The recurrent statements following the chaos of January 6, were nothing, if not cataclysmic, i.e. \u201cdemocracy hangs by a thread!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, foreign friends and allies tend to watch events in Washington via television like everyone else.\u00a0 On multiple occasions conversations with such friends reach a point when they gently suggest that they must re-evaluate their own security and policy positions in light of the circumstances (weakness\/chaos) in Washington.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, even the casual foreign observer of American television reporting (and other media) may notice the preponderance of the use of hyperbole.\u00a0 If you don’t declare that something is the worst or best in the history of the galaxy, then you don\u2019t have an opinion worth airing.\u00a0 Only superlatives get attention.\u00a0 Or so it would seem\u2026especially related to President Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To foreign friends I caution against quick reactions.\u00a0 Look beyond the latest news cycle before compromising with China or Russia.\u00a0 I urge them to consider the longer term.\u00a0 Decipher the current narratives promoted relentlessly by elements in the US. Groups\/individuals have substantial stakes in sustaining those narratives.\u00a0 Without steering foreigners to any particular conclusion, I think it is constructive to advise some historical context.\u00a0 The easiest and perhaps shortest way I have found is to remind interlocutors of 1968.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In April that year, Martin Luther King was assassinated<\/em> and riots engulfed\nWashington and dozens of other cities. Blocks\nin Washington were burned and took years to recover. Armed National Guard troops were deployed to\nrestore order around the country. Live\nammunition was distributed and used. In\nJune, Robert Kennedy was assassinated<\/em>\nin Los Angeles. In August, the Chicago\nDemocratic convention (which nominated Hubert Humphrey after Johnson declared\nhe would not run) was engulfed in riots. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Vietnam War tore the country. Thousands of Americans and Vietnamese were dying (remember the 1968 Tet Offensive). War protesters flooded Washington filling the Mall.\u00a0 The Black Panthers got headlines and there were shootouts and trials.\u00a0 Remember the Huey Newton and Bobby Seale trials?\u00a0 Later in 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the House of Representatives. Yale decided to admit women undergraduates.\u00a0 Nixon beat Humphrey by\u00a0 .7 percent of popular vote.\u00a0 And remember George Wallace? He carried five southern states.\u00a0 Perhaps reading American’s distraction, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia putting an end to \u201cPrague Spring.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh and by the way, don\u2019t forget we were balancing the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union throughout all this.\u00a0 The United States had 300,000 troops in Europe to deter Soviet aggression.\u00a0 There were tens of thousands of nuclear weapons all over the planet, ICBMs, SLBMs, B-52\u2019s, large and small nuclear artillery, etc.\u00a0 Accidents happened.\u00a0 In 1968, a B-52 crashed in Greenland with four nuclear weapons on board. Yikes! \u00a0While Greta Thunberg, may never forgive the boomer generation for not reining in carbon emissions, at least total thermonuclear war was avoided.\u00a0 Think of all the dead pandas and whales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After 1968, the country eventually got out of Vietnam. \u00a0While Nixon was consumed by the Watergate crisis, the country advanced.\u00a0 Social issues evolved in ways unimaginable in the 1950\u2019s.\u00a0 Arguably, the United States became stronger socially, economically, militarily, technologically and scientifically (we landed on the moon in 1969).\u00a0 Democracy did not die as was predicted by many.\u00a0 Western democratic societies endured and the world was not incinerated by accidental or intentional nuclear war.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n So while the confluence of current narratives requires pundits\/parrots to shriek in full-throated superlatives, I suspect the current divisions in the country will heal as they have in the past.\u00a0 And new divisions will inevitably follow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States and its like-minded friends and Allies will, at worst, muddle through.\u00a0 The connective tissue of our common ideals is strong.\u00a0 The inventiveness of people unleashed from authoritarian governments is strong.\u00a0 Our capitalist system tempered by government energizes innovation that serves the people. Cell phones have done as much as anything to raise living standards globally. While we may scare our friends (and ourselves) with the hysteria promoting assorted narratives and interests in the media, I strongly suspect we\u2019ll come out stronger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And consider whether Xi\u2019s China or Putin\u2019s Russia will help you be what you want to be. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The recurrent statements following the chaos of January 6, were nothing, if not cataclysmic, i.e. \u201cdemocracy hangs by a thread!\u201d Unfortunately, foreign friends and allies tend to watch events in Washington via television like everyone else.\u00a0 On multiple occasions conversations … Continue reading