The great American retreat

There is a memorable opening to The Newsroom an American TV series that was aired in 2012. The episode is titled ‘We just decided to…’ and begins with a rant by the lead character as to why America is not the greatest country in the world. It came to mind as I watched the progress of President Trump around the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. By the standards of the Trump administration this was a resounding success. There were no gaping-wound gaffes although failing to incline even slightly from the waist in the direction of the emperor of Japan was a considerable insult and one that bypassed most sensitivities, American or otherwise.

There were trade deals to crow about, most of which had been crafted in the last administration and many of which were MoUs — little more than promissory notes. And there were all those fulfilled commitments, the refusal to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that was an early scalp in the Trump presidency, and that curious doublespeak in relation to China and trade. Orwell would have been proud of Big Orange. And there was a clip around the ear for the leader of North Korea characterising him as “short and fat.” It was all jolly good knockabout stuff, a kind of Punch and Judy show that went from beach to beach and entertained thousands. My how we laughed.

The international diplomacy playbook was tossed from the outset and by the time Da Prezzer set foot back on home soil its replacement, a crude shallow populist document that is penny plain rather than tuppence-coloured was on all the bookshelves. It is a manual much abbreviated, because America is shorter and narrower than when Trump embarked on his Odyssey, a country today seen through the wrong end of the telescope, compressed and miniaturised, still there in all the detail and yes, still a global power but shorn of the super.

There is a sense that the country is drawing into itself. Having withdrawn from the Paris climate accords and the TPP it is trending towards a kind of state-induced peripheral neuropathy, a dying away of the outer limits, a withering of the nerves of statehood that leave the body visibly intact in every respect but weaker, less agile, limited in its ability to move and respond in a way that befits the image that it would be its preferred projection.

In the individual human there is no cognitive damage associated with such a condition, and so far as I can tell after 15 minutes with Uncle Google sufferers are not intellectually impaired — thus differing from Trumpian America. This is not to say that there has been universal intellectual shrinkage over the last year because there most assuredly has not. But there has been a shift in the paradigm, the prevailing worldview, which is a dumbing down that has become seen as a retreat by many external analysts and commentators and presumably by many Americans as well, because it was a Trump win by a small margin and there are millions that seethe as their country is dragged backwards into the backwoods.

‘America first’ is the war-cry of neo-isolationism. It is led by a man of limited intellect who runs off at the mouth and eternally needs a following posse of sweeper-uppers. His electorate remains loyal for the most part and so long as the clips I have seen are not fake news are more than happy with the man they voted for. They were happy to see their leader walk across acres of red carpets, attend banquets in countries whose existence he may have previously been unaware of, declare his admiration for a man who has recently admitted to being a murderer back in the day and dump a bucket of distilled sycophancy over the leader of the country that is going like a rat up a trouser leg to fill the vacuum left by retreating America. They love it and are happy to tell that to anybody sticking a microphone under their noses. As a columnist in The Guardian so succinctly put it in the last week — “This is what happens when a very big nation is led by a very small man.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th, 2017.

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