As On a Foreign Land

Benjamin Kerstein has another of what strikes me as an important post at Quillette, on America’s impending “crack-up”. Here’s its opening:

When you have lived long enough in a foreign country, you eventually begin to realize that the one you left behind, once accepted as utterly unique since it was all you knew, is not particularly different from anywhere else. One can call this perspective, but it is more a recognition of the essential contingency of any nation.

I spent some time working in other countries as well but my reaction has been somewhat different from Mr. Kerstein’s, more closely related to G. K. Chesterton’s:

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.

My experiences in Germany and the United Kingdom led me to appreciate the U. S. all the more. He reminds me more of the critic’s remark on the Russian writer, Turgenev, when another critic praised him as “having his eye fixed on Russia”, the less friendly critic responded “How? Through a telescope?” (Turgenev had been living in Germany for some time.)

I won’t try to summarize his post, leaving that for you. Here’s what I think is a telling sample:

What we are being offered, then, from both Left and Right, is not very much. Nevertheless, they are sincere in their beliefs, fervent in their advocacy, and often fanatical about their messianic ambitions. All this presents a terrible dilemma, because both sides are dedicated to ideas that cannot possibly meet the challenges of the current moment. Worse, they are determined to thwart and destroy their rivals’ ambitions. And there is every reason to believe that neither side will remain standing once the inevitable collision occurs. Perhaps only sane people will be left to pick up the pieces, and a more pragmatic and cooperative zeitgeist will prevail by default. If so, the mess the sane stand to inherit will be exceedingly difficult to clean up.

Is there, then, a way out of this? Is there an outcome that might settle accounts? There are first the apocalyptic scenarios. These come mostly from the MAGA Right, which could double-down on the “Flight 93” mentality it adopted in 2016, reject the republic altogether, and attempt to destroy it. This would probably mean one of two things. The first of these is secession, which is already being, if not considered, at least seriously debated in certain circles. So far, this idea has not been developed beyond some kind of mooted “secession of the counties,” in which conservative rural America simply separates itself from progressive urban America and seizes either near-total autonomy or outright sovereignty, subject to no laws but those it deems amenable.

It is difficult to see how this could be achieved or sustained. A secession of the counties has no precedent in American or indeed world history, and its advocates have presented few details as to what it would look like. It would probably amount to America’s partition into Bantustans, with urban islands locked inside a vast rural outback. How taxes would be paid or services rendered by some kind of federal government—if such a government continued to exist at all—is difficult to imagine. Trade between these various entities might be practicable, but then so would war. Rural autonomies would likely be heavily armed and raise their own militias and even armies. The result, in other words, could be something like a failed state—a kind of American Somalia in which the government is powerless and warlords reign over disconnected cantons. It is highly unlikely, in other words, that a million flowers would bloom.

[…]

There may be reason for optimism in the percentages, however. MAGA and Wokism remain, in many ways, deeply unpopular. According to Pew, last year only 15 percent of Democrats described themselves as “very liberal,” while this April an NBC News poll found that only 21 percent of American adults had a “very positive” view of Trump. As Biden’s election demonstrates, there is still a solid majority of Americans who have remained sane in spite of everything. Unfortunately, unlike activist zealots, they are not organized and are preoccupied with their own lives. Work and children take up most of their time, and they have neither the inclination nor the energy for the kind of fanaticism that drives their enemies. If they could coalesce into a movement, however, and take to the streets, the town halls, and social media in order to demand an end to extremism and a return to competent and pragmatic government, they might be able to finally impose some sanity.

Alternatively, things could get worse. A lot worse. From my vantage point on the Mediterranean, I cannot say that this is necessarily the most likely scenario, but it is likely enough to be terrifying. More than anything else, I fear a rapid shift of the Overton Window. Whether because of Trump, social media, economic and cultural discontent, or numerous other reasons, things are now being said that were previously relegated to the shadows of the unthinkable. Most of all, the possibility of an end to the republic itself is beginning to be spoken of, and once such a thing becomes thinkable, it is by no means impossible that it may also become reality. Legitimacy has been given to the idea that America may be finished, and that this may even be a good thing. No republic can survive if the vast majority of its citizens no longer believe in it, and it does seem that more and more Americans no longer believe in their republic.

Read the whole thing.

I am as concerned as he about the state of liberal democracy in the U. S. I agree that neither the activists of the Left nor the Right have much of use to offer but I also fear those useless ideologues hold the “commanding heights” of their respective sides and are unlikely to be displaced.