Is The U.S.A. Being Eclipsed By Its Own Inevitable Decay?

We cannot blame everything on Donald Trump, much though we might want to. In the decadent stage of the Roman Empire, or of Louis XVI’s France, or the dying days of the Habsburg Empire so brilliantly captured in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, decadence seeped downward from the rulers to the ruled. But in a democracy, the process operates reciprocally. A decadent elite licenses degraded behavior, and a debased public chooses its worst leaders. Then our Nero panders to our worst attributes — and we reward him for doing so.

In a profound analysis of the Zeitgeist marking 2017, James Traub makes a noble attempt to connect the decay of the American spirit to the undercurrents that defined history. The word decadence is at the very core of his arguments in this piece worth reading.

'The marks of imperial decadence appeared not only in grotesque displays of public opulence and waste, but also in the collapse of faith in reason and science,' writes Traub. He puts the blame on the American right to 'introduce the civilisational decay' to the public discourse. Trump, he argues, is the one who expanded the agenda by legitimizing the language of xenophobia and racial hatred, and also the language of selfishness.

Our political elite will continue to gratify our worst impulses so long as we continue to be governed by them. The only way back is to reclaim the common ground — political, moral, and even cognitive — that Donald Trump has lit on fire. Losing to China is hardly the worst thing that could happen to us. Losing ourselves is. 

Traub is far-sighted enough to issue warnings about a future that only pledges dark times — for the planet. 

Read the text to draw your own conclusions.