Perhaps it was only a matter of time, once the Soviet Union collapsed, for American patriotism to wither and recede. With no superpower to oppose it, with the world now open for full Americanization, borders were unnecessary and nationalism was obsolete. Let the globalization begin and old loyalties end!
It seemed so rosy and benign at the start. In 1993, the world was getting more democratic and capitalist by the month. The end of history was at hand. What thinkers meant by the declaration was that the ideological challenges to social democracy (free markets plus individual rights plus a generous safety net for those left behind) were no more. China was no threat; it would join the league of nations as a willing trade partner and shed its communist trappings. Russia would modernize, and people in the Eastern Bloc would wear Levi’s, eat McDonald’s, and listen to Springstein—a libertarian utopia.
Intellectuals liked it because it matched their cosmopolitan profile (cosmos plus polis). Ever since Voltaire, they had fashioned themselves citizens of the world, able to cross borders and feel wholly at ease in faraway lands. No World War II-style devotion to the flag for them. Jingoism was for dimwits, not thinkers, professors, and critics. Their employers, too, claimed the cosmopolitan mantle.
“We are a global university!” one after another proclaimed, and to prove it, they recruited and enrolled more foreign students every year. (Foreign students pay full tuition up front—no messy financial aid and scholarship and loan factors.)
During the ‘90s—yes, the last decade of the second millennium, before 9/11, Facebook, and texting—you could meet your mother at the gate as she flew in from the Midwest and your kids didn’t walk around with 200 photos of themselves in their pockets. Two-and-a-half decades past them, they look happier than ever, certainly in terms of the national mood. Global warming was, to most people, a theory, not a doom, systemic racism was but an academic term, and nobody knew what fentanyl was.
The United States was riding high, no doubt. Could anyone in that heady time imagine a foreign leader coming to Washington in a sweatshirt and telling a fawning Senate and House that the billions of dollars in aid already sent to his country weren’t nearly enough, as a vice president and speaker of the House unfurled his country’s flag with all the exuberance and glee of mothers at a picnic handing out ice cream cones? They outdid veterans of the War in the Pacific saluting the Stars and Stripes. When was the last time our legislators showed as much naive excitement for an American thing?
This is what 30 years of globalization have done to American leaders. No national pride, no zealous regard for the American people. To them, “America First” is a bigoted and dangerous position. National borders are a nativist holdover. Patriotism is for Archie Bunker. Most Americans don’t fly to Europe; they don’t work for international corporations; they don’t sell goods in Chinese markets; and they don’t debate the merits of patriotism. They don’t get what our leaders comprehend so well; they’re stupid. It’s one thing for the people to lose confidence in the government. That’s what elections are for. It’s another thing for the government to lose confidence in the people. Can’t the people be replaced?
What the leaders don’t understand, however, is just how disgusted ordinary Americans feel every time a figurehead appears on camera. The dramaturgy of Washington repels them. John Boehner tearing up at Nancy Pelosi’s goodbye makes them nauseous. The pomp and circumstance impress them not a single bit. It’s all fake to them.
Most Americans still love this country. They have learned to disconnect the country from the people running it. This is a situation that can’t go on for very long.
