A couple of weeks ago, Argentina was sliding fast towards a very big cliff. Had it not been for Donald Trump, she would have gone over it, an event which would have had disastrous consequences for a large proportion of her inhabitants who, in the view of left-leaning North Americans, would have thoroughly deserved such an unhappy fate because they let Javier Milei, a dreadful man who likes Trump, become president.
After bitterly attacking the man they loathe for refusing to send more aid to foreign countries, most of which are ruled by dictatorial governments that seem to meet with their approval, Democrat politicians are now berating him on blatantly nationalistic grounds for helping Argentina. In strident tones, they demand more protection for US farmers whose livelihoods are being threatened by the fearful Argentine soybean juggernaut and more government handouts for the inner-city poor.
Such contradictions are standard fare in times as confusing as the ones we are living through. In all democratic societies, even supposedly high-minded politicians feel obliged to woo voters by blaming whatever might displease them on the folly, or worse, of their adversaries, and by backing Milei at a critical moment, Trump provided his foes with an excuse to give him a taste of the "America First" rhetoric he has used to such effect.
It is unlikely to help them much. The Democratic Party – which despite everything still enjoys the warm support of much of academia, most public employees and what these days are called “the legacy media” – whose once strong influence is waning, has yet to recover from the battering it received in last year’s US presidential elections after parting company with the bulk of the population. What is more, it clearly has no idea about how to repair a broken social order.
Needless to say, the United States is not the only country in which the recently dominant progressive elite is on the back foot. Something very similar is happening in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and other places where the results of immigration on an unprecedented scale from underdeveloped parts of the world are causing serious problems at a time when the local economies are stalling. Though in comparison with those on the other side of the Atlantic, the US economy continues to chug along at an enviable pace, it too could be heading for a huge crisis because the national debt refuses to stop growing.
As in Argentina, democratic governments everywhere are under pressure to spend more money than they can rake in. For decades, those who worry about such matters have been warning that it will all end in tears. Of late, fears that time is running out have greatly intensified in the United Kingdom and France, countries which, if alarmists are right, are approaching the brink of a cliff that looks just as steep as the one Argentina was rolling towards halfway through September.
The progressive consensus is that the biggest threat confronting democracy is the one posed by autocratic and allegedly “neo-fascist” or even “Hitler-adjacent” right-wingers such as Trump. Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and the leaders of the rapidly rising Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) party, but perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that it comes from the inability of most contemporary economies either to generate enough resources to allow governments to give people what they think they are entitled to or distribute what is available in a satisfactory manner.
After a long period in which almost everybody benefitted from overall growth, 20 or so years ago the developed world entered another one in which a dwindling minority reaped most of the rewards and the rest, those “left behind,” had to make do on what remained. It was thanks to the understandable disgruntlement among such people that Trump won the adherence of large swathes of the US population and others like him are on course to do the same in their own countries.
Do any of these politicians have valid answers to the big problems that are facing democratic societies? They could manage to appease electorates which are fed up with “multiculturalism” by putting an end to the uncontrolled influx of people from countries whose ways are incompatible with those of the West, but sending back the large numbers of individuals who entered when large-scale immigration was less controversial than it became would not be at all easy. In his speech to the UN General Assembly last week, Trump told the Europeans they should take a leaf from his book and set about expelling the people he thinks have no right to be where they currently are, but in Europe an equally aggressive equivalent of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency would be sure to face fierce armed resistance from members of the numerous Jihadist organisations that are on the counter-terrorist watch list.
Most rebels against the status quo want to turn the clock back to the days before newcomers from distant parts of the world started changing the communities they had been brought up in and before technological progress began eliminating fairly well-paid jobs for many millions of people who did not have special talents or useful connections.
Dealing with the harm attributed, rightly or wrongly, to mass immigration would be difficult but not impossible; reshaping economies so they benefit the average man and woman would be much harder. As far as most governments and their advisors are concerned, unless they take full advantage of the technological marvels that are coming down the pipeline, led by Artificial Intelligence, their country could quickly degenerate into a primitive backwater. On the other hand, if they embrace them with enthusiasm, the tensions caused by rapidly increasing inequality could soon have quite explosive consequences. Exactly how they will respond to that particular dilemma is anyone’s guess. Some think that putting most people on the dole would do the trick, but as the old adage has it, “the devil finds work for idle hands” – a society of loafers could be every bit as violent as the ones that are already riven by class conflicts and battles between different ethnic groups and bands of religious fanatics.
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