The End Of American Exceptionalism

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The battle for the planet has now become a battle between two systems of human thought and governance; one based on the vestiges of Western Neo-Liberalism and the other based on a restating of Marxist Socialism. The implications are profound. One system offers the possibility of the continuation of the human species on this planet, the other negates that possibility. This essay will attempt to explain the systemic differences between the two and the danger to human civilization of the one.

 

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Let us begin with a recent article in CNN Money US by Daniel Shane: He points out that China is winning the electric cars’ arms race. It is now the top market for electric and hybrid cars, accounting for roughly half of all global sales.

Electric car dominance is just one of many areas of activity where China is about to win economically. It also extends into many other areas well beyond the economic sphere. The Chinese objective is to dominate all nations of the world by replacing Western Colonial Neo-Liberalism with a China centric form of Marxist Socialism.

This China centric form implies only limited participatory democracy and limited freedom of expression. It requires control of the media, the internet and education. It includes control of religion to the extent that any religion presents a danger to defined Chinese societal norms.

The phrase “all for one, one for all” and “communality” is often used to characterize this Chinese collective consciousness and its approach to governance. Past Chinese history, religious and other, plays an important role.

In many ways the Chinese definition of society is the opposite of the American which is referred to as “Neo-Liberal.” Pointing out that difference is the purpose of this essay.

Neo-Liberalism in America is an underlying political philosophy based on belief in the sanctity of personal “freedom” with the conviction that this freedom is expressed through self-determination. It extends back to the early settlement and then the writing of transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) who popularized the expression “self-reliance.” In the recent American election it underlay the Donald Trump code words: “what makes America great again.” Ronald Reagan took advantage of it with his derisive use of the term “welfare queens.” It undergirds the foundation of today’s Republican Party. Senator Chuck Grassley, GOP Iowa, in an astonishing defense of dropping “death taxes” for individual estates worth more than $5.5 million implied that people not currently affected by that tax are “spending every darn penny on booze or women.”

This American Neo-Liberalism in its original and now in its solidified archetypal form by the Trump Administration encompasses freedom of choice in the market place. With this has come an abhorrence of any form of government control over markets. American Republican Neo-Liberals today view free market mechanisms without government interference as the optimal way of exchanging goods and services and allocating planetary and human resources.

The late economist Nobel Prize Winner Milton Friedman built his reputation on this American belief of Neo-Liberalism. Adam Smith’s “hidden hand” had for Neo-Liberals like him become a near religious “belief.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan today subscribes to this Friedmanian Neo-Liberal near religious economic “belief” in the broadest sense. (Also, he is known to be a follower of Ayn Rand)

This system of belief was the underlying reason Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (A Neo-Liberal and Ayn Rand acolyte in his younger years) steered the Congress away from action that could have prevented the 2008 market crash. Here is a quote from him during a congressional testimony before the crash:

“Increasingly complex financial instruments have contributed to the development of a far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient financial system….”

Here is an early quote from Ayn Rand that explains both Greenspan’s and Ryan’s Neo-Liberal view on the danger of government control:

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”

For an understanding of the danger to America today – and the world ‑ of Neo-Liberal thought, read my Countercurrents: The Failure Of Democracy

and view Norman Chomsky’s U Tube: Neoliberalism Is Destroying Our Democracy

At the same time; ask yourself: Could China, a country of 1.388 billion, successfully organize itself into a nation of communal Socialistic centrism combined with a controlled form of capitalism that recognizes ecological negative and positive externalities? And if can, what then happens to the West?

This brings to the fore very important questions. Here are some of them:

X We are economic and nepotistic animals. As a result, throughout human civilization going back to the very beginning, economic power has always been rigged in favor of the oligarchic blood line by way of massive wealth transfers to succeeding generations. With it comes political privilege, intermarriage among the privileged, superior education and superior medical care. Chinese history has been plagued by this problem.

Can China alter this pattern?

X Implicit in the assumption of China becoming the environmental leader of the world is the question as to whether all other nations will follow. This has not been the case, and especially for the United States with the ascendency of the Trump administration. Unless all nations take action together – on the pricing of Carbon for example ‑ an ecological collapse will occur.

Can China alter this pattern?

X There is a need for negative external costs to be built into investment decisions throughout the planet well beyond Carbon. Every nation must participate as only one major noncompliant nation can negatively affect the outcome.

Can China alter this pattern?

X There is a deadly juxtaposition between the human dark side; identified in psychological language as the neurotic/psychotic/narcissistic side, and the loving side. Both Chinese and Western history have shown this same dichotomy. Throughout history this dark side has driven us to be enormously self-destructive. It is often in Western culture expressed by the words “evil” and “good.” This dark side continues to haunt our species and cause enormous pain and suffering.

Can China alter this pattern?

David Anderson brings together a wide range of interests in his writings, namely; theology, history, evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, geopolitics, and economics.

He has written three books. A fourth is near completion. It is about a necessary geo political, social, religious, economic paradigm shift for human survival.

See:   http://www.inquiryabraham.com/new-book.html

David is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Hawaii (Harvard Asia Pacific) Advanced Management Program. Over his career he was an international risk manager and senior executive at several of America’s premier multinational institutions. During that period he became increasingly aware of the underlying cultural, institutional and religious causes of past and present civilizational dysfunction and conflict.

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