"A House Divided Cannot Stand"

 

The perverted policies and actions of Trump's Presidencies, America's GOP and the current witch hunt against 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." The vilification of Dr Fauci is proof enough, were it required, that America has a very large audience of idiots wishing and waiting to be reached out to by those with evil intentions - Rand Paul, Robert Kennedy Jnr. Pete Hegseth and the rest of the amoral and mendacious demagogues that hold sway in America 2026.

The situation is bad enough over here in the UK but I fear America has long since passed the point of no return. In the end, however, this is not about Trump, Rand Paul, Anthony Fauci or any other single individual or policy. It's about the mindset of the American people and something there has gone profoundly wrong. It seems impossible to me, as an 81 year old to look at the USA - a nation once revered and who produced leaders, statesmen and ideas that shaped and improved the world - and wonder what has happened to the wisdom (what an old fashioned word that now seems) and good intentions that once drove Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, Obama and others. What 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 world vision of FDR or the soaring promise of Obama? Would Kennedy'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 Trump's America? I fear so. The words and ideas that once inspired generations not only in America but across the world now seem twee, old fashioned, redundant and are replaced by brutalist and shameless lies and expletives on social media and from the mouths of America's current "leaders". Those great statesmen of the past became leaders not because of their inherent qualities; they became leaders because their wisdom and commitment to the common good was shared and recognised 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 elected them and America's current leaders are a damning reflection upon much of America. Where I ask, has that wisdom and inherent goodness of the American electorate gone. The world should weep - and America should take a long hard look at itself; it is becoming a disintegrating society, a failed state.

So many in America (and to a lesser degree in the UK), in their wilful ignorance have forgotten or chosen to ignore basic lessons of life and adulthood. Firstly, they have not listened to or understood, two of American author Mark Twain's life rules: "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 contemporary America (and here in the UK) as the philippic against Dr Fauci confirms, many people are, through their actions, words, expletives and thoughts, proud of what they once would have been and now should be, ashamed of; posts on social media from "ordinary Americans" and what I witness spewing from the mouths of Trump and his sycophantic followers speaks volumes about their lack of shame. And when an individual or society loses its sense of shame then it is in a downward spiral, for it is losing its sense of basic decency, worthy human values and just action. It is weakening the moral "glue" binds society together and returning a society to the law of the jungle where, as the ancient Greek soldier and statesman Thucydides told the his and our world in his great work “The Peloponnesian War”: "The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must". Written almost three thousand years ago Thucydides' great work sets out the principles of military strategy, diplomacy, high politics and the use of power and is required study for all officers in training at the world’s leading military colleges such as America’s West Point, Britain’s Sandhurst, 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 2026, and know its inevitable consequences - a world where the powerful do what they will, where any words or deeds become acceptable no matter how shameful, cruel or immoral, and where decency, truth and integrity have lost all meaning. And all at the expense of the weak for they have to "suffer what they must".

It is the dismissing of life lessons and values like these that bring the end of empires and civilisations. When "the people" choose ignorance over wisdom, hate and rage over love, and lies over truth and they abdicate their responsibility to seek something better for their children and grandchildren by speaking and acting in a way contrary to the common good then they are condemning their society to a dark age, for as Mark Twain warned, it poisons the body politic and rots the nation/civilisation from the inside. This is what is happening in the akraisic mindset of contemporary America as happened in England with the Brexit vote. America - and my own England must learn another lesson of history, one that we were warned of from the pen of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his great work on good government "Leviathan". Hobbes warned that when good government, to which all are committed and bound- fails, as is happening in the divisive world of American politics and society, then the result is that life becomes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Hobbes' warning has echoed down the centuries and has been proved time and time again across the world. Beware America and Americans, you are on a pathway to social chaos and civil destruction where all will suffer and from which there will be little or no reprieve. As your nation tumbled towards Civil War in 1858 your great Republican President Abraham Lincoln warned your young nation "A house divided cannot stand"; ignore his words at your peril for if you do, history and your children and grandchildren will not judge you kindly.