RobertJ wrote this in a comment on the blog last night (I have edited only very slightly, for presentation purposes):
The problem [we have] is much bigger than Trump. It is the entire power structure:
- The White House,
- Pentagon,
- Congress,
- Both US parties,
- Big finance,
- The Christian right,
- Zionism,
- A dysfunctional relationship between Federal and State governments,
- A dysfunctional press, and
- A long history of tolerated economic and racial injustice.
If Trump got “25th Amendmented” by men in white coats tomorrow, or met his Maker, not a lot would change – unless J D Vance has a different plan, not involving the Koch empire, Musk, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Apple, Big Oil, Bezos, Thiel and money, money, money. And that's just considering the US domestic scene without Russia or China or the health of the planet.
It's going to be up to the rest of us.
On July 4th 1776, the American colonists decided they would challenge a long-dominant world super-power, itself ruled by a deranged autocrat, King George III.
They succeeded. It needs to happen again, a quarter of a millennium later, in the reverse direction.
History is full of stories about the collapse of empires. Hittites, Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, Medes, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Ottomans, Crusaders, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Incas, Aztecs, Moghuls, Genghis Khan, Chinese dynasties, the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, and many others that I've never learned about. One thing they all share – they all were once thought to be invincible – then they FELL.
By 1945, there were plans in the UK for something better. People had been planning it and building it since before the war, perhaps to prevent revolution. My home was part of that, built in 1934 as part of a beautiful and much-appreciated “garden suburb”, now one of the most deprived parts of Bristol.
It is time for us to deliberately turn away from the current neoliberal US-led tyranny. Unfortunately, our political leaders lack the courage, the integrity and the imagination to take us forward. So we will have to do it ourselve,s one step at a time.
The sentiments are ones I share.
The rotten neoliberal empires will fall because they gave the causes of their own failure built into them. They are unsustainable: ultimately, the simultaneous craving for more, coupled with the hatred of others, has always led to downfall, and both are in play now. These edifices will crumble as a result.
That is why considering what should replace them matters now. Imagining what is possible is essential: the need for an alternative will arise. Although we might not yet know when a politics of care will be needed, we can be sure it will be.
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Agree with the main points. But.
“On July 4th 1776, the American colonists”………i.e. British aristocrats/the upper classes in east coast colonies etc George III – farmer George was not so bad compared to e.g. Catherine the (not so) Great (who implemented serfdom in Russia) or the various Louis in France. GIII was +/- controlled by the aristos in the UK. Not ideal – but the result was quite different from other locations. He was certainly no autocrat.
The American mob, liberated from the threat of a French invasion from Canada by the Brits who had just turfed the French out of Canada – decided that they would go it alone, motivated by a mixture of greed and greed. BTW – the nine year fight against the colonists was a global war since it was also fought out in India and various other places against the French. All that said, the whole pack of em were mad and bad, including the (pro-slavery) colonists. It would have been far far better had the USA never been allowed to develop into a single – ocean to ocean entity.
Just for the record, I agree with Mike Parr’s expansion on my post. But 400 words does limit how much contextualisation is possible. Ive posted elsewhere about slave-owning founding fathers and the fatal flaws built-in to the Declaration of Independence. I’ve not studied Catherine the Great, but I wouldn’t want to meet her on a dark night.
In my view the powers of the President are similar to those given to Dutch King William III and Mary (joint monarchy in theory)
Many of the founding Fathers were Whigs and influenced by the so-called glorious Revolution of 1688.
By 1776 Parliament had more of the power and while Americans frame it today as a rebellion against Royal Power, I see it more as a revolt against Tory policies. American opponents of the Revolution were called Tories and there was a lot of sympathy here for the colonists.
Because of vast distances and the only means of transport being horses ( and few roads ) and sailing ship, a federal system made sense in 1787when they wrote the Constitution. But today a more parliamentary system would be more flexible and representative. A few years ago the Senate was split 50 Democrat and 50 Republican but the latter represented several tens of millions fewer people as small rural Red states have small populations and California has 40 million people. But amending the Constitution is very difficult as the states have to vote and a blocking third of the states could be only 15%-20% of the population. The Electoral College gave the Presidency to the person with fewer votes in 2016.
If our budget can’t pass we can call an election. We can and did get rid of a Prime Minister for lying. The US lacks that flexibility.
The famous ‘checks and balances’ are not working as the “good chaps’ of Professor Bogdanor seems to be doing nothing. In the end Constitutions depend on the integrity of the political class- and the willingness of the electorate to tolerate events.
As Robert suggests we see the influence of ‘over mighty subjects’ of the Tech billionaires. Something not catered for by the Constitution.
We in Europe must follow our path and hope that reform will, despite all, happen. Segregation, McCarthyism and the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons, all passed . The Christian Right and Zionists are losing support. The web is an alternative to the press. Many of the military are more liberal than the stereotype. A new generation has different experiences.
We need IMHO to forge our own future but we can still hope for America.
Thanks
We need to accept that our human natures are both Communitarian and Libertarian for survival purposes. In between lies the necessity for trust to balance these two instincts with our creation and extension of democracy being the prime tool we’ll get to do this in most aspects of our lives. Democracy should also be seen as part of the evolution of caring in the universe!
Agreed
Essentially I have to agree with the posters here, they are – sentiment wise – ‘in my neck of the woods’. It is hard to see where the U.S. has not got its tentacles into anything that was supposed to be positive in the post war institutions that were set up the prevent something like Nazi Germany happening again (yes, they were!). And yet here we are!
It’s a shit-show. I think that the UK – small as we actually are – needs to tread carefully now – I would like to see new versions (or discussions about this) of certain entities set up outside of those dominated by America as a way of censuring their behaviour which we should support and join. But we also do not need to be drawn into wider conflict in Europe from the East. That would be disastrous for the people of this country; it would be like World War 1 all over again, as we are ruled by a distant, too comfortable elite once again.
By rights it is the U.S. that needs to have sanctions against it now, and the full force of the NATO apparatus for dealing with those behaving not in the spirit of the treaty needs to start now.
However, as RobertJ alludes, this time it is different and history never repeats itself verbatim. (1) Capital is now so embedded in politics in the West that it is quite obviously having a deleterious effect on peace in pursuit of profit (Gaza being the prime example) – the Trump family is eyeing up real estate around Europe/central Europe too (2) the God-damned internet is enabling disinformation/zonal shit at scale and velocity not seen before and democracy has STILL not come to terms with this (because Western democracy has maybe always been the Trojan Horse for vested interests that concerned Socrates?).
What those who seek justice lack is what we we see in those imposing injustice: audacity. I can’t see a willingness to be audacious anywhere. Instead we have sleep walked into disaster, having given immorality the benefit of the doubt and the use of financial system induced chaos techniques to achieve one sided change – the ultimate victory for markets. Where is the market for peace? Care? Safety? Life?
Here.
Everything has to start somewhere.
Agree a culture of courage and care based on 21st Century economic thinking, not 18th century.
On the topic of neoliberal failures and harms….
I would love Trump and all the neoliberal mob to explain why China has a 90% home ownership rate (as it seems does Russia) and US and UK only 65%.
This is a less talked about but usefully revealing fact, because it simply and quickly shows how over decades neoliberalism doesn’t deliver on what really matters to ordinary people- a secure forever home. US (and UK) are losers in reaching a key goal of the capitalist American Dream – home ownership.
Paraphrasing George Carlin it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Perhaps the MAGA project is more accurately named as MAbGA…..
Make America’s Billionaires Great Again.
That’s staggering – and massively telling.
It is amazing that the home ownership rate in China is so much better than here.
I will reflect on this.
🙂
It is interesting, Chinese system seems to have inherited inbuilt capitalist seeds of destruction issues, nevertheless it delivers a higher rate and did it in a shorter time than US.
It makes me laugh as Trump hates being a loser….
It seems that it is not just China and Russia.
I wanted to check about some very poor areas in Africa too (e.g. townships in S. Africa, or other rural areas). So much for the UK “Home Ownership” myth (much higher than Germany, you know) — I hadn’t realised until today that Germany is very much the outlier.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owner-occupancy — where the focus is on urban home-ownership (and i guess rural homesteads can be easier to build/live in).
Fascinating.
this might help
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes/
It is difficult to take comfort from either Robert’s or Richard’s conclusions :
“….. we will have to do it ourselves one step at a time. ”
” , …… these edifices will crumble …..”
Yeats’ Second Coming and / or Shelley’s Ozymandias come to mind .
The increasingly overt corruption in the US and in the UK, driven by the global ‘over mighty subjects/ big finance’ , controlling political parties and the media – and therefore how people see the world – ‘manufacturing consent’ , make it difficult to imagine how democracy can be rescued.
And yet and yet – we – many of us in the older cohorts , still have much to be thankful for . Millions are doing their jobs conscientiously – and as Richard sees it- caring for each other .,..
The first of Robert’s steps might be to stop the overt corruption of politicians by big money vested interests . It is a popular cause – and seems to be the root of popular alienation from politics ‘they are all in it for themselves’. It should be one law for all public servants, local counsellors, judges, and MP’s and ministers and political parties – so it is illegal to accept ‘donations’ , 2nd ‘jobs’ , bribes and to award insider contracts with public money.
Zack Polanski may be open to mounting such a campaign?
But we have to acknowledge what we are up against. As George Osborne let slip – there is no way anyone who questions the fundamental tenets of the British Establishment would get ‘security clearance’ to be PM. It seems increasingly clear the the security services could well have been involved with the defenestration of Corbyn, and the fraudulent entryism of the McSweeney/Starmer faction capture of Labour. There is probably a list somewhere containing the names of commentators on this blog.
To be candid, I think the stories about objections to Corbyn are nonsense. If he had been elected he would have been PM. Unless you are saying we had a rigged election your claim does not stack. I prefer the real world to conspiracy theories.
Not saying rigged elections, and I also have inbuilt resistance to conspiracy theories
The weaponised antisemitism campaign in Labour , – see Paul Holdens book about the MacSweeney/Starmer fraud -, and George Osborne comments, and the overt corruption of our politics and media, now bought and sold by global corporates, Zionist lobbyists, etc the under cover operations of the security services against protest groups, the weaponizing of terrorism legislation, the BBC censorship by omission, and on and on.
We have to recognise what we are up against.
I don’t trust Osborne to tell the truth.
I don’t think he would know it.
Of course there are agencies opposing democracy. There always have been. But Harold Wilson lived in fear of them and that incapacitated him. We should not risk that.
Half a century on there IS a ‘whitewash at the White House’. ( from a denial by Nixon that he lied )
. A new website rewrites the events of Jan 6h 2021. This tells us the nature of the administration. If you read and are of a delicate disposition, have bucket ready.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/j6/
What this whole discussion brings into focus is that the collapse of a political or economic order is never just about the failures of individuals. It’s about the exhaustion of the organising principles that once held the system together. Neoliberalism promised freedom through markets, but delivered insecurity, precarity and a politics stripped of empathy. Once a system can no longer generate trust, it begins to hollow out from within.
Schofield’s point about the balance between our communitarian and libertarian instincts is crucial here. Every stable society has found some way of reconciling those two impulses. When that balance breaks down — when individualism becomes untethered from responsibility, or when collective institutions stop reflecting the lives of the people they claim to serve — trust evaporates. And without trust, democracy becomes procedural rather than relational.
That’s why a politics of care isn’t a soft alternative; it’s the only viable foundation for legitimacy. Care is what turns institutions from instruments of power into expressions of mutual obligation. It’s what allows people to believe that the system is, at some level, on their side. Without that, the vacuum gets filled by fear, resentment and the search for strongmen or simple answers.
The old order will fall under the weight of its own contradictions. The real work is imagining what comes next — and ensuring that whatever replaces it is built on care, trust and reciprocity rather than on the same extractive logic that brought us here. That work won’t be done by political leaders who can’t imagine anything beyond the status quo. It will have to be built from the ground up, exactly as you suggest: one step at a time.
Thanks. Agreed