gracchusdixit

Nearly a century ago, the poet William Butler Yeats penned these famous words:

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

Yeats was speaking in the wake of World War I, which had, until then, been bloodiest conflict ever fought by mankind.  But if any other words more aptly describe the times we now live in, I don’t know what they may be.

Everywhere you look, the world is awash in anarchy and blood.  Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan are disintegrating.  Israel has given up even the pretense of seeking peace with the Palestinians.  Russia is reasserting the imperial ambitions of the old Soviet Union on the very doorstep of Europe.  The Arab spring, which gave momentary hope of a better life to millions, shriveled more quickly than a rose petal in the withering heat of summer.  The  depressing consequences of the financial collapse of 2007-08 drag on, especially in Southern Europe, where countless Greeks, Spaniards and Italians are being smothered by austerity and unemployment.  Throughout Europe, nationalism, prejudice against immigrants, and outright racism are on the rise.

And here, on our own shores, democratic government seems to be crumbling.  Republicans in Congress, spurred on like frightened cattle by a radical minority in their own ranks and rabid demagogues in the media, have no plan or philosophy except to humiliate a President whose legitimacy they have never recognized and whose two election victories they have refused to accept.  As the November mid-term elections grow near, the nearly incomprehensible seems likely to happen.  Because of our rigged electoral system, the Republicans are poised to hold or widen their control of the House of Representatives and may even gain control of the Senate.  This will mean two more years of dysfunction and inaction: no economic reform, no immigration reform, no gun control, no minimum wage, no meaningful attempt to deal with climate change, nothing at all to address the priorities that an overwhelming majority of Americans support and the problems they want solved.  Here, and throughout the world, the rich will grow richer, and the rest will be left to fend for themselves.

It is tempting to look at these countless crises and catastrophes in isolation, to think that each is a particular case, caused by particular circumstances.  There is some truth to that.  But the greater truth is that the Pax Americana—the exceptional set of military, political, and economic arrangements that followed our victory in World War II, making us the richest and most powerful nation in history—is unraveling before our eyes.  The world we created for our own advantage, the world of global capitalism enforced by American military power and prestige, is disintegrating.  Like the British Empire before us, we have had a good run, but our time is running out.  We can no longer impose our will on a billion Muslims.  We can no longer secure the borders of Europe.  We can no longer credibly claim that our political and economic system is a model for the rest of the world.  We can no longer offer even our own citizens the hope of a better future.

Yeats was right a century ago, and his words ring true even now.  Things are falling apart.  Whatever “center” there may once have been is gone.  Truly, the worst are full of passionate intensity, and the best lack all conviction, while the hopeless innocent are left to drown.  Unless we act, if we do not change, the blood-dimmed tide of history may eventually drown us all.