RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) Sadly, I have to admit that I was drastically wrong.
Despite the fact that Joe Biden has at last won both the popular and the crazy Electoral College vote by healthy margins, barring some unexpected disaster between now and his presidential inauguration on January 20th, my prognosis for the future of the nation is darker than this gringo could ever have imagined.
Don’t say you weren’t warned that the 2020 US election would end badly.
I had long labored under the sincere belief that the great majority of my fellow Americans shared with me a basic set of moral and ethical values. Together they formed for me the foundation of my American identity. I may be an octogenarian gringo, happily resident in Brazil, but I have never considered giving up those characteristics that make me a Yank. Until now.
The hoped-for total repudiation of Trump and Trumpism – fresh air after four years of devastating pollution – did not come to pass.
That more than 70 million US voters, almost 48 percent of the total, freely cast their ballots for another term of Donald Trump’s mendacious presidency is shocking and deeply worrying to anyone who imagined that Trumpism was an outlier that would be swept away, more or less buried in an avalanche of historic good sense.
All of us have no doubt made mistakes in our lives. But repeating and clinging to them, as the results in this election indicate many voters do, is seriously dangerous, especially when they challenge our every basic belief and instinct.
It scares me mightily that with over 230,000 Covid 19 deaths on his watch to date and record daily virus outbreaks of new cases, according to an Associated Press analysis, “in 376 counties where the virus is currently most rampant, 93 percent of those counties went for Trump.”
Are these folks oblivious of the fact that the total mismanagement of the pandemic crisis by his administration directly threatens their own lives and the lives of their loved ones? Do they want to die and if so, for what great cause?
It also scares me that just short of half the US voting population seems willing to ignore corruption at every level, one impeachment, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, an estimated four thousand lawsuits, at least six Cabinet secretaries under investigation for violating federal law or accused of violating federal law, as are an additional eight or more administration officials.
That’s just the most visible part of an enormous iceberg of corruption from the president and his family downwards through the ranks. How could so many of my countrymen vote for the continuation of that?
Is the same thing happening here? Following his hero Trump and putting all his political eggs in a dubious improved economy basket with generous pandemic-driven payments to the public, Jair Bolsonaro has seen the favorable view of his government rise to 34.5 percent from 29.4 percent in August and his personal approval rating rocket almost 8 points to 47.8.
What will Brazilians have to give up to maintain the good feeling?
Brazil can rightly boast compulsory voting (which, unlike facemasks in the US, no one seems to believe is a violation of his or her freedom) and a state-of-the-art electronic voting system which delivers unchallenged results in hours. Brazilians are saved the excruciating hours of TV pundits, filling time between commercial breaks. That’s a big plus but will hardly solve the endemic problem which plagues both nations.
Is growing economic benefit the key driver of happiness and well-being, or does the ‘soul’ of the nation count for more? What kind of a future do we want for ourselves and our loved ones? It’s an increasingly perplexing question.
Over the past few decades, historians have been studying how seemingly productive and functional societies fall apart.
In a NYTimes essay, Ben Ehrenreich reminds us that “In the early 20th century, the German historian Oswald Spengler proposed that all cultures have souls, vital essences that begin falling into decay the moment they adopt the trappings of civilization.” We are told that societies become vulnerable to collapse when they become overly complicated, when instead of becoming more efficient with growth – the popular perception – they become less so – the historic reality.
Ehrenreich observes that Professor Peter Turchin, an authority on the decline of complex societies, believes “…the key is the loss of “social resilience,” a society’s ability to cooperate and act collectively for common goals. By that measure, Turchin judges that the United States was collapsing well before Covid-19 hit.
For the last 40 years, he argues, the population has been growing poorer and more unhealthy as elites accumulate more and more wealth and institutional legitimacy founders. “The United States is basically eating itself from the inside out,” he says. It is hardly an appetizing meal. The same could almost certainly be said for Brazil.
The question is: if we fall under the banner of the nativists like Trump and Bolsonaro, will we still be able to ‘act collectively for common goals’? Or will the endgame be more greed and disruption and the eventual decay of the souls of our societies?
However darkly I view this endgame, I would hope it is not too late for each of us to ask ourselves one question – What’s truly important to us? – and then to act on it.