As the world prepares her final docket to appeal for yet another set of principles for civilization, her inhabitants continue to exhume her dead imperatives of allurements and delusions, undermining her philosophical and ethical discourse. Had it not been total turnarounds of cultural and political upheavals within the spirit of diversified historical allusions, liberal democracy, and free-market capitalism could have been used to demonize the cultures who initially borked them. Now, all seem to exhaust in the hands of its crusaders. America is in a total meltdown of domestic politics. Her self-evidently proclaimed democracy had gruesomely met the juggernauts of Trump’s uprisings of Populism. Russia, through Putin’s iron-fisted totalitarian regime, had mounted another tendons-packed journey for cold-war-like diplomacy. Above all is the unexpected yet very corrosive rise of China with her clandestine communist-styled industrialized totalitarian surge. As if the spirit of the Wilsonian doctrine which projected America as the savior and beacon to global peace and order had been burnt with crude oil; the United States seem to forget what they promised the world during the early 20th century. “Making the world safe for democracy “, has now turned into “making the world stake for democracy.
It is so to speak. Yet remains obvious from the past political tendencies that the world cannot be safe even with the best-practiced democracy. Liberal democracy has enemies not more than that of free-market capitalism. Practicing the two simultaneously was an experiment the United States prepared right after the Cold War. From the early 1990s, Liberal democracy became a resonance, and it proved to be irresistible to other nations; Samuel Huntington called it the third wave of democratization. But we must question Francis Fukuyama that was that really the end of history?
Of course, the end of history can mark the beginning of politics; throughout civilizations, people have done politics without history. Thus, the ends of humanitarian affairs have been so achieved without historical insights. George Washington and his contemporaries tried it in the late 18th century, even when European politics and American history were crying over their death warrants. They succeeded to the surprise of all, and gave the United States an old-fashioned-style republic and new tenets of moral and philosophical constitution just to hope for their maturity. A complex political strand without historical genes is what the United States used to interrupt the European balance of power nation-states concert. The grand crusading of democracy and the assurance of world peace by the United States was an intellectual and moral impetus that oversaw their emergence as an architect and beacon to democracy in the 20th century. Through bloodbaths and brutal frictions, they crashed fascism, Nazism, and communism single-handedly to exhaust both the 20th century economic and political ideologies.
Meanwhile, there were ongoing turnarounds in their domestic politics; Roosevelt’s New Deal, Women Suffrage, the Civil Rights Act, and the Vietnam war protests were centrally defining a new phase of political history. As the dawn of the 21st century remains in total darkness, America’s exceptionalism has backfired; the new phase of their political history which held the banners of democracy and peace is right under their nose. Ideological extinctions, racial resentment, populism uprisings, Neo-Nazis and Neo-fascist insurgence, election carnage all rooted in deeply orchestrated polarized politics now ruin their day. Could this too be the end of politics?
At the global stage, each and every frontier (the West) seem to have its own share of pollical carnage. Race and White Supremacy coupled with immigration troubles have domestically turned the United States politics into mere feeble ideologically-pitched battles, with volcanic furies of anger and resentment. The European politics and history as Brexit prompted us, are now in the abyss of cultural and religious meltdown through several pulls of immigrants. Torn between nostalgia and failed global peace propositions, the frontiers of Western civilization have woefully exhausted all the substance in global architecture. Nationalism and populism are now common creeds. In the United States, domestic policies which fueled the artilleries of their constitutional service are now meeting deadlocks. Their bigger questions aren’t about wars in Iraq and terrorism, it is now about race, immigration, white supremacy, and black lives matter. Europe is urging to the last stage of cultural corruption and their reluctance to address continues to grow, they struggle with new fresh headaches to Neo-Nazi uprising. The notion that America and Europe’s Western civilization can’t sustain any longer means that liberal democracy cannot be trusted. Hence, globalization is under threat.
This ambivalence, coupled with the woes of neoliberal economies and vicious nationalism, pandemics, terrorism, inequalities, climate change, and extreme poverty creates a new sense of a brand-new set of political and economic principles and ideas. The question is not about whether liberal democracy can coexist with totalitarian and communist regimes like Russia and China. It is about whether the West can liberate itself to refurnish its own political and cultural structures yet again.
As liberal democracy continues its neoliberal styled economy to enrich the rich and ensue poverty to the poor. China’s communism and industrially centered market economy continue to flatter the developing countries in areas like Africa. In the 20th century, the U.S was a military and economic crusader, now China is a cultural and economic manipulator. The nuances and the unlearnt lessons of colonialism are serving them with ever-devouring character in African countries. Again, unlike U.S’s ideological battle in the 20th century, China isn’t interested in ideological imposition. They just infiltrate, lend and exploit. The cultural infiltration, economic stewardship, and ideological flatteries of China are gradually rendering institutions like the WTO and IMF useless. And we are yet to see how the United States and Europe will amass yet another strategic proposition to counteract these current nuances of China. Will it be a new form of free-market capitalism? Will it be a new form of liberal democracy? Or there will be an entirely new political and economic culture? The Harvard guys in the United States still think they can answer these questions.
As the global concert continues it melting showdowns. Racial and cultural upheavals continue to tilt the center stage of politics with an unprecedented mixture of anger and resentment. As if political tolerance is the sole savior of democracy, nation-states are squeezing themselves with sovereignty and identity. Racial equality, identity, and religion, very vulnerable to populism, Nazism, and fascism at the apex of indigenous dissatisfaction have cohesively aligned at the epicenter of global politics. Many people feel insecure at home than they feel abroad. The Californian-born American sees the young Indian from Delhi to be a dire threat to his job in Silicon Valley. The Black American suspects the White American to be harboring peculiar hate for him for doing nothing. The young Berlin guy walking in the street feels awkward anytime he sees the young Syrian guy walking around, suspecting that he might be in the process of converting his German neighbors to Islam. Blacks in Africa, seeing the internal smokes of American racial outrage sits below the belts of Sahara to shout Black Lives Matter. Women and men have finally caught themselves with the last stages of feminism and homosexuality.
People continue to engulf moral principles with political insanities. The last stage of our civilization draws nigh. Dignity and historical heritage have been exchanging for political maneuverings. Depressions and anxieties, relationship traumas, health troubles, suicide, and constant killings are still not making political rhetoric irrelevant to our survival. Marxist-based politics are getting stronger. Because the feel of oppression both within and without are being subjected to political economics. The United States is now searching for a dose to heal her brutally wounded domestic culture. Europe has opened the corridors to her historical and cultural shelves to rebuild her dignity. As the Scandinavians continue to enjoy her cultural and economically mixed polity, the Balkans of Europe are still yelling over the dreams of America and the nightmares of Russia. In the Middle East, nuclear weapons and religious fundamentalism are still harboring vengeance for the West. Israel and the Palestinians have still not identified their real enemy. China, in the Far East, is still waiting to be crowned champion. Africa is still holding her leaking begging bowl while South Americans remain drug toys.
These contemporary problems have mounted the fittest survive jungle. In the extremely rich and extremely poor individuals and nations, predicaments are channeled through relentlessly manipulated political and social activism. Coalition for change, Youth in action, and racial sentiments are now the bedrock of mass politics. Liberation from one delusion is the culmination of another allurement. Political rhetoric, echoes of sentiments with sensations, have consumed rationally thought principles in societies. Principles of legitimacy and legality are the benchmark for humanitarian discourse. Whether we can secure a better future for ourselves and for our children remain uncertain. As technological strokes continue to jerk our attention off from cultural values, woes of globalization await. These plaques of our existence are yet to be deepened by Artificial intelligence.