The Continued Squandering of Anglo-American Hegemony

 

I wrote something about this before. Because we were never truly democracies, but, rather, capitalist republics, we never had any chance of genuinely flourishing and perservering.  And people are starting to notice our decline. [That link goes to a review about a Russian's argument for US-American decline, but all one has to do is look at the recent leadership debacle in the UK of Johnson-Truss, and the sad state of leadership in Ottawa with the airhead Justin Trudeau facing-off against the shit-stain Pierre Poilievre, with the cretins Doug Ford and Brad Wall in the provinces.  As I typed I realized that the UK leadership farce is mirrored by Alberta's fall of the imbecilic Jason Kenney and his replacement by the even more embarrassing Danielle Smith.]

Here's some good stuff from that review:

Yet in recent times, he argues, something has happened in American elite circles that has let the more grandiose and delusional side of the American psyche run amok, and this has happened at the very time when America is most in need of good leadership.

Martyanov believes that America’s extreme meritocrats vastly over­estimate their capabilities. This is because, rather than focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the country they rule, they have been taught since birth to focus on themselves. They believe that they just need to maximize their own personal accomplishments and the good of the country will emerge as if by magic. This has led inevitably to the rise of what Martyanov characterizes as a classic oligarchy. Such an oligarchy, he argues, purports to be meritocratic but is actually the opposite. A proper meritocracy allows the best and the brightest to climb up its ranks. But an oligarchy with a meritocratic veneer simply allows those who best play the game to rise. Thus, the meritocratic claims become circular: you climb the ladder because you play the game; the game is meritocratic because those who play it are by definition the best and the brightest. Effectively, for Martyanov, the American elite does not select for intelligence and wisdom, but rather for self-assured­ness and self-interestedness.

It seems very accurate in my mind.  Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton clearly see themselves super-geniuses even though neither of them achieved anything of merit during their entire careers, which in Biden's case is continuing on in its delusional, destructive path.

But the general public has to share some of the blame for elevating bizarre pieces of human garbage like Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre to high office. (Or in the case of liberals and social democrats, they praise to the skies robotic centrists and cynical con-artists like Dalton McGuinty or Crystia Freeland and shriek blue murder at anyone who criticizes them.)

Which is a shame because if you read history, besides doing a lot of bad things, British culture produced a lot of good things.  By the 18th Century, many continental thinkers were looking to the British example for good government, religious toleration, scientific advances and individual freedom.  I say all this again, with a fairly strong grasp of the atrocious crimes of British imperialism and the murderous violence of its class system.  But it must also be understood that human cruelty is not particular to the British or to Europeans.

When one says that women's rights made many of their first gains in the Anglo-American countries, or that Britain produced many of the first female authors in the modern period, one is not denying the prevailing oppression of women at the time and which continues to the present day.  I am not attempting to deny the ugly reality that was very much a part of this heritage.  But it did have its accomplishments.  Individual freedom and creativity in the Anglo-American countries was looked at in admiration around the world.  We (especially our leadership) sometimes claimed to have all the answers, and we never did.  But I fear that the good part of our example is going to be forgotten by the rest of the world by the time that these idiots, arrogant mediocrities in our oligarchies drag everything crashing down.