Jan 10, 2025
Beyond the Illusion: The Dark Dreams of a Unified Reich by Henry Giroux
Source: CP
Before even taking office, Trump has conjured grotesque visions of what he once called the dreams of a “unified Reich.” His delusions of grandeur, disdain for reason and truth, sycophantic worship of billionaires and despots, militarism, and embrace of white supremacy signal the rebirth of authoritarianism on a scale that recalls the horrors of the Third Reich, Pinochet’s Chile, and Putin’s Russia.
The true outrage lies not only in Trump’s madness but in the cowardice, corruption, and complicity of the press, politicians, and pundits. These enablers-from Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos to the legacy media and Vichy Republicans, among others—are part of what Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian calls the “obsequiousness Olympics,” all of whom are defined through their hollow platitudes and refusal to confront the sinister revival of history’s worst atrocities. While they offer cosmetic commentary and reporting, the world burns—children are slaughtered in Gaza, the specter of nuclear war grows, and fascism spreads like wildfire across the globe. Trump’s rhetoric of military invasions and mass incarceration of immigrants has been normalized, ignoring the historical consequences of such virulent messaging. This indifference underscores the erosion of democracy and the abandonment of democratic rights and civic responsibility.
The Machinery of Neoliberal Authoritarianism
Silence, civic illiteracy, and the G.O.P.’s embrace of ruthless dictatorships have plunged the United States into a moral abyss. Algorithmic authoritarianism and neoliberalism’s “disimagination machines” have gutted the public sphere, eroding critical thought with conformity and turning truth into the enemy of politics and everyday life. Historical consciousness is now deemed as dangerous, and dissent is branded as treason. The impending horrors of Trump’s presidency are starkly evident in his escalating rhetoric of vengeance, labeling critics and political opponents as “the enemy within.” This is not governance—it is a declaration of war on democracy itself.
Donald Trump is not the cause but the culmination of America’s descent into authoritarianism. As Chris Hedges aptly observes, “Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay.” This decay has been decades in the making. Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has unleashed a legacy of relentless misery, staggering inequality, systemic corruption, and an unapologetic allegiance to white supremacy and Christian nationalism.
For generations, the United States has been willing to place a For Sale sign on its politics, institutions, and professed ideals. But today, we are witnessing a consolidation of power into “an ever-smaller set of hands”—a deepening and betrayal not just of democracy but of the very possibility of justice. Trump represents the endpoint of this trajectory: the embodiment of an unrestrained gangster capitalism that now clings to fascist politics as its final stronghold—a desperate, violent grasp for unchecked power amid a collapsing moral and social order.
Democracy, once a beacon of promise, has been hollowed out. To many Americans, it no longer symbolizes collective aspiration but serves as a thin veil for the crimes of the financial elite. Trump is not an aberration but the inevitable endpoint of gangster capitalism—a system defined by moral rot, unbridled corruption, and the erosion of civic rights. Under its reign, everything—public goods, human dignity, even the future itself—has been reduced to a commodity, bought and sold to the highest bidder.
It bears repeating: Trump is not the cause but the symptom of democracy’s unraveling. As Wendy Brown so astutely observes, the Democratic Party has failed to grasp the profound ways neoliberalism has corroded the very foundations of democratic life. She eloquently writes:
Trump did not turn the nation in a hard-right direction, and if the liberal political establishment doesn’t ask what wind he caught in his sails, it will remain clueless about the wellsprings and fuel of contemporary antidemocratic thinking and practices. It will ignore the cratered prospects and anxiety of the working and middle classes wrought by neoliberalism and financialization; the unconscionable alignment of the Democratic Party with those forces for decades; a scandalously unaccountable and largely bought mainstream media and the challenges of siloed social media; neoliberalism’s direct and indirect assault on democratic principles and practices; degraded and denigrated public education; and mounting anxiety about constitutional democracy’s seeming inability to meet the greatest challenges of our time, especially but not only the climate catastrophe and the devastating global deformations and inequalities emanating from two centuries of Euro-Atlantic empire. Without facing these things, we will not develop democratic prospects for the coming century.
Rise of the Totalitarian Subject
What we are witnessing today is the rise of a reengineered “totalitarian subject,” forged in the wreckage of institutions that once upheld the common good, basic rights and civil liberties, replaced by machinery designed to sustain authoritarian rule. This subject is governed by fear, surrendering their agency to the grip of cult-like devotion and the iron hand of strongman figures. They are ensnared in a culture of ignorance, enveloped by the fog of anti-intellectualism, and animated by a disdain for difference and the Other. They are imprisoned in what Zadie Smith calls the dreams of a language of autoimprisonment and the blinding poison of consent. Their worldview is reductive, confined to rigid binaries of good and evil, where complexity is obliterated in favor of simplicity.
This is a subject that values emotion over reason, exalts a toxic machismo that glorifies violence, and harbors a seething contempt for women, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, Black people, and anyone who does not conform to the narrow, exclusionary ideal of white Christian nationalism. Their identity is an unsettling fusion of economic, religious, and educational fundamentalisms, designed to crush critical thought and enforce conformity.
The totalitarian subject thrives in a milieu of manufactured crises and engineered divisions, where cruelty becomes virtue and the lust for domination is mistaken for strength. This is not merely a political condition but a moral disintegration—a retreat from shared humanity into the sterile, unyielding embrace of authoritarianism. Under the GOP, the creation of the totalitarian subject—shaped by regressive values, stunted agency, and a warped sense of morality—intersects with a broader assault on the very meaning of citizenship.
As Susan Rinkunas observes, the far-right’s xenophobic rhetoric has seeped into mainstream discourse, legitimizing calls to abolish birthright citizenship and redefining citizenship as a privilege reserved for white men. This authoritarian agenda is unmistakable in the GOP’s relentless efforts to dismantle foundational protections and rights, including the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and even the hard-won freedoms secured under Roe v. Wade. Together, these attacks hollow out the democratic ideals of inclusion and equality, leaving behind a fractured and exclusionary vision of America defined, as professor of constitutional law Michele Goodwin notes, by “a coalition of Christian fundamentalists, white nationalists, and power-hungry Republicans displeased that women and Black people have made gains in the modern fight for full citizenship.”
The Struggle for Youth and Democracy
Our fight is a generational one, waged for young people who are being systematically sacrificed at the altar of greed and authoritarianism. They are slaughtered by wars that enrich the few, brutalized as mere consumer pawns, shackled by oppressive debt, robbed of historical memory, and rendered disposable by a society that treats them as surplus. These are not isolated injustices but part of a broader assault on democracy itself, now hollowed out by gangster capitalism and reduced to a mere swindle of fulfillment.
Oligarchic gangster capitalism, with its brazen consolidation of power and wealth, has overtaken neoliberalism as the dominant force masquerading as democracy. This ideological and economic rot will persist until the public rejects the false equation of capitalism with democracy. When money drives politics, and human rights are subordinated to capital accumulation, democracy crumbles—along with morality, justice, and the rule of law.
Yet, even in the face of such devastation, hope endures. Hope and resistance, though wounded, remain the flames that keep the possibility of a better world alive. Without hope, there is only fear, complicity, and the stench of death. We must nurture this hope, transforming it into a collective will for justice, a vision for a multi-racial working class rising like a phoenix from the ashes of despair. This is not a struggle for the faint of heart—it is a ferocious battle requiring courage, vision, and mass action.
The New Year’s Call to Resistance: Hope in the Face of Fascism
As we step into a new year, the shadows of fascism loom large, threatening to extinguish the very essence of democracy, justice, and human dignity. Yet, in these dark times, we must cling to what Antonio Gramsci so aptly described as the “optimism of the will.” We are called not merely to resist but to envision and enact a transformative movement—a grand narrative of collective power capable of dismantling the death machine of oligarchic gangster capitalism and resurrecting the promise of a meaningful democracy.
This is no time for passive despair. The horror we face must be named, confronted, and transformed into a collective force of resistance. The stakes have never been higher, and failure is no longer an option.
The year ahead must be one of fierce struggle and unyielding militant, collective hope—a time when justice finds its voice again, the working class unites with social movements in acts of defiance and imagination, and a radical democracy rises anew from the ashes of authoritarian decay. Only through relentless resistance and the rekindling of solidarity can we stem the tide of despair and reclaim the dream of a just and equitable world—a democracy built on equality, justice, and freedom.
The time to act is not tomorrow, not someday—it is now. We must wield the educational force of culture, universities, and every platform of communication to expose the machinery of fascist power, policies, and values, rendering them unmistakable and unignorable. Education must become the heartbeat of a politics committed to shaping ideas, transforming mass consciousness, and envisioning futures beyond the chains of domination. This is particularly urgent at a time when the left seems clueless about the role of education in shaping a subject vulnerable to the poisonous lure of fascism.[i]
We must breathe life into the general strike, making it a weapon of both national and international resistance. We must bring the gears of militarization to a halt, dismantle the networks of domestic terrorism, and confront the oligarchic systems driving this march toward authoritarian ruin.
Silence is not neutrality—it is complicity. Inaction is not prudence—it is surrender. This is not a time for hesitation but for mass struggle. The moment demands that we fight, reclaim the transformative vision of radical democracy, and revive solidarity as a political and moral force. We must unite to build a world where shared humanity triumphs over division, and where hope rises above fear. The stakes could not be higher: the future of democracy, the survival of justice, and humanity itself hang in the balance. The time to act is now.
Jan 8, 2025
Jan 6, 2025
Dec 16, 2024
The Tragic Optimist's Guide to Surviving Capitalistic Nihilism
The Dream of Life
“This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief." ~~~Rumi
“Kenshō : A Japanese term from the Zen tradition. Ken means “seeing,” shō means “nature, essence”
Aaron Paradox created this beautiful visual interpretation of “The Dream of Life” by Alan Watts. In the film, the “dreaming hero wakes up and sees the Dreamer himself. Time dissolves and we are seeing things as they are.”
Dec 13, 2024
Poet's Nook: "Tell Me Something Good" by Margaret Atwood
Tell me something good,
just one good thing, just tell me
something that will get me through
the hours the days the weeks that bring
nothing of any goodness, just more
news of other things like
spoiled meat or else raw
bones the dogs keep dragging in from god
knows where, what bombed-out car or ocean
wreck, whose child’s ribs wrenched
open, what woman’s torso torn like
bread, whose sons now head-
less, what trashed home, what
oily sludge a hundred miles
wide on which we feed, the words pour in, the door
won’t close. O stop, go mute,
just one good thing instead is all I ask.
So let’s say green
buds. Or wait, there aren’t a lot of those, just one
green bud might do, despite.
No. Wait. Let’s say a person said
Hello, and not unkindly. No. Let’s say
that it got cooler, or else warmer, or the rain
finished, or else it rained, whichever one
was needed. No. Instead say breakfast.
That could do it.
A faint shimmering
of plates and pearly spoons, a tender cup, what comfort!
There. That’s thirty minutes passed, at any
rate. The gate defended
for a little space, and wasn’t that
enough? No. Wait.
Dec 11, 2024
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing by Maria Popova
Source: The Marginalian
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an era when her chromosomes denied her the authority of her natural powers.
Who gets to write shapes what gets to be written, which shapes what is remembered — that is the making of the collective selective memory we call history, and it is made of words. We invented words to name the world and invented power to apportion the named. It is our inventions that tell the fullest story of our nature. The range of them — the range between chocolate and racism, between the Benedictus and the bomb — is the measure of what James Baldwin called “the doom and glory” of what we are, metered by the words that tell the story of our self-creation.
“What I have always wanted is to expand the frame of humanity, to shift the brackets of images and ideas,” Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects in The Message (public library) — his soulful and sobering reckoning with the power of words and the power structures roiling beneath the landscape of permission for making the images and ideas we call art. What emerges is a manifesto for reexamining who gets to word the world’s story and render human the worlds within the world, pulsating with the urgency of the writer’s job to clarify in order to galvanize — for “you cannot act upon what you cannot see.”
Writing, Coates recalls, was one of the great “obsessions” of his childhood — he relished the “private ecstasy” found in “the organization of words, silences, and sound into stories,” in “the employment of particular verbs, the playful placement of punctuation,” this mysterious alchemy of skill and vision with the power to “make the abstract and distant into something tangible and felt,” to dismantle the myths told by the wardens of the status quo and tell a different story about the world and its horizons of possibility. An epoch after John Steinbeck insisted in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech that a writer ought to bear the torchlight of clarity in humanity’s “gray and desolate time of confusion,” Coates considers what it takes to do that, in all its ecstasy and power:
There has to be something in you, something that hungers for clarity. And you will need that hunger, because if you follow that path, soon enough you will find yourself confronting not just their myths, not just their stories, but your own.
Permeating the book is Coates’s countercultural courage not to mistake for reality what he so aptly terms “the haze” of his own experience — a needed reminder that we lens everything before us through everything behind us and bow to the image in the lens, calling it the world. And yet what the visionary physicist John Archibald Wheeler wrote of the nature of reality — “this is a participatory universe [and] observer-participancy gives rise to information” — is true of the nature of writing. Coates reflects:
There are dimensions in your words — rhythm, content, shape, feeling. And so too with the world outside. The accretion of imperfect, discomfiting life must be seen and felt so that the space in your mind, gray, automatic, and square, fills with angle, color, and curve… But the color is not just in the physical world you observe but in the unique interaction between that world and your consciousness — in your interpretation, your subjectivity, the things you notice in yourself.
Just as the writer writes with all of themselves, the reader reads with all of themselves, adding another layer of subjectivity in the act of interpretation. Sylvia Plath understood this when she was only a teenager: “Once a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader.” So too with all creative work, much as a child enters the world to become their own person. “Your children are not your children,” Kahlil Gibran wrote in one of his most poignant poems. “They come through you but not from you.” Echoing Plath and Gibran, Coates reflects on his own writing:
I imagine my books to be my children, each with its own profile and way of walking through the world… It helps me remember that though they are made by me, they are not ultimately mine. They leave home, travel, have their own relationships, and leave their own impressions. I’ve learned it’s best to, as much as possible, stay out of the way and let them live their own lives.
This is not, however, a recusal from responsibility — over and over, Coates celebrates, demands even, the power of the written word to change the life of the world and the course of what will one day be history by changing the present landscape of possibility and permission we call politics. He writes:
History is not inert but contains within it a story that implicates or justifies political order… A political order is premised not just on who can vote but on what they can vote for, which is to say on what can be imagined. And our political imagination is rooted in our history, our culture, and our myths.
[…]
Politics is the art of the possible, but art creates the possible of politics… Novels, memoirs, paintings, sculptures, statues, monuments, films, miniseries, advertisements, and journalism all order our reality.
Half a century after Gwendolyn Brooks wrote in her forgotten poem “Book Power” that “books feed and cure and chortle and collide,” that they are “flame and flight and flower,” Coates considers the singular power of writing among the other tendrils of the creative spirit — the power of revelation and self-revelation:
Film, music, the theater — all can be experienced amidst the whooping, clapping, and cheering of the crowd. But books work when no one else is looking, mind-melding author and audience, forging an imagined world that only the reader can see. Their power is so intimate, so insidious, that even its authors don’t always comprehend it.
"The Apprentice": The Film DJT Doesn't Want the Public to See
Dec 5, 2024
Civil Rights Lawyer Bryan Stevenson on James Baldwin’s Courage
In this episode, host Razia Iqbal sits down with the celebrated civil rights lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, a man as dedicated to his chosen profession as James Baldwin was to his.
Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Alabama, which has not only transformed the conversation about the disproportionate numbers of incarcerated Black Americans, but has also challenged how we think about the criminal justice system and the system’s treatment of children in particular. He's been described by the late South African bishop and civil rights activist Desmond Tutu as “America's Nelson Mandela.”
Stevenson also initiated the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, and continues to make us all think about the lived legacy of more than 200 years of slavery in the U.S. By Stevenson’s own admission, Baldwin has had a profound impact on his life, professionally and personally. When asked to choose a single Baldwin quote that inspires him, Stevenson chose three, and an exception was made in the interest of an exceptional conversation.
Thom Hartmann: Trump Is Likely Plotting to Succeed Where South Korea’s Yoon Failed
Source: CommonDreams
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of a state of emergency yesterday shocked the world, has often been referred to (both within and outside of his country) as “South Korea’s Donald Trump.” A political outsider, he came to power with anti-establishment and often outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, trash talking women’s rights, “reforming” their healthcare system, and pushing hard for a neoliberal agenda that included raising the workweek from 52 to 69 hours.
In that, he reflects a growing trend among advanced democracies around the world, as decades of neoliberalism have weakened multiple nations’ abilities to sustain middle-class lifestyles while enriching an oligarch class that’s now reaching out—worldwid—to seize control of democratic governments to their own financial benefit.
Of all the events in world news over the past weeks—even more than the escalation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s murderous crimes against Ukraine—President-elect Donald Trump and his authoritarian colleagues down at Mar-a-Lago are probably carefully watching what’s happening to Yoon and gaming out how a similar “emergency” action here in America might be recalibrated to have ultimate success.
If he wants to imitate Yoon’s initial declaration and successfully follow through on it, Trump will need to intimidate and bring to heel any Republicans who still think of themselves as more loyal to the nation and our Constitution than to him.
Yoon has now backed down in the face of opposition from the South Korean parliament; he couldn’t get one single vote from his own party in Parliament, and is now facing demands that he resign or be impeached.
The challenges Yoon faced included a 17% approval rating, the legislature having been captured by the opposition party, and, most importantly, that he had never forced the members of his own party to degrade themselves and perform acts of obedience in front of him.
Thus, when he tried this strongman move of declaring a state of emergency but had not, in fact, first set himself up as a strongman, it failed.
Trump’s goal will be to avoid Yoon’s outcome and instead—like Putin and Viktor Orbán did in Russia and Hungary—ensure there won’t be any meaningful opposition within the GOP to his most extreme measures when they come.
Yoon’s rightwing populist People Power Party (PPP) had lost control of parliament in the April elections to the more progressive Democratic Party of Korea (DPK); Trump will not have such a constraint in a few weeks when he takes the White House. Instead of fighting Democrats, Trump must figure out how to deal with opposition to his most extreme impulses from within his own Republican Party.
Thus, his putting forward outrageous, unqualified, and even occasionally anti-American candidates for cabinet positions is Trump’s first big step in the classic strongman move of softening up Republicans in the House and Senate so when the real fights—like over a state of emergency (and the martial law that could accompany it)—happen, his party members and the handful of “problem solver” quislings in the Democratic Party will have already surrendered their ability to resist him.
This, as I noted but our media seems to be ignoring, is where Yoon failed. Trump—if he’s successful at cowing Republicans in the Senate into rubber-stamping his picks or allowing recess appointments—may not have those constraints, since he will have ended opposition in the Senate, and his MAGA-seized GOP now also controls the House and the Supreme Court.
Nonetheless, if he wants to imitate Yoon’s initial declaration and successfully follow through on it, Trump will need to intimidate and bring to heel any Republicans who still think of themselves as more loyal to the nation and our Constitution than to him. Will they still exist by next February?
Yoon’s behavior serves as both a warning and a call to action: Democracies must stand vigilant against the creeping authoritarianism that threatens their core principles.
This is not a new strategy, as Timothy Snyder, Heidi Siegmund Cuda, or Ruth Ben-Ghiat will tell you in their excellent Substack newsletters.
One of the big points Fritz Thyssen made in his book I Paid Hitler was to note how he and other industrialists and politicians were required to scrape and bow before Adolf Hitler in the early months and years. There was a competition among the industrialists and German politicians alike after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor to see who could be the most publicly obsequious, slavish, and unctuous toward the new German leader.
Today in America we see a similar spectacle as politicians, media figures, business leaders, and foreign dignitaries flock to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump’s golden ass.
It was that exact behavior that paved the way for Hitler to shut down the German press, subserviate the Reichstag, and essentially shatter all opposition to his regime in less than half a year.
And it wasn’t just the political class who bowed to him; so, too, did most average Germans, who had become exhausted by the conflict exploding across the political spectrum and so tuned out, immersing themselves instead in sports, family, and entertainment.
As a result, every day brought a new outrage, a new norm destroyed, a new red line crossed, but each was small enough—like appointing an accused rapist and drunk or drug user to run the Justice Department or the Pentagon—that it created a buzz in the political media but wasn’t sufficient to bring even a dozen people out into the streets.
Fascism comes in on cat’s feet, step by gradual but inexorable step. It never starts with one great clashing explosion of evil or corruption that causes an entire nation to suddenly wake up and pour into the streets. There are no trumpets, drums, or cymbals. As Hemmingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises using the metaphor of bankruptcy, it happens “gradually, and then suddenly.”
It’s usually the story of an insidious gradualism, like what a German professor told Chicago reporter Milton Mayer about in 1954:
But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jew swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.
Yoon’s declaration of emergency and martial law was explicit: It banned all political activities of the National Assembly, local councils, political parties, and associations; prohibited gatherings, protests, and labor strikes; and placed the media under the authority of the Martial Law Command.
Trump has made similar threats to our media and promised to use the state’s power of guns and jails to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” claiming, like Yoon did, that “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
Yoon’s effort to quickly convert South Korea into an autocratic state has so far backfired, in large part because of public opinion, a still-free press, and the courage of opposition and his own PPP politicians alike. The lesson Trump should learn from Yoon’s unsuccessful attempt is the need to avoid authoritarianism and instead embrace coalition-building, transparent governance, and a balanced approach to both domestic and foreign policy challenges.
Instead, it’s a virtual certainty that Trump is thinking Yoon should have acted before April, before the more progressive DPK took back over the parliament, and should have helped friendly oligarchs to seize the media in advance of his proclamation. And that he needs to move fast, before Democrats can regain power in the 2026 midterms that will be only 22 months away.
The resilience of democracy depends on the strength of its institutions, the vigilance of its citizens, and the commitment of its elected leaders of all parties to uphold democratic values. Yoon’s behavior serves as both a warning and a call to action: Democracies must stand vigilant against the creeping authoritarianism that threatens their core principles. As Trump’s return looms, these lessons cannot be ignored.
Dec 3, 2024
The Philosopher Who Solved The Meaning of Life?
Leo Tolstoy, celebrated as one of the greatest writers in history, is best known for masterpieces like War and Peace and Anna Karenina. However, beneath his fame and success lay a deep personal struggle with the most fundamental questions of existence: What is the meaning of life? Why do we live if death is inevitable? At the peak of his career, Tolstoy experienced a profound existential crisis. Despite his literary achievements, wealth, and admiration, he was haunted by a sense of emptiness and despair. These feelings pushed him to search for answers beyond the material world. His journey took him through philosophy, science, and religion as he sought to reconcile life's transience with its deeper significance. Ultimately, Tolstoy found solace and purpose through spiritual awakening, rejecting materialism and embracing faith, simplicity, and a life of moral responsibility. He famously declared, "The meaning of life is to serve humanity and align with divine will." This transformation not only reshaped his personal life but also influenced his later works, which became deeply spiritual and reflective.
Dec 2, 2024
Alfred McCoy: Requiem for an Empire
Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come… in 2025, just 15 years from now.”
To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But, that historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”
Now that a “far-right patriot,” one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.
Making the Original Prediction
Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, of course, that historian was me.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of American decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. The presidency of Barack Obama was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth — the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring, and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm.
Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance” — but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While America’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”
Writing in a similar vein in the New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, dismissed the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.
When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires, particularly those of Britain, France, and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.
By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening, and corporate bailouts were booming — all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary Americans, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of America’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.
Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating U.S. global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population, and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), fully confident, according to two Beltway insiders, that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”
Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment — think Germany versus Great Britain in World War I — fully expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warned that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”
Just a year after that, China’s president, Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power through what he called “the Belt and Road Initiative,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.
In the following decade, the U.S.-China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned: “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”
The Global Rise of the Strongman
Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.
At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy — forming the World Trade Organization in 1995, pressing open-market “reforms” on developing economies, and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by laying 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then launching 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).
By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s industrial output soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the U.S. and Japan, while simultaneously eliminating 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the U.S. and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.
Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections — in Russia (2000), Israel (2009), Hungary (2010), China (2012), Turkey (2014), the Philippines (2016), the U.S. (2016), Brazil (2018), Italy (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Indonesia (2024), and the U.S. again (2024).
Set aside their incendiary us-versus-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro ravaged the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an abortive coup. In Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, sacrificing his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, Recep Erdogan caused a crippling debt crisis, while jailing 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte murdered 30,000 suspected drug users and courted China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to stay in office and stay out of prison.
Prospects for Donald Trump’s Second Term
After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the — or perhaps even an — “exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent reelection, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.
In the globalized world America made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.
Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump called climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up executive orders to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the U.S. will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for nearly half (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent months of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029, the year Trump finishes his second term.
On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump promised last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, telling a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also block wind farm leases on Federal lands and cancel the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.
As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that American-made products will be ever less competitive.
To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petrol-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the U.S. auto industry uncompetitive, at home and abroad.
Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has proposed slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic-foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling American farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs, while dramatically raising the cost of consumer goods for Americans, stoking inflation, and slowing consumer spending.
Reflecting his aversion to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall in May 2023, he claimed he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he added: “I would tell [Ukraine’s president] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”
Just two days after the November election, according to the Washington Post, Trump reputedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call, “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, the Wall Street Journal reported that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.
With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator (should Trump actually appoint one) might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a significant role. But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French president Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses; and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.
America’s Allies
Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for U.S. global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is arguably the most powerful military alliance in all of modern history.
Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he called the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, claiming even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the U.S. into war. While campaigning last February, he announced that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.
Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst called “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” French President Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the American presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the AUKUS entente with Australia and Britain, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (with Australia, India, and Japan), and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the Biden administration strengthened those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, withdrawing from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so American power in the region.
Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said last June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he told the Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because China’s President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.
Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling economic blockade on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the U.S. position along the Pacific littoral, for 80 years the fulcrum of its global imperial posture, pushing its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to America’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.
A Silent U.S. Recessional
Adding up the likely impact of Donald Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe, and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”
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