The Current Election is Evidence That The United States is Crumbling

"If you had to choose a moment in time to be born, any time in human history, and you didn't know ahead of time what nationality you were or what gender or what your economic status might be, what time would you choose? Paleolithic? Neolithic? Ancient Greece or Rome? Medieval times? Elizabethan England? Colonial America? The 1950s? You'd choose today." "We are fortunate to be living in the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history- it's been decades since the last war between major powers. More people live in democracies. We're wealthier and healthier and better educated, with a global economy that has lifted up more than a billion people from extreme poverty." So spoke President Obama this spring and by any big picture, historical, objective analysis he's quite correct. This generation of Americans has real cause to be satisfied with their resiliency, proud of their outsized prosperity and influence in the world, and optimistic about their prospects in the 21st Century. This excellent 4% of the world's population hordes 25% of the planet's resources, compels a quarter of the world to do business with their currency, in their language, on their terms, dominates the seas with the largest navy by an order of magnitude, dominates the skies with the largest air force by an order of magnitude, maintains bases on every continent while suffering no foreign footholds on their own soil, exports American values and culture on a scale unmatched by any prior empire and enjoys a standard of living unmatched in human history. Whatever is to come, when chroniclers write their narratives of the early 21st century, they will begin and end their stories with the United States. If American preeminence does crumble now (as the law of entropy demands it must, eventually) it will only be because the American people now refused to perceive the American advantage, now refused to confront the challenge of the future, now refused to believe the American Dream. In contradiction to Pro, I will argue that America is not crumbling, that this nation is as well positioned for future prosperity as any other if only we resolve, as generations before us have, to adapt and innovate in response to each new problem, to survive in unity in response to each new crisis. I submit that Pro's thesis indulges in a self-reinforcing pessimism, unjustified by the present state of the Union or the uninspirational nature of the presidential race. Case in point: Pro believes that the two front-runners for the are alike in authoritarian tendency but will vote for Trump to buy the people time until an "actual" (presumably less authoritarian) candidate can be elected. This rationalization fails on at least 3 measures: 1) By any objective test, Pro prefers the candidate demonstrating the most authoritarian vision of executive power- not just more authoritarian than any other candidate in 2016, but more authoritarian than any candidate since MacArthur. 2) If Pro truly believes both front-runners are unacceptably authoritarian in outlook, why not vote for another candidate? Gary Johnson, for example, is a sufficiently qualified candidate running almost exclusively on a "weak executive" platform. 3) By definition, authoritarian governments suppress the advancement of rivals for leadership, so voting for an authoritarian contradicts the notion of "buying time" for a more perfect candidate. Not only do I refute that both front-runners are alike in authoritarian promise, I also deny that any authoritarian tendency in a presidential candidate is always anti-democratic. A little authoritarianism is not necessarily undesirable in a presidential candidate: we are, after all, electing a Commander-in-chief, a chief executive. Like our justice system or our economic system, our Federal Govt is designed to be competitive and adversarial. Effective administrators tend to extend authority to the maximum extent, relying on effective judicial and legislative constraints to set the boundaries. Our best remembered presidents, Washington, Lincoln, FDR all exceeded their mandates in response to crisis. They are well remembered not because of their self-restraint but because they permitted constraint and surrendered power when the crisis had passed and their terms expired. I contend that the strength of our democracy is less tested by the relative quality of presidential candidates than by challenges to our system of checks and balances. We may well be tested by constitutional crisis in the next presidential term. Whoever is our next president, calls for impeachment, nomination struggles, and profound political struggles are quite likely. The evidence Pro seeks will be found in degree to which the three estates play by the rules of engagement and respect the results. The Roman Republic did not die because Julius Caesar refused to surrender his legions but because the SPQR was unwilling to unseat Augustus after the Civil War. Support for an authoritarian candidate does not necessarily prove a weaker democracy but failing to limit that president might. In truth, presidential elections are far more potent symbolically than politically, a collective gesture of the National will. Reagan raised taxes and increased the govt by 8% but his presidency is nevertheless remembered as iconically "small government." Few questioned Bush 41's competency but he was denied a second term as an anti-tax protest. Obama's electoral appeal in '08 was primarily symbolic. In this sense of the election, women- in spite of their long-standing majority in the electorate (and permanent majority in the population) are today afforded their first real opportunity to elect a representative from the ranks of that majority. To the extent that Hillary symbolizes the potential end of 240 years of disenfranchisement from the highest ranks of power for most of America, this election seems like the dawning of democracy, not collapse. Pro's complaint is very traditional and rather tired- if no candidate promotes my particular agenda sufficiently, I am unrepresented and democracy has failed. But democracy does not depend on the perfection of ambitious politicians, we'd be long gone if it did. Democracy depends on our commitment to our fellow citizens- to sustain our institutions, to contribute our best, to protect one another, to be fair in prosperity and courageous in crisis, to survive together and teach the next generation how we survived. This Union will survive so long as we see ourselves as democracy's keepers.