The Need for Humility

My learned cousin Charles in Alabama sent me this piece from an English writer for the International New York Times. This is a splendid analysis of what the next few years might be under the new American president.  It is penetrating and for Mr. Cohen, ultimately frightening. - Glenn N. Holliman

LIBERALS NEED HUMILITY
by Roger Cohen

It is too early to say what Mr. Trump will do and how many of his wild campaign promises he will keep, but it’s safe to predict turbulence. Irascibility, impetuosity and inattention define him, however curtailed they may prove to be by his entourage and the responsibilities of power. He is, for now, in over his head.

NATO will grow weaker. Baltic States will feel more vulnerable. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, backed by a Putin-Trump entente, will grow stronger. Chinese-American trade tensions will sharpen, in approximate sync with military tensions in the East and South China seas. The Iran nuclear deal, painstakingly negotiated by the major powers, could unravel, making the Middle East exponentially more dangerous.

Any jihadi attack or other assault on America will not be met with restraint; Mr. Trump seems to regard nukes as an underused asset.

Fossil fuels will make a comeback. The world’s Paris-enshrined commitment to fight climate change will be undermined. The approximately 65 million migrants on the move, about one-third of them refugees, will find shelter and dignity scarce as xenophobic nationalism moves into the political mainstream across Central Europe and elsewhere. 

Technology’s implacable advance, and the great strides being made by artificial intelligence, will test Mr. Trump’s promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. Some forms of employment are gone forever, and not even a self-styled savior can conjure their return. The Trans-Pacific Partnership already looks dead; other trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which symbolized the ever-more-open trading system of past decades, could be nixed or substantially diluted.

Will all this assuage the people’s ire? Perhaps Mr. Trump really does have some fairy dust he can scatter for a while. But of course “the people” were only part of a divided population, millions and millions of whom did not want — and will resist — the global nationalist and authoritarian lurch. They will do so on the streets, in the courts, via the press and through the checks and balances the framers of the Constitution created precisely to rein in a demagogue. Still, Mr. Trump has enormous powers, a Republican-controlled Congress and a mission to make America great again, whatever that means or takes.

Western democracies are in the midst of an upheaval they only dimly grasp. Virtual direct democracy through social media has outflanked representative democracy. The impact of the smartphone on the human psyche is as yet scarcely understood; its addictiveness is treacherous and can be the enemy of thought. Mr. Trump hijacked the Republican Party like a man borrowing a dinner jacket for an evening. His campaign moved through Twitter to the aroused masses; it had no use or need for conventional channels. The major political parties in Britain and the United States will have to prove their relevance again.

Democracies, it is clear, have not been delivering to the less privileged, who were disenfranchised or discarded in the swirl of technology’s advance. A lot of thought is now needed to find ways to restore faith in liberal, free-market societies; to show that they can be fairer and more equitable and offer more opportunities across the social spectrum. Germany, with its successful balance of capitalism and solidarity, its respect for the labor force and its commitments to both higher education and technical training, offers one model. The rage of 2016 will not abate by itself.

The liberal elites’ arrogance and ignorance has been astounding. It is time to listen to the people who voted for change, be humble and think again. That, of course, does not mean succumbing to the hatemongers and racists among them: They must be fought every inch of the way. Nor does it mean succumbing to a post-truth society: Facts are the linchpins of progress. But so brutal a comeuppance cannot be met by more of the same. I fear for my children’s world, more than I ever imagined possible.

Comments?