The Decline of Political Order
Trying to sum up Francis Fukuyama’s Summa Politica: The Origins of Political Order(620 pages) and Political Order and Political Decay (672 pages) is presumptuous. So I won’t.
However, I urge consulting this magnificent and comprehensive study of politics by the author of The End of History for excellent insights into what is happening to America in the present Trumpian age.
He begins his study of politics in tribal times through the founding of the first state in ancient China through succeeding civilizations in India and the Near East, then Greece and Rome, through medieval Europe and the Ottoman Empire, the French Revolution, and into the modern nation states of Industrial Revolution and the Globalization of Liberal Democracy which Hegel would have celebrated as the End of History.
It’s a spectacular read which I recommend to all who want to reflect on today’s events.
Out of this study emerges a model that Fukuyama uses to understand the past and present meaning of political order. Here is his model slightly modified to meditate the relationships among its components.
This helps me gain insight into today’s particular events and opens to me the possibilities of concerted action for the future.
There are three elements (in blue) in the development of political order — the order by which a plurality of persons can live and act in the world. 1) accountable government, 2) the rule of law, and 3) the state bureaucracy — the offices that carry out the laws by which government achieves the decisions of people, explicitly or tacitly to maintain the order by which people live and act together.
Economy and its growth maintain and promotes the livelihood of the members of a social order. The social order is the process by which people mobilize and constitute the relationships among themselves to promote the maintenance of their life and their personal and collective happiness. This order and its structured process is legitimated, given meaning, and sanctified in the origin myths, philosophies, stories, cultural expressions of the people who member the social order. These three dimensions I insert in my diagram (yellow).
The elements of political order and their effects evolve in the interactions of the members of society in the development of the political order including the structure of the state, the government and its accountability, and the extent of its prescriptions in law. In the Trumpian era of the US, all three if these elements, State, Rule of Law, and Accountability, lead to the decline of the American political order.
State. The State has been diminished starting with the attack on government, not only the failings of its leadership and policies, but the very institution of government itself. This began in my time with the Reagan doctrine that “government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem.” The libertarian movement of corporations over against the Progressive movements of the Roosevelts, then embodied in the “Tea Party Movement” took over the Republican Party to install Trump and his enablers. All this has diminished the trust in government and its institutions. Today government workers are considered entrenched in the “deep swamp,” obstacles to citizens in achieving their rights and parity as persons of color and aliens hold back traditional citizens.
Rule of Law. To overcome the excesses of government and its favoring of those who turn to government to achieve health, income, housing, citizenship, and opportunity, Trumpian enablers with private sector backing promote a nationalism, that puts Americans first. True Americans are understood as “Christian” white Anglo males and their women, in the tradition of the white supremacist confederacy, the anti-socialist McCarthy and John Birch Society, and the know-nothing, anti-alien movements. To overcome the institutions of government that prevent individuals and private militias to achieve a Christian state as they understand it and to maintain control over illegal aliens and immoral low class people and perverts who promote homosexuality, feminism, and socialism, here is need for a powerful leader who will rule with force. This leader is not subject to the laws that are facilitating the perversions of the moral order. He needs to be seen as appointed by God to clean up the social order and return America to its former greatness.
Accountability. The civil societies and the free press who take it upon themselves to hold institutions accountable in the achievement of their purpose and the mission of the nation, as they understand it, are under fire in the Trumpian age. Those who dissent are considered disloyal traitors. Cities and non-profit organizations who speak and act to use and strengthen the environmental protection agency, the fair housing administration, voting rights and affirmative action, immigrant and refugee support, food and drug administration, are considered liberal do-gooders at best and dangerous troublemakers at worst. Sanctuary cities and counties, labor organizations, whistleblowers against the President, feminists and queers are anti-American.
Just as acquired and chosen habits, virtues and vices, constitute the character of persons, so do institutions for good and evil constitute and character of a community and nation. The shaping of institutions through critical thinking and action is the product of politics. When these institutions decay and are no longer accountable or trusted by the society they affect and even effect, the political order declines.
In the diagram of the political order above, Fukuyama represents three components (in yellow) of human political behavior and their progression through growth and decay: economic growth, social mobilization, and cultural cohesion. The decay of American and world political order, cited by Fukuyama in the Afterward of his magnum opus written and published before the election of Trump, now culminates in the Trumpian State. This is demonstrated in 1) global libertarian economic behavior resulting in gross inequities, 2) social mobilization that factions people and nations into winners and losers, us and them, and 3) loss of the democratic faith, human aspiration towards transcending possibilities, and the forfeiture of the spirit of citizenship in nations united for the common good.
The language of American and many world leaders appealing to followers has become vicious, accusatory, fractious, and indecent. Political speech is in bumper sticker slogans and internet tweets that name and blame without critical thinking: theist vs atheist, pro-choice vs pro-life, religious vs secular, committed vs doubtful.
The decay of the American political order is evident at this moment of our history. The seeds of that decay have always been sprouting from the arrival of the first slave ship with which an economy was built, the oppression of women and the original inhabitants of what we have come to call America, the wars between states grasping for economic advantage and imposing factional and religious dogma by those claiming divine inspiration. But the seeds of growth have always been with us as well.
Through my reading of history, I have discovered a capacity in humanity aspiring for “freedom and justice for all” in momentary, temporary, and particular events. Through my study of science and philosophy of mind, I discover this capacity is built into our DNA — our genetic and mimetic evolution for political order that is inclusive, transformative, transcending. It can and does, from time to time, spark new beginnings which is the essence of political growth.
It is to these seeds of growth I turn to next.