American Democracy on the Brink, Social Collapse and Social Implosion, Plus the Moment and the Test

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Hi. How’s everyone? Take a deep breath, first of all, if you’re feeling upset, afraid, or panicked. I’m right here with you. Sorry to be away for a bit. I had a sense that things were about to reach boiling point, and they did, with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

We’re going to talk about it all, beginning with a little timeline. Because the last few days have been like a lifetime.

Joe Biden and American Democracy’s Fight For Survival

Something remarkable happened over the last week or two. The media and pundits became a kind of wolfpack, with a singular intent: to humiliate, harass, and intimidate Joe Biden out of the Presidential race. They piled on him time and again, for things as simple as “gaffes.” 

But we’re all human. So what if someone mixes up a name or two, when in fact, they’re doing something as notable as leading, let me underscore that, leading NATO, and there are the heads of state of France, the United Kingdom, and Germany themselves emphasizing that to the press? Isn’t substance more important? 

Not to America’s media and its pundits. In a shocking dereliction of not just duty, but basic decency, they disgraced only themselves. If, for example, Starmer, Macron, and Scholz, among other global leaders, all say, repeatedly, out loud, over and over again, hey, the President is doing an excellent job—shouldn’t we listen? Especially if we’re…journalists? Isn’t it our job to report the facts, not make moral judgments about “gaffes” and “old age” being more important than the tasks at hand?

What are those tasks, anyways? Chief among them is this: preserving democracy, from the waiting jaws of fascism.

But something, like I said, remarkable happened. Americans revolted against their press and pundits. They gained a newfound sympathy and respect for Biden, who, repeatedly stepping into the wolfpack’s lair, seemed to prove his character and mettle over and over again. And that much is true. Knowing that you might make a mistake, for which such lesser minds might hound you and harangue you, and standing up there and fighting for democracy anyways? That’s a sign of character, of strength, courage, poise. Not its opposite.

And as Americans understood this, felt it in their bones, the remarkable thing happened, which was that Biden’s poll numbers rose. Despite the savage abuse of the press and pundits. I’ve talked to you openly about what it’s like being in their firing line. They’ll make it their job to humiliate you, to ruin you, for no reason other than glee and rising up the totem pole of their own ignoble profession. Americans rejected that.

And that really is remarkable, because for too long, American democracy has been the plaything of its punditry and press. Remember how they swift-boated John Kerry? But-her-emailsed Hillary? Dean-Screamed Howard Dean? All the way back to poor old Jimmy Carter, a fine President, but absurd so severely by the press, never given a fair hearing, that Reagan won a landslide,

Americans have never done this before. Rejected their pundits and press as bad actors, which, too often, they are. I say that objectively—American punditry is something of a global laughingstock amongst international journalism, because it’s all heat and no light. Finally, it dawned on Americans that the job of this class is manufacture fake outrage and controversy to try to salvage what’s left of dying careers and sinking business models. And it didn’t sit too well with them, and that’s an historic thing.

So things were looking up for American Democracy, until one fateful night…

A lunatic tried to assassinate Donald Trump.

So where is American democracy now?

American Democracy on the Brink

I won’t mince words for you.

Right on the brink. Dangling by a thread. 

I mean that emphatically. Empires have been lost for less. Wars started over far less. Nations have given it all up for less than this.

How do social collapses proceed? There’s the “collapse” stage, which is where America’s been for the last decade. A society’s politics go dysfunctional. Its press turns into mere punditry. Extremists seize control of one side, usually the right, in our era, and offer fascism and authoritarianism as a cure-all for society’s ills. 

After that, though—if a society can’t and won’t pull back—comes the “implosion” stage. And here the key is that things move at lightning speed. Rights being eviscerated and ripped away turn into outright brutality. Mere division becomes open season. Rancor and enmity and rhetoric become explicit, overt, and actual violence. 

Are you getting the drift? If not, let me make it clearer, with a few examples. In Iran, for example, there were mutterings of revolutions long before the real thing, people fed up with inequality, Westernization, economic stagnation, etcetera. That was a growing period of collapse, when politics stopped working. But when the revolution happened, the fireworks began, and proceeded at light speed, until in a matter of months, society was unrecognizable, in the hands of fanatics. 

Or think of post-Soviet Russia. It went through a decade of various factions jockeying for power, in a sort of pseudodemocratic process, straining to see if it could keep a modern democracy. Along came you know who, consolidated power, and the answer was: no, it couldn’t. 

You get my point, perhaps.

Social Collapse and Social Implosion

America is now dangling by a thread. It’s at the outer edge of collapse, and the inner horizon of implosion. And if that boundary’s crossed, often, there’s no going back.

So what’s the task before Americans right now? This is a frightening moment. For good reason. That much is true, and your gut isn’t lying to you. Listen to it, and heed its warnings. The dangers now are exactly what it says they are, and they go like this.

Vicious cycles of retaliation and escalation set in. Norms of peace and coexistence, to whatever extent they’re left, simply begin to give way, and there’s a sort of descent into everyday violence, which becomes a regular feature of life. This is what life in collapsed societies is, by the way. You never know, just walking or driving down the street, which faction is going to try and kill another one.

Meanwhile, crackpots on every side exploit all this for their own gain, and sow division, fear, anger, and vengeance. It’s their fault, cries one group. It’s theirs, cry another. And before you know it, vengeance is all there is—this is why, for example, in many countries, there are so many “paramilitary groups” with all kinds of funny names, the Army of the Pure, against the Sons of the Homeland, versus the Patriots of the Soil. On and on it goes, in an endless game of musical chairs of implosion, vendetta upon vendetta draining democracy’s corpse dry.

The Task Societies Have When They Face Implosion

So the first task before Americans is this.

Americans must put their differences aside, and unite in the name of democracy. All those who are left sane, anyways. Left? Right? Center? Doesn’t matter anymore. What does matter is that this vicious cycle is stopped before it reaches the detonation point of true implosion, and retaliation and vendetta don’t set in. 

Put their differences aside, in the name of democracy. Maybe you think that can’t be done, but that brings me back to what I began with. Even in the center, and among the left, there are differences aplenty. And yet seeing the press and pundits try to humiliate and ruin Biden, for no reason other their own egos—it fomented a groundswell of unity.

That says to me, at least, that unity is not an impossible task. That it can be achieved.

At the same time, of course, that was before what happened next happened, and the task, make no mistake, is that much harder now.

This is the moment. This is the test.

When a great mind wrote, “a democracy, if you can keep it,” or words to that effect, this is the moment that history had in mind. One like this.

One where if a society can’t pull together, and unite in the name of democracy, put its differences aside, reject and abjure violence, and commit to equality, truth, justice, and consent—then all is lost. If, on the other hand, such a thing can be achieved, then democracy can perhaps be saved from the abyss.

I’m emphatically not saying that the task above will be easy. If you want to know the numbers, the hard truth is that most societies who go this far into social collapse—where the risk of retaliation and factionalism is now very real—don’t make it. They don’t recover. But rules like that aren’t rules—they can be broken, and they should.

So this is the moment that tests American Democracy most profoundly. Perhaps in its history, probably at least since Lincoln’s assassination, I’d guess. The question now is whether or not Americans themselves can rise to this test. Because in the end there is no force left in society willing or able to save it. Politics is dysfunctional. The press has disgraced itself. In the void, lunatics and fanatics of every stripe gather, shouldering arms. 

This is how democracies end, my friends. 

But it’s also in moments like this that they prove what they were made for, and why. Just why democracy is such a beautiful and powerful and noble thing, when, at last, it rises from its slumber, and reclaims its mantle.

The choice is America’s now.

The world can only hope it will make the right one.

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