History Unfolding

The combination of reaching a certain age – I having just turned 70 – and reading a new, overarching history of the world, Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, makes me feel, unusually, that I am not just living in the present but am living in history. On TV we are watching Borgen, which provides insight into the workings of government – and since the government is Denmark’s I can’t challenge its verisimilitude – while the journals in America are consumed with the Republican convention, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and apparently seismic developments like Brexit, police shootings in the U.S., terrorist attacks in Europe and a failed coup in Turkey. Just as 1968, which I lived, is now treated as a historical moment, I look around me and think that 50 years from now books will be written about 2016 – if, of course, we are still around and books are still written.
The historic development that most concerns me is the rise of Donald Trump.When he announced his candidacy I assumed it was a publicity stunt. When we heard David Brooks last fall, he predicted the nomination of Marco Rubio or one other – Bush? Cruz?, I can’t remember – but made no mention of Trump. When we met Canadians on our vacation in January, we assured them that Trump would not get the nomination and tolerated their naivete in that regard. When I watched the Republican debates, I wondered what Trump was doing up there, he seemed so lost at times. Yet he is now the standard-bearer of one of our major political parties. And people are assessing his chances of becoming President – mainly, I must say, because Hillary Clinton on the other side is so unpopular herself. In the past I have never understood how the Germans, such a rational, civilized people, could have enabled the ascent to power of Adolf Hitler. To me, that was “history,” something totally outside my personal ken. Now I feel I am witnessing something comparable. Everyone who writes for or reads The New York Times or The New Yorker, which describes most of our acquaintances, considers Trump dangerous, despicable, not worth the time of day. Yet huge audiences and a convention of delegates chants his name. And I feel powerless to do anything about it, except cast my one, meaningless vote in November.
The newspaper says, “Country on Edge,” after a shooting of police in Baton Rouge closely follows one in Dallas. I feel nothing. Nor am I concerned about the police killing of Philando Castle in Minnesota. These are isolated incidents, and the efforts of the media, not to mention Trump, to turn these into movement-defining moments is not helpful, just as Bush’s use of 9/11 to create a ‘War on Terror’ was misguided and more damaging to “us” than to “them.” The Brexit vote, on the other hand, is more symbolic of a turn that history books will recognize. It’s hard to see how disaffection with the status quo will not continue to grow as the world’s population increases, resources diminish and climate change disrupts. Immigration is an issue that runs through Trump, Brexit, terrorism and Turkey, and it’s a problem without an answer.
Where there are problems with answers, it is often the case that politics or political leaders simply aren’t up to dealing with them. I read in Silk Roads today about the American plan to curry favor with Egypt by financing construction of the Aswan Dam, only to have Southern senators block the plan out of concern that the dam would result in lower cotton prices that would hurt their constituents. As a result, Russia moved in to build the dam, throwing a wrench in our geopolitical strategy. In today’s world, the Obama administration is trying to bring Iran back into the community of nations to lessen the threat of nuclear proliferation (and warfare) and build a working relationship to combat ISIS and Middle East disruptions. Republicans in Congress, however, are scuttling Boeing’s deal to sell $20 billion of aircraft to Iran, effectively reneging on the promise of economic benefits in the nuclear arms treaty Obama negotiated. Is history repeating itself?

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