Can A New Foundation Be Poured Before The Complete Collapse Of The International Order?

The so-called debate between the shameless liar Donald Trump, and an infirm and befuddled President Biden has produced something approaching panic in Democrats and the commentariat in the United States. 

Having predicted that Trump would win in 2016, and repeating ad nauseum over the last three years that he will win again in 2024 if the underlying reasons that such a malignant narcissist was elected president in 2016 aren’t faced, the debate’s outcome seemed metaphysically predestined to me. I wasn’t surprised by the painfully obvious inability of President Biden to meet the moment. 

The display of Biden’s decline is not just a metaphor for the decline of the United States; it is an apt reflection of it. Just as Trump is the lowest expression of the darkness at America’s core. He embodies the worst of us as he projects the hate in his heart and that he channels. 

“I saw western civilization pass before my eyes as Joe Biden drowned,” Sydney Blumenthal wrote in the Guardian. “Biden understands the state of the world. Biden has held together the center of the western alliance.” Precisely, and “the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” 

The debate was never about a declining president versus a “master of the dark art of demagoguery.” It was whether there was enough life left in President Biden, the Democratic Party and the American people to face down the man-made evil that this nation has allowed to grow in the hidden recesses of the national psyche. The answer is now irrefutable; there isn’t. 

What progressives refuse to see is that there is a strong metaphysical dimension to national and international politics. This is denied even in hindsight, when forces beyond the superficial, outermost level of politics and vote counting are clearly in play. 

For example, in the debate between Biden and Trump, The Donald, with his characteristic cruelty, spitefully invoked the name of the FBI director when he became president, James Comey. 

In truth, Trump should be everlastingly grateful to Comey. More than any other single person, James Comey made Trump president in 2016 by issuing a statement shortly before the election implicitly smearing Hillary Clinton for her minor mishandling of emails while she headed the State Department under President Obama. 

The idea that elections, even in functioning democracies, are only decided on the day that voting takes place is willfully naïve and childish. When one sees a runaway train, it’s the height of folly to hope that there won’t be a crash at the bottom of the hill. A derailment is inevitable because there’s too much momentum for the engineer to switch tracks at the last junction. 

We just passed the last junction at which we could change course, and Biden and his administration blew right by it. 

Besides Biden’s infirmity, and the absurdly poor preparation by his team for the debate (they should have emphasized rest at Camp David, rather than cramming his head full of talking points), there was another factor. 

Biden was completely out of his depth in dealing with the evil that Trump spouted with the confidence of the devil. Throughout the debate Joe had a stunned look on his face, transparently showing that he could not believe the crap that was coming out of Trump’s mouth. 

Why wasn’t he prepared for it? Trump has been becoming more vile and spewing increasing bile in recent months. The reason is that Joe Biden and Democrats still presume decency and reason still prevail in the American people. They don’t. 

MSNBC’s chief political ass Chuck Todd scolded Katy Tur for questioning the CNN setup the day before the debate, saying, “Don’t you believe in democracy? Don’t you believe in the public?” 

As Rebecca Solnit concisely and bitingly wrote: “CNN’s insistence on proceeding as though things are pretty much what they’ve always been, on normalizing the appalling and outrageous, on using false equivalencies and bothsiderism to make themselves look fair and reasonable, on turning politics into horseraces and personality contests, is aiding the destruction of the United States.” 

Some Democrats are fantasizing that Joe Biden will drop out of the race in time for a new generation candidate to enter and beat Trump. But Jill Biden will decide, and she totally backs her man, even when it means telling him what a great debate performance he had. “You answered all the questions Joe!” 

So the die is cast, and the United States will become an autocracy. The remaining nominal democracies in the world have only a few months to prepare by pouring the foundation for a new, true world order.

For years we’ve been watching the slow-motion collapse of the post-World War II international order, which was conceived and built by the only country to emerge unscathed, with vastly greater industrial and military power. 

Since then the American people have had an absurdly high opinion of themselves, which President Biden keeps trying to tap into by shouting, “WE ARE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR GOD’S SAKES.” 

It’s falling on deaf ears. Even though public figures deny it, most citizens know, even if they won’t admit it, that the United States is a nation in precipitous decline. 

The sick, unjust world economic and political order decimating the earth and humanity, which the Biden Administration has been desperately holding together, is finished. It will collapse with a catastrophe if it does not collapse into irrelevance when the hideous Trump assumes the most powerful office in the world again. 

That will undeniably demonstrate that American leadership is a thing of the past, and that the post-World War II international system that the United States built is no longer fit for use in a globalized world. 

Of course, the die-hards are still saying that there is no substitute for the liberal international order, and that American leadership is essential for a rules based system, and that the autocracies of China and Russia are waiting in the wings to fill the vacuum. 

Like all half-truths at a time of crisis and collapse, these shibboleths are worse than outright lies. By clinging to the old order when it’s collapsing around us, they augment the very thing they’re trying to prevent. 

Of course, there may be a much more severe shock, such as Israel using a nuclear weapon if their “Iron Dome” defenses crumple under a sustained assault by Hezbollah backed by Iran after Netanyahu invades Lebanon. 

But let’s not take the worst-case, nuclear war scenario. We are faced with a tectonic shift in human affairs, far greater than the collapse of the USSR in the early ‘90’s. Can we respond? Is there an adequate response? 

These aren’t abstract or philosophical question for me, since I foresaw the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, proposed a new course based on mutual cooperation between former superpower enemies with a team in the San Francisco Bay Area, and flew to Moscow in January 1990 on high-level invitation. 

It was an epic failure. And though I now feel the chance of success was much lower than my optimistic American estimate at the time, it could have succeeded, and I don’t regret taking the risk and making the attempt. 

The imminent collapse now is of the entire international order. It will be similar to the collapse of the USSR, in that it won’t initially be violent (except perhaps in the US). But it poses both a tremendous danger and a tremendous opportunity for the future of humanity. 

Adaptation to collapse, whether conventional or “deep adaptation,” is not possible. Indeed adaptation lies at the root of the crisis of human consciousness, since humans can adapt to anything, even extermination camps. 

In short, the spiritual, philosophical and political foundation has to be poured before a collapse occurs to change course when it does. 

What can we do as individuals? First look within and be a light to yourself. Then question and ignite insight with anyone who still cares about the future of the earth and humanity. 

Martin LeFevre

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