I have noticed something I find unsettling about our current crop of national leaders : they don’t seem to be interested in the future. You would think that after their struggles to achieve the powerful positions they have finally won they would now want to exercise their authority to change the future direction of their countries in pursuit of their new visions. Having taken advantage of dissatisfaction among their followers to upend the status quo, you would think that they would then be full-throated advocates for change. Instead they mostly seem to want to turn the clock back to some previous mythical Golden Age. That golden age usually seems to be one where challenges to authority — especially their own newfound authority — are effectively suppressed, and where anyone who questions authority is severely dealt with. “Make America Great Again” and put crooked Hillary in jail.”
Vladimir Putin wants to recreate the Soviet Union and make Russia a great power again, if not engineer a complete reversion to the time of the tsars. Benyamin Netanyahu in Israel wants to restore the Kingdom of God, where a four thousand year old promise is all that is needed to ensure his legitimacy. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey seems to want to re-establish the old Ottoman Empire, with Islamic law and hatred of the Infidel as the revived standard. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Iraq thinks the plan of the former Sunni domination of the pan Arabic world should be re-instituted. General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt is determined to get back as fast as he can to the good old authoritative days of Hosni Mubarak or Anwar Sadat, or even King Farouk. François Hollande in France insists that his own flirtations with socialism are in no way to be considered a weakening of his belief that France is the only really civilized country in Europe, entitled forever on that account to a seat for its elite at the table where major European decisions are made. Theresa May in England has taken the first step in washing Britain’s hands of the great unwashed and disrespectful EU rabble (especially southern and eastern branches) and reconstituting the old British Empire as Churchill and the Iron Lady once ran it. Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang sees all of Korea as his private fief, to be unified as it used to be under his leadership. Kinzō Abe in Japan shows signs of flexing Japan’s old-time muscles to keep China from gaining too much Pacific rim influence, and some say Xi Jinping may be toying with reforms in China’s rotating politburo chief executives in order to prolong his own position as top man.
Of more immediate concern for us Americans, of course, is Donald Trump, who wants to go back to the time when the white man’s onerous burden was made bearable by the rewards of unquestioned elite authority, and a free hand (unfortunate expression in his case, perhaps) with women. And our Republican Party, that does everything in its (inexorably waning) power to exclude Blacks, immigrants, any young person who has ever thought of revising the inequitable tax laws, immigrants, and minorities from their ranks; preferring instead (apparently) to let their dwindling legions go down to defeat with the Confederate flag proudly flying.
Against this list of statesmen whose vision seems to be firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror, we can still gratefully point to a few who seem interested in exploring the possibilities of a more adventurous future — Bernie Sanders here in our own country, Angela Merkel in Germany, Justin Trudeau in Canada, Youssef Chahed in Tunisia — but except for Merkel they don’t appear to be having much success.
Do these retreat-fixated people have no vision? Is all modern politics, like all old politics, just about who is going to be the next Big Man? Are all the thousands of books written by the economists and philosophers and political theorists of recent generations just ineffective academic scribblings, to be cast aside the moment the possibility of a Swiss bank account shows up on a new leader’s horizon?
The exceptions to this trend appear to be in Scandinavia, where experiments with new approaches to government are welcomed, or at least tolerated, by a better educated and more interested public. Sweden, for instance, is exploring the elimination of cash. All three countries are debating how a new world economy might be organized if there aren’t (and probably never again will be) enough jobs for all the people who want them. The right to a basic income is under consideration. Denmark is starting to question whether old people who feel their usefulness has come to an end should be allowed to choose their own times and methods for a dignified departure. (Interestingly, all three countries have preserved their anachronistic monarchies as useful symbols of national unity, while divesting them of any real influence. A better choice than relying on the unifying power of the Internet perhaps?) They have shrunk their militaries to the minimum (although, regrettably, they have not so far shown any signs of forgoing the profits from selling their unwanted arms to their more bellicose neighbors). They have long since recognized health care and social security and education as basic rights, and have defined driving and firearm possession as privileges to be earned, limited, and regulated. They are, in short, looking at innovation. They have recognized that keeping a tight lid on pressure for reform is a way to ensure that change, when it inevitably does come, will be explosive and disruptive instead of carefully considered.
Are we paying enough attention? How many of the leaders of those three countries can you even name? What do you know about the possible reasons for their electoral successes?
Looking backward for lessons to be learned is one thing; a desire to retreat into the past as Utopia is quite another.
I am reminded of a 1923 New Yorker profile of Henry Luce, co-founder of TIME magazine, by Wolcott Gibbs, one of its more irreverent writers in those freewheeling days when the magazine reflected the personality of the snobbish lepidopterist Eustace Tilley on its cover : “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind,” he wrote, parodying that publication’s overwrought style. “Where it all will end, knows God.”
Vance Weaver 