The bad news is our children will not enjoy the American Dream. The good news is that under the next “stimulus” bill they’ll be eligible to apply for a position as a federally funded American Dream Awareness Assistance Coordination Program Grantwriter. If the political class plus their dependents in the underclass and their cheerleaders in the media and academy have disconnected themselves from the animating principles of the American idea, what then is the point of America? Like President Obama, the progressive elite doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism, yet somehow assumes that the very exceptional peace and prosperity Americans have enjoyed since 1945 are eternal—as permanent a fact of life as the sky and the oceans.
The “bubble” is not the property market or cheap credit. The bubble is twenty-first-century America itself, from the financial sector to a wretched education system culminating in languorous, undemanding “college” courses whose absurd soaraway prices were affected not a jot by the economic downturn. When you weigh America in the balances, it’s not just wanting, it’s wanting a sugar daddy—urgently: if Europe’s somewhat agreeable post-war decline was cushioned by America, who’s volunteering to do the cushioning for America?
There is no good answer to that question.
By September 2010, America’s public debt was up to 94 percent of GDP.
Hey, relax, says
That was also the year that America made Hiroshima and Nagasaki the first and to date only recipients of the world’s newest and most devastating technology. That’s a helluva bang for the buck. The America sliding ever faster to that 1945 debt burden and way past it has no such credibility—and, as every two-bit nationalist provocateur in any old dusty colonial backwater will tell you, for a superpower, credibility is essential. America hit 113 percent after a world war in which it vanquished mighty enemies of global reach and established itself as the dominant power on the planet.
What do Americans have to show for the debt this time ’round? Cash-for-clunkers? Stimulus funding for a stimulus-funding application-coordinator in Idaho? Take Your Child Bride to Work Day in Afghanistan?
As to worshipping false gods, even avowed secularists have their moments of evangelical fervor. There have been two competing theories at play in the twenty-first century. The first and better known is “globalization”—which is less a theory and more a religion with universalist claims.
To its worshippers, globalization is some kind of mysterious metaphysical force that’s out there remaking our assumptions about the planet. May the Force be with you—because, if it’s not, you’re just a squaresville daddy-o receding in the rear view mirror of history. The high priest of this cult is the
The United States has two roles in a “globalized” world: it funds the transnational bodies, it keeps the sea lanes open, it’s there when an earthquake or tsunami strikes—at least until the debt and politically untouchable social programs necessitate sweeping cuts in military capability. Which, for great powers in decline, they always do.
That’s America’s first role. Its second is just as important: the burgeoning middle classes of China, India, and elsewhere improve their lives by making stuff to sell to us. America’s government is the guarantor of global order; its people are the guarantors of global prosperity. That’s the United States the world needs: in security terms, the order maker; in economic terms, the order placer.
Unfortunately, neither role is sustainable. America is on course to be the first great power in history literally to shop till we drop. And the way to bet is one hell of a drop, and sooner than you think.
“Globalization” has the appeal of all inevitablist theories: it’s gonna happen. Why? It just is. Don’t sweat it. Likewise, Francis Fukuyama and
