A Broken Brain?

I’m increasingly convinced winning the Cold War broke America’s brain and ushered in a license for elites and masses to be completely irresponsible.

- Mark Safranski (1) 

History repeats the same conceits

The glib replies, the same defeats

 

- Elvis Costello, "Beyond Belief"

 

With the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, the lingering background fear of nuclear annihilation that had existed for my entire life dissipated and I felt relief for my children and thought it possible we might now enter the "broad, sunlit uplands" that Winston Churchill spoke of in 1940.(2)  I forgot that history just keeps rolling along.  And though it was memorable and inspiring rhetoric, Churchill proved wrong, for even with triumph in WW2, we were plunged in its aftermath into the Cold War.  By 1955, in his last great public speech, he was referring to "the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell".

 

The policy and cultural missteps since the end of the Cold War are numerous.  To some degree, this always happens, it is human nature, but I think Safranski's reference to irresponsibility is important; we simply became less serious, less vigilant.  On foreign policy we took some wrong lessons from the way the Cold War turned out, with the consequences we now face.  More importantly, what I had completely misunderestimated was the extent to which American society would deteriorate and lead us to today's crisis, which is much more serious than any external threat.

Rome's final triumph over Carthage in 146 BC, the moment when it became the dominant power in the Mediterranean world, has often been cited, by both ancient and modern historians, as the pivotal event that resulted in the downfall of the Roman Republic, as it unleashed domestic turmoil that had been suppressed for many decades, turmoil that the Republic failed to temper and solve. It will be a Herculean task to right our course, and the scale and type of actions required, even if successful, create their own set of risks and will result in a country different than the one I grew up in.

But history does move in unexpected ways, both good and bad.  The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War without a major war was not foreseen or predicted in the 1970s, least of all by the academic and government experts on the subject.  And remember that Churchill, right after his reference to the hideous epoch in the 1955 speech went on to give us good counsel, "Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair."

-----------------------------------

(1)  No, I don't know who he is; just ran across his observation.

(2)  From the "Finest Hour" speech, June 18, 1940

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”