What does ISIS have in common with worldwide increases in terrorist attacks, Black Lives Matter and the recent killing of cops? More than has been appreciated so far by political scientist, politicians and the media! They all point toward a breakdown of civility, respect for the law and trust in universally accepted democratic societal governance covenants.
Such periods are not unprecedented in history. They, indeed, are fairly repetitive phases, characteristic of prerevolutionary times. Consider, for example, what led to the creation of the Magna Carta, a document that dates back to 1215, and was signed by King John, a rather unpopular ruler of England at the beginning of the 13th century, not because he believed in the promises of the document but because political circumstances left him no other choice. Or take the French Revolution, which, as is widely acknowledged by historians, was the ultimate consequence of the French monarchy in an international struggle for hegemony of its empire in Europe outstripping the country’s financial resources, increasing social antagonism between the aristocracy and the rising bourgeoisie (i.e., middle class), a highly ineffective ruler (Louis XVI) and increasing economic hardship, brought on by the agrarian crisis of 1788-1789. Similarly, The Bolshevik 1917 October revolution in Russia can be simply summarized in its causation by the revolution’s slogan, “Bread, Land and Peace,” thereby suggesting that Russia’s monarchy had provided none of the above and, therefore, very similar origins of this revolution to the French Revolution.
Following the worldwide devastation of World War II, mankind longed for stability and reconstruction. Stability was paradoxically further enhanced by the partition of the world into two principal regions of influence expressing opposing government ideologies, the Western world of Capitalism and the Eastern world of Communism, and the threat of mutual destruction in case of military conflict between these two blocks of nations. How important that balance was is now becoming increasingly apparent because history did not end, as at the time suggested by the prominent political scientist Francis Fukuyama (in his now infamous 1989 essay “The End of History” in the journal The National Interest and subsequent book “The End of History and the Last Man,” published in 1992) when the Soviet Union collapsed on December 25, 1991 and, with it, to a large degree the political ideology of Communism.
The U.S., the beacon of Capitalism, now the only remaining world power in a “flat world” (to quote Thomas L. Friedman), in the midst of a communication revolution (because of the Internet and more recently Social Media in general), and economic upheaval because of economic globalization, unfortunately, did not recognize the extent to which all of these changes would contribute to global instability. Like prior empires, starting from the Roman Empire, over the French Empire of Louis XVI, the Czarist Russian Empire but also the Soviet Communist Empire, instead of strengthening the nation’s economic health and, thereby, exerting influence, the U.S. empire economically overextended like all other empires before.
Most of the Western world, indeed, did the same, with ever increasing government debt, accrued by spending, which was not based on what represented economically the best investments and would achieve strongest returns on these investments for the country but on what buys most votes in future election campaigns. Since such deficit spending can go only so far, and last only so long, the Great Recession of 2008, in retrospect, does not surprise. What also cannot surprise, since the U.S. to a disproportional degree was responsible for the recession, is that both, U.S. policy and the economic and political concept of Capitalism, in large parts of the world, including among longstanding friendly nations, suddenly lost credibility.
And this is when Barak Hussein Obama was elected the 44th President of the U.S., an election, which in itself to an important degree has to be viewed as a revolutionary act. The reason is that at no earlier time in U.S. history would a candidate like Obama have had even the slightest chance of being elected. The Canary in a number of previous essays, based on his upbringing, offered a very detailed psychological analysis of this president. While we do not wish to be repetitive, it is important to note that even before his election it was obvious to anybody who only wanted to know that Obama’s history unquestionably defined him in his political ideology as an Afrocentric Marxist Socialist (to be differentiated from a European-style Social Democrat). Supported by very liberal major media organizations, the country, however, simply did not want to know! (Readers interested in more detail we refer to our earlier series of essays on President Obama.)
Obama’s governance, therefore, did not come as a surprise to The Canary; indeed, we predicted his “sympathy” for revolutionary movements around the world, his distancing from traditional friends of the U.S., like the U.K and especially Israel. We, however, also predicted his racial divisiveness within the U.S. at a time when most of the country assumed that his election for all practical purposes represented an end of most racial conflicts. Most importantly, we, however, pointed out that Obama in the deepest levels of his soul was a revolutionary who, as his ultimate political goal (from his days as a community organizer in Chicago on) was seeking a revolutionary overthrow of current power structures in this country.
We now have to acknowledge that he succeeded beyond even our predictions. His foreign policy of non-intervention in the Middle East unleashed the biggest refugee streams since World War II in Europe, thereby dividing local populations into radically opposing camps of left and right, like not seen since the 1930s, a devastating period for Europa, which ultimately lead to Hitler’s rise and World War II. Here in the U.S., America’s first Black president has, in a very underhanded and seemingly “cool” way, championed Afrocentric notions over and over again, with the result that population surveys consider race relations at the lowest point since the 1960s. In doing so, he has followed classical Afrocentric and Marxist dialectic by attacking law enforcement first because a revolution can only succeed if law enforcement is weakened first.
Helped by the incompetence of preceding administrations, the acquiescence of most of the media and even some of the Republican opposition, he, thus, has almost singlehandedly succeeded in bringing large swaths of the world into prerevolutionary times, like not seen in since the 1930. As a consequence, over half of all college students in this country currently believe that Capitalism is evil. Though he, himself, denied during his first election campaign being a “Socialist,” he has made it possible for Bernie Sanders, an openly declared Democratic Socialist to become a serious presidential contender. Who would ever have thought this possible prior to Obama’s two presidential terms, and who would ever have anticipated that the Democratic Party would move further to the left of most traditional European Social Democratic parties. But this is exactly what we have been witnessing over the last seven plus years, as so well demonstrated by the recent unprecedented illegal sit-in of the Democratic caucus in Congress.
All of this demonstrates the increasing break down of civility and deference to the law not only in Congress and politics but in the nation. As we have witnessed, it is only a small step from Black Lives Matters’ offensive verbiage during demonstrations and the targeted killing of law enforcement officers. It is probably an even smaller step between targeted cop killing and race riots or even worse.
The upcoming presidential election in November, therefore, matter more than anybody can, possibly, imagine. For everybody who favors evolutionary rather than revolutionary change and abhors the anarchy and violence of revolutions, casting a vote is, therefore, more important than probably in any election since the Large Depression before World War II. And then we can only pray that a new administration has the wisdom of pulling us back from the brink of revolution.