Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way wrote an article under the title: “America’s Coming Age of Instability,” and the subtitle: “Why Constitutional Crises and Political Violence Could Soon Be the Norm.” It was published on January 20, 2022 in Foreign Affairs.
While this is a well thought out piece, you can think of
it as describing only the beginning of something much bigger than the two
writers dared to imagine. What they did was study what happened to the
countries of Eastern Europe that tried democracy but then rejected it either
fully or partially. They saw differences between the methods that were adopted
by each country, pinpointed those that might be duplicated in America, and came
up with a construct they called, “Competitive Authoritarianism.” And the two
writers predicted that this kind of regime will become the norm in America.
To describe blow by blow how events will probably unfold
in America before reaching that dreaded end, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, said
this:
“America will likely
be marked by heightened political violence. Extreme polarization and intense
partisan competition generate violence, and indeed, the United States
experienced a spike in far-right violence during Trump’s presidency. The United
States could experience a rise in assassinations, bombings, and other terrorist
attacks; armed uprisings; mob attacks; and violent street
confrontations—tolerated and incited by politicians. Such violence might
resemble that which afflicted Spain in the early 1930s, Northern Ireland during
the Troubles, or the American South during and after Reconstruction”.
Yes, it is not too difficult to imagine that America may
drift far enough into chaos to find itself in a situation such as that. But
unlike those countries or even America of the Reconstruction era, the
peculiarities of today’s America — seen as the spark that will cause an explosion — will have worldwide reverberations to rival those
of the French and Russian Revolutions.
For one thing, the nations of Eastern Europe, Spain,
Northern Ireland and the American Deep South of the nineteenth century are
different from the America of the twenty first century in many respects. First
and foremost, those countries have populations that enjoy a high degree of
homogeneity in terms of ethnicity, language, color of the skin and religion,
whereas America’s population is extremely diverse in all these categories. If
today, all these people see each other as Americans, tomorrow each of them will
see the other as the enemy that must be vanquished.
Whereas the firearms in the hands of past revolutionaries,
were few and not as efficient as those of today, the number of guns in the
hands of present-day Americans exceeds the size of the population. And the new
weapons are of such variety and killing efficiency, a single machine-gunner
today could take on a platoon of old-time musketeers and vanquish them hands
down. Now imagine millions of contemporary revolutionaries equipped with this kind
of weaponry, going at each other from sea to bloody sea.
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way think that America’s
transformation from democratic to autocratic will more or less follow the
pattern of the Eastern European countries, but that the people’s dissatisfaction
that will follow the happening, will make America resemble Northern Ireland or
Spain of the early 1930s. Well, if this happens—whether or not the abundance of firearms in America will
make it look more like the Lebanese or Yemeni civil wars—America will not experience the happy ending that the
Spaniards and the Irish were lucky enough to see and celebrate at the end of
their ordeal.
The reason for that is simple to understand. Today, the
American people live a life of plenty and one of luxury when compared to most
others. Americans live this life thanks to the amenities which are made
available by the industries, the organizations and the people that run these
places. Let a prolonged disturbance take the comfortable life away from them,
and you’ll see the businessmen — that had no compunction relocating their businesses
abroad during good times — flee America
as fast as the draft dodgers fled the country during the Vietnam War, and go
live elsewhere. They will no longer sing: Home sweet home, America. Their new
love will be England or Switzerland or even China or Vietnam.
On their way out, these people will have dumped the
dollars they used to keep in their American bank accounts, and will have converted
them into gold and other currencies. The dollar will go down to zero, and the
people staying in America will not have the purchasing power to import from
abroad even the bare necessities of life.
So, while savage revenge will have filled the hearts of
these people, guess who they will blame for the misery that was heaped on them
and their country. You guessed it; they will blame the Jews. And with all the
guns they have in their hands, and all the bullets they have stashed away in
their basements, you can guess what will happen next.
But relax, my friend, because nothing says the scenario
for America must unfold as described. Still, it behooves us not to restrict
ourselves to historical events, or believe that these are the only possible outcomes
awaiting America. The reason is that America is a different place from those
described in the history books, and our time is different from the past. It
offers opportunities for salvation beside the opportunities for destruction
that will make the past look like child’s play.