Much of the population thinks the United States is heading in the wrong direction, but there is no agreement at all on…

The United States is celebrating its 250th birthday as an independent state in what, by all accounts, is a decidedly gloomy mood. Accustomed to believing that theirs is a young nation bursting with youthful vigour, unlike the arthritic countries in Europe that they or their ancestors left behind, many North Americans seem to feel it is ageing fast and the best days lie in the past.

According to the opinion polls, much of the population thinks the US is heading in the wrong direction, but there is no agreement at all on what would be the right one. Not that long ago, there was a broad consensus shared by Republicans and Democrats that, by and large, the US was a far better country than any other, but this is no longer the case. If the rhetoric used by many “progressives” is anything to go by, there are many among them who have somehow convinced themselves that it is among the worst. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, the reputation of the US has deteriorated in recent months as a result of its indecisive policy in the chronically unstable Middle East and its sudden suspension of military and financial aid to Ukraine.

Many attribute this unhappy state of affairs to the often loutish behaviour of Donald Trump, a self-centred man who makes no secret of the contempt he feels not just for the many foreign countries he regularly describes in excremental terms but also for those among his own compatriots who dare to criticise him and his works.

However, many of the people Trump is up against are equally obnoxious and seem to be even more determined to ensure that their country’s future is nightmarishly bad. While the Republican Party has morphed into something like a Trump fan club, the Democratic Party is in the process of being taken over by the products of an educational system which for several decades has concentrated on indoctrinating young folk with a range of “woke” verities which involve racial hierarchies, with “people of colour” at the top and whites at the bottom, the sheer nastiness of capitalism, hatred of Israel and by extension Jews who in some way support the “Zionist project” and the need to defend Muslims against “Islamophobia.” Woke militants also say they are convinced that anyone can change at will his or her sex, along with the corresponding pronouns, and do their best to wreck the careers of reactionaries who think biology should be taken into account.

Naturally enough, those trapped between the two extremes, people who greatly dislike Trump’s vulgarity but have no time for what the loudest Democrats now have to offer, feel that their country is slipping away from them. They are also made nervous by their government’s missteps on the international stage. The still unfinished war against the bloodthirsty Iranian dictatorship has certainly not helped, what with Trump one day threatening to annihilate Persian civilisation and then showing himself willing to make a mutually profitable “deal” with whatever is left of the regime without taking into account the interests of the Iranian people, most of whom want to see the ayatollahs and their enforcers overthrown, or those of Israel.

The rancorous confusion prevailing in the United States is part of a far wider picture. If the still reigning superpower is in decline, as many people are telling us, it is still doing quite well in comparison with most other countries with a similar cultural background. On both sides of the Atlantic, doubts about the immediate prospects facing Western civilisation, let alone its long-term ones, continue to intensify, with pessimists saying that civil wars are now virtually inevitable and the relatively optimistic hoping that, somehow or other, collapse can be delayed for a few more years.

Much of what is going on has to do with the demographic changes that are underway, what with birth rates plummeting and large-scale immigration continuing at a fairly brisk pace in Europe despite efforts by most countries to put it into reverse. Though Westerners’ reluctance to have as many children as their forebears did is usually attributed to economic factors, housing costs and the like, it also seems to reflect a deep cultural malaise of a kind that affects societies that reach a certain stage in their development.  As historians are fond of pointing out, the Roman emperor Augustus and his successors faced a very similar problem and, though their efforts to solve it fell short, Rome could survive and prosper by widening its domains and absorbing an increasing number of the Germanic barbarians who, centuries later, carved up the Western half of the empire.

In the United States, Trump is far from being the only person who takes it for granted that his country would be far better off without the many millions of undocumented, and for the most part low-skilled, immigrants who flocked in when laxer presidents such as Joe Biden were in charge. The rather draconian way he has gone about deporting many of them still enjoys much popular support.  Encouraged by his success on this front, Trump has taken to urging his European counterparts to do the same.

Many European leaders have made it clear that they would very much like to do so, but fear that a determined effort to repatriate a large proportion of the millions of Muslims who have settled in their countries in recent years could be met by armed resistance. Over the years, people alarmed by the influx of refugees who allegedly were fleeing persecution have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that a large proportion of the newcomers were military-age men – a detail which, needless to say, continues to encourage those attracted by conspiracy theories. In any event, hostility towards Islam is growing rapidly in Europe, a trend which has ominous implications for the future.

The West, led by the US which, thanks to its geographic and demographic size and its economic dynamism remains by far the most powerful country on the planet, may be in decline, but nonetheless a considerable proportion of the world’s population is willing to go to almost any lengths to enter it. A minority of fervent Muslims do say they want to take it over, but most of their coreligionists would be satisfied with a small share of what it has to offer, which includes not just many material benefits but also the rule of law and a readiness to let people get on with their lives as they see fit, something few can do in non-Western countries.

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