"Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?" asked Jack Kerouac in his novel, "On the Road" - a book that changed the world and me when I read it soon after it was published in1957. Kerouac's tale questioned the soul and direction of 1950s America with its emphasis upon wealth, consumerism, and the chasing of the American Dream. One might paraphrase Kerouac's question for the America of today and ask "Why goest thou, America, in thy shiny car, into the dark", for America, the richest and most powerful nation on Earth is fast entering a new dark age - and all of its own making. The malevolent actions of Trump, America's GOP and the recent witch hunt against Dr Fauci prove the truth of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's comment over a century ago that "If you want to reach a large audience, appeal to idiots." America, it seems, has a very large audience of easily led idiots waiting to be reached out to by those of evil intent - Rand Paul, Robert Kennedy, Pete Hegseth and the rest of the mendacious demagogues who hold sway in Washington 2026. Dark times indeed for a nation once revered but now, across the world, untrusted and ridiculed in the court of public opinion.
The situation is bad enough here in the UK - we have our own brand of the wilfully ignorant and the plain nasty in the rag-bag supporters of Nigel Farage and the wider right - but I fear America has long passed the point of no return. But this is not about Trump, Paul, Kennedy Jnr. or any other individual or policy. It's about the mindset of America and something there has gone profoundly wrong. It seems impossible to me, as an 81 year old, to look at the USA - a nation who produced leaders and ideas that shaped and improved the world - and wonder what has happened to the wisdom (how old fashioned that word now seems) and good intentions that once drove Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, Obama and others. What has happened to Lincoln's moral steadfastness or LBJ's "Great Society"? Where now are the men and women who govern with the humility and integrity of Jimmy Carter or share the vision and empathy of FDR or the soaring promise of Obama? Would JFK's plea to "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" now fall upon deaf ears in 2026 America? I fear so. The words and ideas that once inspired generations in America and across the world seem now redundant, replaced by brutal, shameless lies, stupidity and foul mouthed expletives on social media and from the lips of America's current "leaders". Those statesmen of the past became leaders not because of any superiority or brilliance but because their wisdom and commitment to the common good was recognised and shared by the American electorate of yesteryear who gave them the power to act in their name. A nation gets the leaders it deserves; leaders reflect those who elect them and America's current leaders are a damning reflection upon America today. Roosevelt, in his Inaugural Address in 1937 said "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little" . His words would, I suspect, get short shrift in today's White House and be howled down as being "woke" or "communist fake news" by the coarse, the wilfully ignorant and the shameless across swathes of Republican America. The world should weep - and Americans should take a long hard look at themselves; their nation has become a disintegrating society, and soon a failed state.
In America, and here in the UK, so many have forgotten or ignore basic lessons of adulthood. Firstly, they have not listened to or understood, two of American author Mark Twain's aphorisms: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt" and secondly. "Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured". In America, as the philippic against Dr Fauci confirms, many, through their actions, words and thoughts, are proud of what they once would have been, or now should be, ashamed. Posts on social media and what I read and see in the wider media spewing from the mouths of Trump and his sycophantic followers speak volumes about their mindset and lack of shame.
And shame matters. In our hi-tech, anything goes, 24 hour news, social media driven world the word shame seems passé, twee; a word our grandparents used when we were naughty children. But when an individual or a society loses its sense of shame it is in a downward spiral, for it is also losing its sense of decency, worthy human values and capacity for just action. It is what happened in 1930s Germany - ordinary Germans did shameful things that a few years before would have horrified them; I wonder how long it will be before we witness the Republican Party's version of Nazi Germany's Kristallnacht? Loss of shame weakens the moral "glue" which binds society together and returns a society to the law of the jungle. The ancient Greek statesman Thucydides told his world in his work “The Peloponnesian War” that in a world where anything goes, where the winner takes all and where right is defined by might then "The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must". Written almost 3000 years ago Thucydides' treatise sets out principles of military strategy, diplomacy, high politics and the use of power and is required study for officers in training leading military colleges such as America’s West Point, Britain’s Sandhurst, or France’s Saint Cyr. It is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it and he would recognise what is now happening in America, and know its inevitable consequences. In a world where the powerful do what they will, where shameful, cruel or immoral words or deeds become acceptable then decency, integrity and justice lose all meaning and the weak have to "suffer what they must".
It is in the losing of these values - not outside threats or war - that empires and civilisations crumble and die; they rot from within. When people choose ignorance over wisdom, hate and rage over love, lies over truth, or act in a way contrary to the common good then they condemn their society to a dark age. When an abdication of responsibility or egregious and pernicious words become embedded and normalised in society the body politic is in terminal decline; it has happened throughout history. And this is what is occuring in the akrasic mindset of 2026 America. America - and my own England - must grasp one of the profound lessons of history, one that we were warned of from the pen of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in "Leviathan" his mighty treatise on government. Hobbes warned that when good government, to which all are bound and committed, fails, then the law of the jungle becomes embedded - as is now happening in the divisive world of American politics and society. The result, and speaking from his own experience, Hobbes told us that life becomes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". His warning has echoed down the centuries and been proved time and time again across the world. Beware America your nation is on a pathway to social chaos and civil destruction where all will suffer and from which there will be little reprieve. A new President or government might give short term respite but the root of the problem lies in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. Trump and his demagogues are merely the personification of those millions; America's fissiparous and embittered body politic is corrupted. It will not heal easily nor end well.
In 1858, as America tumbled towards Civil War, Republican President to be Abraham Lincoln cautioned his nation "A house divided against itself cannot stand"; ignore Lincoln's wise words America and your children your grandchildren will not judge you kindly.
