The problem a victorious United States faced back when I arrived as a schoolboy was how to create a functioning global system out of the wreckage of two world wars. Luckily, men like Truman, Eisenhower, and John Dulles ran the show. The last of these was convinced that an ideological offensive against America’s adversaries was more important than a nuclear one.
I am writing this with the midterm election results in mind, and recalling a not very convincing euphemism used by Emperor Hirohito in 1945 when he announced, “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” The Trump group should keep this in mind and try to mirror the emperor’s dignity in defeat.
Dignity has been rather absent of late, and what saddened me after the Republican drubbing reminded me of Europe instead of America. Over on the old continent, the winners’ first action is to punish the losers. On this side of the ocean, things in the past played out differently. I remember well the dignity of Richard Nixon after losing to JFK in 1960, and declining to publicly challenge the results in Illinois and Texas for the good of the process and of the nation. Watching those Democrats and their buddies in the media brag how they’re going to put the screws on the Trumpists reminded me of my birthplace, when the newly elected socialist firebrand Andreas Papandreou named names—including that of my father—that his party was going to go after. (They failed.)
But back to Eisenhower and Dulles, and the latter’s plans to win hearts and minds rather than nuke them. He saw the Cold War as a potential source of spiritual and social revival. In other words, a chance to make America a place others would wish to emulate, not attack. Back then, both Republicans and Democrats shared a basic idea on how America should behave.
Mind you, Dulles’s brother Allen, head of the CIA, was doing things that diverged from the vision of his older sibling. Mysterious coups and assassinations in various small countries south of our border went unmentioned in polite society, and it cost me a wonderful evening with the beautiful Bella Arbenz in Paris, when just as we were about to retire I said how glad I was to hear that a certain strongman in Guatemala had been overthrown. (It was her father, and the CIA was responsible, and I was thrown out of her flat rather rudely.)
Never mind. David Ellison’s Paramount, Warner and CBS, plus CNN and affiliates will now go all out to maintain the image of Israel as a victim of Iran and of the Palestinians. Bari Weiss, who in Second World War parlance would be described as a fifth columnist, will make sure Israel appears the victim on newscasts. It is now up to Trump to keep America from falling further into the trap he has put us in with his real estate sharks. Just think. His second term has been destroyed by his flawed judgement of people and nations. Suckered into attacking Iran by the Israelis and his slumlord buddies, he could have had it all: a closed southern border, the end of woke, cheap gas, plus personal popularity. Now, the gulf between deeply divided political and moral camps is as wide as it has ever been. What we should be aware of is that democracy can turn into mob rule by an ignorant, bullying majority, just as monarchy can degenerate into tyranny.
Needless to say, America today is not the same lady I first met back in 1948. She seems to have been dragged down from her ethical moorings, with open borders, men turning into women, people in the White House enriching themselves, bombing far away countries for no reason—I could go on. The evening before the election I watched a left-wing show on TV and it could have been a replica of one in 1943, with Jewish Americans discussing Hitler and what a horror Germany had become. They were talking about Trump and the US of A today.
See what I mean about going back to nicer, gentler people and political climates? I suppose the far more nonwhite country of today can never go back to the one that greeted me back then, but promoting Third World mass migration is not the answer to our diminishment. Those promoting such matters do not feel any connection to the country’s traditional identity but fantasize instead about some kind of global unity nonsense. If they ever succeed, as they well might, all they will have achieved is an irrelevant America.
So, what’s the point of all this? Easy. Instead of Europe becoming more and more like America, we’re becoming more and more like the old continent. A pity.
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