A Historic Fist Bump

Throughout man’s recorded history, the average length of an empire has been ~250 years. 

When the President of the United States thinks a fist bump is a good diplomatic compromise between “I will not shake that man’s hand,” and the reality of needing Saudi’s oil even though America is capable of producing its own,” we know we have hit a new low.

Domestically, the consequences of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol are still reverberating; inflation is raging at a near all-time high, and our country is divided along pro-life and pro-choice lines. Internationally, we are engaged in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine; the Middle East is a tinderbox ready to explode, and China is challenging America’s global leadership on every front.

In light of the above, even the proponents of American Exceptionalism are questioning whether 246 years into it, our Democratic experiment is in the process of self-destructing.

Michael Podhorzer, a longtime political strategist for labor unions, believes that similar to the country’s north and south divide during the Civil War, the current political left and right – or what he calls the blue nation and the red nation – are “fundamentally different nations uneasily sharing the same geographic space.”

There is no doubt that, once again, our country is divided. However, before we give up on The America Experiment, it is good to recall that our Founding Fathers understood the duality of man’s nature, manifested by the never-ending arguments between the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, striving to achieve E Pluribus Unum.

Empires fall for two reasons: they grow rich, fat, bloated, lazy, and bureaucratic, tempting the hungry, lean, and driven Barbarians at the gate; and/or they lose their technological edge and, with that, their military advantage, forgetting that might makes right remains the rule of the jungle!

Perhaps what is needed to bring us back together is what Jim Collins calls a BHAG, or a moonshot, a common enemy like Japan after Pearl Harbor or the Soviet menace leading to an arms race. 

Before we get too disconsolate, however, it is good to remember Churchill’s take on Americans in that “they always do the right thing – after exhausting all the alternatives.”

Let us look forward to this November’s elections as a means to let ourselves vent and express ourselves with our vote.

— Sina.