So American virtualism, Maçaes might reasonably argue, has actually done a better job of mastering the coronavirus challenge than European realism. Yes, the American tendency to make war on reality can look ridiculous and embarrassing, it can produce all kinds of weird partisan myths and extreme behaviors … but it’s also connected to greater optimism and wider imaginative horizons, both of which have contributed to America’s unfinished but faster-than-expected escape from the coronavirus era.
I think this is a plausible interpretation of recent events. But that’s as far as I can go with Maçaes, because merely proving that America is less decadent than Europe doesn’t prove that we’re on the cusp of a general American renaissance. In the particular case of the Covid vaccines, yes, our war on reality cashed out in actual real-world solutions to the pandemic. But I don’t see that achievement necessarily being duplicated in other realms where virtualism holds sway. What I see instead, relative to the American past, is a consistent failure to make the leap back to reality, to apply the fantasy to the world as it exists, in a way that succeeds in leaving an undeniable alteration, a fundamental mark.
This probably qualifies as a steel-manning. But the season has not started.
Something seems off about talking of Europe as some sort of integrated whole defined by commonality. Not even many European countries seem very unitary. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, all seem to have quite distinct and diverse cultural components. There is a wide range of thought and social outlook that not even the domineering EU’s authoritarian agenda has been able to entirely erase. Despite EU regulatory control of nearly every aspect of political and everyday life, human diversity survives.
I’ve not read the Maçães but it does seem related to the biography of Thomas Paine (yet another) that I happen to be reading. Paine too saw hopeful new beginnings in the supplanting of old, corrupt regimes with new forms of political organization. Douthat is right to look to Latin America, especially the constitutional convention in Chile, for a hopeful new future, yet, Europe too offers excellent examples of a progressive, populist way
forward to a better future.
Having here extolled too often the wonderful examples of Switzerland and the Netherlands, today I shall offer up Finland as a model to which the USA might aspire. Just named the most happy country for the fourth year running, Finland has much to be happy about. Wikipedia notes:
“Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life and human development. In 2015, Finland was ranked first in the World Human Capital and the Press Freedom Index and as the most stable country in the world during 2011–2016 in the Fragile States Index, and second in the Global Gender Gap Report.”
And:
“Finland has successfully fought against government corruption, which was more common in the 1970s and ’80s. For instance, economic reforms and EU membership introduced stricter requirements for open bidding and many public monopolies were abolished. Today, Finland has a very low number of corruption charges; Transparency International ranks Finland as one of the least corrupt countries in Europe.”
So clearly, in another league altogether than the third rate USA whose unhappiness leaves it ranked a dismal 19th.
What accounts for Finland’s thoroughly superior performance? The authors of the Happiness report sagely note:
“Autonomy and the freedom to make life choices are known to be connected to subjective well-being. For example, a study of 63 countries showed that the degree to which autonomy and individualism were valued in those countries was a more consistent predictor of well-being (measured with anxiety, burnout, and general health) than national wealth. Accordingly, the extent to which a country is able to provide individuals a sense of agency, freedom, and autonomy plays a significant role in explaining citizen happiness. Using World Values Survey data from 1981 to 2007, Inglehart et al. showed that rises in national levels of sense of free choice were associated with similar rises in national levels of subjective well-being, with change in free choice explaining about 30% of the change over time in subjective well-being. Other research has also demonstrated the importance of freedom to make life choices for national levels of happiness.”
https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/the-nordic-exceptionalism-what-explains-why-the-nordic-countries-are-constantly-among-the-happiest-in-the-world/
But what is it that gives the Finns so much higher quality autonomy and freedom? The simplest explanation is Finland’s populist constitution which embraces the rule of law is much more democratic and subject to popular sovereignty than the decrepit USA constitution. Wikipedia’s entry on the Constitution of Finland offers a lengthy section on the many reforms and improvements that the people of Sweden have made to their constitutional system, but most recently:
” The Commission completed its work on 17 June 1997, and during 1998, the bill was considered by the Constitutional Law Committee, which finally produced its unanimous report on the bill in January 1999. On 12 February, Parliament gave its approval for the Committee’s proposal for the new Constitution to be left in abeyance until after the parliamentary elections. The new Parliament elected in March 1999 approved the new Constitution in June that year and it was ratified by the President of the Republic.
The Constitution has since been amended a number of times, notably in 2011 to allow bills to be introduced in Parliament by popular petition and in 2017 to expand the access of police and intelligence services to private communications.”
Truly a legitimate and authentic “living constitution” uncorrupted by an autocratic Supreme Court. Indeed, the USA would do well to replace its SC with a Finnish model SC (18 justices, 5 judge panels, mandatory retirement age 68).
At any rate, only a populist consensus to embrace reform democratically through an orderly and inclusive pluralist process, as Finland has done and Chile is doing, will produce any sort of authentically hopeful future for the USA.
US seems only capable of addressing an issue when it smacks it right in the face and then appears to mobilize like a snowball going down hill.
Yes, does not point to US renaissance since reaction is to a crisis. Had US been prepared as it should have fo an event like Covid a different viewpoint of the Country might be warranted.
For now virtue signaling and kicking the can down the road(ie SS/Medicare) with regard to any number of challenges seems to be the case
Ross is certainly correct in many things:
Americans inhabit a world of reality television scripts and Marvel dramas, but that’s preferable to the Europeans who are living “in the moral ruins of Auschwitz,” unable to move on from their civilization’s twentieth century catastrophes, unable to be “fully free because we fear making the old mistakes.”
Reminding me that the ruins of WW I, The Great War (to end all war), gave rise to severe anti-Christian malaise among the intelligentsia. The fear of making the old mistakes is an undiscussed problem in both the EU, with Hitler/ neo-fascists, but also in America, with “white supremacy” being the Trump-hater’s new substitute target to allow them to feel morally superior. Claims of racism seems quite the fear of making the old mistake; and in some ways it’s worse when those claims are false.
One does have to smile at Ross’s effort on virtual sex:
sex, where fantasy hasn’t so much reshaped real intercourse as it has displaced it, the libidinal imagination of the Sexual Revolution giving way to the pounding repetitions of so much online porn.
I would sure be interested in steelman arguments comparing the Pill plus estrogen in the environment in changing sexual behavior & biology including fish sperm counts, as compared to online porn. (I would bet there’s big influences of both.)
Seeing Slovak Parliamentary parties and coalition agreements, not as bad as Israel yet not so great, makes me continue to think the US de facto two Party system is better for free people. (Israel’s 4th election in 2 years due 23 March) On net, with different plusses and minuses.
On a “new beginning”, Ross
won’t believe this new birth is happening until our dreamers and fantasists begin to build monuments at least as impressive as their 19th century predecessors,
I would bet that Ross doesn’t see this in his lifetime.
If Ross made such an offer would that be a “bet”?
Now I wonder about Musk and a trip to Mars, or ships built in space, or a colony on the Moon – and whether that wouldn’t count as a monument as least as impressive as those railroads and Civil War from the 1800s.
a colony on the moon
A prison with low gravity and no atmosphere. Not a very useful monument.
a trip to Mars
A cool thing once, but the moon with somewhat stronger gravity. Not much of a monument either.
This would be a MUCH stronger critique if you had included some “monument” you thought was both plausible in the next 2 decades, and was as impressive as 19th century monuments.
Ross also doesn’t specify what monuments he thinks are so impressive, so I can imagine both science progress and moral progress as “monuments”, but the Taj Mahal was done in 1653 (almost $1 billion in today’s money; would be 10x or more today).
For the life of the human species, we have had to worry about getting enough to eat, not dying of disease, trying to avoid being too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer, and having our children survive into adulthood. The “monuments” of the last two centuries have been to show that all those problems are mostly solvable. It is possible to produce enough so that every American has enough to eat, a roof over their head, and the reasonable prospect of living past 70.
These aren’t so much “low hanging fruit” as fruit everyone can agree on. But once you have all that, there is a real question of what comes next? In fact, part of what is now desired is to fix the “unintended consequences” of the monuments. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. from an abundance of food. Decrepit or demented old age as medical problems get treated so life is extended but the body continues to deteriorate. Lack of ambition from childhoods where everything is provided and nothing productive is required.
There are oodles of science fiction stories dealing with the less than noble consequences of possible technological change. Things like genetic engineering leading to people changing themselves like teen girls change their hair color, for fashion or frivolity.
There are some deep questions here.
I fully agree on these being excellent questions.
Tho you fail my challenge about “monuments” you’d admire, unless we’re to impute your specification of a tough problem as neo-spec on solving that problem being a monument.
My other plausible achievement would be a Full Employment policy, that would include a Job Guarantee for everybody (voluntary).
Just finished a two day rifle course in a red state. The course was frigging brutal. Shooting rounds prone at 100 yards and then diagnosing my mediocre shot pattern is not fun, but rewarding.
Anyways, no face masks anywhere to be found and I would have definitely been looked at really funny for having worn one, even in the hotel lobby. Now, that’s American optimism in a nutshell. Love it!