CENTURIES

Centuries, it turns out, are weird things.

In the strictest sense they are numbers, one-hundred year increments. They start at a certain point and end at an equally certain point. The 20th began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000. And for the entire common era, you can count nineteen more of them.

And twenty-four plus years in a 21st.

Pretty simple stuff.

Not so fast, however, say the historians.

For them centuries are not mere slices of time. 

Instead, they define changing epochs. 

They can be longer or shorter than ten arithmetic decades. 

And they can begin or end in years other than the first or the hundredth. 

According to British historian Eric Hobsbawm, the "long nineteenth century" lasted 125 years. It "began",  he says, with the French Revolution in 1789 and "ended" with the start of World War I in 1914. Its defining trait appears to have been the Treaty of Paris in 1815 that set Europe upon a century-long period of balance of power politics.  In that regard, therefore, claiming the beginning as the French Revolution looks out of place.  Not to worry, however, because others argue that before it -- the long nineteenth, that is --  there was a "long eighteenth".  It began, they say, in 1688 with England's Glorious Revolution and ended in 1815 with the Napoleonic Wars, thus nicely book ending that 127-year century as a revolutionary one, are own included. This, of course, complicates Hobsbawm's long nineteenth. If it only ran from the end of Napoleon to the start of the First World War, it now becomes a slightly shorter (but still erratic --1815 to 1914) one. Shorter, however, seems to be his trend. Because Hobsbawm insists that his (not that) long nineteenth century was followed by a "short twentieth". He starts the latter with World War I and ends it with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

My own view is the 20th century was not that short. 

In fact, it was a bit long.

In my mind, it started in 1917 when the United States entered and then changed the outcome of World War I from a stalemate to an Allied victory. It continued through the interwar years, World War II, the post-war rules-based international order, the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the follow-on neo-liberal period of globalism. 

It was a period of American hegemony.

Economic and political hegemony to be sure.

But also and most importantly . . .

Moral hegemony. 

Alone among history's hegemons, the United States in the wake of World War II chose to share both its power and its wealth. It created the United Nations as a forum for discussion and (it hoped) a peace preserved on the basis of a rules-based order and the development and respect for universal human rights. It drew red-lines that could not be crossed by authoritarian communists in a Cold War President Reagan correctly predicted it would (and did) win.  Some of those lines were well considered (in Berlin in 1948-49 and Korea in 1950, for example); others, not so much (in Vietnam in the '60s and in Chile in 1973). With its victor's purse, it funded the Marshall  Plan that re-built war-torn Europe. With its rule of law, it globally turbocharged capitalism. With its idealism, it launched  President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress and USAID and W's PEPFAR. 

Always imperfect but never truly (or perhaps only rarely) imperious, its ultimate aim was a free world.

The freedom it sought, however, was freedom in the fullest (and therefore truest) sense of the word. 

It was a "freedom from" the fascists and communists and assorted authoritarians who would otherwise enslave their victims or subjects.  

But it was also, in the words of Yale Prof. Timothy Snyder, a much larger "freedom to". The positive freedom to choose, to adapt, to move, to understand. The "five forms of freedom'', as he puts it, that recognize our "sovereignty, or the learned capacity to make choices; unpredictability, the power to adapt physical regularities to personal purposes; mobility, the capacity to move through space and time following values; factuality, the grip on the world that allows us to change it; and solidarity, the recognition that freedom is for everyone."

That century -- the American century -- ended last week.

It did not have to.

Indeed, because the work of freedom -- and especially the work of positive freedom or "freedom to" -- is a lived project, it was supposed to be an on-going one.

But it ended anyway.

Donald Trump killed it.

I am at this point guilty of some overstatement.  

It is not the case that Donald Trump killed the American century all in the last week.  

In fact, he has been working on the execution for the now almost ten years of his political life and for most of his personal life.  

He does not believe in freedom.  He certainly does not understand that it comes as a positive manner in the five forms outlined by Prof. Snyder.  His pathological lying and aversion to any notion of factuality leaves him without any grip on the real world, enthralled as he is to the created and false reality he manufactures and then acts upon on a daily basis. A slave to lying is not free. Nor does he recognize that freedom includes "the capacity to move through space and time". To the contrary, he has harvested thousands of votes demeaning the freedom of migrants for whom mobility is a matter of life and death, and now wants to issue a Gold Card that makes entry to and citizenship for immigrants available to those willing to pay $5 million.  Freedom, however, is not a product for the rich; it is a right of all. 

I chose last week, however, because his conduct in that period capsulized in such a complete way how he has so thoroughly orchestrated the killing over the life of his presidencies and over the course of his personal  life.

On Ukraine, he has decided to surrender to Vladimir Putin.  

Even before last Friday's disgusting ambush of Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, Trump told the world that Ukraine would have to give up all or most of the land Putin illegally seized in 2014 (Crimea) and after Russia started the war in 2022 (large parts of the eastern Donbas). He has also said America would provide no security guarantees of any peace deal and that Ukraine would never be admitted to NATO.  He has falsely claimed that Ukraine started the war and falsely characterized Zelensky as a dictator. 

In last Friday's meeting, after Zelensky asked Vice President Vance what sort of diplomacy Vance was advocating given that Russia has violated every agreement struck on past ceasefires, Vance accused him of being "disrespectful" (ostensibly for "litigating" in front of the media) and not sufficiently thankful (although Zelensky has literally thanked America more times than anyone can count, Vance -- in full asskissing mode -- was claiming Zelensky had not personally thanked Trump at the meeting). Accusing him of "gambling with World War III", having "no cards" to play, and demanding that he either "make a deal or we're out", Trump then kicked Zelensky out of the White House. 

In the days since, Trump has suspended the continued provision of military equipment and critical intelligence to Ukraine.

Trump and the entire GOP are pretending this is all part of an effort to get Putin to the negotiating table and are claiming there can be no peace if there is no parley.  In truth, however, all Trump is doing is telling Putin he can have everything he has already seized, along the promise that Ukraine will not be in NATO and America will not guarantee that he, Putin, adheres to any deal. Waiting, therefore, has been a great deal for Putin.  

Every day that passes, Trump gives him something else.  

Before last week, it was the concession that Ukraine could never expect the return of its illegally seized land. Last Friday it was the dressing down of Zelensky (loved by the Russians, whose lickspittle President Medvedev praised Trump for "slap[ping] down" the "insolent pig" Zelensky). Over the weekend and on Monday and Wednesday it was the cessation of military and intel support. Not surprisingly, Russia's response to those moves was to say it intended to inflict "maximum damage" on Ukraine and to call Zelensky a "parasitic" and "flea-ridden dog".

Europe's reaction to all of this has been sheer disgust.  The Germans are now revisiting fiscal policies they have followed for decades in an effort to fund the military and France is saying it will utilize its nukes to protect Europe.  The entire continent is backing Ukraine and praying some form of American support remains.  They are also rapidly planning for a free world which they -- and not the United States -- lead.  

The notion that Russia intends to stop with Ukraine or part of it is fantasy. Putin has been clear that his plan is to reconstitute the old Soviet Union under the Russian flag.  That means he intends to control or dominate at least the old Soviet Republics in Europe, the Balkans, and southeastern Europe and Poland,  and wants to checkmate France , Germany and the rest of western Europe. It is basically the reverse of what Hitler intended in the 1940s.  Trump is fine with all of this. He owes the continuing financial viability of the Trump Organization to Russian money and thinks fascist or authoritarian rulers are fine. 

In fact, he aspires to be one.

Which was the second thing made clear in this death-of-the-American-century week.

On Tuesday, Trump gave a joint address to Congress.

It was a combination of lies, smug arrogance, contempt and wishful thinking. 

He lied about who is getting Social Security, the amount the US has spent in Ukraine, the number of illegals who entered the country the past four years,  the state of the economy both now and prior to January 20, the ostensibly huge and unfair gap between foreign tariffs and ours, the rise in military recruitment, and -- almost comically --  mice supposedly being transgendered. 

The arrogance was evident in his pretense that "America is back" (when he is actually authoring its decline); in his demand that we "enhanc[e] protections for America's police officers" (whose "protections" he absolutely destroyed in pardoning the J6 insurrectionists); in the assertion that he will get Greenland "sooner or later" or is now "taking back" the Panama Canal (neither will happen); or in the renaming ("Gulf of America") no one takes seriously.

Then, of course, there was the contempt (in particular for the infinitesimally small number of transgendered Americans, or for anyone who actually believes diversity, equity and inclusion are good things, or for the laws he violated and the indictments only his election suspended), and, finally, the wishful thinking. Those tariffs, he said,  will cause only "a little disturbance", a prediction he keeps abandoning as the deadlines for them approach, the stock market tanks, and a magical "pause" is announced. 

Apparently, his own portfolio cannot suffer "a little disturbance".

The speech lasted an hour and forty minutes -- the longest ever in the history of joint addresses. It followed six weeks of near constant televised comments from Trump.  He thinks he is flooding the zone and in fact he is. 

In doing so, however, he is imitating the conduct of history's authoritarians on that score as well. 

Fidel Castro routinely spoke for three and four hours at a time. Venezuela's Madura spoke for four hours at his second inauguration. China's Xi went on for three and a half hours at a recent communist party congress speech. 

Stalin and Khrushchev were also long winded. 

As were Hitler and Mussolini.

The idea is to talk so much, so often, and so dishonestly . . .

That either no one else can . . . 

Or no one else is heard.

Since taking office on January 20, Trump has done all in his power to insure Russian victory in Ukraine and its later dominance of Europe in a non-NATO balance of power world where might makes right. He has also continued his assault on truth and structured the executive branch to guarantee its loyalty to himself alone and not the Constitution.  His political party stands mute in the face of this assault.  Indeed, to the contrary, and as was evident last Tuesday, his party applauds it.

None of this is consistent with the world FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon created and then managed in the American Century 

Nor is it consistent with the Cold War victory Reagan predicted and then helped orchestrate in that same period. 

Or the vision of Constitutional government without monarchy the Founders created years ago.

Trump has repudiated all of that.

Epochs can end.

The American Century just did.