The Destructiveness of Unfettered Progress - How the Moral and Intellectual Bankrupcy of the Left Destroys this Nation

The idea that change and progress can be potentially destructive and represent decline and decadence goes back to Plato. In essence and applied to our time, outlined mostly in his dialogue 'Timaios,' the underpinning thought is that social and political evolution must always be tempered and corrected by the ideal ontological concepts of man and the various manifestations of his coexistence.

 

 The ancients also made us aware that a democratic republic is in constant danger of perishing due to the inability to deal responsibly with the core element of its political system - liberty. They showed us clearly that once a democracy transforms itself into an OCHLOCRACY, the reign of the mob, it is on its best way to coming apart.

 

When the mob of a society floods the streets, negates the laws and the order their elected representatives have stipulated for that very society, the state of political affairs has reached the eleventh hour. When the proletariat attempts to intimidate the government and openly threatens to overthrow it, the social community is about to descend into chaos and ungovernability. What awaits is tyranny!

 

This development is precisely the reason why so many commentators speak of an imminent civil war in the U.S. I felt compelled to point out that more than a year ago when the country faced the hatred and nasty obstructionism of the left in the wake of their loss in the presidential elections (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/07/a-sick-republic-yeah-dude-im-talking.html).

 

 As I pointed out, the stunning fact in the U.S.' case is that the societal mob does not only consist of disgruntled blue-collar workers or angry hordes of jobless people but rather recruits from all strata of society. It is made up and even led and represented by elected officials of the Democratic Party, supported by many neoconservatives and so-called Never-Trumpers and a considerable portion of the mainstream media and exponents of academia the world of arts and culture.

 

Examples of the rants of renowned people who have apparently lost their minds and probably never had morals are aplenty. They prove how unhinged and utterly unacceptable the discourse on the political left has become:

• Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who encouraged violent harassment of Trump supporters and White House Staff.
• Republican Senator Jeff Flake, Trump back-stabber and open-border advocate.
• HBO show host Bill Maher wished the economy to crash and the country to fail to get rid of Trump.
• Hollywood actor Robert de Niro, talking in front of high school kids of the elected president as a 'soulless, amoral, abusive, con-artist SOB.'

 

A significant part of the electorate shows disrespect for political institutions, offices, and regulations. Even worse, many elected representatives of both parties in executive and legislature at federal and regional levels do the same. They negate one of the prime features of democratic republics: that governing regimes alternate due to periodic electoral decisions. Without a doubt, ill-education and wrong morality have penetrated all strata of society.

 

 I gave an account of how immoral the political dialogue has become shortly after President Trump took office. Once the desperation of the far-Left had shown its real fascist face (https://edwinseditorial.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-tyranny-of-left.html), I made clear what brought about this sheer ubiquitous political illiteracy. I blamed the lack of classical art instruction as the primary cause for the utter lack of philosophical depth and wisdom in many areas of US-American politics.

 

 Let's make no mistake. Despite rapid technological advancements and the globalized connectedness of nations and peoples, only against the backdrop of a century-old and even millennia-old can the core elements of our civilizational social and political arrangements be understood appropriately. The condition of the human being per se – aside from driving cars, using smartphones, and moving in airplanes from continent to continent – has not changed.

 

We avail over the same faculties. We face identical physical and emotional needs. Besides a more substantial oeuvre of historical experience and scientific knowledge, human reasoning and the capacity for moral judgment have not improved. The hubris of progressivism is not only unwarranted but dangerous if developing unfettered and immune to the eternal wisdom of human efforts generated in philosophy, religion, and the fine arts.

 

 The most recent and still ongoing proof to that effect is the widespread ignorance regarding open borders and the bias in extending constitutional citizen rights onto not only foreigners who come to visit or temporarily work here but even onto individuals who entered and remain in the country illegally. It culminates in calls for abolishing ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, as the new battle-cry of the radical left.

 

 In their desperation over Trump being president and, in several policy areas relevant to people, quite successful at it, the progressives move ever further to the left. But as we know, in these times of deranged minds and hearts, hateful obstructionism, and fabricated false news and accusation, there is no limit as to how far the left can go. And the further the left moves leftwards, the more space is being built for blaming even the most reasonable political stances as far-right.

 

While the lunacy of the radical left seems to know no bounds, quite a few people recovered their senses and fled the Democratic Party. New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn went public and told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in an open letter that he will support President Trump and Republicans until "sanity and honesty to the Democratic Party" have been restored. Hikind accuses Schumer of launching "hard-right attacks" in a recent mailer while ignoring President Trump's "multiple policy victories." Hikind particularly mentions the unemployment at its lowest in decades and economic confidence at a 17-year high, including a record low for minorities.

 

 But these encouraging signs cannot deceive over the fact that for the left – including the neo-liberals and large cohorts of the neo-conservatives – the political struggle has become genuinely existential. As they are looking at the wreckage of their failed policies - pernicious globalist imperialism of interventions and regime-change operations in international relations; deconstruction of Christian values and weakening of the Westphalia Nation-State System domestically - they become ever more desperate. By the way, their policies' apparent failure was the actual reason why Donald Trump and conservative political administrations in Europe got elected.

 

The left claims that they occupy the moral and intellectual high ground in politics. In reality, they are only moralizing without having morals. Life's reality denies their social and political theories the only real proof for any intellectual concept's correctness – validation by success and improvement of human living conditions continuously at any level of coexistence.

 

 But the left's minds and hearts are neither troubled by the constant falsification of their theories by the chaos they create in real life, nor are they disturbed by the moral depravity of their positions. If it suits their goals, they disparage the sensible as reprehensible, the good as bad, and the American (or civilized) as un-American (or uncivilized). Their existential instinct to survive at all costs makes them relentless in their pursuit to bring down political opponents and whoever and whatever else might stand in their way. It also hinders them from acknowledging the deprivation their progressive policies have brought over the U.S. and the entire Western civilization.

 

Indeed, Plato was right when he envisioned that progress must not be confused with improvement and betterment. If progress is pushed at all cost and develops unrestrained, without constructive criticism, and without being gauged against the backdrop of the timeless notions of justice and morality, it becomes a destructive and evil force. We have witnessed this development in recent years, if not decades, but it has accelerated to unsavory dimensions ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential elections.

 At least intuitively, the silent majority of Americans and people who live in western countries seem to be mindful of the wicked ways of the left and the damage caused to our societies' fabric. They voted accordingly and will continue to do so. But the struggle reached existential significance as to the future of our civilizational development – in this country and beyond.

The United States of America – Is a Hegemon Devouring Itself?

Half a year before last fall's presidential elections, I argued (see my blog essay "U.S. Presidential Elections and the Future of the West" https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2016/04/2016-us-presidential-election-and.html) that the fate of this country and the entire Western civilization will depend on its outcome. By denying Hillary Clinton the presidency, we must prevent a third term of Obama's Marxist-Globalist policies. The result was one I had predicted and hoped for; Trump won. In a follow-up essay, I explained how the U.S. and the world were supposed to get a respite from the insanity of previous years. 

But a look at Washington D.C. some eight months into Mr. Trump's presidency makes one wonder about wasted chances and failures to implement urgently needed policy promises. It appears that President Trump's pragmatic instincts succumbed to neoconservative imposition from within the White House as well as the Senate and the Congress.

 

Instead of vetoing it and signaling decisive course correction, a seemingly helpless Trump signed a sanctions bill on Russia and had himself bullied by the mainstream media into moral relativism and the absurdity of designating (fascist) right-wing violence worse than (equally fascist) left-wing violence. He disregarded the Virginia governor and Charlottesville mayor's lawlessness, both of whom intentionally and purposefully let a demonstration turn violent by ordering police forces to stand down. 

While fortunately proclaiming the end of nation-building and democracy export, Mr. Trump caved to the pressure for a troop surge in Afghanistan and the continuation of U.S. presence there. 

 

The malice of Never-Trumpers and the hateful obstructionism of Democrats and neoconservative Republicans appear to force Trump to continue the past two decades' terrible policy failures. He seems, at least partially, to abandon the promises he ran on in his presidential campaign. 

 

Given my political philosophy expertise and my participation in educational efforts in Eastern and Southeastern Europe after the end of the Cold War, I have tried to get in touch with the Trump administration since campaign times, particularly since its inauguration. But, alas, to no avail. I admit that I felt the need to do something about Washington's overbearing strategic blunder that has caused so much damage to global affairs. And I was sure that only President Trump gave hope to overcome and defeat the previous administration's wrong ways (after Rand Paul as the best suited among the Republican establishment candidates had dropped out). 

 

As repeatedly addressed in my blog essays, I sensed the lack of philosophical depth in U.S. politics. I had observed the mistakes ill-educated and ideologically disoriented politicians and advisors, liberals as well as neocons, had perpetrated time and again, and from whose apparent failures they refused to learn. I witnessed how the establishment of a post-Cold War New World Order started as an initially well-intended and seemingly meaningful project. In 1991, the transatlantic alliance instituted close relations with Russia in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council/NACC (later on named Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council/EAPC). The creation of NATO/Partnership for Peace (PfP) in 1994 intended to expand the alliance's reach to meet the new challenges Out-of-Area in close cooperation with Russia. 

I shared the initial enthusiasm for building a new stable and just world order by providing educational input in multiple undertakings within the PfP framework. Sadly, those good relations soon became perverted by nothing else than Washington's geostrategic arrogance and hubris.

Propaganda from both sides aside, relations began to sour due to aggressive power projection and the increasing neglect and alienation of Russia's and other global players' strategic and economic interests by the U.S. and its European and NATO allies. Of course, this carelessness happened in combination with the old strategic ploy for vindicating one's unjust policies by reversing actual cause-effect relations. As so often before in history, it resulted in the grounding of U.S. foreign affairs and national security policies on intentional misconceptions and outright lies. While the U.S. pushed NATO closer to Russia's borders and engaged in ever-bolder imperialism, it blamed Russia precisely for what it was doing itself. 

 

Two cases may exemplify this reversal of facts and the blaming of an alleged and yet never existing so-called "Russian aggression" and Mr. Putin's dream of reinstating the boundaries of the "Old Soviet Empire." In the summer of 2008, after Georgia invaded South Ossetia, a tiny province that had won its independence in the 1990s, and Georgian artillery had killed Russian peacekeepers, the Russian army entered and chased the Georgians back into their own country. Since then, Russia has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, very much to the chagrin of the U.S. and the U.N.  

The aggressor was not Vladimir Putin but Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, a megalomaniac and now stateless sociopath who had been brought to power in 2004 by one of the US-engineered color-coded revolutions, at the time under Bush II. By annexing those two provinces, Georgia as an ally to the West would have enlarged its national territory and moved NATO-friendly terrain closer to Russian borders, despite a tendency in those provinces that broke from Georgia in the early 1990ies for ethnic and other reasons, to instead ally with Russia. The same applied to Transnistria and Moldova, both of which show interested in joining the Russian Federation. Thus, the question arises, astutely asked by Pat Buchanan, why in a time of peoples' self-determination, the U.S. (and the transatlantic community for that matter) support every ethnic group or fledgling republic that secedes from Russia, but considers any ethnic group or little state moving toward Russia a threat, a traitor, and insinuates it could only take place because of Russian imperialism? The only viable answers are:

 

• A paranoid and untenable Russophobia endures in Washington.
• A misconceived strategic design for a post-Cold War global setting dominates national security circles.
• An astounding lack of any sound political philosophy of international relations abounds among Washington's elites who to this day impose their unreasonable concepts on the White House and the U.S. State Department. 

 

 The distorted narrative on foreign affairs and Russia's role is kept alive by the paranoid Washington elites at all costs. It became tangible in early August this year when the honorable Vice-president Pence, speaking in Montenegro, the tiny nation in the Balkans that had just become the newest member of NATO. He repeated the apparent national security lies about Russia vis-à-vis Georgia. As was to expect, he also replicated the falsehoods about Ukraine to justify the offensive deployment of forces and missiles to Poland and the Czech Republic, and other Eastern European Nations. In Ukraine, President Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup, which had ousted a democratically elected political ally of Russia. He bloodlessly seized the pro-Russian Crimea where Moscow's Black Sea fleet was present by Treaty. The West alienates Russia and Putin now over a reaction it could have easily foreseen, had it only pursued just and wise policies that acknowledge the existential interests of other global players. I commented on all this in more detail in several earlier blog entries ('Russophobia - Achilles' Heel of US-Russia Relations of February 17, 2017, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/02/us-russia-relations-russo-phobia.html and 'Ukraine - Another Failure of Western Interventionism' of February 22, 2015, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/02/another-failure-of-western.html).

 

Not Russia, but the U.S. has become the primary threat to world peace and global stability through aggressive policies of indifferent power projection that neglected legitimate geopolitical and geostrategic claims of other international players. Over the last two decades, the old buffers of the Soviet Union toward the West, most of all Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and not to forget the Baltic States, have all become full-fledged NATO members; with only minor diplomatic resistance from Russia and clearly no intent to invade those countries or reinstate the boundaries of the old Soviet bloc. It is of strategic importance for Russia and a core consideration for her national interest to keep Ukraine, an important geopolitical region that it designated the 'Near Abroad' somehow in a militarily neutral state. 

 

But the foreign relations experts in Washington do not rest contented with all the strategic blunder on the ground and in military terms. They pair their misguided policies with economic foolishness by way of economic warfare through sanction regimes that impact not only the U.S. but allies and partners in Europe and beyond as well. Just ignorant politicians could jubilee over the significant disruption of Russia's economy, the Ruble's inflation, and working "trade barriers." What they forget or perhaps willfully put on the line is the fact that the European Union is, by far, Russia's leading trade partner and accounts for about fifty percent of all Russian exports and imports and seventy-five percent of all foreign investments in Russia. From whatever angle, it sure comes at too high a price to prop Russia as an artificial enemy for one's own failed imperialism and as the scapegoat for a presidential election's unsuccessful outcome. After all, the presidential candidate herself as secretary of state had caused the blunder in cooperation with the presidential predecessor. 

The opposite of what the strategic calculus of Washington wanted to achieve is happening – not only is the global standing of the U.S. diminishing, but the hegemonic superpower harms itself in various policy fields. Putin increasingly writes off the U.S. and the West and enters into a Russian-Chinese strategic alliance. And if Washington continues to ignore and alienate Russia, the European Union and individual European countries will have to weigh their commitment to the North-Atlantic Alliance against their own economic and security interests. The latter process is what has commenced in Europe right now. It is relatively easy to comprehend that if Washington is not coming to its senses, a continuation of this policy will drive a wedge into transatlantic relations. 

 

Will President Trump be able to stand up against all these war-mongering and Russia-hating Democrats, Neoconservative Senators and Congressmen, Brass-Officer advisors, and Military-Industrial lobbyists? Will he bring home the troops from Afghanistan and Syria and end the aggressive posture of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern and southeastern Europe and the Baltic Region? After all, he was elected to complete the conglomerate of provocative, aggressive, and, indeed, unethical policies the United States has pursued in recent years.  

 

Not forget we must that the appalling course of U.S. foreign affairs policy of late runs parallel to the deterioration of internal politics in the United States. The civil war over ideas and convictions – a real culture war – is in full swing and seems to intensify day by day. Relentlessly dishonest and Trump-hating news outlets push it, above all CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, and, the most abysmal and painfully foolish of all, MSNBC. The degree of disinformation and corruption is mind-boggling in its unreasonableness and almost inconceivable in its blatant immorality. The Washington swamp is real. It is so bad that certain commentators even identify an ongoing silent coup to oust Trump by the joint conspiracy of mainstream media, deep-state exponents, liberal politicians, and radical left-wing interest groups. The latter, who organize protests wherever Trump appears and carry out counter-demonstrations with the explicit aim to instigate violence, which they blame on Trump, are funded by billionaires like George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg. 

 

The pigheadedness of never-Trumpers and all those politicians, pundits, and commentators who were so wrong about Trump never being able to win the presidency seems boundless. These people give precedence to their stubbornness and political and ideological inertia over the nation's best interest. Insight into one's wrongs and judgment errors, learning from mistakes and wising up, and notions like critical self-reflection no longer count or even exist in certain people's consciousness. Instead, they are doubling down on stances that experience has proven wrong. Unprecedented obstructionism not only from the opposition party but from the GOP's ranks – the most despicable example provided by the traitor senator John McCain on the repeal vote on the Affordable Care Act – dominate the domestic political landscape. 

 

 A look into U.S. politics, not even a year into Trump's presidency, reminds one of a young and fledgling republic in some Third World region of the globe. In the previous blog essay entitled 'A Sick Republic' of July 5, 2017 (https://edwinseditorial.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-sick-republic-yeah-dude-im-talking.html), I outlined the parameters of this profoundly flawed political system and the unmatched decay of intellectual and moral political standards in the U.S., which continues to push the nation toward more violence and outright civil war. 

 

Who or what could remedy this state of affairs of division and hatred in the United States society that goes far beyond any acceptable measure a functioning republic could withstand in the long run? How can we overcome this mental tyranny of the left that denounces everybody and everything running counter to their views? How can we break the vicious collaboration of forces on the political left to remove Trump from office, even at the cost of throwing this country into mayhem and internal violent conflict? The only answer I can come up with is "success." 

 

 To improve relations and defeat obstructionism, President Trump and his allies in Senate and Congress will have to be successful in pulling off a significant tax reform for businesses and working citizens. Furthermore, they will have to push through a decisive modification of the healthcare system, in both cases with immediate and tangible results that can no longer be hidden from the public, not even by hostile news media outlets. A new paradigm in foreign and security affairs is overdue. It should feature pragmatic strategic prudence and restraint rather than globalist adventurism. The U.S. has to disentangle from the continued involvement in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and bring troops home. It should abandon regime change interventionism and come to a new understanding in US-Russia relations. These steps should enable the nation to recover and find political and social stability. 

 

The United States finds itself at a crucial crossroads at this point. The significance of the moment goes far beyond saving Mr. Trump's presidency and marks a juncture that determines the future not only of this nation but the future direction of Western civilization as a whole. 

 

Let's make no mistake. The election of Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the U.S. came at a point of existential significance as to the future course of our civilizational development. It is the defining moment of decision between, on the one hand, liberal-Marxist globalism in conjunction with cultural decadence and the rise of moral relativism in ever more secularized social milieus; and in contrast, on the other hand, the furtherance of orderly (international) relations among sovereign nations with western countries grounding their pluralism in traditional morality and a minimal nucleus of their Christian heritage. 

 

It is clear before the power of our reasoning that both opposing sides in this ongoing culture war over principles and values cannot claim the same amount of validity for how they envisage our Western-style democracies' future path. Opposing concepts in all kinds of social and political realms – immigration, the rule of law, gender and race relations, education, economics, international affairs, etc. - cannot be equally meaningful. The course of social and political 'progressivism' that we have witnessed in recent years is either the right one for a prosperous future or a pernicious concept that destroys our societies and our civilization in its entirety. Yet, who could honestly believe, considering the evidence of societal mayhem, confusion, and polarization regarding open border globalism in recent years, that cultural progressivism is the right way as we advance? 

 

It might be wise for the left to end their demonization of conservative politics and specifically of President Trump, and give the man and his program a chance to succeed. But for this to happen would require the mainstream media to stop its one-sided anti-Trump crusade and bethink their exact principal role as an unbiased and objective interface for information and dialogue between people and government. 

Furthermore, perhaps even more importantly, it will take the ceasing of obstructionist efforts from certain Republicans in Congress. Full support of Mr. Trump's by his party, whose representatives have to set aside personal vanities and sanctimonious reservations, and a constructive political opposition that recovers at least some minimal sense of fairness decency, appear to be immediate requirements for success. 

 

The period of trial and error and political and social experimentation with the radical ideas of the left, domestically and internationally, has to end. It is high time that the Washington elites and stakeholders come to their senses, intellectually and morally, and refocus on this country's common good, which is so closely related to the entire western hemisphere's well-being.