The Times They Are A-Changin'
When global leadership held socioeconomics hostage for three years, they guaranteed that nothing would ever be the same. For the first time, I'm optimistic about the new world we're building
It’s always dangerous to relax, but for the first time in memory I feel like the people in charge share my basic values, understand the enormity of the challenges facing us, and bring basic competence to the table. It’s a good feeling. It’s also gotten me to publish a couple of columns making that same fundamental point in very different spheres.
Last week, RealClearPolitics ran Dawn of a New Era, on foreign policy and the global order. This morning, RealClearMarkets ran Elon Musk’s DOGE is Zero-Basing the Federal Government on domestic policy and government reform. (Have I mentioned that I love the folks over at RealClear?)
These columns both stem from my beliefs that every good idea runs its course, that every system has a degenerate state, and that given enough time all things will degenerate. Both the U.S. federal government and the liberal international order are way, way, way beyond their “best used by” dates. We’re stuck with atrophied, corroded, corrupted legacy infrastructure that’s strangling us both domestically and globally.
Worse, the vaunted “shared values” that are supposed to animate the “liberal” in both our liberal republic and the liberal international order have become parodies of themselves. As our great Vice President noted in Munich, they’re no longer as evident as we might like them to be. From where I’m sitting, a fair number of European governments (easier to judge than their people) are antisemitic warmongers with zero respect for civil liberties. A partial list of such government certainly includes at least the UK, France, Ireland, Spain, Norway, and Ukraine. Romania and Poland warrant watching. Canada, Australia, and New Zeland escape the list only because they’re not in Europe
Which is not to say, of course, that these Western countries have become the worst of the worst. For all of the UK’s locking up people for praying and shitposting, their civil liberties record is still better than China’s. But the race to the bottom is heating up.
That’s part of the point I raise in Dawn of a New Era. My argument in a nutshell is that we entered an era of hubristic U.S. hegemony when the Soviet Union fell. I see the characteristics of that era as “a toxic combination of unrivaled innovation, prosperity, and technological advancement with a shocking and near total collapse of morality, faith, and community.” (Hint: That’s not a compliment).
Agree with that characterization or not, however, that era is over. It ended with Covid. Turns out, when you pull the batteries on the socioeconomic fabric of the globe and play with them for three years, you end up in a very different place—notwithstanding the sizable assortment of seeming familiarities. We’re now in a brave new world—though as with all transitions, we’ll continue running on fumes until the contours of the new era become clearer.
That same idea is also lurking in the background in my piece about DOGE and Zero-Basing. In effect, the biggest problem we face is that our internal governance structures are completely attuned to self-preservation rather than to public welfare. Worse, like so many of our erstwhile allies, our own governance class and their allies in the Democratic Party have run hard from what were supposed to be our shared values.
None of our government processes work, and the challenge of proving dysfunctionality is on those who notice the obvious external disasters rather than on those in possession of internal evidence. By zero-basing, Musk is putting the incentives where they belong.
Taken together, the world we thought we knew prior to Covid is gone. Most of us lament parts of what we lost. No one cares. History moves on. I’ve often noted that I might have enjoyed living in 1890s Paris. So what? It’s not there any more. More importantly, what I really would have enjoyed is living in some stylized version of 1890s Paris unencumbered by slums, disease, and the Dreyfus Affair.
The evil that cultures do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
Let’s see if we can be the exception. Can we keep the truly wondrous parts of the late 20thearly 21st c. world while burying their worst elements? Until quite recently, I would have laughed at the thought. Now, at least, I can see a path forward.
We are indeed at the dawn of a new era. Widespread zero-basing provides our best chance of making it a glorious one.
For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com
To learn more about America’s Spiritual Crisis and the new religion of Wokeism, see: American Spirit or Great Awokening? The Battle to Restore or Destroy Our Nation (Academica Press, 2024).
To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see: The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).
To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).
To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at The Coalition for America.
To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.