And now, an analysis of where we in America have arrived, courtesy of an historian and fan of entertainment allegories to try and help us understand the point.
Long read, but worth the investment in time because I think his analysis is one to consider in terms of what you are watching unfold before your eyes in this country. Bottom line is that the norms of what we have known all of our lives in terms of politics and culture in this country - are gone. We have forgotten why things were set up the way they were - and the institutions that preserve both liberty and the peace are corrupted and broached. The peace and trust has been broken and the old things that held us together are no longer there.
I've excerpted the key things he says that resonate and are a good cause for consternation. I was largely ignorant of the civil war in Biafra, Nigeria, and I had not read Achebe's book, but I am going to find myself a copy.
Things Fall Apart
Ogbuef Ezedudu, who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men when they came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan.
“It has not always been so,†he said. “My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. but after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve.â€
― Chinua Achebe, “Things Fall Apart†(1958)
...Do we settle with the guy we hate? Do we voluntarily pay the heavy price for breaking the “norms†of conflict with a guy who we suspect wouldn’t hesitate to break any norm at all? Little Carmine’s comic relief notwithstanding, we all believe that we are at the precipice of an enormous crossroad in American politics. But what if it’s not a choice at all? What if the choice has already been made for us? What if we are immersed in a competitive equilibrium of a competitive game, where the only rational choice is to go to the mattresses? To do unto others as they would do unto you … but to do it first. What then?
...I mean that, just like the Romans of Gibbon’s history and just like the Africans of Achebe’s novel and just like the mobsters of the Sopranos, we have long forgotten the horrors of literal war and why we constructed these cooperatively-oriented institutions in the first place. We are content instead to trust that the Peace of Ani or the Peace of the Five Families or the Pax Romana or the Pax Americana is a stable peace – a stable equilibrium – where we can all just focus on living our best lives and eking out a liiiiitle bit of relative advantage
...What’s the difference between a President Trump and an Emperor Commodus? Commodus didn’t have cruise missiles for his Syrian theatrics. That’s really about the extent of it.
And it’s not Trump per se, although Trump – like Phil Leotardo or Commodus – is the apotheosis of what I’m talking about. If it weren’t Trump, it would be someone just as ridiculous. It WILL be someone just as ridiculous in the future, probably someone on the other side of the political spectrum, someone like Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris. See, I am an equal opportunity connoisseur of ridiculous politicians. I’d say don’t @me, all you Trumpkins and Good Leftie Soldiers alike, but it won’t do me any good. Ah, well. That’s the thing about an equilibrium. That’s the thing about a widening gyre.
...One of the big points of Epsilon Theory is to call things by their proper names, to speak clearly about what IS. And what America IS today is a two-party political system with high-peaked bimodal electorate preferences. So long as that is the case, we will be whipsawed between extremist candidates of the Right and the Left. Our choices for president in 2020 will be The Mule and Madame Defarge. Enjoy.
I say “enjoy†because I can’t help but use snark in my despair. But the truth is … and again, this is what a bimodal electorate preference distribution means … a significant majority of Americans will enjoy very much, thank you, a choice between The Mule and Madame Defarge. Or as all the pundits will say on TV, “the base sure is excitedâ€, and that will be true for both Democrats and Republicans.
So why do I despair? Primarily because I think that the policy agendas on both extremist sides are an absolute dumpster fire, and that lurching from stem to stern on fiscal policy and social policy and national defense is a really crappy way to run a country. All I can hope for is gridlock.
But secondarily I despair because, as much as a significant majority of Americans will want and will enjoy a contest of extremists in 2020, an even larger majority of Americans will be very unhappy with whoever wins. A bimodal electorate preference distribution doesn’t just go away on its own. It doesn’t just get better over time. It is a widening gyre. It gets worse over time, as more and more extremist candidates, full of passionate intensity, strut and fret their hour upon the stage. That’s a mixed poetic metaphor, but you get my point. The widening gyre, as Yeats put it so perfectly, is a period of mere anarchy, not special or momentous anarchy. It is a tale told by, if not idiots, then ridiculous people, full of sound and fury and ultimately accomplishing nothing.
