Americans — Enjoy Your Decline!

The American Society of Stoic Philosophers (if it exists) should recommend to the electorate the title – only the title – of a German book, Die Lust am Untergang (Lust does not mean lust. It means relishing the downfall). The book was published after WW2.

In one respect the current American situation is worse than Germany’s. It is unlikely to lead to an economic miracle. The word downfall suggests finality, whereas the current American decline is likely to be temporary and to lead to an adjustment to a world in which the U.S. will once again play the role it did before 1914, a major but not a predominant power.

The groundwork for its propulsion to an illusory imperial status was laid in 1918 by WW1 from which it emerged as the only winner, Britain and France being exhausted and heavily in debt to the U.S. The U.S. as a great power was launched by the victory in 1945, which gave it the appetite for becoming the heir of the British Empire. This might have worked if WW2 had not meant the end of all empires. The American version became an anachronism. In any case, a proper empire is created by conquest and not by inheritance.

So what is today’s America doing with 761 military bases around the world? Its military expenditures can be justified (though not publicly) only by the domestic needs for defence contracts. No politician can survive if a defence contract in his or her constituency is cancelled. That is the nature of the military-industrial-corporate state.

Still, demilitarization will have to happen. The country cannot afford its military establishment, just as it cannot maintain the standard of living of its middle class – meaning everybody except the poor. If only Obama could have said in recent weeks: “I’m doing the best I can – the decline is not my fault! Enjoy it and stop being so angry!” That would have been nice though it would not have silenced his critics who would have said, with some justification, that, even given the decline, he made some errors. He should have concentrated on jobs and the economy instead of health care. He should have been more sensitive to public opinion altogether. The charge of elitism would have been mitigated if not killed in the bud.

So instead of worldly-wise stoicism, we get anger and outbursts like, “Obama is a greater danger to America than al-Qaeda.”

It may be asking too much to expect a nation in decline to keep its temper. The important thing is to remember that decline does not mean downfall.

The phoenix is sitting on his ashes and watching the clock.