They say everybody becomes less left-wing as they age. But I think higher income Brits leave lefty circles a bit earlier than our international kin. This may, in part, be due to the financial burdens of home ownership and the brutal competition to get one's kids into good schools. It is, after all, quite hypocritical to keep the red flag flying when you've spent nearly a million quid to live near a primary school with a decent cricket programme.
But there's another reason we become centrists — we get fed up with all the finger pointing. There is an undertone in leftist rhetoric that the British Empire was the root of all of today's evils. I get quite annoyed by this. Not because I deny history happened, nor do I make any attempt to justify the bad bits, but because the rhetoric never acknowledges that most British people were victims.
My British ancestors, like almost every other Brit's ancestors, were subjugated, brutalized, starved, and indentured. Children lost their limbs to cotton mills, men coughed their lungs out in coal mines, women gave birth (and regularly died) in squalid slums, and disease-ridden poverty became the norm. I don't care to engage in "oppression olympics", and I do not deny that slavery was much worse, but there are reasons British men thought standing in front of Napoleon's cannons was their best available option. Yet, there is a perception, championed by Westminster politicians, that Britain was a democracy the whole time. That our ancestors voted for it all — along with the conquest of India, the treatment of Ireland, the Atlantic slave trade, and so on. This is nonsense.
British "democracy" began as oligarchy. Put simply, the men who already held power through aristocratic titles decided to vote more, and skewer each other with swords a bit less. In doing so, these noble (literally) pioneers of negotiation discovered that by cooperating among themselves, they could really turn the screw on the rest of us. Common land was enclosed and the people kicked off it; grazing land was cleared of people to make way for more profitable sheep; anyone who protested was renditioned to the colonies; being poor was allowed (in fact, actively enforced), but asking for help was criminalized. It was a bad time, and while it couldn't last forever, it was seriously dragged out.
Whenever those without representation rose up against their oppression, Parliament would find a way of expanding enfranchisement just enough to quell the unrest, but not an inch further. The richest were enfranchised first, then the slightly less rich, then the lesser (but still phenomenally wealthy) property owning classes, and so on. The path to modern democracy was very long. In fact, Britain only achieved all three fundamentals — universal suffrage, a secret ballot, and one-person-one-equal-vote — with the Representation of The People Act in 1948.
That isn't late, by the way: France got there with The Fourth Republic in 1945; West Germany in 1949; Spain had to wait until the end of Franco; and the United States didn't resolve its malappropriation problem until Reynolds v. Sims in 1964. Consequently, we have very little modern democratic history to draw from. But, in the time we have, we've observed something unprecedented and entirely counter to all previous political systems — no true democracy has successfully built or maintained an empire. I think this is meaningful.
When ordinary people have equal votes, nations are forced to listen to them, and ordinary people generally want peace. As evidence, I offer two things: 1) the public reaction to almost every military adventure since the Korean War, and 2) the lack of appetite among European democracies to rebuild their overseas footprints. Also, throwing in a little pathos for parents, imagine receiving a folded flag to commemorate your child dying to protect a billionaire's foreign oil field. It’s horrifying.
I just don't think modern democracy is compatible with imperialism, at least not overt imperialism. The United States has maintained an informal empire of geopolitical influence for the past eighty years. But this has largely been an empire of consent, if we "Wider-Westerners" are honest with ourselves. We've lapped up America's willingness to do the heavy lifting, taken the peace dividend, and our people have benefited more from the "American Century" than Americans have (to put it bluntly — almost every average westerner outside the US enjoys better health, lives longer, socializes more, and works less). Donald Trump is correct to say we need to pull our weight.
My fingers burned as I wrote that last sentence, but I'll console myself with that proverb about a stopped watch being right twice per day. Although, I'm baffled as to what Trump's other correct insight might be. His attempt on Greenland exposed the fact that nobody, even if they're offered lots of money, wants to become American. His aggression towards Canada has driven half the North American landmass towards China. His overcooked pressure on Europe has made it seek independence from American tech and the US dollar. America's informal empire is (was) a network of economic and geopolitical influence built through decades of brilliant diplomacy. Frankly, it was diplomacy above Themistocles, Augustus, and the heyday of the Habsburgs, yet it's been critically damaged in less than a year. Such is the clusterfuck of Trumpism 2.0.
Do not think the Trump Whitehouse, nor the acolytes and Svengali's driving it, will accept their culpability in America's decline. Instead, expect an almighty tantrum. Or rather, expect their already happening tantrum to inflate. Toddlers who lack the communication skills to express their wants throw themselves on the floor and scream. Politicians with deficits in charm and persuasion lean on bullying and hard power. Trump's attempt to build an American empire of overt territorial control and client states is every bit the use of force in the absence of grace. Just one year into the second term, this has failed in Greenland, succeeded in Venezuela, is in progress in Argentina, likely in Cuba, possible in Colombia, and could even involve some kind of military posturing within Mexico. If I'm right to say that modern democracy is incompatible with imperialism, then this will quickly surface a massive problem — Trumpism will have to make America fundamentally less democratic.
The question for Americans is simple — will you let this happen? Depressingly, most of your political establishment appears perfectly willing. The more sensible Republicans are stepping down; Congressional Democrats are practically invisible; and Gavin Newsom flew to Munich to tell European allies “Trump will be gone in three years”. That’s like being in a flood, and instead of building dykes, drainage, and life-rafts, you look at the weather forecast and hope the rain stops when it's supposed to. It might not, and you may drown while you’re waiting.
So what can the rest of the West do? Can we replace the US dollar with (let's accept it) the Euro? Can we lay new transoceanic cables to bypass America's control over our digital infrastructure? Can we fill the sky with our own satellites? Can we protect the sea lanes? Can we rearm enough to sink American ships if needs be?
The answer to these questions is undoubtedly yes. Our combined GDP is already much higher than America’s, our combined population more than double, and together we have about four times the global surface area for resource exploration. Will we join forces? Will we act in time?
