The entry of Hillary Clinton into the presidential race brings in two old, antiquated, irrelevant families now, Clinton and Bush, each seeking a restoration. Universities — administrators and academics alike — can think of nothing but generational avatar President Bill Clinton and it has been that way since the first days of the Clinton dynasty. So it has been a drag on youthful generations rising and continues to be an enormous drag on the general culture. Awakenings will seek more fertile ground as America falls fallow. Spirit will return to Britain, perhaps, or as U.K. Independence Party upstart Nigel Farage (recently challenged to a sword duel by a Polish prince) suggested in the debate for prime minister, the Commonwealth. The British are not to be ruled out. They will never go away.
{mosads}The rush of world economies to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank last month suggests that American “declinism” is a motivator today. We are stuck in the Sixties with Clintons or stuck in the Reagan Eighties — the last active influence of the World War II generation — with the Bushes. Nostalgia parties always bring trouble (think Francisco Franco, Spanish general and dictator of Spain). But it is a rare historical moment indeed when both parties become nostálgico.
Britain, Israel, most all of Europe and even Canada openly speak of American decline today and openly plan their futures accordingly. The rise of familiar families to American politics certainly suggests a failure of American imagination, and with it, dark prospects for the future. The Clintons pitch “purple,” but in reality, political sensibilities have become increasingly fixed and regionalized since the very first days of the Clinton dynasty in 1993. Political analyst and humorist Kurt Schlichter today presents a fairly chilling future scenario in Townhall:
The July 4, 2019, ceremony marking the final dissolution of the United States of America was quite amicable compared to the anger and bitterness of the preceding five years. The 2014 election results created a map clearly defining “Red America” and “Blue America,” and it sparked a debate, unlike any in the last 150 years, over whether the United States should remain united. For many in the leftist coastal states — their progressivism constrained by the overwhelming [c]ongressional advantage of the conservative interior states — the answer was, “No.”
Schlichter then quotes Michael Tomasky’s recent commentary in the Daily Beast: “Forget about the whole fetid place. Write it off. Let the GOP have it and run it and turn it into Free-Market Jesus Paradise. The Democrats don’t need it anyway.”
But said in this column earlier, they do.
“Two years later,” writes Schlichter. “President [d]e Blasio, elected leader of the Democratic States of North America, and President Abbott of the Republic of America, stood together on the platform on the border at St. Louis to sign the Dissolution Pact.”
Schlichter sees the future and it doesn’t work. But he is correct in seeing the existential themes in America today; the rise of heartland states in opposition to federal centralization through coalition of governors and state apparatuses like that recently instigated by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), and the rise of urban mayors, to be led by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), in opposition. He is dead on in seeing this as the key conflict in America’s future and in identifying the true rising leadership of these classic forces of contention — head vs. heart, urban vs. heartland, New York vs. Texas — as New York City’s de Blasio and Texas’s Abbott.
The future will rise with these two. Why descend into the maelstrom and desperately tread water until 2020? We are in an emergency situation today. Bring them in now to work a better solution: de Blasio vs. Abbott in 2016.
Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.