and in a formal sense, democracy ceases to matter very much. This is called “elective autocracy,” sometimes, in the sense, that enough of a society chooses it. If this is the future, then the First American Republic is dead and gone, and what replaces may of course wear its symbols, but like Rome’s transition to emperors, isn’t remotely going to be the same. In this regard, the Second American Republic is autocracy, like Russia, perhaps.

The second possibility is that America claws back some semblance of democracy, and…what? Goes back to being to the First American Republic? With all its paralysis, instability, and inability to solve any real social problem, from inequality to healthcare to downward mobility? Those are real questions—I’m not just asking them rhetorically.

You see, the problem is that when political forms become as ossified and unstable and paralyzed as America’s First Republic grew, then of course change must come, one way or another. America’s power centers resisted the idea that America should ever modernize its institutions or its constitution, to modernize like Europe, where of course, basic public goods like healthcare and education are guaranteed rights—even America’s liberals still resist that. And that is exactly what made Trump inevitable, not just once, but twice.

And this second time around, Trump is determined to absolutely shatter and grind to dust what’s left of America’s democratic republic, and replace it with something much more like an authoritarian fascist state, where he controls everything, right down to individual companies and courts and universities and whatnot, everything.

Now. The question then becomes: what happens as political forms die and are replaced by others? Particularly, more degenerate and more violent and more autocratic ones? What happens as political forms degenerate—versus, in Europe’s case, advance and progress?

Such degeneration , if you like, usually comes with a range of consequences. It affects everything. It devalues, often shreds, the currency. The economy stagnates and crumples. Markets cease to function efficiently. Investment dries up. Political repression becomes an everyday affair. People go dark, and then go into survival mode. Fanatics and lunatics ascend into the highest positions of power, and their stupidest kinds to the lowest. A society quickly becomes abusive.

And as all this happens, the consequences for wealth are often stark and severe. People lose their wealth, their savings. Careers end, because entire industries no longer really exist. There is no “future” left, really, just a continuation of the bleak present—and who would want to invest in that? So capital flight ensues, and as people try to get their money out, bang, the autocrats crack down on even that. In the end, societies with degenerating political forms are left far poorer, more unstable, more volatile, and profoundly less wealthy.

I highlight the consequences to wealth for you for simple reasons. One is that America is a capitalist society, and without money, you die. But the deeper reason is that wealth is the linchpin of a modern society. Not in a trivial sense—paper chits and bits. But what you can do with your mind, your intellect, your creativity, what you can accomplish, whom you can be, and what a life can “amount” to.

Is America dying? The answer to that question is, obviously, LOL yes. But that’s not really the right question. The right question: is there still an America that can learn something about the very modern idea of the life and death of societies, their reimagination and transformation, which is one of the highest achievements of humankind, its intellect, will, and spirit?

I have my doubts. And so do you, I’d bet. For that reason, consider your next set of moves, very, very carefully. The world, after all, is.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!!)