In 2014, I filmed the movie “SammyTheJourney.com.” It’s a film about one of the youngest survivors on the Holocaust. In order to put this film together, I had to do a lot of research. That research left me puzzled. I was born on October 12th, 1938. Just a year later, World War 2 started on September 1st, 1939. I went through the war as a child here in America. I witnessed what every other American witnessed. The United States Won That War! That was my belief after the war.
Later in life, I realized it was much more complex than that. During my research for the film, I was puzzled why the German people didn’t stop Hitler and how did Benito Mussolini end up in power in Italy. How could so-called intelligent, civilized human beings fall for people like that? Years later, after the war, those same people said “We didn’t know the Holocaust was happening.” Military personal for the most part said “We were just following orders.”
In the UFC, if your opponent puts you in a choke hold, you have two options: pass out or TAP out! It’s time for the Republicans to TAP OUT if they ever want to work in the political arena again.
63
Wop, wop. Occasionally you lose an election. The key is to accept it and try to win the next one. The principle is you don't "resist" the winner of a democratic election because "resist" means any means, democratic or otherwise, is justified in overturning the results of an election you disagree with. It's also a form of whining.
You don't like the Republicans I get it. You think they should be as indignant as you are because you don't like Trump. Problem is, while Trump tends to shoot himself in the foot with callous idiotic comments, he's doing great things for this country. Just renouncing the Iran Surrender agreement was good enough for me.
Trump isn't the one undermining democratic institutions, you are. Your attempt to destroy an eminently qualified Supreme Court nominee with nothing more than unsubstantiatable accusations was worse than McCarthyism. McCarthy destroyed people in the name of national security, you did it because you can't accept the results of a democratic election. Now, your plan is to undermine the Supreme Court by continuing your (additional) witch hunt or packing it with liberals when you have the power to do so. And Trump is the barbarian?
I hope you do win the House. Pelosi's return to speaker would only disgust the American people even more. You have some good ideas but they're subsumed by craziness (open borders and bathrooms), legal impunity for your candidates, endless hysteria, and double standards.
Goodspeed Republicans!
22
Thank you sir, Well done.
Mr. Sayoc, our recent mail bomber, is an example of how the barbarian within, who is leading our country, can influence many people. Mr Sayoc and millions like him are so traumatized by our culture, the horrid results and weaknesses of "pure" capitalism, pure "free markets." Hillary called his type of sad persons the "basket of deplorables." They are miserable because capitalism is a most unstable and horrid economic system. Every economics 101 course will first tell you that capitalism has a crash of serious proportions every 4 ti 7 years; a "business cycle" as these are sometimes called. They devastate millions and millions of people each time and sometimes crush the nation for years.
We need very regulated capitalism or a more socialistic version, where all have a job with dignity, universal basic income and a national health care system, etc. We can see what can happen with Trump the inner barbarian; his admin is becoming more and fascist every day and I'm sure he sounds and acts more and more like Caligula the Empire barbarian leader. The number of lies grow, the economic pain grows, the rich get richer and the equal opportunity idea is dying. The main stream media is a joke, just selling and schilling and doing what is called "manufacturing consent." That means they work for those in power and promote those in power and tell us lies daily and promote consumerism and live only , as do all capitalists, for profit making. Get out and vote.
34
The Tampa Bay Times, reporting on early voting in Florida, sees Republicans showing up at the polls in their usual abundance, and no surplus of Democrats or independents. From the statistics about voters, it so far looks like a regular election, no detectable Democratic wave. Things might change tomorrow (Saturday Oct. 27) when more counties open their early polls.
34
Please stop the Hate Speech .
America must come together and Move On .
15
It's simple. There was too much self-regard, too much idle hope, too little self-examination. A country where the word "Great" was used - or "Exceptional" - without understanding where the mass psychology of the nation was heading. A great or exceptional disaster is unfolding.
The politics sucks. Democratic process has been captured by money, lobbies and pressure groups and is being used to unleash destructiveness against the democratic values. Of the three great values of democracy - freedom, equality and fraternity - freedom and equality are legal (often constitutional) rights and concepts and can be defined and protected in the courts. Although they are in a state of tension of each other, they can be made to work if the third great value is present, namely fraternity. Fraternity is the "soft", non-legal, value - that glue in the system - that the destroyers have gone for - for without that glue the democratic experiment can never be sustained and freedom and equality, rather than being joint values, will be set at each others throats.
Democratic process has been hijacked and used to destroy democratic values - and most of all, fraternity. And by fraternity we mean respect for the other, pluralism, compromise and social cohesion. Watch Trump "philosophise" with a hammer.....
20
To me the barbarians are Brownshirts surrounding The Leader.
One was arrested yesterday.
There are thousands more poorly educated saps like him, with very little personal strength, letting their anger consume them. At the most extreme they put crosshairs over the faces of the opposition on down to the subtle gerrymandering locally. The former is just crazy the latter disenfranchisement.
This is not what we are supposed to be, GOP.
34
I respect the right of Americans not to vote, absolutely and inviably.
I respect the right of Americans to shelter under the umbrella of fear during a drought of rational debate while the world spins on an axis that views the transience of fruit cakes of Halloween monsters such as Hitler and Stalin.
Name calling and assiduous perpetual threats are reflective of Hitler and Stalin now exclusively referred to in the past tense.
I make no comment on their views.
Teflon, television and microwave ovens and yes the Loch Ness monster are threats to life as we know it.
Henny Penny would blush.
Americans can vote by choice a right reflected on the eleventh day of next month at 11am.
Americans stilled by 100 years since 1918 may observe one quiet minute of silence.
These millions of war dead can not now vote.
V for Victory is comprises two fingers only and I have seen old men from the Great War with one leg comply with Australian Law, vote.
I raise a single finger to non voters.
A leg lost eye and arm and other really unpleasant matters not for publication compels me to encourage Americans to vote.
Mr Trump will be in France on this most private and sombre day for Australians, Americans, Canadians , Germans and French apparently for the "Parade".
Lest we forget.
One Time May I be critical of Americans in general while exempting an increasing minority for adulation.
Heroes are becoming a rarity in America.
The
10
What are you getting so excited about Roger? America has always been barbarous as the French and British have always said; America is the only nation that has gone straight from barbarism to empire without developing a civilization.
87
@Peter
Why I love the French!
8
Such an apt response. Yes.
6
This is by far the most 'David Brooks' style opinion I have read from Roger Cohen. Needless to say, I'm dissappointed.
What an intellectually lazy way to comment on current issues. Trying to hack and reverse engineer allegories from a random novel you have the luxury to read over probably a vacation Roger.
No wonder the 'barbarians' (I'm reverse engineering your reverse engineering here. Lazily), hate the elites in the current climate.
Wait, they always have for almost the same reasons since the beginning of time. I'm sure Coetzee would agree. Dont you think.
14
So, “...they never heard a chord...or saw a sensuous line on a canvas that caused them to wonder.” What condescension. Mr. Cohen’s bias is clear. Republicans really are those “basket of deplorables” semi-human beings that disagree with Cohen. And of course Republicans cannot appreciate Gauguin nor understand Mozart's Concertos. Cohen and other self righteous elites still — even after the 2016 election — just do not get it. They are out of touch with millions of ordinary, hard working Americans who shake their heads at Cohen’s literary battles over wedding cakes and unisex bathrooms. Maybe 1 day Cohen will realize that his “barbarians” are the same men and women who work in our factories and warehouses, till our soil, serve in our military, and attend our churches, mosques and synagogues. Here’s to those barbarians.
28
I hear Trumpland screaming that the the media, the whoever, are dastardly equating them with villainous regimes of the past.
I hear them... listen with me...
How dare effete bleeding heart commie godless liberals honestly and seriously study and in some sense even actually truly remember History as lived and give their thoughtful factual assessments?
How dare these unimaginative people not appreciate the glorious illusions we are laboriously conjuring for them?
What is this Country coming to when - these thinkers - these resisters - these spoilsports are allowed to express their considered honest informed opinion of things?
Why all we need is a couple more SCOTUS appointees and we'll form some Special Courts -People's Courts - to rid us of these inferior citizens!
Trust us! We'll make our Nation pure as driven snow!
Vote for us! We are great - we are entertaining - we are YOU - don't you feel it viscerally?!
Don't you love the fun! Don't you love the power to assert you prejudices and irrational fears? your presuppositions? your version of god?
Forget testable models - too much work!
Forget rigor and evidence and truth - these things get in the way of your vision of greatness!
Forget reality - forget notions of kinship with humankind and the environment!
We are the light and the way! We will win back your greatness and beyond.
Trust us! Victory is us!
Ignore the weeping - the screams - the smell of smoke. It's all good! We're all good!
We are YOU!
13
What Donald Trump has created is a culture of contempt and arrogance. What is happening, even as I write, across this nation is the work of an arrogant fascist mind.
Stand down, America. Stand down and step back from hate and Trump's constant message of "I know it all. Don't listen to others. Hose them down with withering contempt, because you, America, need ME to be your leader.
And our President has sprayed that same message within and upon the Senate and Congress and now our citizens.
Toadies now bow and scrape before him. Men and women you would be worried to see in your own living rooms, now rule, your children watching in the background, silent, wide-eyed, frightened.
Step down, America! Embrace the America of Lincoln and Roosevelt and, yes, Martin Luther King. These fascists are not interested in anything but turning up the burners of hate.
Come back to true Democracy, America. Come back to that always invaluable thing: Truth, Justice and what was always the American Way: love for your fellow man.
20
Anybody else wondering if Trump will pardon Sayoc? I can just hear the Orange One: "He said many nice things about me, unlike CNN fake news. He said he didn't make the 'bomb stuff.' He denied it very strongly. I think...you see what's happening, it's unbelievable. He's been treated very UNFAIR. No one cares that thousands of bad people, Mexicans, people from the Middle East, are marching on America. Dems are to blame!"
32
Cesar Sayoc. Homemade bombs. I had my own tiny experience with an angry voter on Tuesday. There was a beep on the horn from the car behind me, a very nice looking Mercedes driven by a middle aged or older man. I looked in my rear view mirror and say the guy scowling and rather violently shaking his fist with the 'thumbs down' symbol. I just turned 80, weigh about 120 - couldn't figure out what I had done to make this guy so mad. Then I remembered that I have a Beto sticker on the back of my car (I live in a Dallas suburb). Never, ever before in all my years of voting have I seen or heard of such a thing. Did someone incite that guy to harass me, an ordinary 'old lady?' Yes, I think so, frankly. At least he didn't throw a bomb at me -
273
Active shooter in a synagogue. Now the white christian nationalists want to distinguish between themselves and white Jewish folks. Jared, are you listening?
24
Isn't this the natural result of clinging to an archaic patriarchy and its toxic masculinity?
8
A life long resident of the metro area, I had some idea of what we were getting with Donald J Trump, at the least, a stage 4 narcissist, who would make the presidency come to him.
I knew he was a con artist, a tedious self promoter and a liar, but although there were strong hints -- the scams, the birther campaign -- I didn't actually grasp how profoundly and unalterably destructive and malicious he was at the core.
What we have now is a president who has enough charisma and cunning to be a star without any other discernible talent. In other words, he can get the level of attention he craves, but has nothing of substance to show for it except crowds of seemingly hypnotized followers. At this point what they are chanting is dated and meaningless, showing that they appear as globally hostile and empty as he is. Everything else is down literally to those who would exploit the vacuum where once morality, civility and ethical boundaries stood. If they can't find it within themselves to air on the side of civilization over ephemeral self interest, they must be voted out.
172
@pixilated
Most of us here in New York City had an idea of what kind of president Donald Trump would be after being exposed to him and his antics for years.
That's why we didn't vote for him -- and why he avoids coming back.
23
@pixilated Excellent comment.
13
It's not the immigrants who are dangerous. It's Trump supporters who sent pipe bombs and killed Jews today in congregations.
27
You give Trump too much credit. He fools no one. His supporters know he is a fraud. They just enjoy the show. It's all about self-delusion. How to make them take a reality-check come election day? One must pull at the deepest chords of humanity within the barbarian. In the multitude of atrocities committed by Trump, the Achilles heel may be the separation of children from parents. Like in the mid-19th century abolitionist literature, that one atrocity resonates. Pull that chord and perhaps the barbarian will realize the reality of all the other atrocities and vote for sanity.
7
Yes, and most of us saw the evil from the beginning. But a fundamental error in our Constitution gave the arrogant psychopath his fake victory. A legacy of slavery gave us this nightmare. An error passed down for over two centuries allows an evil fool to trash the American story, to throw out The Enlightenment as if it never happened. To disregard knowledge for endless fiction. To use the language to distort reality as if we live in a room of distorted mirrors.
America is hardly a paragon of virtue: it's past, hidden away, a history lost on its own populace. And yet, with all the evil we've produced, we still held to the belief in human dignity, in universal rights, in values that seek to raise the level of discourse. We espoused these values throughout the world. The noble side of us was copied, though not always fulfilled. But now, what is to copy? The demonizing of migrants yearning to breath free, to work hard, to participate in the dream, to make it a reality? To listen to the alternate reality of made up fear? To tremble from the poorest of the poor as they abandon their homes and take what they have because they have nothing and go north?
The man will stir up more hate and fear. With little time to the midterms, he is compelled to "turn it up" as high as he can go. But on D-day, November 6th, we will save democracy, or burn in the flames of the last chapter of our Empire.
30
Another beautifully written opinion by Roger Cohen about a not so beautiful fall of an empire and an ugly man and his barbaric followers. Vote and stem the tide.
19
Coetzee was right.
6
"They trudged their trauma home in sullen silence".
A fine sentence Roger on a topic that continues to unnerve, depress and sap the spirits of the millions and millions of us who never thought the day would come when the citizenry of this country would elect the evil, sociopathic simpleton that is our President.
29
Well said. I have been describing Trump -- and I purposefully do not use either title, President or Mister — as a barbarian for some time now. Uncouth, ignorant (willfully so) and uncivilized.
18
God, I wish I could write like that!
13
After reading a number of opinion articles I know now why progressives are so emotionally out of control. The opinion articles in this paper are so bias that there is no reality in these articles. But these article do get people fired up and sell papers.
7
"but all he really wants to do is to loot it on the way down. His Republican cronies enable him because their love of power blinds them..."
But is it love of power or fear of the jungle they've helped create.... an abject inability to play on a level field?
They cling, obsessively, to advantage, tossing their souls aside like so much burdensome baggage.
It's abject cowardice, weakness, immorality.... They aren't the strong, but the pitiable weak.... the morally corrupt, the wholly dishonest.... human detritus...
7
It is so very disappointing when yet again Trump shows he cannot take any responsibility for his bellicose rhetoric and he violent effects it's had on our people. Yet again, he shows us what a small man he is. He blames the Media for the pipe bomber, takes not one shred of responsibility for dreams of assassination of his many demonized enemies.
Once again, his whine since childhood is that he is treated "unfairly". It's the Media's fault, not his. He is the victim, not his scapegoats or the American people. Trump wants positive press for being a brutal and mean bully. He wants this bullying cowardice to be praised as strength instead of recognized for the weakness and lack of character it is.
He wants the Press to stop with the analysis and criticism of his immorality to the point of amorality. It's not his tone that needs any adjustment, but the Media's. He can bellow and scream everyday, and has to be on television everyday to inflict his ugliness on us all, but it's not his tone that needs to change it's theirs.
So small, so weak. Always blaming someone else. He demands others be civil but he is permitted to bellow as the barbarian. The double standard he practices is his greatest constant. He get's to act and speak any damn way he wants, but everyone else must toe the line and be civil. He fails to have any awareness of how nasty and vicious he is on a daily basis.
Platitudes about peace and harmony, empty words he says because he has to.
14
Astonishing that, so far, not a single GOP Senator has stated the obvious: that Trump incites violence and white male rage in his rallies -- and that this is what inspired the Trumpee pipe bomber.
The GOP Senators were mute when Trump mocked and humiliated Dr. Ford -- "only one beer!" he jeered over and over, implying to his right wing mob that the 15 year old girl was too inebriated to remember more details. Meanwhile, Kavanaugh and his buddy Mark Judge, according to Judge's autobiographical book on extreme teenage drinking, entitled "Wasted", would have frequently drunk so much as to not remember anything.
When a Democrat Senator asked Justice Kavanaugh, "are you the character Bart O'Kavanaugh" in the book that Mark Judge wrote, Justice Kavanaugh yelled back "Ask him!"
So, did the FBI ask Mark Judge that question?
Now, you don't need to be a rabid right wing dog to hear Trump's dog whistles:
"I am a Nationalist" (Just like the White Nationalist Supremacists who go to Trump rallies to beat up Trump protesters and stash rifles on the roofs of parking ramps overhead).
"The press is responsible for the tone ..." (This is AFTER CNN has been targeted by the pipe bomber, with the Trump mob yelling "CNN Sucks" -- implying, the press deserved it, and more will be coming.)
Not a single GOP Senator has pointed out the obvious: that Trump's power is entirely based on his mob, a mob that is now using threats and violence to terrorize everyone else.
Silence in the GOP.
Shame.
18
The left has gone absolutely bonkers, I'll remind you again you lost get over it. What a bunch of brats
6
Just look at the stories plastered across the front page of this paper. All anti-Trump and full of anger and hate with many exaggerated claims sprinkled with some lies and an overdose of bias. What you see from Trump supporters - and there are many millions - is just a reaction to the liberal bias we have suffered from the media, Hollywood and our educational institutions. We are sick of it - and now we are vomiting in your face. We want diversity - we dont want it forced down our throats and to be called racists for it. We want free speech - not your pc speech and not to have our conservative speakers barred from events on campus and elsewhere by your angry mobs. We support life and most of us support your freedom to choose but we will not support that choice with our tax dollars. The decay i see in our country is coming from liberal programs supporting drug use, prositution, amnesty for people who are unverified and illegally enter our country - some of them criminals and so many of them low skilled and requiring our financial support for life. Finally we have risen up and revolted against you. Learn to lose as we bring reason back to our country.
10
And what brought this upon us - the environment so fertile to allow Trump to ascend with the updraft of his fervent supporters? The possibility of a "I don't stay home and bake cookies" type of woman becoming President, succeeding an uppity know-it-all black President. For Trump and his base, this was a line too far for the "America" they want to protect. Its misogyny and racism, pure and simple.
16
This is one of the best written words portraying the complex scam that the Trump presidency is. The barbarians are within. If only we Americans allow ourselves to see and appreciate for once the deceptive war that we are declaring against ourselves by enabling Trump and his so called government.
3
The further a society drifts from the truth the more they will hate those who speak it.
As in this article, the left is fond of using novels the draw comparisons to contemporary political conflicts.
The right leans more on non fiction historical lessons guided by Biblical precepts.
Fictional allegories can spark intellectual thought and debate but invariably such leftist intellectual gymnastics fall flat in everyday governance.
Those mocking the concepts of the founding fathers, individual freedom and Biblical precepts do so with full stomachs made possible by those very precepts.. put the novels aside and give the Venezuelan tragedy some thought,, your making the same mistake.
4
Trump and his minions are awful but with all due respect, Mr, Cohen, we have experienced bad presidents before. Think Nixon and Andrew Johnson, among others. We will get through this. Our institutions and common sense will see us through these tough times. We are not in the end-times. I think your heated, apocalyptic tone is too much.
6
Revolution frightens me; the winners are usually military or economic thugs
What we need to do in two weeks is simply vote as if it’s our last chance.
Already the radRight is demanding elections “be postponed” due to the arrest of one if their own on multiple attempted murder chsrges for doing what their Fearless Leader told him to - use violencr against his enemies, the free press, and, of course, whst used to be “the other party” now designated by Trump, “the Enemy”.
Unfortunately, this means voting as if we are selecting a parliament- against every member of the party of the Prime Minister l, those who have given him everything he demanded, with 99.9% of their votes, and handing Congress, both houses, to the opposition, the Democrats, so, even without the power in the Senate to veto bad proposals, there will at least be a force to control Trump and prevent him from stacking 100% of the federal courts, and stripping agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency of both power and their entire scientific divisions.
Despots don’t like science, because facts get in the way of demagoguery.
There msy well be more pre-election violence.
The only way to stop it is to give power back to all the people, by giving them control of what has become the weakest third of our government.
Ueh, I happen to be a registered Democrat so I have some say in candidate selection in the primaries.
I know many a politician, and often split my vote.
We don’t have that luxury this time.
2
"The President's Speech" - a friend from Maryland just called, asking if I had read what Mr. Obama has addressed to the Nation, adding that it was to be found everywhere. It's a cold world out there, babe, so let me close the windows, I replied, remembering a defining point in the movie 'Casablanca', with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
For you, Mr. Cohen, for our reporters at The New York Times and beyond, for All Americans, lest we forget, here is La Marseillaise, as our Democracy and Republic rise from the ashes, like the Lone Eagle soaring the skies again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsg9i6lvqU.
This week "the barbarian saviour" was revealed in all his destructive darkness as one of his "true believers" attempted literally to blow-up his opponents. It was or should be the final outrage following his attempt to coverup the brutal, "premeditated," political assassination of a resident American journalist by a foreign power and ally, his lauding a fellow political Congressman for body-slamming a journalist, and now narcissisticly complaining that the mass assassination attempt on his opponents has taken attention away from him and the increasingly vitriolic and toxic attacks on them. There is only one solution for dealing with such a deadly demagogue. He must be removed for power by impeachment before he and his "willing accomplices" destroy the democracy they claim to be saving.
7
The saltier lake could easily be explained by increased evaporation due to higher temperatures arising from climate change, but that isn’t were this long story wanted to take us by design.
2
Unfortunately, there is no whole just society. Relative versions abound, based on cultural norms, expectations, etc.
The U.S. is extremely dominant in the world, and has been an antagonist outside of its borders as well. I think one the things every life, every nation, needs a purpose. A vision to gather people around it.
To pursue 'happiness' or 'pleasures' without an overriding vision...creates rot, from within. Perhaps the empire needs some soul searching, to reinvigorate its core, and perhaps stave off the fate of previous empires.
2
the barbarian in us is the hare, running fast and furious. The tortoise is the plodding decency in us, the conscience God gave us, that will stubbornly insist that we are more than our mere base instincts. The hare will burn himself out and the tortoise will go on and on, in her plodding way, sometimes behind but never quitting -- she knows that this race never ends.
2
Thanks again, Roger. Am praying for the end of Atilla
8
Ever read Gibbon's massive "Decline and Fall of the roman Empire"?
Neither have I. Not ALL of it, you understand. But I have read PART of it.
Somewhere in that huge tome, he tackles an interesting question. Could it happen again? Just as the Goths and the Vandals and the Huns poured into that tottering empire in the 400's and 500's A.D.--
--could the cultivated Europe of 1785 be similarly overrun?
No, said the great historian. United as they were by a shared cultured--a shared religion--even (sort of) by shared languages--
--all the nations of Europe would band together and repel the uncouth savages loping in from Russia or Asia.
Even we Americans (and he alludes, very distantly, to our ongoing Revolution) would come sailing back to help out.
He forgot--just as you HAVEN'T forgotten, Mr. Cohen--
--about the barbarians within.
For all his culture and discernment, Gibbon never came within a hundred miles of foretelling--
--a Hitler. Or a Franco.
I think our founding fathers COULD (dimly) foresee a Donald J. Trump. I think they strove to so shape their Constitution as to forestall or exclude a Donald J. Trump.
They failed.
What now?
4
I hear Trumpland screaming that the the media, the whoever, are dastardly equating them with villainous regimes of the past. I hear them... listen with me...
How dare effete bleeding heart commie godless liberals honestly and seriously study and in some sense even actually truly remember History as lived and give their thoughtful factual assessments?
How dare these unimaginative people not appreciate the glorious illusions we are laboriously conjuring for them?
What is this Country coming to when - these thinkers - these resisters - these spoilsports - are allowed to express their considered honest informed opinion of things?
Why all we need is a couple more SCOTUS appointees and we'll form some Special Courts -People's Courts - to rid us of these inferior citizens!
Trust us! We'll make our Nation pure as driven snow!
Vote for us! We are great - we are entertaining - we are YOU - don't you feel it viscerally?!
Don't you love the fun! Don't you love the power to assert you prejudices and irrational fears? your presuppositions? your version of god?
Forget testable models - too much work!
Forget rigor and evidence and truth - these things get in the way of your vision of greatness!
Forget reality - forget notions of kinship with humankind and the environment!
We are the light and the way! We will win back your greatness and beyond.
Trust us! Victory is us!
Ignore the weeping - the screams - the smell of smoke. It's all good! We're all good!
We are YOU!
5
Good piece, beautifully written. Thank you, Mr. Cohen.
3
That is the question all of us have.
We know Trump is a soulless vicarious pugilist devoid of moral bearing.
But what of his supporters?
Those we work with - what will be their tipping point?
4
Yes, the American empire is dying and the rise of the right wing is its last ugly gasp. Americans don’t like to think of themselves as imperialists, but we certainly are and the need for empire is dying worldwide. What will rise from the ashes? Will the new nation be less “exceptional” and possibly more caring and ordinary - a peer among peers? Will we imagine more friends than foes and use force only as a last resort? Will we value caring more than owning and find a deeper richness in our human condition? Or, will we hide in fear and let the barbarians run wild with the repressed animus of our isolation and grief?
4
Mr. Cohen, you have perfectly captured my feelings about our current situation. I sincerely hope that the mid-term elections can turn this country around. I am so sick and tired of the lack of thoughtful policy, the lack of care for governing based on facts and the common good, the bullying talk, and the disregard for institutions that should prevent us from autocrats. I hope that our governing institutions can change. I hope that good leadership can mend the rifts that have opened amongst our fellow citizens.
6
How absolutely apt and perfect this article. I still fear that no one in the Press will have the courage to point at the roots of the problem so that we can tear it out by the roots once and for all.
The republicans have been winding people up knowing they would get some fringe people to enact terrorist attacks on the targets of their ire since reagan. It has been known for centuries that the kind of public speech republicans engage in will drive some people to acts of terror. There is a name for it "incitement". Their skill at manipulating the "low education" types as El Trumpo calls them is fascinating and terrifying in itself.
Bombing innocent people seems to be the first choice for these sorts of right wing folks followed by sniper assassinations and ultimately truck bombs like in OKC. Yes all of that is directly traceable to republican hate mongering, use of propaganda, spreading of conspiracy theories, using religion to overcome reason as part of their divide and conquer politics for the last 50+ years. Republicans can be counted on to put the taste of blood into the mouths of those who like it.
If we as a nation do not openly confront this fact and the people responsible to hold them to account for it we are all doomed and I expect will be an occupied colony again in short order.
2
It is because of the lack of Emotional Intelligence that we are in this precarious moment in our history.
If Trump and the Republicans posesessed this humane Intelligence we would not be going down the tubes so fast
Trump and company have a nerve pointing to the Democrats and the press for the hate. Trump and company are responsible all by themselves
4
The choice is absolutely clear in an election that has been reduced to voting for a dystopian future filled with continuing hatred, divisiveness, corruption, and more terrorist-inspired incidents or a start to returning to a national civility, regular order, unity, respect for others, and the pursuit of fundamental justice. While America may have been temporarily hijacked by an amoral, criminal captain and his conned crew, there are many more of us than them along for the journey. Vote for a total course correction America! Your lives depend on it!
5
The barbarians have long been riding roughshod over the poor and middle-class, here in the disunited, United States of America, and the reason they are in full control of our existence is that they were hidden in plain sight, in the boardrooms of Corporate America, the same Corporate America which had it's own covert agenda, the key mandate being the taking over of the government of these badly fractured disunited United States of America. And lest anyone be deluded by pundits professing the purity of one political party over another, know that when it comes to control and ownership of the wealth, there is no discernable difference between Republican and Democrat.
And today, days before a weak opportunity to halt the march to irreversible fascism, there is hope that the midterms may take back some little aspect of control, but truth be told it is likely not to occur, and march on we will to our doom, led by a truly evil ogre hiding in plain sight, in our White House.
How did it all go bad ?
Complacency, apathy, the focus on self, the thinking that others will save the day, and the eventual, and if anyone had had the intelligence to think about it, result, is the disastrous state of affairs we are currently living in.
Spare me the responses about the "wonderful thriving" economy, since it is common knowledge that as is usual the benefits are designed to accrue only to the .01%ters.
Still, I suppose thanks are in order, for the slightly larger, less stale, breadcrumbs.
3
Better written words that express deep and deeply resonant thoughts cannot be found.
Unfortunately, the surreal closeness of so many congressional races tell us in no uncertain terms that very few citizens are yet thinking such thoughts though they
surely must harbor some of the fears.
Too many have been expertly manipulated to pay
closer attention to their fears than to their consciences
and sense of decency. This has happened many times in
the country's past.
Sometimes we just manage to slog
our way through leaving vast piles of dirty laundry to
be shoved under the historical rug, but which fester
and distort our sense of ourselves (think of early part of
20th century). Sometimes there
is a transcendent moment when the demons are
confronted with skill and daring and moral gumption, from
which they shrink and slither away (think of Joseph Welch jr.
or Peter Rodino)- eventually.
That we are up against a comparable moment is undeniable
and is undeniably grave. The faults are many and are easy
to identify, list, ruminate over.
What remains open is how the citizenry responds. Will it be out of fear, or out of moral disgust at what has been done in their name? Will it be out of personal interest or the greater
social good? Do they want governing to be by intimidation, lies, and spewing of vile words that surely lead to violent acts?
It is far from clear that enough people realize this is the
essential question that must be asked and answered
next Tuesday.
8
Define "Good"
Any civilization - even "Democratic" or "Western Civilization" - exists for one purpose. It exists to preserve order and resist chaos.
As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king’s firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. Neither the rule of succession nor election are formulas for identifying the best ruler, they are formulas for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.
Anyone who steps outside the laws of his civilization becomes the barbarian. Even and especially those who would do so in service to the 'Good'.
3
@bl, if it goes against us, we must continue to resist and assist those who need us without hesitation or despair.
2
and coetzee went on to write "disgrace" another great novel. the protagonist of that book is far far less a disgrace than our emperor. he does penance, and trump never will.
3
The problem with this essay is with the identification of the barbarians.
Roger Cohen wants us to see Trump as the leader of the barbarians who threaten our Republic. The problem is that in many ways, Obama and Clinton acted like barbarians when they were in power.
As Paul Cohen states, the "United States is a self-governing enterprise." That means that we the people are responsible for the governing. But there is a problem with democracy. If the people are misinformed, they can make disastrous mistakes.
As the US society becomes more complex it becomes harder to understand, and mistakes become more likely. The US has entered the stage of too much complexity for the simple mottos of politicians, making mistakes inevitable.
Thus we need to do something about illegal immigration. But there is no discussion. Only warring groups. Liberals say those who oppose open borders are racists.
Thus Obama felt justified in circumventing Congress and giving amnesty to dreamers. And Governor Brown felt justified in declaring California a sanctuary state (although California has no actual role in determining federal immigration law).
The so-called racists try to defend themselves. But many of them are poorly educated so they make a bad choice.
Trump is that bad choice. Yes he is a worse barbarian.
But liberals are responsible for the first step away from democracy in which people decided through their elected representatives in Congress.
Both sides are at fault.
35
@Jake Wagner
During the Obama tenure, both major parties recognized that the immigration system was broken and needed reform. Marco Rubio and some Democrats were eager to co-sponsor legislation to fix immigration. But, under pressure from his donors, Rubio withdrew. And took with him the possibility of a legislative fix. That is when and why Obama acted.
Democrats don’t want open borders. The people who want open borders are the construction companies and agribusinesses who like cheap labor.
109
@Jake Wagner: no, racism and scapegoating are not just "bad choices". They are crimes that cannot be equated with whatever you imagine the "liberals" did. You are trying to spread the blame on "both sides", but it belongs almost entirely on Republicans.
74
False equivalence as usual. Dreamers do you have any idea who they are ? What there status represents ? You prefer to deny them a path to citizenship, this seems so unjust also the liberals do not espouse open borders but a reasonable immigration system to yet be determined. The president goes about saying the opposition wants open borders that is not the truth.
41
Trump leads the barbarians to the gates of treason and a takeover of this country. The rallies, wanna-be brown shirts, the lies repeated over and over again, the bombs (whether detonated or not), are all too similar to the days of Hitler's 1930's. If the people do not stand up and vote these Republican barbarians out of office next week, we will awake to a new nation in November based on Fascism.
Do the American people really want a Fascist government similar to the days of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Nazis?
12
Roger Cohen’s thoughtful columns are enriched by the fact that he can look at domestic politics with the perspective of an outsider—a South African. That’s a nation that has had its share, more than its share, of internal divisiveness, violence, suspicion and estrangement. ( I’ve long believed that if the South had won the Civil War, it would have grown into a nation not unlike South Africa during apartheid).
To this crisis in the U.S., Cohen has brought the writing of JM Coetzee, also South African. As these two observers so accurately explain, we are facing the destruction of our core beliefs, buried by rank racism, fear of the “other” and the reappearance of the banality of evil, with its lack of boundary, restraint, empathy and, mostly, respect.
Keep writing, Roger. Keep reminding.
176
@PaulB67 Definitely an outsider. Which is why I can't help wonder why he uses the language "we Americans," as I believe he carries a UK passport and lives in the UK.
It is nice to hear the opinions of others, but I personally have had enough -- especially when it comes to the more "intellectual"European ones quoting people like JM Coetzee. I think we're going to need a lot more creative thought and action than the pensees of Oxford graduates who got themselves into Brexit. (And by the way, would they want me over there pontificating "we Brits" with regard towhat should be done on Brexit). Gee, I've spent a lot of time there, really think I know the country, so why not?
Not only is it a nice thing to vote, it would be an even better thing to do something about gerrymandering, about corruption in Albany, and on and on. Unfortunately, many of us live in districts where our votes will mean little other than that we care, are good upright citizens. I would prefer to have Mr. Cohen provide more productive, concrete advice, or at least point us in the direction of someone who really knows our country, systems and problems and could help.
3
Roger Cohen, where have you been living - the US has been weaponizing the world for decades - it’s finally coming to the surface with this administration- you’re ignorance is blinding. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Carter all capitulated to the Saudis. The Barbarians have been at the Gate all along - you’re just reporting on it now.
7
Good column.
3
An open caring and honest mind is all that is needed to not be sucked in by the barbarian. It requires nothing more than the will to not lose sight of who we are. To not allow the barbarian to tell us who and what we should be. Simply because we already and always have known that we are better humans than the barbarian needs us to be. The barbarian wins by making us believe that stooping to his level is better than the alternative. Don't be fooled, rise above the barbarian by not forsaking sound and decent principles.
8
Just as it was never 'just Hitler', just as it was never 'just Khrushchev', just as it was never 'just Saddam', so it is not 'just Trump'. It is the millions of his self pitying followers. Ironically, one of their great minds (Rush Limbaugh) used to preach independence and self reliance. "If there's a recession, don't participate." It doesn't help that he has greedily changed course to join the cry babies. The people who blame all their troubles on everybody else, would at one time been the butt of Limbaugh's barbs, not the reason for them.
5
The lucidity of courage... of something... is quite apparent in this fine article.
Too often the language that paints an image in our minds is tepid or timid or shy. Not this.
Several times, I have been disappointed in my fellow Americans. When Nixon was elected -- the second time after Watergate! When George W. Bush was elected -- the second time after torture and war crimes.
But each time, I was relieved by the election of men with more sensible notions, even as they were bound by the norms and traditions of governance.
Now, with Trump, we have discarded even those moral guardrails and ethical principles.
The people have the chance to make America great again.
12
I have had a lifelong interest in the history of human civilizations - beginning with the Minoans right up until the demise of the British Empire and the rise of the U.S. One thing they have all had in common is simple - they end. At some point and for some reason, they burn out. Often it’s the result of slowly creeping internal rot that undermines the foundations upon which the civilization/nation/empire was built until it collapses under it’s own weight and they become shadows of their former selves. The collapse of the U.S. won’t happen in the remainder of my lifetime, perhaps not even what is left of my adult children’s lifetimes, but it’s coming. The beginning of the end has been creeping along for a few decades now and it’s conclusion is historically inevitable.
17
@WesternMass: Government endures only by securing the consent of the governed.
3
Roger, I'm of course delighted that you have lit the fires with which folks can see and hopefully understand the seminal meta-cause of Empire --- particularly since only yesterday my lack of hope was showing in these times/"Times":
[can't be included in this current comment]
I've just received my kindle version of Coetzee’s novel, which I was unaware of, since I don't read fiction --- although I do strongly believe in 'art being prescient of reality' (or what ever Warhol said), and in George Lakoff's "analogy-thinking".
I'm also delighted since my only current (2017/18)
and lonely, demonstration, march, and protest sign simply shouts-out:
DUMP
EMPEROR
TRUMP
and on the reverse side, under the image of 'our' (not the Emperor's) American flag:
"We can't be an EMPIRE".
However, Roger, while I agree with your corrective action on Nov. 6, and recommend myself:
My advice to all Americans about voting in 2018 if they are smart, but more about 2020 if they're not, is to ask themselves this simple but seminal question:
Do you want to vote in favor of a country that "acts like an Empire?" --- or a country that "acts like a democracy?"
There are some other things we'll need to 'double-down' on, if we are to continue and complete our "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin du Rivage].
11
@Alan MacDonald
Diary of a Bad Year (2007) is the J.M. Coatzee novel mo
The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation...
The typical reaction of liberal intellectuals is to seize on the contradiction here: How can something be both wrong and right, or at least both wrong and OK, at the same time? What liberal intellectuals fail to see is that this so-called contradiction expresses the quintessence of the Machiavellian and therefore the modern, a quintessence that has been thoroughly absorbed by the man in the street. The world is ruled by necessity, says the man in the street, not by some abstract moral code. We have to do what we have to do.
If you wish to counter the man in the street, it cannot be by appeal to moral principles, much less by demanding that people should run their lives in such a way that there are no contradictions between what they say and what they do. Ordinary life is full of contradictions; ordinary people are used to accommodating them. Rather, you must attack the metaphysical, supra-empirical status of necessità and show that to be fraudulent.
1
@Alan MacDonald
Diary of a Bad Year (2007) is the J.M. Coatzee novel you might appreciate. Its observation is that If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.
The typical reaction of liberal intellectuals is to seize on the contradiction here: How can something be both wrong and right, or at least both wrong and OK, at the same time? What liberal intellectuals fail to see is that this so-called contradiction expresses the quintessence of the Machiavellian and therefore the modern, a quintessence that has been thoroughly absorbed by the man in the street. The world is ruled by necessity, says the man in the street. We have to do what we have to do.
If you wish to counter the man in the street, it cannot be by appeal to moral principles, much less by demanding that people should run their lives in such a way that there are no contradictions between what they say and what they do. Ordinary life is full of contradictions; ordinary people are used to accommodating them. Rather, you must attack the metaphysical, supra-empirical status of necessità and show that to be fraudulent.
If DEMOCRATIC civilization is what you wish to defend, means are limited
1
@Alan MacDonald
earlier comment:
Alan MacDonald
Wells, MaineOct. 26
Michelle, you state that, "Trump’s words were meant to further derange American political debate, they were, in one sense, clarifying."
However, I would clarify a bit more and say that, "Trump’s words were meant to further derange (and DIVIDE American political debate) they were, in one sense, clarifying" --- what this hidden cancer of disguised global capitalist Empire has amped-up in "dividing and conquering" we the people of America with over at least the last 10 "least worst voting cycles", and arguably longer (since the ending days of the Second World War of Empires).
Taking, admittedly, a broader view, Michelle, I would add to this commentary list that, having been given the ‘gift’ of Emperor Trump —- who is the most obvious Emperor ever to appear in the ‘role’ of faux-president to the American people —- it is beyond disappointing to me that so few Americans recognize that the signal, seminal, simple diagnosis of what ails our country is the exact same thing as it was in 1775: EMPIRE.
Despite the new popularity of the word ‘Woke’ —- so few seem to be.
As I write my comment now among 162 others there is no mention of Empire, nor hint in your column that Empire is a problem.
1
Fun read as is most of Cohen's commentaries.
But, I see a common denominator in the rise of Trump and what he represents.
He is lacking in education, moral understanding and has little regard for the truth. He uses tactics of a playground bully to down grade those that call out and publicize his self serving attitude and interest.
In a nutshell, Trump mirrors the attitudes of his supporters.
It is very interesting that the majority of those that oppose Trump are made up of the better educated.
What this says is that the glaring answer to Trump-ism is stronger emphasis on education. This means better funding especially for long term dependable funding guarantees.
The one item that I see as the elephant in the room is the shear lack of interest and ability of Trumptsters to read and write. His followers use the ten second soundbite/video to form their opinions without reading or listening to the background information from different sources. This includes Trump himself.
14
"The barbarian game is clear: to blind Americans to the fact that the United States is a self-governing enterprise. To say government is evil, government is terrible, bad government is what Democrats do — so just leave it to us!"
Mr. Trump may be a barbarian, but Mr. Cohen is positively Orwellian.
First, he sets up a straw man, a lie, that the deplorables are denying that the US is a self-governing enterprise.
But the opposite is true. We assert and shout that this is a self-governing enterprise, and for that very reason we want limited government, small, a government that makes decisions close to the people and not in faraway DC, not the Leviathan that perennially wants to occupy us and keep us on a reservation, which it, and Mr. Cohen, dishonestly, or naively (to be charitable), call self-government.
And most importantly, we value a document written to be understood by the people, the Constitution, as being the ultimate expression of self-government, a reasonably precise and fair prescription for it - like Newton's laws, and like Newton's laws changeable only by close to universal consent - not a pre-text for social engineering by the Orwellians that have a habit of sprouting in every generation.
11:17 am Sat
7
@John Xavier III Very interesting. This is a common theme we hear that states rights for local governance should trump the federal government. That is all fine and good until states expect the federal government to bail them out of disasters like the plethora of wildfires, floods, landslides, hurricanes, tornadoes, bombings, mass shootings, failed banks and schemers like Lehman and AIG who fraud us of our life savings. No state, not even the very populated such as California and New York and Texas and Florida can bail themselves out from enormous natural and man made disasters. And when our country gets attacked we expect our federal government military to defend us. We drive on federally funded interstates all across this country. Most states want the government to slap nationwide limits on benefits to minorities such as the LGBTQ population and most states refuse to allow marijuana to be recreationally and medically prohibited.
2
Excellent, Mr. Cohen, but I take issue with your assertion that the Republicans are blind to the consequences of their pursuit of power: they know they are destroying America and they are doing it on purpose -- nothing will cement their hold on power like destroying our democracy. It's not a bug in their program, it's a feature. The blindness to which you refer is merely hypocrisy. It's the only art form Republicans recognize.
9
We are all part of the problem. We have become conplacent with Trump, McConnell, other democracy hating people in charge.
7
No we haven't--I know many who have certainly not and never will. I'm not sure why people seem fond of saying "we all" as if it's so. You might start by saying that is how you are yourself--but if it isn't, then you can be certain it isn't for others, either.
12
@Tricia
NO. We are all not "part of the problem", because many of us not only foresaw what a Trump presidency would do to this nation-- but tried to inform others about it.
So in this instance, it's probably best for you speak for yourself....and VOTE!
7
@Tricia No Tricia it is not all of our fault. Millions of us are hard working, taxpaying, law abiding, kind and generous. Millions of us truly care about our great nation and it’s principles. Currently we are experiencing a lack of statesmanship in our Congress. Our divided Congress has wrought so much disarray in our country right now and the Congress is derelict in its duty to put a check on the current occupant of OUR Oval Office. We are living under plutocratic rule. If people don’t know what the words plutocrat and plutocracy mean this is why we have what we have now in our country. Trump, Ryan and McConnel need to be put in check. These three are supposed to work for all of us and yet they have contributed to the nastiness that is going on in our country by causing the enormous divisions that is straining our republic.
5
This nation is at a crossroad. We have elected a would be dictator to the highest office. Trump is following the course of all dictators bent on complete subservience by all citizens. He caters to the military, enlists a rowdy element of society, ripe for blood, and incites them to a zombie-like fervor of hatred and thoughtless anger. Trump attacks the free press and extols the worshiping media like Fox News--revered institutions are mocked and vilified. The mass which comprises the lunatic fringe need an object for their unhinged anger, and they are supplied with a few such being, immigrants, Hillary, CNN and any anti-Trump actor or action. Lies have become the norm and the old axiom 'tell the big lie often enough and it will be believed' has ruled this administration.
Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants like Giuiano. Kudlow, Bolton-- and like a banana republic generalissimo--his family.
Where does it end? Only the voters will write the final chapter.
12
No doubt, Roger. But, though we must undeniably vote "against" the current barbarian sitting in an office once held to be sacred, what are we to be voting "for"? More unfunded goodies like that represented by the empty, but emotionally satisfying, catch-phrase, "Medicare for All"?
No, to set things right we need a revolution where everyone makes a sacrifice (and, yes, where those at the top make -- by far -- the largest one) and a revolution where everyone come to grips with the own internal biases and recognizes how out-groups are made to suffer unduly because of 'my' fears for 'me-and-mine'.
In other words, we need a revolution in what makes us humans tick. And, sadly, that's a revolution which I'd place a bet -- on any odds you like -- which ain't going to happen.
3
When you look at how we’ve behaved since 9/11 there is a certain collective insanity at play. The understandable reaction to that attack has metastasized into a militaristic foreign policy of irrational reaction based on wishful thinking and unrealistic expectations. This isn’t just about Iraq and Afghanistan. Its also about Syria and Libya and the mishandling of our reaction to the Arab spring. It’s about the rise of an regionally aggressive China and Russia and the fragmenting of the European Union. Its about a reliance on military power and the diminishment of diplomacy. Its about the undermining of international institutions in favor of a nationalist posture that ill serves our interests. This has been a bipartisan project that Trump is merely capitalizing on. The foundation was built before him and the rubble will need to be cleaned up after him but Trump will not make America great again, it never was his intention to do so in the first place. (After all a great con man always knows his marks weaknesses). But the disfunction predated him and I don’t see us getting past that for a long time, and that’s a truth neither political party cares to face.
15
As a South African who read Coetzee's timely novel, while living under the apartheid government, I was thrilled to read this article.
His basic premise , that the barbarians, despite Jol's best efforts, will win, as they have that one thing a society needs, patience, wait for the downfall of the empire, via the leaders greed and stupidity.
Never in our wildest dreams did our family expect that apartheid would fall. It did, money to finance the system ran out. Mothers started to object to their sons death on an ill defined battle field. Sons who came home brutalised and unable to participate in a normal manner with others.
I also never thought that , " waiting for the barbarians, would be used in an USA newspaper, of great standing, to make a comparison to your "Barbarian," used as a slur now, president.
Please get out and vote Democrat on the 6th of November. I am old now, but I would still like to see my seven grandchildren experience what it means to be principled leader. One who tackles difficult problems with the necessary forethought, and listens to sage advice
Please make my wishes come true!
24
@William Gould
Roger Cohen does hijack the meaning of the novel to support his own thesis, here. Cohen compels us to 'rage, rage against the dying of the light', whereas Coatzee's antihero (the magistrate) knew the whole verse:
'Though wise men in the End know DARK IS RIGHT
As their tounge had forked no lightening they
Do Not Go Gentle into that good night.'
The magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians wasn't fighting for a lost cause. He simply recognized he was at the End of his civilization's History; he was the Last Man:
“Let it at the very least be said, if it ever comes to be said, if there is ever anyone in some remote future interested to know the way we lived, that in this farthest outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a barbarian.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
1
@William Gould
Roger Cohen does hijack the meaning of the novel to support his own thesis, here. Cohen compels us to 'age, rage against the dying of the light', whereas Coatzee's antihero (the magistrate) knew the whole verse:
Though wise men in the End know DARK IS RIGHT
As their tounge had forked no lightening they
Do Not Go Gentle into that good night.
The magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians wasnt fighting for a lost cause. He simply recognized he was at the End of his civilization's History; He was the Last Man:
“Let it at the very least be said, if it ever comes to be said, if there is ever anyone in some remote future interested to know the way we lived, that in this farthest outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a barbarian.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
2
Not surprising that both Jesus and Trump were plastered on Sayoc's van: the Savior and the "Barbarian savior." A reminder that Trump's biggest supporters are evangelicals. Believing in the one on "faith" and without evidence would appear to make it easier to believe in - and blindly follow - the other.
18
Mr. Cohen, this book,“Waiting for the Barbarians", sounds like it is a capsule of the HIStory of supposed civilization and progress.
HIStory is one of death and destruction with the barbarians you define so eloquently trying to take supposed power from each other.
WE THE PEOPLE are always the ones who pay - with life and financial ruin - in their demented power wars.
Time to put HIStory in the dustbin.
As you say, "We Americans are self-governing, and in the face of malevolent and feckless and corrupt people, there are better options. That is what the vote on Nov. 6 is about."
Yes, OUR United States of America is a country made up of immigrants who are learning to leave the old ways behind them and take part in the governance of OUR country.
Socially Conscious Women are stepping up to take one-half the power and bring balance to all systems.
OUR story begins now.
6
"Not to speak is to speak. Not to Act is to Act." Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
"The coldest place is hell is reserved for those to remain neutral during times of moral crisis." Dante
15
@Hugh McElyea - Actually Dante put reserved the coldest place in hell for those who betray their masters, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. The Aristotelian organization of The Great Chain of Being does not bend to the needs of posters to the NYT.
2
Cesar Sayoc, Jr. Is now the indelible face of Trump supporters and the Republican Party.
24
@Sam Kanter
True. And oddly enough, this president is trying to play it down.
2
no he is not@Sam Kanter
3
Once again, literature gives us a way to describe the indescribable present. Our unimaginable today was imagined already by a storyteller, J.M. Coetzee. Perhaps it is true that we have become the barbarians, the ones we used to despise and feel superior to, but we don't have to go out like this.
What we need now is a storyteller to describe the future, the time when we will escape the current nightmare and enjoy "normal" life. May we all wake up on November 6th to a new story, a hopeful one.
Vote. Ten more days until a new and better story.
225
@TinyBlueDot. We say “vote”. I have said “vote”. In that plea we hope for the country to repair itself without coming apart. I have no illusions the world before Trump was anything but deeply flawed, unjust, and violent, but I could believe (perhaps naively) that most of us wanted it to be better, and would try and fail and try and fail until we succeeded, even in a small way. That’s no longer the case. In fact the barbarians appear to want to accelerate our demise, socially and environmentally. Yes, vote. But if voting fails be prepared for more turbulent times.
62
@TinyBlueDot
"What we need now is a storyteller to describe the future, the time when we will escape the current nightmare and enjoy "normal" life."
I think that story teller was J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote his fantasy saga during WWII, a time of great evil, and when many people came together to end it.
We just have to get that Ring of Power into the lake of fire, and defeat Sauron.
That's all.
30
@TinyBlueDot I wish "vote" meant more than it does in most places -- like where I live, in midtown Manhattan. It's a nice way to say "I care" Or "I'm going to stand up and be counted," but I think we're going to have to be a whole lot more creative than to see any change.
27
MAGA is a slogan on a red cap. Trump's real motto is Heads I win, tails you lose.
That's the essence of Trump and his home-schooled crypto-conspiracists. Before the FBI got their guy, the very first descriptions of the pipe bombs suggested they were fake because no self-respecting bomber would use a digital watch as depicted in movies because they don't want to give away the detonation time. That specious notion was planted in the very first report of mailed bombs, including The NYTimes.
Guess Cesar Sayoc didn't get the memo. That's truthiness traveling faster than the speed of light. It's also a predictable consequence of loosening the screws on objectivity and greasing the rails like Trump so subjective nonsense -- punditry and shallow opinion (bias actually) arrives at the station before the facts do.
Confusing? Isn't that the point? Uncertain? Just follow the mob and you won't feel so stupid or at least have the comfort of knowing you joined the crowd, which was stupid so at least you're not alone.
Trump world is no longer remotely related to truth, other than using it as a tennis ball to thwack back and forth between talking heads on cable Fox. To America's right brain, it's not about bombs or a bombastic Trump glamorizing violence or vilifying the news. Instead the Fox fog rolls in and all that's left visible for the dim of vision is a Soros-subsidized fake bomb.
With the Barbarians here and now, you can poison the wells with impunity.
15
@Yuri Asian
But just to ensure complete success, when he flips that coin he makes sure it's a 2 headed coin.
Heads I win tails I lose. Oh look! Heads. Again! I win again! I'm so lucky. I'm such a winner
1
Brilliant, insightful writing, It has been said that “Content is king, but context is God.” Mr. Cohen has illuminated the context as few others have done, and although the truths he has delivered are difficult to accept, they are truths that need to be confronted head-on.
15
Most of us grow accepting or at least not rejecting the illusions of our parents' religion. Why should we expect critical thinking when it comes to politics?
Christopher Hitchens had it right.
5
@Sophocles: It became obvious to me by about age eight that the universe self-organizes fractally from simple elements that become complex by obeying conditional rules of relationship.
1
Your quotes from the great novelist Coetzee set up a grim prognosis but then your melodramatic extrapolations take the piece in a comic direction. You have your barbarian savior humiliate a woman traumatized by sexual assault when it would be closer to the truth to say that the savior heroically defends an honorable man humiliated by an hysterical mob of false accusers. Perhaps the problem is that you read only one novel by Coetzee but not the more apt, namely, Disgrace, which much more appropriately considers what it means for a civilization to submit not to a corrupt savior but to the engorging barbarians.
5
Trump calld this! Only his 300lb guy libing in a basement turned out to be a 215lb guy living in a van...but here's the irony: it was Trump's guy all along!
15
Keep reading fiction Roger the Oracle. Personally I like history. Remember everyone has a voice on this matter. I would rather defend my values as an American then than running up the white flag and be overrun by changes that would result in this not being the country I want it to be. We cannot be the final destination of all those who want to come here as they number in the millions and beyond. I want room and opportunity for my children and grandchildren and beyond. They come first. I would love to hear your solutions to these seeming intractable world problems rather than just smearing and demeaning those willing to enter the ring and at least try to work things out. I’m really tired of those critics, you included, who have and do nothing except tell me how crummy things are. Poetry is lovely and gives great opportunity to ponder life’s meaning. But right now I’m for resetting a path back to reality and giving up to everyone who doesn’t think this way is not on the agenda.
9
@Mike,"I want room and opportunity for my children and grandchildren and beyond. They come first" I'm sure these were the same thoughts and motivations your ancestors had when they migrated to this country however long ago. Prosperity is not a zero sum game. Opportunity is not a zero sum game. Those are the values of the country in which I was raised.
7
WHAT values? That wealthy white Christian straight men have special privileges to enrich themselves while destroying our planet in the process?
3
If your children and grandchildren come first, how could you vote for someone who thinks climate change is a hoax?
3
"Throughout a trying period he and I have managed to behave towards each other like civilized people. All my life I have believed in civilized behaviour; on this occasion, however, I cannot deny it, the memory leaves me sick with myself.”
Successful Empires talk their way out of all sorts of war crimes all the time. You just write history (yesterday's fake news).
On a more positive note because we must move on.
So, delight at soaring prose:
"On horseback, ragged mirages in the dust, Coetzee’s barbarians do not really need to do anything. Hardly more than chimera, they suck the Empire into their labyrinth. This is because the Empire is dying, just as the magistrate is dying. He is an aging libertine with an agile mind and a love of knowledge — a speck, as he sees with unforgiving insistence, on history’s tide. This is a novel about the desperation of mortality."
Mr Cohen is on his way to being a literary critic.
3
The United States began to decline in the aftermath of 9/11. The nation blundered about, stung and hurt, looking for an enemy they could hit with the weapons they had. But there were no armies to sweep off the field, no fighter aircraft to down, no fleets to sink. The enemy was a ghost, with a few dollars and a few men, drifting in and out of view.
So our frustrated President, looking to employ his military, to see a war he could understand, launched a conventional invasion of a country that while an adversary, had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11. He did not pay for the expense; in fact he borrowed the money for all of it. He didn't invade with the forces he was recommended to provide; he went in light, and that force, sent in over and over again, began a long bleeding that has not stopped in 17 years.
15
Yes, to all of this that Cohen offers. One thing though not included about commenting on the barbarian savior: When the chips are down, he, the savior, says to the masses something like, "We're a nation of love, a nation that is peace-loving. And we celebrate all of its goodness in a unity that we are and must be for the sake of what's right." The question left is, In what way do words matter? Even words that are accepted to convey nobility and honor and graciousness are being manipulated in order to ground enthusiastically the sinister. If this doesn't offend that which Good, I don't what does. And it is unforgivable.
12
Another fine column from Roger Cohen. Impossible not to think of J.M. Cavafy’s great poem, “Waiting for the Barbarians” (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard):
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
The poem continues in this vein. Eventually night falls, and word comes that the barbarians have gone away. The poem ends,
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
If there is a glimmer of hope to be found in our present calamitous situation, perhaps it's in that last line. In the end Trump, however awful he may be, is sweeping away much of the political stagnation of the past fifty years that both parties have contributed to. After he’s gone, the time for radical rebuilding will come.
16
@Richard Ogle Thank you for the terrific quote from that unique poem. But, do you really think the North-American people will finally wake up and look at our harsh reality directly in the eye?
Well done. I recently read Chritian Meier's "Caesar", a biography of the first Roman Emperor. The parallels between their days and ours here in America are frightening. Of course, Julius had contempt for the Republic. He set up barbarian enemies out on the frontiers so that he could knock them down. War was his friend and his tool, his glory.
He sought to jail his opponents in the Senate. He believed that only he could save Rome, and that only he really knew what was "best". His god was Power. Everything else was to be harnessed in service to that god, and to its servant, himself. To Julius, republican procedures were little more than quaint antiquities.
As Trump seems to be saying to peoples whom he has identified as his modern day "barbarians," (Iranians, Muslims, immigrants, and so forth), either go along with the program written by the Empire or be destroyed. That worked for the Romans too--until it didn't work. Unluckily for us, it seems that modern historical timelines have become compressed, and we may not have the 300 years or so for the savage treatment of fellow human beings to result in their finally growing powerful enough to destroy us.
It's particularly frightening nowadays to hear otherwise decent American supporters of Trump state that they believe he was "sent by God," as a means of stepping past his copious anti-republican short-comings. It's almost as though these supporters are saying that Trump has to destroy our republic in order to save it.
17
@N. Ray, you forgot one thing - the Roman elites despised the plebeians and treated them like cannon fodder, slave labor, or dirt, depending on the day. Caeser found a ready and receptive audience and the plebeians had no idea how much worse it was going to become.
2
From Will Durant.
A Nation is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.
Barbarism is like the jungle; it never admits its defeat; it waits patiently for centuries to recover the territory it has lost.
12
We'll never face the barbarians until we, and the likes of Roger Cohen, acknowledge that they're the ones who jet to Davos every year, run our permanent foreign and domestic policy establishment and are content to see the world heat up to extinction if it helps their portfolios (after all, got that estate in New Zealand and besides, Lexus and Olive Tree!).
Donald is a but an excrescence of this crowd's pathology, the id with the right suit but the wrong tie and grammar.
When are our "opinion makers" surfeited with wealth, ignorance and complacency, and having gotten so much wrong, going to own up to their complicity?
Of course, the answer is never. This columnist and his colleagues couldn't possible be at fault, they're so civil and their ties are so right...
8
Well-written copy. "Bully! Bully!" as Teddy Roosevelt would have said. I think if you'll recall: we've been here before. Oligarchs ruled our country once. The world was a dim, gray, lifeless place for the poor and middle class while the likes of JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller used a president named McKinley as his personal sock-puppet. These monsters strode the country making the lives of ordinary Americans miserable. They won a big election by pour millions into electing their pawn McKinley. The country waited in anguish new laws enriching the oligarchs while stealing from the country.
Then, a man ended McKinley's political ambitions. TR rose to power; and, the world and the country changed paths forever. Without TR there is no FDR; no safety net; a world as the oligarchs would have it: a zero-sum game. America is more than that. We rise together --- oligarchs and the middle class --- or we wallow in a pit. The oligarchs must learn, over and over again, that ingenuity and economic growth are a product of a nurturing society.
20
@Rocketscientist I hope you are right.
The Barbarians may be within the gates, but they haven’t yet seized all the agencies of government. The Justice Department and the FBI still maintain some degree of independence. Should they become loyal to Trump personally, rather than to the country and the Constitution - as he demanded of Comey - the corruption of our institutions, that Roger Cohen fears so much, will be completed. This could happen not in a matter of years, but months, and if it does, the rule of law will be at an end. The Barbarians will take over, and America, as we know, it will cease to exist. I know that sounds alarmist and overwrought, but given what’s happening, I only wish it were.
16
@Paul The FBI is much closer to becoming henchmen than you think. In my work with them over 30 years, my impression of them is that as a rule, they are stolidly Republican, order-obsessed, and utterly ruthless. Their office politics are played grimly, and for keeps.
All you need to know about how closely allied with trump and trump-ism is to observe the video of them yesterday, unsuccessfully trying to draw a blue tarp over the screeds written all over the bomber's van. Why was this done? There was no law-enforcement need and no policy or procedure to do so. It was done out of personal embarrassment, for the politics they happen to share.
8
@Paul: Trumpism is nothing more than plain old fashioned cronyism. Cronies are exempt from all laws they make for others.
2
If only we had an educated public. A public with a solid, humanities based education. Sadly, over the past 40 years, the humanities have been sacked and we are all left with 100k, vocational training degrees. Not many (yes, even among NYT readers) will know or even recognize the name Coetzee. The "educated," these days, get their social/moral compass from the likes of comedians. We see people quoting Amy Schumer and John Oliver, not Joan Didion or James Baldwin. Barbarians, indeed.
12
I have long said that the decline in public education in this country correlated exactly with the decline in public discourse, public engagement, and the rise of the worst elements of our politics that continued to make cuts to education funding a priority. It’s now a vicious cycle. We elect republicans who gut public education resulting in the election of more republicans. An educated electorate is essential to a functioning democracy. This is something the founding fathers recognized at the very dawn of our nation - and their concern was correct. We are now in the midst of exactly what they feared.
8
I firmly believe the education system in this country has been very systematically reduced just for this reason. Uneducated people are far more easily lead.
3
@Bartleby S ... yes indeed, " the humanities have been sacked ", and sacked by politically correct harridans of academia who howled that the humanities were constructs of privileged white males.
1
When historians look back at the demise of the republic, which act of desperation will they identify as the turning point? Will it be the desperation leading to the election of Nixon after the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the failure of the military and civil authorities in the Vietnam War debacle? The desperation of a president to retain power that led to Watergate? The undermining of democratic norms resulting from the desperation of the Republican Party to regain power during the Clinton years? The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the disastrously desperate reactions to them? The Republican Party’s undermining of democratic norms and institutions resulting from their desperation over the election of the first African-American president? One thing is certain: the election of 2016 was not the cause, but the most blatant symptom of the republic’s demise. That was when it became clear to me that failure of this grand experiment is inevitable, despite the results of the upcoming election. The sooner we all begin to realize this, the sooner we can prepare for the future without the “United” States as we know them. RIP, USA.
12
@William Burns: The moronic US public elects Republican presidents for committing treason.
6
Bravo Roger. I've always thought you were underneath it all, dyspeptic. Thanks for bringing it to the surface. But as for the facts of the matter: American history is turbulent. It is ideally still that city on a hill imagined by the pilgrims. America, America, God mend thy every flaw; confirm thy goals with self control, thy liberty in law. That's what I'm fighting for. This is no time for dystopian nightmares, when a call to action is what's needed. You take coetzee. I'll take crispus attacks, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama. All names you ought to use more, in reverential tones.
13
Obama was "cool, " that's all he was. He did little for America, as has been recently reviewed by many. Remember his cry: "hope and change." He walked into a pit of financial horror and studied it little and took the word of the banks; the big banks and their reps. He screwed over the little person and millions lost jobs, homes, dignity and a future. Lives gone to shreds by the millions. He failed with obamacare; it is a capitalistic nightmare run by private companies and millions in this country have no access to health care. He made Bush tax cuts for the rich permanent and started a bunch of new wars many which continue today. He supported the military industrial complex to a great degree and hence wasted trillions of dollars on the ware machine. He did very little for this country and admitted it. He regularly has said he was a moderate Republican and had policies very similar to those which capitalist buy from their congressmen on a regular basis. America has a "system" the same system your grandfather spoke of and it doesn't change. The corruption continues. The profit motive drops our values into a big hole in the ground along with good educational opportunities, sharing of the wealth, good health insurance and good media information.
2
When Bush invaded Iraq, I though historians would mark that date as the end of the American century. With Obama's election, I though we might have dodged the bullet. By November 2016, I feared that I was wrong. But there is still a chance on November 6 to salvage something of our moral standing in the world.
59
@Historian I don't know. Remember at the end of Bush's tenure as president, far fewer people were admitting having voted for him, esp. in the second election, than did, his name became one to not be mentioned by Republicans, Republicans were declaring they need to do some soul-searching, and the all-around declaration was that Republicans would be in the wilderness for 40 years? Not only did that last a mere two years, but the right wing in this country has become even more virulent, toxic, and rabid, the election of Donald Trump being Exhibit A. We went from that post-Bush wilderness thing to the GOP being handed full power and Donald Trump as president. It's the American electorate that gives me pause and a sickening belief that too many of us are uneducated in American civics and too indoctrinated by the decades of GOP/FOX propaganda and warfare against the American left. the irrationality, the disregard for facts and reason, history, evidence...and allowing one's emotions, usually of rage and hate, seem to dictate the choices the rightwing base makes. That is tough to turn around.
11
Fiendish energy? We're talking about the President who spends one in four days at a golf course and schedules TV breaks throughout the workday. I won't deny you the malicious intent. However, fiendish energy does not describe this President. He is inherently lazy. Both intellectually and physically. He's a thug and a goon. Nothing more.
We appreciate J.M. Coetzee’s writing. However, I think you give Trump too much credit. We should be referencing a novel titled "Diaries of a Goomba." Trump is as two dimensional as the character and as criminal as the word's origin. While we all lament the tragic collapse of Western hegemony, let's not mistakenly throw Roman honorifics at Trump. He is not a leader. More importantly, he is not our leader.
Imagine a child's immortal embarrassment upon realizing their parents support for this man. The awareness will forever mark a point of shame. History will not judge Trump kindly. Those who follow him now are wise to reflect on their own legacies.
23
@Andy: The bewilderment of the children dragged to Trump rallies by their parents shines through in every photograph of Trump's rabble-rousing.
10
"It is of the nature of declining powers to imagine foes ... imagined enemies, once provoked, turn into real ones."
See Iraq - the imagined foe - the invasion of which Roger Cohen advocated to make the Middle East great again.
7
Jared Diamond in his counter narrative to his book, 'Guns, Germs, and Steel', the chilling analysis of failed civilizations, 'Collapse', observes that the evidence of demise was staring these empires directly in the face, but they turned away unwilling to confront what ultimately became their apocalypse. Do not turn away, give aid those enthralled with the demagogue, Vote!
18
@alprufrock: All 12 of the factors identified by Jared Diamond as critical contributors to social collapses are intensifying by the day now. The fish rots from the head. The plutocrats who fund American political psychopathy today are investing in apocalypse.
6
It took some doing to amass all those bumper stickers.
I assume he purchased them at Trump rallies.
A few years from now collections as complete as his will be selling for substantial prices on eBay.
Eventually the entire van complete with stickers will be up there too.
And Trump Enterprises rolls along on its merry way.
5
I have often had the chilling thought, as one who has read a great deal about Rome and its empire, that the current political situation in this country reminds me much of the last days of the Roman Republic. Coetzee's novel, which I have not read yet, suggests the waning days of the empire. That period may also resemble ours, in that the waning days of the Republic occurred during a period of conquest and military ascendance, whereas we are currently in a period of diminution.
3
It took some doing to amass all those bumper stickers.
I assume he purchased them at Trump rallies.
A few years from now collections as complete as his will be selling for selling for substantial prices on eBay.
Eventually the entire van complete with stickers will be up there too.
And Trump Enterprises rolls along on its merry way.
Growing up, one of my parents suggested that I beware of pep rallies, something I didn't quite understand. Pep rallies, held in the school gym and in favor of our parochial school sports teams enabled us to get out of class for an hour or so, and encouraged us to encourage "our" team. In the late 1960's, there were some "hippies" against the Vietnam War who wore black armbands, sat quietly while we shouted in unison, and found themselves characterized as troublemakers. I now see how rallies while providing provide "pep," stir up strong emotion and not always in the interest of good. There is a sharp line today between those who choose the path of information and those who follow authority. Some of the black arm-banded anti-war protesters were dismissive of us rule following cheering pep-rally attendees. We might have thought they were barbarians. Think. Think. Think.
20
@Debra Merryweather
I have often said this about "pep rallies" but have never heard this from anyone else---finally. I did not participate in the shouting: "crush them, defeat them, beat them, murder them". Even in my teens I had seen the footage of Nazi rallies. Ugly, mindless group-think.
3
The Empire has been calcifying for a generation. The "Peace Dividend" never came as new enemies were created faster than schools and bridges and could be built. New battle ships were built with no foreign navy left to challenge. Rockets and bombers with bigger payloads were built with no cities to bomb. We were protected from imaginary foreign foes and all the while our homeland decayed. No longer first in anything but finance and entertainment, we turned inward and found enemies at home to blame They were hard working immigrants, black and brown people, Muslims and atheists and finally the elite, the well read, well educated, articulate and honest people among us to spoke the truth about science and economics and Human Rights. We rejected internationalism in favor of nationalism, we turned our backs on humanity in favor of self interest. To whom will the baton be passed is the only question left, unless there is a massive resounding rise of indignation that unequivocally rejects the turn we have taken.
33
I too waited for the Peace Dividend. It took me a couple of years to understand that it was always a misnomer for government to military industrial complex welfare in the guise of defense spending. At the time it was figured to be $250B...a drop in the bucket, so to speak.
6
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
30
Are we too alone to fight the good fight as the 'magistrate' in "Waiting for the Barbarians' seemed to feel himself? Are we too comfortable; too old; too young; too burdened; too scared; too busy; too lazy; too abused, too sick; too hopeless; too indifferent and too weak to fight the Barbarian, Donald J. Trump, and his pawns; too ill-equipped to fight the Republican Party and 'Black Money'? Are we, really?
10
@F. McB, I see many ready to give up, as if they've fought. But when? It's not just marches or online comments. It's organizing, it's boycotts (a tool we have not comprehended in its power), it's gathering funds for protection or help for the weak who are being harmed. And it's thinking of more ways, more resources we still have. It's recognizing that being attacked or challenged is not the same as defeat. How quick and easy a defeat would be, compared to giving all you can to fight. People have died for the rights and decency when tyrants came as they have. What will we do? First refuse despair, no matter what.
13
@jb, YES, Stand Up, Forward Together, NOW!
2
At one time, at our zenith after WW II, citizens believed in institutions and leaders with integrity, regardless of their roots. After seeing the horror of fascism and the rise of communism, people of all stripes wanted to show that capitalism could provide widespread and shared prosperity.
Then the elites decided "enough with sharing" and too many whites said "we have to share with THEM too?"
Reagan caught that moment with his 9 scariest words and Cadillac-driving welfare queen.
The GOP, having an agenda of empowering elites, couldn't run on that agenda. So along came the soul-sucking skill set of Lee Atwater. Fear, rage, resentment and grievance became the GOP way to make natives restless and vote against their own interests and very futures of themselves and their children.
The Clintons and Schumers then competed with the GOP for elites' money, looking for elites with a social conscience while abandoning democracy.
The result was both parties on the 1% dole and faith in institutions led by leaders of integrity was shot. Capitalism now works for the few with leftovers for the rest.
Buffoons like Trump are not the answer. He is an acknowledgement of lost faith. He will attack but never build. A prince of our disorder.
To break the cycle of elite money and the concomitant corruption of democratic values, common citizens must save our country from below (after real statesmen left in disgust). We must no longer enable the parties, but infiltrate and take them over.
6
So “complete,” Roger... I’m reminded of one of my favorite political musings from my reading of history.. “ there will always be politicians who appeal to the swine in people, by constantly harnessing human stupidity.” Kurt Schumacher, Berlin, 1933.. this country I’ve lived in for 74 years is hardly recognizable anymore.
9
In our nation's history, we can look back to the days of slavery and the 'McCarthy hearings' as times when we saw belief structures take hold within our nation that became entrenched amongst members of our own govvernment but truly at odds with what the majority believed.
Well, we're again at that point with this Trump Administration, this cabal of bigotds, hypocrites being led by the likes of the sanctimonious, plaster saint Donald Trump. But make no mistake it is Stephen Miller who continues to manage what is coming out of the White House.
And the time is at hand to start the process to rid our nation of this insidious cancer undermining all that our parents, grandparents, our forefathers devoted their lives for, shed their blood over.
We can win back the House this election cycle and the Senate in 2020, no matter what we're hearing on the news cycles.
We just have to get to the polls like never before to match what the Evangelicals, the Religious Right is planning as they hope to keep in place those they believe will permanently end 'A Woman's Right to Chose'.
Who do you believe is flocking to these Trump Rallies? Yes there are the 'rust belt types' who believe Trump will bring back industry and coal jobs, etc., etc.. But it's the Religious Right, the Evangelicals who are pounding the pavement, with many showing up in support for Trump at his rallies. They're the staged actors behind Trump at the podium, holding up those signs that say Women for Trump.
10
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and holding a cross.” Although it is unclear to whom this quote should be attributed....Huey Long, Sinclair Lewis or someone else....the prescient truth of the idea cannot be denied. Despite his draft and tax dodging past, Trump constantly wraps himself in the American flag and despite his amoral, misogynist, mendacious and philandering ways he holds the evangelical cross high. Under this guise he labels the press the enemy of the people, incites violence, condones voter suppression, destroys democracy and grabs national treasure for himself and his family. What a travesty. Make Nov 6 the beginning of his end.
31
We, the salivating masses who live for blood sport, keep feeding the barbarian master's ego ignorant of the consequences we will face as the barbarian master loots our treasure, our pride.
9
I'm just not sure where you're going with this. Is it that the Barbarians are us? Cause that's what it is. Trump is just a popular now as he was when he was elected. McConnell, Ryan, Collins, Grassley are still doing what they have been doing for years and always getting re-elected. The majority of State legislatures are GOP. 1 in 5 Amercians still thinks Obama is a Muslin foreigner. We continue to talk about more about poverty and homelessness rather the underlying structural racism. It's not that Americans are being hoodwinked here. Almost 50% either agree with the feckless corrupt people, or jhate the rest of us more, or just don't care enough to change their views. So long Shining City on a Hill. Hello Les Barbarians, c'est nous.
6
@SGoodwin, it's not "almost 50%" but less. And since when is that "us"? It's not you or me or a majority of the nation . And it's time we make that crystal clear. It is NOT us.
12
@jb As of this week, his approval rating is 42.4%, with a disapproval rating rating of 52.4%. With a plus/minus of 3% accuracy, that 's pretty close to 50/50 according to my math. Yes, not a majority - but so close as to be an almost meaningless distinction. I say it IS us. Or at least 1 out of 2 of us. Or if you want to get technical about it
4.5 out of 10 of us. So all that hand wrining about "we're better than this", "Shining City on a Hill" falls a bit flat for me.
That's a nice read, but my response is 42% and transparency. Your president is transparently abysmal. There is no scam, no sleight of hand, no hidden agenda. Americans elected a liar, a fraud, a cheat, a bully, a huckster, a man debilitated by narcissism. They elected this man despite decades of of evidence that he was exactly the opposite of presidential material. Since taking office, he has lived down to expectations, even somehow managing to burrow below them. He lies constantly, he incites, he brags like a spoiled child, he bleats whiny complaints like a spoiled child, he rages, pouts, makes excuses, blames others, all like a spoiled child. Almost two years into this fully public, heavily reported farce, 42% of American voters approve of his presidency. That is the most scathing indictment of a people I can imagine. You are not faced with barbarians from without, and the barbarian that leads you is a symptom, not the disease. America must acknowledge that it is rotting from within. When that many citizens support a grotesquerie as leader, the foundation cannot hold.
30
@Rob
HEY, these are my country-people you're talking about!
And, tragically, you're correct.
7
The worse part of our barbarian is that our checks and balances became non-existent in the realm of total power. Therefore, this failure belongs to our Congress. McConnell and Ryan will forever be the poster children of the love of power over Democracy. The individuals that comprise the barbarian's base are less than 40% of the population, they certainly can't swing elections.
The bigger problems include the Electoral College combined with interference from foreign powers. Women too have drunk the cyanide and refuse to see that they and their daughters will return to the scarlet letter and burkas. Gerrymandering and the destruction of the VRA make it difficult for Democrats and minorities to win elections. These are all nails in the coffin of the fall of Democracy is America.
5
The GOP was groomed for Trump by Rush, Fox News, Michael Savage, Alex Jones and the list goes on and on. Trump borrowed their rhetoric, which reached an enraged fever pitch from 2012 and 2016, and he upped the ante. The state of our nation isn't really about Trump, as shameless and indecent as he is, it is about white Americans inability to tolerate a black family living in the White House for eight long years - four years could be considered a fluke, eight years may be a trend. The GOP doesn't care that he is an incompetent pathological liar as long as he represents that the lion's share of American wealth and opportunity rolls, unimpeded, to white Americans. Add to that sentiment, intellectual laziness and a lack of political sophistication, and you have the modern GOP. They don't care to be informed, it takes too much effort. They don't care if he is lying, and Trump knows it. It is much easier to see a group of 1,000s of migrant refugees as 10,000,000 white walkers ready to scale the walls and infect the U.S. with crime and disease - just listen to Fox News this evening. Trump is a true reflection of the GOP constituent and they are the barbarians at the gate.
57
@Michelle
A remarkable comment that should be enshrined in stone.
Thank you.
10
@Michelle
The GOP felt that the Black body of Obama at the Resolute Desk was THE assault on America. That he was a Democrat was just great political cover. Any white man would be better and thus Trash Trump ascended to the Oval Office and the GOP was fine with that. And he spoke the ultimate truth, take back America for the white people. The GOP supports this awful bully of a grifter because any white is better than black. Greed for more money and power drive the desperate GOP and allows them to sink into perverted and hateful policies. They have abandoned decency and morals for their last grabs at power.
6
Dear Roger Cohen, Nicely done. Thanks for not saying tribal.
5
Beautiful language is a powerful weapon to fight the barbarians.
Your voice is heard, a clarion trumpet from the edge of the wilderness.
Thank you for eloquence, for a momentary lift from the spewing, hateful, lies of the barbarian leader.
7
I have only one misgiving with Mr. Cohen's column today - and the NY Times picture editor in general. Does every column and every report that reflects on our current PotUS have to include a picture of the man. We know how he looks, we know how he frowns, scolds, demeans, lambasts, hates, grins, pouts and so forth. This article would have been just as true and more palatable if we did not have to be confronted with another mug shot spread across the screen. Really.
17
Perhaps moving the Statue if Liberty from Ellis Island to the Mexican border and substitutinga machine gun for the torch might make the message of the USA a bit clearer.
8
@Jan Sand
Just don't make the mistake in thinking that "message", and this president is representative of all Americans...it's not.
5
Most clear-headed Americans already know that any distribution of guilt that equates Democrats and Republicans is a media PC lie. There is no comparison whatsoever between Republican barbarians and their victims: women, minorities, the old, the sick, the young, and all those who oppose their scorched-earth vision of America.
15
@Alfredo Villanueva
Much historical amnesia of the Democratic incompetence in support for wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria. Obama’s election was in large measure a product of dirty politics surrounding the debacle in Iraq. So much so that he could not intervene in Syria. He was afraid of another debacle. ISIS also metastized under Obama which he famously dismissed as junior varsity. I apologize if the gist of your comments are to highlight Republican shortcomings however the Democratic brand is severely hobbled at the moment.
3
Beautifully written, moving,frightening and yet inspiring.
It makes me want to roar to Americans that they should never bow to the dumb crassness of the likes of Trump and those who support him! NEVER!
"This time the barbarians are not shabby.They are well-groomed, well-heeled, loud-mouthed; and they never heard a chord, or read a phrase or saw a sensuous line on canvas that caused them to pause in wonder."
Do not let the barbarians strip you of your wonder of the truth, beauty and humanity to be found in your nation !
9
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
14
What we fear the most has already happened...Jon Kabat Zen
I think that is what you said,
3
Vote, definitely. But, while we read books and look deeper, we have to be careful of a tendency NYT readers might have to look at the "real barbarians" as Trump and Sarah Palin and their rally-screaming followers. Surely not people enjoying a morning coffee and reading the NYT! Not that it's some abstraction, and a decent person is the equivalent of a torturer. But there is something about that easy pointing at the bad guys that we have be careful of.
28
@John Bergstrom We'll have to disagree. I admit that I don't consider people enjoying a morning coffee and reading the NYT to be bad guys (and gals). I do consider vice president nominees and presidents who engage in "lock and load" and other rhetoric making clear to their supporters, either mindless or not caring that there are crazy people out there who will hear rhetoric like Trump's and hers as a message to kill those they are saying are threats to them...to be bad people. Yes, I heard Maxine Waters say that Trump supporters and Republicans should be run out of restaurants. For one thing, that is hardly calling for physical violence against political adversaries, and for another, she was roundly condemned by Democrats for those comments. But not on the right. Trump is the only president, and Palin the only VP nominee, I've heard throw red-meant calls out to their base, provoke unstable people into action...and Trump is right back at it, with viable Republican pols or Trump supporters condemning it. Not one.
17
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
-- Pogo
5
Ever since the Life and Times of Michael K. I have been an avid supporter of Coetzee. May "Waiting for the Barbarians" bring down the new Chief Barbarian.
Coetzee, a South African (by birth), is a brilliant Nobel Prize novelist. He was the first to win the Booker Prize, twice. He takes a deep look at the racial divide in that country. How many Americans have had 10,000 hours of Fox "News" noise/mythology and not one minute of the brilliance of a Coetzee novel, with its sophisticated exploration of the human condition? Bigly sad and pathetic.
5
The Barbarian leader, who fancies himself genius and who brags about his education, is so ignorant of history, literature and metaphors that he would not recognize himself in any parable, or understand the doom he is precipitating for the nation he claims to love.
5
Out of the barbarian invasions came the EU.
1
Sorry to be so contrary, but for some the real barbarians began arriving here in 1492. They gave america its barbarian culture. They took civilization away from everyone else.
4
Beautifully written and appropriately timely. A historical perspective; an overview of where we, here in the USA, are and must not be.
1
I think back often these days to what I was taught in school in the 60's, back presumably when America was great. For one, we were taught that America was not a fully capitalist country, that there had always been an appropriate mixture of capitalist and socialist elements as needed to support society. (And for that matter, Russia at the time was not fully communist but was a mixture, as needed, of communism and capitalism.)
But also we were taught that no great civilization lasted more than about 200 years. We took this in with some skepticism; "America is a great country, it could never decay in influence and stature like the English, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese before it!" But looking around now I can see how it could happen, how it might very well BE happening right before our eyes. This one mid-term election will not save us, we need to all take a look at ourselves and not just turn the Barbarians away, but turn away from BEING the Barbarians.
18
Another interesting and well-timed aspect of this commentary's reference, is the fact that J.M. Coetzee lived at the time when there was a racially repressive Apartheid regime in South Africa, which is now the direction where this country appears to be headed.
The barbarians are no longer at the gate.
11
The minute the pipe bomb was sent to the person whom the followers were told to "lock up!" and to other innocents it was over. How can this onslaught of cruel speech and rampant action be stopped now?
6
Tribalism. Survival of the fittest. In this case the fittest are the men with guns and swagger. egged on by the man wearing blinders. As in the American West, it’s the women who will bring civilization. We’re waiting.
10
It is a cheap shot to call President Trump and his supporters barbarians for silly statements at rallies while giving a free pass to Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, Eric Holder and others have have all actually called for getting in the face of Trump supporters in public. It was a Democrat supporter who shot Rep. Scalise at a baseball game and Democrat Supporters, Antifa, who have attacked Trump supporters in many cities and Democrat supporters who threw Sarah Huckabee Sanders out of a restaurant. Sen McConnell was also verbally assaulted in a restaurant. It is sanctimonious opinion pieces like this one which will stimulate the red wave in November.
6
@Sue Mee
Don't bet the farm on it.
The difference between liberals/democtats and conservative/republicans is that one group believes in live and let live while the other group replies we'll do nothing of the sort.
Guess which is which.
8
@Sue Mee
No offense. But this is a perfect example of the same false equivalence used by Republicans to justify their acts without realizing that every action has a reaction.
And try as they might, nothing will ever normalize what they are doing to this country now.
8
@Sue Meeas...Trump has proved by his words and actions that he is a vulgar bigoted narcissist. You can go ahead and deny it all you want, but a large body of facts say otherwise. Why is it a cheap shot to call someone who supports a vulgar bigoted narcissist, a barbarian?
7
It's not enough to vote. You have to put up credible candidates who are up to the task of good governance. As it stands, the voters have only the choice between extreme right and extreme left, and elections become shouting contests to determine who is better at demonizing the other side.
49
@Steve I tend to agree with you. Where I live, in midtown Manhattan, "vote" means practically nothing. Maybe my showing up will help improve by a tiny bit the % of people in my district voting in an off-year election. But not much beyond that.
Rather than just saying "vote" or quoting JM Coetzee, we need better candidates who can both understand and communicate good governance issues, especially to people who not only don't read JM Coetzee, but may not read anything.
18
Thank you for the false equivalence, Steve.
The Democratic 2018 platform of higher taxes for infrastructure, healthcare, education and reasonable regulation would be considered conservative in Canada, Europe or Japan.
Meanwhile, the Republican platform of science denialism, court-packing, gerrymandering, Trump Swampism, Christian Shariah Law, massive voter suppression, Guns R Us-Whites R Us, and endless 0.1% welfare is as radical as as the right-wing can get without implementing martial law.
Today's Democrats are moderate Republicans from the 1970's.
You should get out more.
657
Both sides? So advocating a living wage, universal healthcare and free education (to help us meet 21st century labor challenges) is just as extreme as “the lock her up crowd?” Opposing child abductions is extreme and just as bad as the right wing allowing or advocating for it?
118
I doubt the people who would benefit from reading this would make it past the first paragraph.
23
What social environment enables the barbarian to thrive? Is the rise of such a leader due in part to the poor education of the electorate? The academic downsizing in schools and colleges where the arts, government and history are largely ignored in curriculum? Our barbarian brags that he is a "nationalist." The day-to-day rallies eerily recall those in Nuremberg before World War II. The spectre of violence dominates and reasonable people have been fearing it for some time.
Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. May God help us.
23
@Doc . It's a good analysis and no doubt education plays a big role. Nevertheless, we have all met people of very limited intellectual capacity and worldly insight who are nevertheless decent, honest and caring human beings. What is the source of Republican wickedness and hatred for all that makes life worth living? Lack of education alone can not account for it.
4
@Doc
We cannot wait for a god to help us. We humans, we Americans, have to do the work, we have to perform the heavy lifting.
Otherwise, the god of our beliefs will simply ponder another experiment gone horribly wrong.
2
@Doc
"The day-to-day rallies eerily recall those in Nuremberg before World War II."
It got to be his German genes. "I'm proud of that German blood, it's great stuff." But the Germans don't like him. Who in the world like him best? The orthodox Israeli Jews. So, he can't be a 2nd Hitler, or can he?
1
Approximately 3% of the population are Sociopaths. Almost everyone else wants to fit in. Thus the heard is easily manipulated.
If one wants to understand how a disturbed man with little moral fiber gains control of a nation, read about Mussolini's rise to power.
The combination of no or low morality, and great oratory skills are dangerous to the heard. In their efforts to solve their problems by attacking the scapegoat, they hurt themselves.
Recently a scapegoat was sawed to death in a certain embassy, as thousands starve to death in a neighboring nation, and cheeseburgers are being eaten!
15
@Texan
Interesting.
Just remember the only book on Trump's bedside table was a book of speeches by Hitler.
Coincidence? Or practice exercises.
5
The vote on Nov, 6? Voting stops barbarians? I don't think so. I appreciate the profound literary analogy but if one is going to hurl this accusation - barbarian - then one must back it up with something more than voting. I don't imagine barbarians respect the vote. Do you?
6
This barbarian was born that way and then excelled in its persona. This barbarian is Trump and he is an enemy to democracy and this is self-declared.
He thinks he is so powerful he doesn't even have to put on the thinnest veneer of civilization. He thinks he can appeal to the barbarian in all of us and get his way. That is all he is interested in and it is amazing how he can completely ignore 325M Americans as if we don't exist.
Right now we are the civilians flocking to our local polls to get rid of the barbarian hordes who have taken over the country for their own self-interests, self-gratification, and enormous profits off the people.
11
Be brave Americans: vote them out.
16
“He is a man of fiendish energy and malicious intuitions who gets the blood up by appealing to the barbarian in us all. He says he wants to make the Empire great again, but all he really wants to do is to loot it on the way down. His Republican cronies enable him because their love of power blinds them to the contagion they propagate.”
Oh they are well aware of the contagion - because they are the carriers of it. They embraced it decades ago because of that love of power. They made him possible. They have always been looters, of everything of value.
What do they fear? Justice.
So should we all, for allowing them license.
They are the punishment we have inflicted on ourselves in exchange for convenient lies and comfortable illusions. Hate is easier than love; fear comes more naturally than confidence. We must reject both and begin the hard work of rebuilding civilization. It is a job that is never done.
The world is made by the people who show up for the job. The hour is late; the task awaits. Who will show up?
That is the question.
15
Declines in empires is as inevitable as death. The blame in declines in a democracy is the fault of the people who follow leadership that is no longer interested in expanding the empire or sharing the wealth of the empire and no longer interested in leading the world to a better place. Trump is the natural selection of the End. He plays to the angry mob, gives money to the rich, cuts benefits of the poor and gives up on leading because it is expensive. Builds the military to fight wars of yesterday. The debt rises the rot continues. Will we slowly decline like Britain or crash and burn.
22
@dave
If only our decline turned out like Britain's...it might be a healthy turn of events to see ourselves as part of a community of nations rather than its dominator and master.
One suspects our decline will mirror our national character and we will scream and cry and strike out at a world that doesn't give us our pudding.
12
@dave I'm going to suggest that we look critically at that idea that we are declining. There were no glory days of American democracy when we weren't accumulating wealth on slavery, stolen land, global imperialism, and the military-industrial economy. Strange as it may seem, these current days might be some of our best -- we aren't waging any wars as destructive as our war in Vietnam, and we are painfully exploring areas of domestic freedom and justice that few dared dream of for most of our past. Something to think about, at least.
5
Yes, and I've been reading Marcuse who tells us that when capitalism cannot be thwarted, the Marxists concern themselves with “the small minorities” as a means to divide and gain access to political power denied to them through the ballot box, or the constitution most recently.
No question the barbarians are within and far too many work for our Sovietized mass-media that promotes a cultural Marxist agenda of the Grand Collective--open borders, a nation without citizenship, a Stalinist government of regulations and that controls everything to include soda straws, rule by the unelected mandarin class via bureaucratic fiat and "free-speech" restaurant mobs, and, of course, a social ethos that seeks to punish those who challenge the "accepted" social narrative and those who use "unacceptable" argot and metaphor in the public square, an Orwellian dystopia.
Perhaps, Cohen should try Michel Houellebecq’s “Surrender” next.
6
The lethal threat to the country and the world does not come from a goofy nut case living in a mobile Republican campaign office. It comes from the wealthy Republicans in government and civilian life. THEY are the enemies of humankind who will take the whole world down with them.
41
Yes. Thank you.
5
The barbarians in the mirror look just like us. We really need the fairness doctrine back and money out of politics - until this is done I fear those that have wealth will always control how 40% of Americans think. Propaganda works - trump read Hitler and know his manipulative lies work with the under educated that is why he like them.
11
Yeah but he's a self-made multi-billionaire barbarian who started with a 400 million dollar interest free no-payback loan from his barbarian father and turned it into 3 bankrupt casinos and a billion dollar Russian money laundering empire.
23
"It is of the nature of life that imagined enemies, once provoked, turn into real ones." HOLY WOW Roger Cohen. That about sums it all up. Where we are headed. Why we are headed. What we've been asking for all along.
14
@leslie polychron
That's Hegel's dialectical progression in motion! which came first to America: Identity Politics or the alt-right reactionaries? Did Antifa really exist in North America before there were Proud Boys for them to fight in the streets?
History isnt deterministic, but human nature is. Now that exponential technological development has given us the Disinformation Age, it has seemingly sped up Girard's eternal Mechanism. Perhaps we'll all become our own Antithesis. Maybe some of us will live long enough to see New Synthesis!
"And if God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him... How else could the Devil be born" -- Tielhard de Chardin
3
He is truly the very last gasp of white male rule. And THIS patient is a “ Do Not Resuscitate “.
VOTE in November. Neuter this Presidential Apprentice.
17
I hope the barbarians read the New York Times. Probably not high on their list of priorities.
11
@Joseph
They will only read something if it is limited to 140 characters and includes the word "Sad!".
3
@Joseph My family votes Republican. W work hard, obey the laws, pay taxes to contribute to society. We do not like everything about the Republican Party, but an objective Democrat will say their same about their party. The anti-white man bias in other comments here show as much hate as anything Trump does.
To classify your opposition as barbarians just shows how childish Mr. Cohen is. This column was written for self-glorification, and to get the Times left leaning reader base excited. So, the problem is with you, not the people who refuse to read this nonsense
2
Cohen's columns are consistently good.....
17
We have met the enemy, and he is us. Pogo. "Comic" strip.
9
america is dead. It is not going to come back after yet another fraudulent election. It is over.
7
Even if Trump is impeached and convicted and imprisoned the cancerous apparatus that brought him to us will not be eradicated until the communications infrastructure of the right wing is dismantled.
Just look at the bumper stickers on Mr. Sayoc’s van: it could be the opening shot of a SNL parody of the ideas that have been drilled into the heads of tens of millions of Americans for decades: liberals in cross-hairs, the Cintons & Obamas as satanic figures, worship of the military ... the list goes on.
Rolling back such a saturated propaganda effort will take years if not decades, but I see nothing to indicate that we’ve even begun to do it.
32
Your description of Empire fits like a 'ring to finger', to the malevolent fraudster in the Oval Office, best known as our ugly American in-chief, a truly brutus ignoramus dedicated to destroy this republic. A despicable barbarian intent in making us sick with his lies and insults, always promoting violence in his nonsensical speeches to his credulous base, a condition that prevents them from thinking for themselves. The treatment, of course, is his ousting from a stolen presidency, and the condemnation of his republican enablers, reversing the current pluto-kleptocracy into a democracy; but possible only after we restore the trust in each other. Now, do we have the will (ganas)? And if so, the courage, hard work and perseverance to see things through?
19
Read C P Cavafy “Waiting for the Barbarians.”
3
Great poem laden with ironies and subtle tendrils! I hadn’t read it before but it captures well the erosion of the institutions in the declining empire. In short, what good are our institutions if one is incapable of using them? Timeless piece...
2
Likewise the fall of the Roman Empire (itself barbaric beyond measure) came not from the invading Germanic peoples, but because the empire was so afraid of them that they allied with and hired the Huns as mercenaries to defeat the various Germanic tribes. These tribes simply wanted food, a better standard of life, and to escape the Huns. Later on the Huns, armed by the romans and newly learned in the arts of the siege, decimated the empire.
73
@Theo Baker
Completely counter factual. The Roman Empire allied with the Germans against the huns. They never allied with the huns. A “Times Pick” and 18 likes so far? Do you people know who won the Civil War? Whose side Italy was on in World War 2?
7
A wonderfully written metaphor for "We have met the enemy and he is us". Empires come and go throughout history and we are no different. All of them bore the seeds of their own destruction from within...as we appear to do. Is it too late to save the "Empire"? History will give us the answer.
6
Thank you, Mr. Cohen, for setting forth in such striking and elegantly written prose, the thoughts and feelings so many of us share - - but could never have expressed in this way.
KUDOS ! ! . . .
11
God, I love reading great OpEds!
I just wish the truth wasn’t so damn crazy
16
Mr. Cohen, Thank You. At last I read a column which needs no comment. I comment only to say that.
Well done. A clear allegory, a literate analysis, without resort to pettiness and complaint.
I feel better after reading your column than after a hundred witty put-downs of the fool in the picture, but of course, that just underlines the fact that we're really screwed.
And, there I go, commenting...
15
This is one of the most insightful articles I have ever read, and so well written! Thank you Roger Cohen, for composing this little masterpiece.
14
Exactly.
As you wax philosophically Mr. Cohen in this excellent piece, could not help thinking of the words said by the great imitator of today's Chief of Barbarism, Alec Baldwin.
"It is now time to overthrow the government of donald trump".
Pretty much says it all for me.
Vote people, VOTE!
7
"We have met the enemy and it is us." - Walt Kelly
4
Hard to say whether "Waiting for the Barbarians" or "Night of the Living Dead" is the more appropriate description of the current state of our country. Scary to hear the reaction of some of the Trumpsters to the apprehension of the Magabomber. I could almost hear them moan, "Brains, brains, I want to eat brains."
7
The next generation in this country is going to be not about which news is fake and which news is real, but which people are fake and which people are real.
7
Great line: " .... they never heard a chord, or read a phrase, or saw a sensuous line on a canvas that caused them to pause in wonder."
There is no love or humility or art in the minds of McConnell and Trump, other than art of the dystopian variety. America is Edvard Munch's silent scream: We forge ahead in constant horror at the sights and sounds of a blood-red rhetorical landscape, caused by emotional vacuity and racial hatred in the souls of our supposed leaders.
18
Provoking. A caveat. To be mindful. Our toxic WE-THEY culture enables violating created, selected, and targeted “the other(s).” In a range of ways. Both WE and THEY can be ummenschlich. Experiencing victimization is not an immunity against violating self or others. Being an active, complicit or complacent victimizer doesn’t prevent carrying out “good deeds.” The “barbarians,” an identity as well as an ongoing source of barbaric-behaviors, are not a unique Big-banged evolutionary outcome, or created by God-species. Barbaric words and deeds- by commission, and the barbarity of not doing what needs to be done to enable menschlichkeit-by omission, is ever present. Documented in sacred narratives. In secular tales. In historical revisionism. The concepts and processes of WE and THEY are staid, notwithstanding their dynamic violations.The actors/actresses can and do change. As do the stages. The audiences. The attempts, successful as well as failed ones, by a documentable empowered WE to “blame” a created, disempowered THEY was. IS! Will likely continue. Its existence is enabled by each of a temporary US. Actively. Or not. If and when choosing to BE willfully blind, to “barbarism” which shouldn’t exist. Nipped early on. Willfully deaf, as exemplified by the shameless Saudi anatomist, purportedly telling his fellow barbarians to listen to music as they dismembered both a BEING and…A narrative transmitted globally. Paralleled by SILENCE of deaths by barbaric famines in Yemen.
4
"This time the barbarians are not shabby. They are well groomed, well heeled, loud-mouthed". These barbarians have also not paid their taxes due to the terrible bad government, for decades and decades. They have found every loophole that exists, every tax shelter, every tax haven to escape paying their share. Because of that barbaric reason, America suffers from crumbling infrastructure. We could be a 21st century but people like Trumps and Kushners have held us back, all the while they have been constructing and building grand structures for their personal gain, they have neglected to contribute to the building of America. That is the only reason that our airports, our subways, our public schools are in shambles today in 2018. How long can we the people tolerate the wealthiest of the wealthy getting away from their patriotic nationalist most American duty and responsibility of participating in nation building by simply paying our taxes. Today, a fresh immigrant pays all the taxes he owes. Today a documented immigrant pays all the taxes he owes. But no, not Judge Maryanna Barry, not Jared Kushner and not Donald Trump - these uber wealthy people are exempt legally from paying their share. So barbaric.
17
In his book The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis shares that Max Stier wanted to recognize government employees. “Every year the list of achievements was mind-blowing. A guy in the Energy Dept. organized the first successful cleanup of a nuclear weapons factory … and had brought it in sixty years early and $30 billion under budget. A woman at the FTC had built the Do Not Call Registry … A NIH researcher had pioneered immunotherapy….” Yes, “to say government is evil” or terrible or bad so we should just leave it to the GOP is frightening as they will “eviscerate the institutions that make us, us.” And they have been laying off experts in many fields, privatizing for the benefit of a few to accumulate wealth, repealing every environmental law possible, etc. “But no! We Americans are self-governing, and in the face of malevolent and feckless and corrupt people, there are better options. That is what the vote on Nov. 6 is about.”
15
Tomorrow I will go out into my small portion of America, and talk with my fellow Americans for four hours, about why I, and the other person I will be knocking on doors with, think they should vote for the Democratic candidate for the US House of Representatives. And although I fear the threat of violence for bringing unsolicited Democratic support to what will undoubtedly be some red doorsteps, thanks in no small measure to Donald Trump’s “fiendish energy and malicious intuitions” and non-stop promulgation of hate... my desire to get out and do my little part, to try and stop what I no longer doubt to be a formidable fascist cabal… headed by Donald Trump, numerous, aligned billionaires and most of the leadership of what was once the Republican party… doing everything in their power to seize total control of the United States, is greater than my fear. Your piece Roger added some steel to spine and spring to my step. All the same, I will still pray to God for courage and safe keeping before venturing out and engaging an America that has at least been partially made over into the image and likeness of Donald Trump.
21
At the lowest level of every Empire, there lies a level of rot, social decay, ignorance, and bigotry, which is suppressed by the rule of law. Trump the barbarian recognized that, by energizing the rot in a society already divided by racial, ethnic, and religious conflict, he could allow the rot to assert dominance and maintain power by disabling all the institutions that interpreted and enforced the law. Clearly, the rotten, subterranean level of this society has to be marginalized back to the depths, and law must be reinstituted, along with truth, by evicting the corrupt, indecent barbarian family and its enablers. Otherwise, the rot will continue to soil us all, and ultimately cause irreversible contamination of this country and all it used to represent.
9
The lack of truth is what is killing us. It is radical to stay in the truth because it allows no complacency or compromise. But nothing sustains except the truth.
4
I'm trying to define the new civilization that started with the not so great minds like Nietzche and Marx and somehow came to the #I'masexist movement created by Dr Yancy of Duke University just a few days ago in the nytimes. It took an incredible amount of thought on the good Dr's part. No?
Let's talk art which I have absolutely no qualification to speak. A recent nytimes article about works of art made of synthetic materials said those pieces which were deteriorating. The original idea was not to make art of permanent materials because there was no permanence or truth. The problem now is how to preserve them. Above my head. Way above.
Can you explain, given this level of mordern achievement, what's wrong with being a barbarian?
2
@JoeG
So.... You're with Aristotle or Oscar Wilde in the Mimesis/anti-memesis debate (Does life imitate art or the other way round)?
Either way, I think the evil geniuses from 4chan proved Rene Girard was right about mimetic contagion. Dr. Yancy proved the perfect example of the cultural dominance of Nietsche's 'slave morality' and the obscenities (Girard's word) that can follow from 'Scapegoating to the 2nd degree (the hunt for hunters of scapegoats; intolerance in the name of tolerance).
Nietsche might be right about the need for an Antichrist to change the existing moral order; Marx and the Young Hegelians may be right about history being deterministic. Human nature is algorithmic now, that's what social media technologies are based upon (think advertisements... And why does my smart phone or Google tell me the shortest route to the gym before I even settle on going there?)
The future is authoritarian; Orwell was right.
1
Pretty good as an allegory for our repulsive political times. But where's good old Shakespeare when we need him?
3
@Rafael Gonzalez If Shakespeare is not around, Coetzee will do. Waiting for the Barbarians is that good.
3
@Rafael Gonzalez
Elliot Cohen in The Atlantic recently referred to Hamlet:
" . . . Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief."
All so terribly true and yet, the citizens out here in the hinterland love him as if he were The Second Coming. Perhaps he is, in the Yeatsian poetic sense.
10
Not in my ‘hinterland’. In my ‘hinterland’ he is seen as the ‘barbarian’ he is and we work daily on our quest to rid our towns, cities, states and nation of his influence and presence. This too shall pass. But only if we VOTE!
4
In America we--each of us--are the government, because we vote for the folks who represent us in the halls of power. The barbarians, however, are inside our empire. And they are "eviscerating" (nice word) our democracy and its vital institutions and traditions. The barbarians control the three branches of government. They are the government in the sense that we all are by dint of our votes. They are the government also because they presently control all of the levers of power--if traditions hold true, on a temporary basis. Their mandate, however, is to decimate the government and otherwise blow the whole thing up, until or unless they retain power for themselves, and retain the unearned entitlements of white people. That is how they are going to save us from the government?
(My previous comment, which is otherwise the same, mistakenly retained at the end something that I had temporarily copied from the article itself.)
3
@Robert
We have an indirect democracy, a republic. We elect 'trustees' to govern for us. That is its form. Whether they govern in our interests is questionable. A large majority of us want sensible gun control, universal healthcare, reductions in environmental destruction, an end to senseless military violence abroad, better schools, roads, bridges, airports. Studies show that government does not respond to our wishes on any of these. Instead, every two years we get ridiculous attack ads, racist dogwhistles, and venom. We are in a post-democratic phase, not yet a Russian-style oligopoly/kleptocracy, but trending that way.
1
This analysis seems mistaken by placing the blame on the politicians. It ignores the question that humanists try so hard to avoid, that is, maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with the human animal.
The human animal voted for these scoundrels and will again.
I just don't understand why the human animal gets a pass here.
The NYTs will rightfully criticize DJT all day long, but will seldom if ever turn its criticism at the Crazy Ape.
If DJT is a barbarian he is the one that won an election and enjoys a 45% thumbs up.
“The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, ‘Western civilization’ or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate.”
John N. Gray
"As so often is the case, secular thinking follows a pattern dictated by religion while suppressing religion’s most valuable insights. Modern rationalists reject the idea of evil while being obsessed by it. Seeing themselves as embattled warriors in a struggle against darkness, it has not occurred to them to ask why humankind is so fond of the dark. They are left with the same problem of evil that faces religion. The difference is that religious believers know they face an insoluble difficulty, while secular believers do not."
John N. Gray
No my friends to be human is to be unwell. It's analytical, true by definition.
12
@Prometheus
"The difference is that religious believers know they face an insoluble difficulty, while secular believers do not."
No, "religious believers" know no such thing; they externalize and project their own darknesses onto The Other and imagine, however, vaguely, that destroying scapegoats will solve their difficulties.
But yes, humans are essentially "unwell" in the sense that they do not know their own nature and context and are so myopic and lazy as to believe what they think (which is essentially conditioned by nurture and social milieu) without reflective question. THAT is the human flaw: we are almost universally unable to turn our attention on ourselves to observe and detach from our arbitrarily-programmed conditioning.
1
@Prometheus. Yes, yes, yes. I’ve met the real enemy and he is within.
1
@Prometheus,
No it is not the human that is at fault. It is the unhumans amongst us over time bringing religion, tribalism, and nationalism that divide, conquer, and limit man's cooperative nature and progress.
My question, and concern, is why do so many Americans, tens of millions, seem to love and cheer the barbarians and for their barbaric rhetoric and behavior? Rhetorical question, because i know the answer (I'm looking at you, Newtie). The GOP pulled a genie out of a bottle when it started its Gingrich/DeLay tactic and drip, drip, drip campaign of convincing the more intellectually challenged (their targets) amongst us that Democrats and liberals are evil, their enemy, the real threat, worse than or equal to terrorists, all in service to making sure all of the wealth in this country is redirected to 1% of the population.
11
The most important point about Mr. Cohen's essay is his recognition of the American Empire. Empires decline, and their decline has little to do with Barbarians; it has a lot to do with greedy politicians and the USA has plenty of those, so called Democrats and Republicans. President Trump differs from his predecessors only in his inability to project hypocrisy. He is a narcissist and narcissists cannot understand hypocrisy.
3
Thank you. Such beautiful writing. Again, you have graced us with many elegant, beautiful lines.
I hoped those things that "caused us to pause in wonder" were civilizing. I thought acquaintance with art engendered empathy and knowledge of fragility. But I thought democracy encouraged empathy and rationality too. I thought it lumbered toward the light.
Sophisticated 1930's Germany proved art does not civilize society. The 21st century Republican Party holds empathy, rationality and the sacredness of truth to be the quaint notions of fools. McConnell and his ilk did worse than break feet as they sought to bring suffering on millions of their countrymen by opposing all things Obama to further their personal power. Even denying medical care for those in pain. And I am "sick with myself" as I sanction them with civility.
The institutions of democracy may surprise, but I doubt our Republic will. It is manipulated by many Colonel Joll's, empowered by America's anti-democratic appointment of senators and Electors. America's destiny is to be ruled by a minority due to the non-Athenian design of the senate.
I remain bewildered that so many of my countrymen embrace obvious villainy, lies and irrationality. It will not serve for climate change and a changing economic paradigm.
8
@JT
Maybe we are facing widespread systems failure throughout Western Civilization. Maybe Yuval Harari is right and the technologies of this new age ensure a future that is authoritarian. Government is only ever an imagined order, but before we can imagine abandoning even a failed system, we have to imagine what a new system would look like.
2
@Justin Sigman.
Did not mean to suggest abandoning the system and not trying. I hope to do all possible to not let the darkness gain on the light.
Didn't mean to have political minutiae get in the way of the difficult questions of humanity raised by Mr. Cohen's beautiful writing. Just wanted to note the design of our system empowers small states with a minority of the population to control the senate, which also gives them control of the Court. Two of three branches appointed by anti-democratic design due to a "states' rights" compromise on slavery that also tilts the election of the executive branch is a system that could be improved. The drift away from democracy will be exacerbated as urbanization continues.
I imagine a less lopsided senate would be better. No idea how to get there because small states have veto power, given 2/3rds requirement in a convention and the constitutional prohibition against changing original rules.
I imagine the broad desire of most Americans is to protect the environment, insure all are fed, housed, have medical care, access to education, jobs and social mobility based on merit. Difficult to have those desires subsumed by a minority manipulated by a minority via xenophobic and racial fear.
Harari's books promising and frightening. Someone wrote technology always a Faustian bargain.
1
"We Americans are self-governing, and in the face of malevolent and feckless and corrupt people, there are better options. That is what the vote on Nov. 6 is about."
Before we get too excited about the possibilities of a resurgence of civility and decency in the upcoming election, consider how this same group of self-governing Americans considered the Republican candidates over the past three presidential elections.
McCain and Romney, both men representing the better qualities of our past presidents, received 60.0 and 60.5 million votes, respectively; Trump received 63 million votes. Even accounting for increased population that tells you something that should give pause about the potential for a resurgence of our better angels.
Trump is correct when he says that his vile attacks since his Kavanaugh "win" are revitalizing his "base" (aka, The Fascists), as reflected in the polls.
That is why I approach the upcoming elections with some trepidation at what "we Americans" might again do.
6
What a wondrous piece of writing. In all the mudslinging in the pit that is America right now, Roger Cohen's eloquent words cut through to the essence of who we are as human beings. I thank him for that reminder.
Sometimes that essence gets lost in the brawling. Our primitive inner beast awakens and we join the fray. I fell down the rabbit hole recently and watched the MMA title fight between MacGregor and Nurmagomedov. That wasn't enough for me. I fell further down that hole. Got lost in Khabib's rise to the top through his annihilation of every opponent. It was bloody, brutal, mesmerizing and weirdly healing. This too, is who we are - savage beasts whose inner rage must out.
But what happens when there is no referee to stop the fight? No inner voice of reason that says, "This is madness." What happens when the madness escapes the cage and infects the growing mobs? How civilized will we be then?
We about to find out, aren't we?
7
We are no longer battling just partisan forces, but the very powers of darkness. We are no longer battling just Trump being Trump, but the darkest impulses in all of us. We are no longer battling public policies, but the darker influences that uphold selfishness, hatred and greed. We are in a spiritual battle for the very soul of our nation and all that is has represented to the world since it’s inception, truth, justice and the former American way. Justice will be served. The day of reckoning is coming.
6
Few, if any, Republican voters I know will read this brilliant essay and even less would understand it.
8
Giving in to the despair of the moment will not change the future. As long as we have this form of government, whatever you name it, we MUST be part, however minuscule. The vote is still our weapon. It may be skewered to fit a pattern but it is OUR weapon to use. Darkness cannot prevail as long as we are willing to use this privilege. Before it is destroyed.
4
"We Americans are self-governing, and in the face of malevolent and feckless and corrupt people, there are better options. That is what the vote on Nov. 6 is about."
And yet, tens of millions of eligible voters will NOT vote on November 6.
How can that be? Of course, a lot of them don't read, so they don't have access to powerful essays like this. And then one Party does everything it can to prevent those who would likely vote against it, from voting.
My question is: How come the other Party seems unable to reach out and convince just a few of these millions upon millions of non voters, who could make a difference, that elections matter and their outcome will negatively impact them, their families, and their Country immediately and for years and even generations to come?
4
Weeping this morning as we read your words, Roger Cohen. Thank you for bringing your former countryman's book -- J.M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" -- to our attention. We pray you are correct that this moment in time, when our barbarian president is destroying Democracy within America's gates, that our desperation of mortality will finally make a stand.
7
Bravo.
My favorite line was "His Republican cronies enable him because their love of power blinds them to the contagion they propagate."
People, regardless of party or affiliation, are so blind to the irrational acts unleashed once a mob gets set in motion. But eventually, they must and will wake up.
With apologies to Brue Springsteen, "It's gonna be a long walk home".
3
“There comes a moment, when the barbarian is within, to draw a line, to say enough, to speak out, to make a stand whatever the cost.”
This line was crossed on election day in 2016 and has been moved and crossed dozens and dozens of times since. Republicans in Congress are co-conspirators and silent enablers in destroying the American values and the nation they profess to represent. It is a moral outrage.
5
This is a remarkable essay by Roger Cohen. It speaks volumes about America’s frittering away much of its goodness for a generation, trying to chase away an enemy without realizing that the worrisome enemies are the frittering and the chase.
Roger Cohen’s use of J.M. Coetzee to explain the attraction of the fraudulent savior-opportunist named Donald Trump is brilliant.
8
So well written. So sad that anyone able to appreciate this essay is already voting against the barbarian next month. The frustrating perspective of your Canadian neighbours is that so many American leaders are so busy observing, remarking on and eloquently describing their country’s dangerous downfall that they are not taking to the streets in action to save it. Quit speaking and writing so brilliantly to yourselves about what is happening and reach out to every American to try to stop it before it’s too late and your tyrant takes a lasting hold on power.
11
This is the truest and saddest line: "[...]and they never heard a chord, or read a phrase, or saw a sensuous line on a canvas that caused them to pause in wonder."
We must outlast them, no matter how bad it gets.
6
Another important reminder from Coetzee:
"Nevertheless, I should never have allowed the gates of the town to be opened to people who assert that there are higher
considerations than those of decency."
-- J. M. Coetzee, WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS, Penguin
Books, 1980, p. 81
5
We are in a period of decline, and America has never declined for very long. We don't know how to act.
We had seemingly infinite resources to run factories and plant crops; we had a seemingly infinite number of acres to spread over; a seemingly infinite workforce to build things. After WWII we have a huge period of technological advancement with a workforce we educated to run it, while other nations were forced to focus on rebuilding their cities.
But now we are 320M people in an economy that is at least 3B and working to engage 7B of us. People and brains are not a market we've cornered any longer. And our resources - like iron for steel - are played out compared to the deposits in the far east. We don't have infinite expansion; we must learn to live with something closer to stasis.
And we can't grasp that. Someone **must** be taking our glory! Barbarians, immigrants, the Chinese, someone.
Trump is the carnival barker who has engaged us to believe that all we have to do to regain the lost glory is some incredibly simple solution that only he has the key to. It is a message people would prefer to believe, especially in comparison to the nuanced messages of Obama which were the equivalent of "Eat your vegetables." Obama's messages were aimed at grown ups who could manage our transition to what we are inevitably going to be.
2
Scipio's Dream, another well-regarded warning book. It covers the ending of three separate empires in history, leaving us to conclude whether this country can ever restore itself. Or not.
2
Some of the commenters here had better read up a little more on those accusations they level at former presidents before they give this current freakshow a blind pass by the "it's not his fault, he's just a product of past Executive policy" nonsense. Dear Leader's record in the School of Barbarism is well documented going back at least 40 years, decades before he was even a glint in the eye of wing-nut politics.
They would do well to focus more on the Legislative branch, anyway, as many of the comments are leveled at Big D Presidents, without any mention of the devolving, right wing congressional psychosis that more than played into those decisions. Not acknowledging this as the catalyst that directs us further and further from civil debate into the barbaric, animalistic tendencies of extremism is akin to making an insurance claim on a washer when it was you that broke it.
Selective memory, revisionist history, and hindsight bias are as active in the school of barbarism as anything else. And it's exactly this type of uninformed bandwagon rationale that puts the country where it is today, and brings us ever closer to a dangerous line, that if crossed, may be a point of no return.
3
Looks like it's over--unless we grab that thread in a couple of weeks...
5
What is happening in your country is painful to watch; I can only begin to imagine what it must be like to have to endure it daily.
Trump himself, of course, lives for adulation and gold: there is no profound political strategy going on here. He displays all the symptoms of an addict, needing that daily fix of attention and praise: the rallies are his drug, and the actual business of government bores him.
But Trump is, in a way, an indication of a deeper malaise. The simple expediency of electoral success for the Democrats in November (which in any event now looks unlikely) will not resolve this. The problem is not Trump in himself, however egregious and rebarbative he may be. The problem is that sufficient numbers of your fellow Americans can look at a man like that and say, This is exactly who we want as our president: he is just like us, and this is who we are. Trump has held up the mirror of his emptiness to collective America, and many of your people are, apparently, delighted with what they see in it.
Now, Trump may not be who you, personally, are; but he most certainly is an aspect of who you, collectively, are. And for change to happen (if it ever does), that unpalatable truth is going to have to be faced.
At the climax of the sci-fi film 'Forbidden Planet', Commander Adams confronts a horrified and still disbelieving Dr Morbius about the barbaric psychic entity he has unwittingly unleashed: "You still refuse to face the truth - that thing out there. It's you."
9
Having lived a long time, I have witnessed many ups and downs in this country and in the world, some grossly barbaric and an imperfect Union. There were threats of world-wide destruction during the Cold War; the assassinations of a President and two political leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy; peaceful marches for equal citizenship and racial riots; college campus protests against a war and the killing of college protesters at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard; far-left domestic terrorists - the Weathermen - and far-right domestic terrorists - the KKK; elected leaders trying to square the circle of anti-democratic segregation. The best medicine to cure the beasts has been positive visions for this country and legislation that addresses problems society cannot solve on its own - putting a man on the moon; the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts; Medicare; Medicaid; the creation of the EPA to clean up the water, soil, and air; the Affordable Care Act. Presidents, Congresses, and the American people made America became a more perfect Union in my lifetime.
For the first time in our history, we have a fringe President mainstreaming fringe ideas. The President’s Nationalism is anti-democratic. It is not American; it is not patriotic.
Since the majorities in the US House and Senate refuse to check this president’s anti-democratic agenda, it is up to the American people to change the balance to preserve a more perfect Union.
9
The white people of the Europe came to American continent and massager the local indigenous people and occupy this vast landmass. Repetatedly, this barbaric history was repeated in this society during the last 250 years and the Trump rally is the most recent manifestation. The people we considered as normal and cultured and educated are now openly displaying their inside - a bundle of hate, ignorance and ego. The Christian teaching of love and empathy are totally absent. The barbarians are back. What we do - fight or flight. Luckily, majority of the younger generation still maintain their Christian values and they are trying to fight it back. Let all of us who still can see the world with our senses and interpret it sensibly join the younger generation to restore the civility like the 1960s Civil Right movement - WE WILL OVERCOME.
2
First we put our faith in Mueller. Now it is becoming apparent that there is nothing in his investigation that will imperil the Trump presidency. In fact, it is likely that Rod Rosenstein has told Trump so since he kept his job, Trump is no longer threatening Rosenstein and Trump is no longer railing that the investigation is a hoax. Then, we put our faith in the midterm elections, but, best case, Democrats win the house and the ability to block legislation and conduct investigations. Although that is important, it is not much. But what if even that does not happen?
It is clear that Trump is a minority president and the Republican Party is intent on holding Party by any means possible. It has no qualms about a minority governing a majority. We are now at a point where people like Kris Kobach feel cheating to win an election is a legitimate tool of political action. I don’t know where this is going, but the end of our Democracy and the beginning of fascism is a very clear possibility.
I do not urge a military coup, but I would like to know if, among its many contingency plans, the military has a contingency plan that identifies the limit of the tolerable threat to democratic governance and a response to prevent that limit from being exceeded. Or would our military obey orders from an undisputed fascist leading a minority, fascist political party?
10
At his best, and this piece is among his best, Roger Cohen is the NY Times' finest writer. The man understands that what's at stake here is whether our country is turning towards a full-on embrace of fascism. This piece burned with a kind of cold fury that is a call to action: "The desperation of mortality can also yield the lucidity of courage." Vote. Vote Blue on November 6th.
7
Cohen quotes Coetzee's magistrate's reflections on the torturer: “Throughout a trying period he and I have managed to behave towards each other like civilized people. All my life I have believed in civilized behaviour; on this occasion, however, I cannot deny it, the memory leaves me sick with myself.”
This mirrors current Republicans' invoking of "civility" in a sinister & telling way. Coetzee's torturer blinds prisoners & crushes their feet. Are we not sick to be party to the damage Republicans do daily?
In seeking to deny medical care to the poor & the merely middle class, they "crush" regular people, the unworthy.
In our names, now, the Trump administration steals and cages children from poor, weak, battered people, calling them all manner of vile names -- surely someone has called them "barbarians" while calling them vermin and animals.
The description of the torturer "crushing the feet" of prisoners eerily echos the U.S.-supported Saudis dismembering the hands of a journalist. The light that journalists shine on corruption being the Saudi's -- and clearly Trump's -- definition of "barbarian."
Are we not sick with ourselves? Are we not party to cruelty, party to Republicans' plundering of our democracy as they destroy it?
Is it too late? Or is Nov. 6 our last chance?
Cohen does not tell us how Coetzee's novel ends. Americans have been good at writing their own story. Let's rewrite this ending now, before the curtain falls.
7
I wish I could hare your confidence that the barbarians won't again win on Nov. 6. This may be what the people want.
4
In his analysis of social classes, the 19th century English critic Mathew Arnold designated the middle classes “Philistines” and the lower classes the blameless “Populace.” For the upper classes he reserved the name “Barbarians,” those who by the swipe of a pen or casual wave of the hand consign countless others to lives of misery or death. So it is.
12
It is too easy, too simple, to brand Trump and Tumpeteers as the Evil to be opposed.
If you belong to the Top 20%: take a good, long look in the mirror.
6
Thank you Mr. Cohen for finding the words that match my thoughts today.
3
In America we--each of us--are the government, because we vote for the folks who represent us in the halls of power. The barbarians, however, are inside our empire. And they are "eviscerating" (nice word) our democracy and its vital institutions and traditions. The barbarians control the three branches of government. They are the government in the sense that we all are by dint of our votes. They are the government also because they presently control all of the levers of power--if traditions hold true, on a temporary basis. Their mandate, however, is to decimate the government and otherwise blow the whole thing up, until or unless they retain power for themselves, and retain the unearned entitlements of white people. That is how they are going to save us from the government?
United States is a self-governing enterprise. To say government is evil, government is terrible, bad government is what Democrats do — so just leave it to us! In short, the objective is to outlast us, and to eviscerate the institutions that make us, us. But no! We Americans are self-governing, and in the face of malevolent and feckless and corrupt people, there are better options. That is what the vote on Nov. 6 is about.
1
This is a fine piece of writing. Tragically, there isn’t a Trump supporter alive who could understand any of it.
4
Literature, art, doesn’t imitate life it helps explain it. Coetzee’s magistrate, like many Americans, feels he can do nothing to stop his government’s violence against innocents. Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”, where all the adults leave the room, shows what happens when decency is destroyed. Golding’s Jack, the big, charismatic bully, attracts supporters and gains control by rejecting cultural norms for a governance based on the pleasure of violent rage. Only he, through violent acts, can protect the his followers from “the beast”, the island’s imaginary monster. His followers commit murderous acts, not at his direction, but as a result of Jack’s destruction of norms of decency. Jack’s opponents are only saved from death when the adults return. In our case, too many “adults” support Trump for their own personal gain. Our adults need to come out to vote; we are our only saviors.
5
Since 9/11/01 a mere 0.75% of Americans have volunteered to wear the military uniform of any American armed force.
While the rest of us pretend to be brave honorable and patriotic by rising for the national anthem and saluting the flag at sporting events. And then condemning and excoriating those who do not by kneeling in silent symbolic protest in favor of more humble humane empathy.
Rome collapsed from within when it brought the barbarians to the heart of the empire. Ignoring the warning of the looming danger when the Roman trained soldier Arminius aka Herman the German lured three Roman legions into a trap in the Teuteborg Forest during the reign of Auugustus Caesar. They were wiped out and never replaced.
See " The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon ; "The Limits of Power" Andrew Bacevich
3
Ben Franklin said the constitutional convention had created a republic, "If you can keep it." It has been 231 years since Franklin's warning. We have come a long way from an agricultural society with constitutionally protected slavery where only white male landowners could vote, but November 6, 2018 may be the day Franklin warned us about. Will we keep it?
7
Another brilliant column by Roger Cohen.
We've long been endangered from without: the Nazis and Imperial Japan did not prevail and we established a world order that kept the Great Peace for seventy years; the truly imperial Russian empire sought to end us but failed in the face of our sturdy defense of decency and democracy; the great Japanese economic miracle that was to eat our lunch failed when they stepped in it and failed to step out again; and then came the tyrannical Chinese economic giant. I always thought we might fail one day because the task was so difficult, but hoped the next age would still tend toward the light.
What I never guessed, or would ever have guessed, was that our own President, through his own intention, would betray our legacy and wreck what we had so carefully built. Destroyed from within, with the acquiescence of our own leaders and people. To use one of our leader's favorite phrases, Sad.
6
All empires are based on the subjugation of other peoples outside their gates. Or, to put it bluntly, on murder, torture, and theft of resources. And all empires fall. Consider how the Dutch treated Indonesia, and how the British treated India. Consider what the U.S. has done to any nations that dared elect leaders who weren't subservient to our corporations (e.g. Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile). Or what we did to make sure Vietnam didn't have a chance to hold an election, when the likely winner would have been Ho Chi Minh.
We cling to the smug fantasy that we spread democracy and are an example to the world. IMO, we've based that on the alliances we made with the developed nations in Europe and with Canada, Australia, etc. But those alliances were made with the understanding that our corporations get to exploit the resources of the rest of the world. And to them, WE are the barbarians.
3
Wonderfully metaphoric and cogent, this column is a good example of why the intellectual appeal of the venerable "Gray Lady" and her elitist counterparts have so little effect on the political persuasions of the unwashed masses.
I read the "Times" for the comfort and reassurance that thoughtful and mindful points of view still exist, but have come to realize how little this means in the mindless wasteland that America has become.
6
If only, Roger Cohen, if only, the courage were yet grown, and growing, within. Unfortunately, I just reread C.P. Cavafy's "Waiting for the Barbarians." His last line ends differently than yours..."Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution." I sadly recommend the whole poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51294/waiting-for-the-barbarians )
3
Democracies can die, as a Connecticut history professor has said in his annual fall message. Democracies can die.
We must not let the blind lead us into their darkness.
4
The Barbarian is not just within, he has thousands of calculating sycophants and millions of followers. This country fought its most vicious war with itself, allowed Joe McCarthy to flourish, elected the mendacious and paranoid Nixon in a landslide over an honest but mild McGovern, made thousands of Florida votes disappear to allow Darth Cheney to protect his oil supply. And now Nero twitters while the World burns, in a fire set by his unwashed horde. Or floods, in a tsunami unleashed by the Cheney/Koch continuum, the barons who think their castles are immune to the human and natural forces they've unleashed...
6
This has truth. But must my only recourse be to vote for a party that, dispute its name, has clearly shown that it too is a cabal of plutocrats. Plutocrats who insist on opening borders to hordes of people from the most violent nation on earth without enforcement of the laws which the people clearly want enforced, yet who pile more law on me regulating even my speech and thought. Plutocrats who attempt to coerce me into not merely tolerating but celebrating and approving morally offensive perversions. Plutocrats who insist on perpetual relegation of my kith and kin to a category of person against whom discrimination is acceptable and even required in education, business, and employment. Who turn the unchosen features of my existence, my age, gender, and skin tone, into a slur.
No. I will not turn to that. I refuse to succumb to the cruel coercion of “Vote for us. You have no other choice” by people who have also made themselves the enemies of the ordered liberty that is worth fighting for.
1
WOW. I can't count the times in the past two years I have silently screamed, "Enough!" I felt compelled to vote early last Tuesday just to self-soothe.
5
This is beautifully written, but a horrible misinterpretation of J.M. Coatzee's novel.
Yes, the magistrate saw he was living at the end of his civilization's history. He also noted that what we hate in others we have in ourselves: civilization doesn't want to fall into chaos, so even the civilized will behave like barbarians to defend it; what barbarians want to conquer is not the wealth of civilization, but order itself... from the oppression of anarchic freedom who would not welcome the liberation of confinement?
Yes, the magistrate rejected Col. Joll's adoption of barbarian means (torture) to secure his ends (preserving civilization), but he equally rejected the barbarian's ends (conquering civilization): "Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization."
“No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the streets that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished.” Only the magistrate saw he was at the End of his civilization's history, and so he was his civilization's Last Man. That meant being a (Hegelian) philosopher, recognizing the dialectic progression, and accepting the Change.
Roger, you read Coatzee wrong if you find in the novel that earned him the Nobel Prize a Fight Song rather than Eris's zen. The magistrate saw 'the world has changed; we within it are changed... the Logos holds, nothing has changed; everything is on fire...'
3
When the radical London imam Abu Hamza was sentenced to life in prison in a NYC courtroom, the judge said his actions were not acceptable in a civilized society, were barbaric and were wrong. Through his preaching at his London mosque, he radicalized young men who became terrorists. Put a man full of anger and hatred in a position of power, give him a stage or pulpit, protect him through his status, and his words resonate and radicalize, with violent consequences.
Trump's audiences at his hate rallies go through a metamorphosis that we in America sadly have seen before. Their faces become contorted with rage.
Trump gives them his list of enemies. They shout chants of "Lock him/her up!" not for any crimes committed, and their targets have certainly not had due process in any courtroom.
Trump and his audiences care as little as lynch mobs about law and order. They shout against CNN and the media. They shout hatred against Jewish donors like Mr. Soros, Democratic politicians past and present but especially black or female, the FBI, et al.
Once we saw these shouting masks of hatred directed at black schoolchildren, at black men being lynched for imaginary crimes, at a bus mistakenly thought to be full of immigrant women and children, at Jewish people and other targets of bigotry.
Our barbarians are within the gates. They have been emboldened and manipulated by Trump, Fox and social media propaganda.
Can they return to mainstream American civility and civilization?
6
"What can be said at this point about the self-styled savior? He is a man of fiendish energy and malicious intuitions who gets the blood up by appealing to the barbarian in us all."
I don't know about "the barbarian in us all," but I do see the barbarians at the rallies held by the "self-styled savior."
There certainly are base animal instincts within all men. They ironically make us both human in our flawed lives and more human in the choice to listen to our better angels, suppress what is base and pursue what is noble.
But what does it say about men who choose to respond to and be guided by their base animal instincts?
And what does it say about the state of humanity when the "self-styled savior" glorifies and celebrates his own base animal instincts and cultivates and elevates those same base instincts in others?
More irony may be in the offing. The "self-styled" savior, a greedy, self-promoting narcissist, may in his rage to rape America's wealth and power, shake enough of the foundation of America to bring down the entire empire and along with it its culture of gilded-age inequity. And in the disarray, his army of barbarians may get loose, go rogue and bring about a new and not bloodless revolution, which could mirror the excesses of the French Revolution, including the beheading of its leaders. A dark, but ironically fulfilling vision...
“It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.” Thomas Fuller
8
Courage is what is missing. That is what is wrong with ICE. They have a choice to go after criminals, real dangerous people, and they choose to go after housekeepers and nannies and high school chemistry teachers and crying babies. That is what is wrong with sending the army to guard the border from a bunch of destitute peasants. It is cowardice.
This is important. We are the land of the free because we are brave. Without bravery, without courage, there is no freedom.
261
@DB Here's a shocker for you: all my friends in Canada, France, Denmark etc. consider themselves living in free societies too, and find our own sense of exceptionalism on this front to be laughable.
Go figure?!
6
For many years now we've read reports of the demise, or at least the beginning of the demise, of the American empire. I think history will record that date as November 2016.
5
The old story is dying. A new story is waiting to be born. We now live in the land between stories, a land of the unknown and full of fear and insecurity. Out of this struggle, the new story will be born. It will be a story of onenes, harmony, and a self that includes the other. It will be a story of unlimited and harmless energy and consciousness that includes even, "the spider in the moonlight". Yet, I fear it will be much like the Exodus of old. Not many who left Egypt will be able to enter The Promised Land.
Unfortunately, people like Roger Cohen still cannot admit the the institutions that built the old order must also perish. One cannot build a new world on failed ideas. One cannot put new wine in old wine skins.
3
@Dan Lake
The village must be destroyed in order to save it? Happily most Americans will not be willing to embrace the gospel of nihilism.
6
@Dan Lake There’s nothing new about authoritarian government.
2
America has always been greatest when it has been dynamic: challenging the obsolete governing principles of royalty; creating newer and better ways to accomplish an old task; offering the lower economic classes higher standards of living rather than serfdom; offering the world a "shining city on a hill" if you will. We have often failed, and we are failing again now. The butterfly cannot morph into a caterpillar. But never count us out. There are those who will never understand, and they must be removed from power. There are those that can be enlightened, and that is where we must focus our attention. We are better than this. Get out and vote on November 6th!
19
Brilliant. Just a brilliant essay. The American Character, the American Ideal, American Values - all are up for grabs come 11/6. In a democracy, we get the government we deserve.
24
Mr. Bruni: an eloquent and elegant essay. Sadly, it is right on the mark.
7
@big al This comment should have been addressed to Mr. Cohen. Mea Culpa.
3
@big al -- True. Except that Mr. Cohen, not Bruni, deserves the praise.
1
Bruni???
1
America is a self-governing enterprise? And what are the signs of barbarism in America and the undermining of the self-governing enterprise?
America's not much of a self-governing enterprise, never has been, and like in so many places in the world historically the vast majority of citizens have been viewed as skeptically as foreign elements, viewed as potential "barbarians". For all of America being a self-governing enterprise, considered such, you would think if it really was successful, distinguished from other cultures, it would have a clear and certain cultural platform which is superior, distinguished from being barbaric, which is to say by now we should have measurable elements of a culture's distance from barbarism.
Instead in America there is no clearly defined superior culture. Rather than having resulted in a measurable leap in the arts and sciences or cuisine or other areas of life we seem instead to have arrived at a dubious process of standardization, everything from fast food to driven business/legal jargon and of course never ending bureaucracy, machinery of control. We are not emerged from historical barbarism and existing in a superior culture, we are immersed in a perpetual war against barbarism which has made us technical, controlling, sterile, standardized, with no great emphasis on arts or sciences or development of high cuisine or much of anything. Probably in technology we are most advanced. But that is also increasing sword of control over people.
7
What a beautiful, powerfully written, and tragically true essay. The American problem is that our hubris blinds us to our reality - that we have become the bully nation led by an ignorant bully of a president. By definition, bullies are not strong - they are bullies in the first place precisely because they know they are not strong, at least not in their principles. True strength is never a bully, but is patient and courageous. Because we are thus blinded, we lack the "desperation of mortality" that might "yield the lucidity of courage". The barbarians are not "at the gate", they are in the seats of our government. And we, shamefully, put them there.
117
Brilliant piece. However, the key word is not "precariousness", it is inequality. Read "The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live and Die" by Keith Payne, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It explains the extreme polarisation, the belief in conspiracy theories, and many others things. This inequality has taken decades to result in today's extreme form, it cannot be blamed on Trump - he comes at the end of decades of policies that created this result, starting with Reagan, and including Democrat politicians such as Clinton (financial deregulation ultimately resulting in the 2007/2008 crash) and even Obama who did not lift a finger for millions of foreclosed homeowners shamelessly tricked by mortgage brokers and banks.
51
Ten years from now, when the full extent of the damage Trump is doing to this country has finally begun to manifest itself and it is no longer possible to discern any important differences at all between us and countries like Russia, North Korea, China, Egypt and Iran, even his supporters will be appalled, but by then it will likely be too late for them and the rest of us to recover.
481
@A. Stanton His supporters will never be appalled. Instead, they will miss the maliciousness, violence, and hatred they had become accustomed to openly expressing.
103
@A. Stanton We do not have to wait ten years. Our citizens bankrupting themselves and dying sick for lack of affordable health care? Abducted children in prisons? Families torn apart carelessly and cruelly? Because "they" are not "us"? Today, right now, as we sanction Saudi Arabia's murdering of a journalist, as Trump proclaims his love for the North Korean and Russian dictators ... do we recognize ourselves now? And as Trump cultist spin elaborate plots to explain how a bomber with Trump stickers all over his van and a long track-record of rightwing hate is really, somehow, a violent Democrat?
No matter if the American experiment goes down in flames -- Trump's followers will NEVER be able to admit fault or ask forgiveness, any more than their dear leader ever will.
42
@A. Stanton But, what about "American Exceptionalism?" I just want to go out and scream "USA, USA" to make me feel better.
10
It is hard not to think that this is the death of the American empire. Many Americans have lost faith in our system. Most of the good jobs went overseas. Then working people lost their homes in the economic crash caused by people who got rich by crashing the economy. Their frustration and despair is now nursed into anger by the right wing spin machine that feeds them fictions and lies so that they can be delivered as a voting block to the republican party. The anger has reached a pitch and has found a perfect leader in Trump. Many of the Trump supporters can no longer tell the difference between what is fake and they seem to resist reality. Those people do not make good citizens. Good luck to us all.
901
@Mark
To the peoples in the USA: yes, poverty and hardship do exist here. The worse of it falls on historically discriminated minorities, not Trump supporters. But "most of the good job went overseas" is just a plain absurd statement, feeding the paranoia. Much of you say is true, but there are a lot of relative hardships there. You are welcome to be born in Bangladesh, Sub Saharan Africa, West Bengal in India, and in all likelihood, you will learn the true meaning of hardship and despair.
If Trump is so stupid, how can he counter the narrative of some many smart people so easily? Time to take some responsibility.
22
@Mark
Let Empire die and the free republic return. Renounce territorial rights over overseas territories, bring troops home, from their futile “peace keeping” and “nation building” mission using them only for what militaries are good at: to kill and destroy from whence we are attacked and to escalate the killing and destruction until the attacks end. Govern locally and defend nationally. Leave the private affairs of our lives outside of government. What has empire ever done for me? Are the Swiss less free for lacking an Empire?
18
@Ard I'm recommending your comment only because it's a great question, but the answer is pretty easy too: Trump isn't really 'countering the narrative' with reasoned argument. He & his followers are in the ascendancy largely because our political system & news media are not set up to allow for actual reasoned discussion, with calm, detailed statements & rebuttals, side tracks & returns, & reasonable comparison of reference sources, etc etc. Money drives those who protect Trump from actually having to explain his randomly blurted nonsensical answers & hints at policy positions. I do not know what (besides money = viewership) drives the news media who regularly let the GOP off with pat soundbite answers to soft questions. The Democrats themselves (besides Bernie) are guilty of failing to unite with one voice against Trump & his enablers. Some would see the DNC in the role of Barbarians. This unfortunately timed discussion is going on at the same time, but is masked by the overall big-picture, simplified version, of us vs them, which never really gets around to defining who is US & who is THEM for any of the maybe four major factions in the country nowadays.
This is a terrific piece of writing. There's one thing I would dispute, however -- that the Nov. 6 election gives us the chance for "better options." In a relative sense, yes. Better Democrats in power than the shamelessly corrupt Republicans. Better for women, better for the environment, maybe better for minorities. But ultimately? No. Because whether Democrats or Republicans, the "Empire" exists as a corporate capitalist enterprise which by its very nature preys on the environment, takes advantage of the poor and erases ethnic differences around the globe in a breathless pursuit of profits. It turns women into empowered versions of men rather than looking to before patriarchy for how people actually lived for hundreds of thousands of years. Until we find a way around this killer system, patriarchy will not truly be eradicated, only a more humane version put in its place where women to succeed will mimic the competitive behavior of successful men. And the planet will still be savaged for profits. And people worldwide will run themselves into the ground in a futile attempt to survive. And they will do so without dignity.
13
This is the moment when we have to admit that working together would mean joining in the destruction of the nation. Bipartisanship is no longer possible and the only role for those who would save the Republic is resistance. Mr. Cohen knows our mission now and few could express it so eloquently. "In the face of malevolent and feckless and corrupt people" we must stand courageous and shout, "No. Never. Not here." Vote.
8
For a time the Democratic Party was the resistance to the suplantation of a free republic by empire. Bryan betrayed the party in voting for the annexation of Hawaii and then from Wilson forward the Democratic Party took the lead.
For most of the last 80 years the Republican Party has been an occasional weak resistance to that role, never effective. But it is worth noting that Donald Trump was a Democrat who took over the Republican Party as an outsider largely through primary voters who were formerly democratic voters.
We can never go back but we can do better. Voting one party of corporatist plutocrats our and another in will solve nothing. To do better we all have to fight, starting at the local level, for control of both parties by ordinary sensible people away from lobiests, activists, and ideologues.
3
Two distinct ways to live is society is to either embrace the advantages of community and cooperation or exploit the community for personal gain. An important tool of those engaged of the later is to divide the community so that a powerful majority works on one's behalf. In the "winning", the manipulated majority fails to see their own self inflicted sabotage.
6
Brilliant column.
Does everyone remember when pundits were expecting Trump to turn presidential because of the weight of his office? After his first State of the Union several declared that he had made that pivot. We simply couldn't believe what we had on our hands. The magnitude of the catastrophe.
Now pundits wonder when the Republican Party will declare that Trump has crossed the line. Apparently never. After a few brief expressions of dismay, they all fall back in line. They are terrified of the bully, and they'll never stand up to him.
The United States of America has been reduced to a vicious playground in which the school bully dominates everything. Trump's followers love the bullying--they're like the playground hangers-on. We need to bring the adults back.
Vote for a congress that will act like a coequal branch of government.
15
The cost of taking the stand you mention just got higher, Mr. Cohen. The next would-be bomber may have military training and friends who want to start a civil war. This is what Trump brings to our nation. His barbarians are already setting fires. The first one was in Charlottesville, just up the road from me.
Yes, someone else might have become the spokesman for this brand of American evil. But Trump, a man without empathy, could care less if his words and deeds bring us to disaster.
31
What a beautifully written piece. It captured for me the true horror of what we are watching happen to our America.
11
A wonderful piece by Mr. Cohen, allerting the thinking part of the public. I find its excellent analogy in Kafka's story of the barbarians invading "on flesh devouring horses".
When a barbarian manages to seize power by a distorted popular vote, this only shows that "vox populi NON vox Dei est" -- the voice of the people is NOT the voice of God.
3
Allegorical, Mr. Cohen here sounds Kafkaesque in describing the crumbling of the empire by the barbarians within who have barricaded the walls from such decay but have accelerated it by their ignorant actions. Trump’s protégée has taken direction from the leader himself who has identified his enemies by name from CNN to Obama, Hillary to DeNiro. He has given the green light to physically assault reporters, so his barbarian diehard follower with his van posted with his hate took it the next step. He took Trump at his word to destroy. After all, in this miasma of immorality, he thought he was helping Trump forward his agenda.
The barbarians are indeed within and on,y need to hear the dog whistles to unleash their fury.
There is a gulf separating the desperation of immorality from the desperation of immortality. The former fuels hate, the latter moral courage.
12
Dear Mr Cohen, as I read your wonderful and disturbing article on The Barbarian I could not help but listen to the opera with music by Philip Glass. The music, lyrics, and set design mirror what you present in your article. It is honest, disturbing, and a warning to all people who care about our country and its neighbors. Thank You.
Rich McGarry
14
Mr. Cohen is correct, of course. His comments are perhaps fifty years too late( since the savage attacks on the peasant societies of Southeast Asia) but nonetheless on the mark. The imperial republic has much more damage to do before it is thoroughly exhausted. Et apres...?
14
This was an exorbitantly powerful book, suggestive of our condition but not fully apposite, Mr Cohen's underlying argument is stronger. Nothing remains to allow us to suffer the ignominy of this Presidency.
2
"We Americans are self-governing, and in the face of malevolent and feckless and corrupt people, there are better options. That is what the vote on Nov. 6 is about."
Since you say "we Americans" I assume you are an American citizen, Mr. Cohen. Where do you vote? To be honest, where I vote, in midtown Manhattan, it is hard to imagine my vote is about anything, other than perhaps to improve the statistics on the number of people who bother to vote in off-year elections. Everything else has pretty much already been decided and is most difficult to change, one reason why I chose to register as an independent rather than a democrat when I moved here 30+ years ago.
Your column is very nice, but I think one of the reasons why we may be stuck with Mr. Trump for quite a bit longer (not to mention why we got him in the first place) is that there have been too many columns by people like you who read & quote people like JM Coetzee while our fate is being decided by people who don't read anything.
5
@ellienyc
I have long been of the opinion that the non-partisan public service messages calling for everyone to vote are shallow idiocy. Sure, it makes sense to encourage your side to vote. But voting can only be responsibly exercised with an investment of serious time between election in staying informed and engaged. In voting you are putting yourself on the hiring committee and should be informed of the job description, the most pressing issues the employee will deal with, and each candidates abilities and temperament.
It seems to me that the more responsible thing for a citizen to do on Election Day should they find that they have not previously made the necessary commitment, is to have a beer and watch television, leaving voting to others. I consider myself engaged but still find races on the ballot that I leave unmarked feeling unqualified.
One thing I saw happening here in 2016 was Trump motivating a lot of people who were previously non voters mindlessly chanting “Trump is going to fix that!” In response to every problem. Most of these folks were previous Democratic voters who, feeling left out by the move of that party away from the daily survival problems of working people to “social justice”, had been disengaged entirely since at least the Clinton years.
1
For all of the commentary and opinions written, describing Trump and his massive shortcomings, there is one major thing lacking: someone to stand up to him and make him back down, a Champion of Rightness. There have been more than a few who have tried, but who, for whatever reason, failed. Trump is the Alpha Male, and he has bested all comers. It turns my stomach to say that, but it's true.
But the reason that no one has backed him down is that no one has fought by the same rules he does. They're shackled by decorum, and rules of fair play, none of these bind Trump. His only credo is that the ends always justify the means. If it takes lying, no problem. If it takes pitting Americans against each other, no problem. If it takes consorting with our enemies to ensure his rise to power and retaining it, absolutely no problem. So why do those who would oppose him refuse to engage him on his own terms?
If he calls the news media "fake news", why don't they respond in kind by refusing to print or broadcast anything he says that can't be substantiated? If he says Democrats are anti-American because they're exercising their VERY Constitutional right to express their opinion and to disagree with him, then why don't they refuse to acknowledge him as lawful President? This poseur has to be confronted and faced down, regardless of the consequences for us doing that. There is no Super Hero that will do this - we must do it, as our Founders once faced their own tyrant.
34
@Kingfish52
I believe the best strategy is, as you suggested, don't give the guy coverage. As a narcissist he thrives on the attention. Any attention, good or bad, feeds his ego.
In my neck of the woods ( born and raised in Appalachia ) we have a saying: " Don't feed the bears and the bears go away."
If the antics of the guy in the White House were to be reported on by Fox exclusively, the only people watching will be " the base ". They are out-of-touch anyway. Confining their coverage to Fox ( Faux) News will finally isolate them enough for the plant to wither on the vine.
People need to wake up. Maybe Muller's report will make the point that we cannot tolerate the destruction of our democracy by those who are our enemies, or from within.
One tactic used successfully by the current guy , not to anyones surprise, is distraction. Can you tell me the issues in the news 6 weeks ago? How about 3 months? Maybe a week ago?
When the media finally decides to not give his agenda any airtime, perhaps they could replace it with reporting the humanitarian side of the news. There are plenty of " good news " stories that could be used as teaching moments. We must not allow the current rot to continue.
7
@Mike Westfall: The problem is, Mike, that the media companies all want the higher ratings the constant emphasis on Trump's lies and outrageous talk give them. How do we get the media companies to stop covering his nonsense and lies? Turn off the TV and stop clicking on stories about Trump. Tell them we won't buy any of their advertisers' products. Money (or lack of incoming constant money) might make the difference. But that means we ALL have to do so and I don't see it happening.
Remember now ex-CBS executive Les Moonves, "Trump may not be good for America but he's great for CBS". And Trump knows it, loves it and says and does things he knows will win the 24/7 news cycle. It's all he cares about, I do believe. Winning the news cycle each and every day.
1
@Mike Westfall: I think your suggestion that the media focus on more humanitarian and/or positive news as a counterbalance to the darkness of Trump and Faux News is a good one. Even Trump's most ardent supporters will get tired of always being spun into a negative fury by the Agitator In Chief, and will eventually want to "see the light". As they say, "A single pinpoint of light drowns out the darkness".
1
I'm not sure what a "self-governing enterprise" is but it sounds like a Republican white paper from Heritage Foundation.
Enterprise to me means business or commerce, one of its several denotative meanings. Self-governing is likewise for me a vague and problematic notion, unless it's used to mean discipline or self-control. In this latter sense, self-governing is what Trump isn't.
Among the stable of op-ed columnists at The NYTimes, you're the poet laureate. Unless it's one of your hobbyhorses, you are reliably measured, genuinely thoughtful, humane and always lucid.
Thus my quandary with "self-governing enterprise." This one I can't blame the barbarians for my being at sea about the reference. (Also it would be quaint given the cage-fighting quality of their politics if Republicans were as genteel as to "outlast us." Pipe bombs and Presidential incitement of violence tell us otherwise.)
I applaud -- and on better days I share -- your faith that Americans are greater than the sum of their grievances. That faith was severely tested this last election and I am eager to have it restored two weeks from now.
I agree if your notion is that Trump sows so much chaos and corruption sticks to him like toilet paper on a shoe that he drives people running and screaming from civic engagement like voting. But the majority of Americans who don't vote say its because it doesn't make a difference.
Trump proved them wrong.
I hope in two weeks we can prove them wrong as well.
10
The arrest of a bomber who is a rabid supporter of Trump makes clear at the very least that Trump's demonizing of his opponents inspires violence. Further, Trump has encouraged violence numerous times - supporting body slamming reporters, referring to rioting white supremacists as some very nice people.
His rallies follow the same script and demonize the same opponents. They are not news, they are dangerous partisan calls to violence. The press should stop covering his rallies. We can't stop a few thousand racists from attending but we do not need to have such invective published throughout the country. No amount of ad revenue justifies continued coverage by the press.
42
Another superb column by Roger Cohen. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" is indeed a novel to read in these times. And while I am commenting, I encourage readers to get and read almost all of J.M. Coetzee's novels, informed throughout by his experience as a South African raised in the time of apartheid.
11
Thank you for a beautifully eloquent dirge. I hope we can bring this country back from its Trumpian wasteland. Lots of people are fighting very hard to do so. Where I live lots of people are canvassing and calling, cajoling others to vote and volunteer if they have the time. Your voice helps people understand what’s at stake, or at least those who read. It’s too bad a lot of others are just watching Fox News. They already believe Democrats are funding illegal immigrants, sending pipe bombs to Trump’s opponents and are responsible for Trump’s lies - it’s definitely not Trump, he just lied but he didn’t tell anyone anything really bad, it was all just a lie.
18
Mr. Cohen, you hit the nail on the head: “He says he wants to make the Empire great again, but all he really wants to do is to loot it on the way down.” The decline and fall of the American empire. When did it start? The 70’s?
9
@Mandrillus sphinx
I would suggest that looting is the motivation of 90% of our representatives as well. The public began feeling it in the 70’s but it began earlier in the post-WW2 hubris. Ike saw the problem but was unable to prevent it.
I would root for the fall of the Empire if I thought I would get my free republic back but history and maturity tells me that it doesn’t usually work like that. But decline it will whether I root for it or not. The question is how to manage it with an outcome that saves the best of what we have. Obama understood the geopolitical problem but he just wasn’t the right person for that message no matter what he said. Even George W sounded like he understood in the 2000 election but 9/11 distorted vision and he set out on grand unachievable goals.
2
@Mandrillus sphinx
1. Kissinger and the deal with Vietnam
2. Ronald Reagan and Olli North and Iran (Kissinger again)
3. Newt Gingrich and the revenge of the pathetic old white male
4. The Supreme Court takes Florida / hanging chads
5. Bush/Cheney/Powell / NineEleven and Iraq
6. Electronic unverifiable Voting
=
Democracy is toast
Only a destruction of the Republicans could change that
And they have defined laws in such as minority rule
3
Two problems-Trump is mentally and emotionally unfit to be the president. He's a master salesman, no question. But unqualified by any standard you care to use.
#2. His supporters are a strange and sometimes dangerous collection of people who have been complaining about the government for a very long time with encouragement from smart people diverting their attention away from the basic political facts of life for the same very long time. We should start taking names at those "rallies"- how many of the men belong to the Klan, a vigilante group, a clandestine gun club, and worse?
Time to heal the divide? Between who and who? When you see governors and state secretaries putting up barriers to voting, it's time to turn to a massive non-violent protest both in D.C. and across the country. Sit-downs, marches, rallies (for the 99%), and
get the real monkey off our backs. why are so many people turning to opioids if everything is so "great again"? I watch the PBS news and the constant effort to "avoid the obvious"- maybe people feel as I do that no one wants to say that an open, enlightened, progressive society is and always has been the dream of civilized men (and women)? No they say- both sides "love" America. Does the other side know even a speck of history of where we've been, and what our pressing needs in 2018 are?
Is climate change, the greatest threat to our survival- even being seriously considered? Will the turnout for the election even reach 60%??
14
After his reaction to bombs that went to specific Democrats, including Michelle Obama, I am angry, terrified, , anxious, as I watch this emperor, (who has no clothes) continues to deceive, lie, self aggrandize, flat out create an alternate reality that is eagerly, with no question, scooped up as the truth by his base. "I get more hate mail than anybody, probably', he says.
Jeff Flake made an important point after one of Trump's rural rally rants, held typically in very small arenas. Don't focus on him, he said, look at the people behind him. They are the scary ones.
The environment, a healthy middle class, health care, social justice, equality, standing by foreign policy and trade deals, non transactional "good for mankind things",,,, not important.
It has led, god help me, rooting fo the Chinese to beat you in this trade war.
Only because it might cause a sea change in your governance, and lead to a restoration of all the good things that have happened under your country's leadership in he world.
12
This could be the best piece you have yet written. Thank you.
1
And while the carney barker throws up the chaff and mesmerizes with distraction, the country is being looted left and right by the plutocrats and kleptocrats. Hoarding the cheese in advance of the coming catastrophe.
57
America imagined as a self-governing enterprise? Hmmm. Not based on my observations since I became politically aware in the late 1960s. We elect individuals who go to Washington, D.C., become indoctrinated and co-opted by bureaucrats and lobbyists, and then act much in the same vein as their predecessors. It happened to Obama. Prosecuting more “leakers” than all previous administrations combined; lying about the intrusiveness of government surveillance on the citizenry (then embarrassed by Snowden’s revelations); vastly expanding the use of drone attacks and other air attacks in non-combat situations, resulting in increased civilian deaths.
Coming of age in the shadow of the Vietnam War and the revelations of the Gulf of
Tonkin Resolution, the Phoenix Project, and the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Church Committee’s reports of the CIA’s and the military’s overthrow of several legitimately elected foreign governments, and, domestically, the disclosures of the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO operations against Americans, it was impossible to perceive of government as “good”. More in the nature of a necessity which fluctuates in color from gradations of gray to black.
Now, both sides, but it seems more so liberals (of which I counted myself a member since 1974 up until 5 years ago) want to use government to make people think and act in conformity with political philosophies which, to me, have little or nothing to do maintaining a free society.
7
@Duane Coyle
There is no such thing as a "free society", only various degrees of enforced conformity, ideally in the interest of the "common good". A "free society" is one in which the "Proud Boys" can wreak havoc and conscienceless capitalists can rape the environment and pay slave wages. You may disparage "liberals" for their ideals (tolerance of diversity, freedom from exploitation, equality of opportunity and equal, fair treatment under law, consent of the governed...you know, "American" ideals).
Libertarian "philosophy" is workable only in the remote wilderness and enjoyed by hermits. Otherwise, the name for it is "selfish chaos".
2
Is a ‘barbarian’ anything like the region that used to be known as ‘Barbary’? Business always seemed more lucrative than history, as far as I could tell.
“Barbarians within.” What a terrible and misleading metaphor for our times!
Trump stinks. We all know that. But the real challenge is to build a Democratic party that deserves power, that once in power uses that power to improve people’s lives
Building that kind of progressive party demands self-criticism. But we won’t get there by reassuring ourselves about how wonderful we are compared to our fellow citizens.
21
Trump has been successful with real estate scams, beauty pageants, football, wrestling, and casino gambling. He has learned to take as much as he can get, and when things go bad, he heads for the exit, leaving others to shoulder the losses. He managed to win the presidency by conning, by lying, to everyone. Now he is applying the same principles that have worked so well for him to the national and international stages. He and his enablers think that the global infrastructure that they are exploiting for money and power for themselves will survive the onslaught. They will take what they can and move on, leaving others to take the blame and clean up the detritus. But maybe they are in over their heads this time. Maybe things won't work out. Maybe Trump won't get away cutting and running with this scam of a presidency.
Maybe ripping up the Iran deal, the Paris Accord, the INF treaty, maybe these aren't such good ideas. Maybe sacking health care, public education, infrastructure, and Social Security and Medicare, at the expense of tax cuts for the wealthy, won't work out in the long term. Maybe utter disdain for women, and minorities, and immigrants, and the free press is insanity. Maybe denigrating climate change is complete lunacy. Maybe there will be consequences. Catastrophic consequences.
By the time we find out, it will be too late. So we need to be proactive. We have 11 more days: the world is counting on us. Let's not let our neighbors down again.
36
The rot that has successfully invaded our government and that Mr. Cohen so well describes both artfully and skillfully, reminds me of an old joke:
Q: What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?
A: Finding half a worm.
But what we have discovered in our institutions, as explained here by Mr. Cohen, is not a worm, not half of a worm, but rather, a nest of vipers.
If it is true that revolutions eat their young, then surely what we are experiencing now is the final gasp of the "Reagan Revoluition." The young are mostly old to middle aged now. As to the demise of the Republican Party as it is currently constituted, I say that it can't die soon enough. The stench is so great that the GOP doesn't even know that it is disconnecting itself from life support.
The rest of us will re-build. They may bring down the structure, but our foundation is still strong.
7
Excellent column, Mr. Cohen. But you got one thing wrong. Trump isn't the barbarian. His followers are. And we saw just one vicious, toxic example today, with the arrest of the MAGAbomber.
Trump would be nothing but an ignorant, dishonest, rich old white businessman in New York, if he didn't have nearly half this country -- his barbarians -- propping him up. Congressional Republicans don't fear him -- they fear his voters, and this is why they dare not cross him.
We are very much as the mercy of tens of millions of these barbarians, the cadre of MAGAbombers to follow, and none of these people will go quietly. They know that Trump is where he is solely because of them. And what must he do to stay in their good graces? Continue to tell them that as whites, they are the "real" Americans, and that other citizens they don't like (such as racial and ethnic minorities, religious minorities, the LGBTQ community, or women who don't "know their place") have no place in this country, or at least not a place equal to theirs.
Barbarians here in the U.S. Mr. Cohen, we are surrounded by tens of millions of them. And they are some of the most heavily armed civilians on this planet. If they were simply ignorant bigots, we might be safe. But they are Trump's troops, and they are just waiting for him to say the word, to begin targeting the rest of us.
You think this is farfetched? That this scenario will never happen? Continue to think this at your peril. Meanwhile, get ready.
64
@Henry Hurt . That would be true save for a couple facts. First, there is nothing for the barbarians to really fight about. They have already won. They have a total stranglehold on this country and control all 3 branches of government. Secondly, they know that without liberals, they can't sustain themselves as all the technology and science our civilization depends on is the work of liberals. If liberals ever got smart and denied the fruits of their talent to Republicans, the latter would starve to death in a matter of weeks.
8
@VoiceofAmerica
You're making them sound rational.
They can always imagine MORE power, just like hedge fund mgrs et al can always imagine 'making' MORE money, whether they need it or not.
Also, I would not give the know-nothings you describe the awareness to realize that they would perish without modern technology, even though it's quite true. I expect them to keep bullying & shooting indiscriminately & indefinitely, with perhaps a shred of Wild-West tough guy survivalist fantasy to prolong the fun.
1
You say the US has not won a war in 17 years. Actually, as I see it, no president has won a war since Harry Truman (WWll) and he left the Korean peninsula with far less than a victory. I guess we can credit George H. W. Bush with having won two wars with extremely limited objectives. A war against Panama to depose Noriega, who was originally the CIA's guy, and a war against Iraq to push them out of Kuwait. All told, those wars lasted about two weeks. For the supposedly sole superpower, our military accomplishments since 1945 resemble those of a paper tiger.
6
Like Atticus in To Kill A Mockingbird, we must strive to do the right thing, even when it seems futile. It may seem hopeless now, but we must remind ourselves- there was a time in this country during the McCarthy period when it seemed that we really would go down the road to fascism.
But we didn't.
32
I take issue with the statement that Trump "gets the blood up by appealing to the barbarian in us all."
No he doesn't. He get the blood up by appealing to his white base, albeit a base that is shockingly bigger than most people realized even a few years ago.
If he could get the blood up in all of us then he would. He can't because most people have greater critical thinking skills then the "lock her up" crowds at his rallies, most people don't fall for his constant lies, most people don't believe ridiculous conspiracy theories, and most of us are quite content to live in a diverse nation.
78
@DBman so why aren’t most people doing anything to stop the barbarian?
@hankypanky I think 'many, if not most' people who aren't frothing with rage & really trying to do something are those who are stupified by their daily despondent trudge through an unrewarding (at best) or desperate (or even worse) existence, in which they think they have 'no time' for considering political questions, no information on which to base an opinion (if they only get 'news' from talk radio and mainstream tv channels) or are convinced that their opinion doesn't matter. 'Most People' have to have a stable income & health insurance, & time & peace of mind & curiosity to read & investigate on their own before they will start 'doing anything' on their own. They are trusting (or giving up on) The 'System' to work as advertised. The message that the whole durn thing is broken is starting to dawn on them, but what to do about it is still up in the air, mostly because we have no effective opposition party. THAT discussion is also ongoing, but you have to search to find it too. Most people who do see the real answers have very few outlets to influence anything, so we just try to talk sense to the neighbors we can still communicate with, send in our $5 donations, & rant in the Comments sections... .
2
I am over here in Europe tromping around the grounds of the Roman Empire(s) most recently up at the ruins in Conimbriga, Portugal, a significant and wealthy trading town held by the Romans for 500+ years. Yes, 500 years! Now that was an Empire.
What of the American Empire that we are writing about here? born (in my opinion) in the early 1940's? As I travel the modern highways built on top of the Roman Road system and talk to a varied mix of Europeans they seem to be viewing the USA as an interesting soap opera; it no longer feels like they are looking to America for anything more than movies, music and (maybe) a little technology. They have their own ideas on investing in their infrastructure, their health care and in their future. It feels prosperous and vibrant here (no matter what you reading back home).
So what flaw in the American psyche led us to this moment in history where after a short 8 decades we elected a clown prince to steer the American ship of state? Like the Romans, will we survive and hang onto the empire? After all they managed to survive their own mad emperors; Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Commodus and Elagabalus.
Then again, maybe the barbarians back then didn't have a clever leader like Putin. Maybe the Roman emperors with all of their faults never colluded with the barbarians. Feel free to weigh in... I am just a student in these matters.
23
@Bill Cullen, Author
Look further back than the 1940’s. The American Union planted the seed of Empire in the soul of it’s people when it denied self determination to a share of it’s, until then voluntary, member states in 1861 and birthed a sense of nationalism in a lake of blood.
That sense of nationalism grew and sharpened itself in the subjugation of the Western nomads. But a clear decision was made to become an empire in the 1890’s with the annexation of Hawaii and the denial of independence to the Phillipines. The issue was openly debated in Congress where a congress of aging Grand Army of the Republic veterans voted for empire. As some of the opponents then pointed out, the free Republic was thereby doomed and our descendants would be required to surrender their personal liberty, property and lives to the growing leviathan of empire.
9
Unfortunately, like the novel’s lead character, the fate of America is sealed. The structure of US governance is such that 31 states with less than 30% of the population elect 62% of your senators. And, the population of those states have joined the red team.
The founding fathers were not so prescient after all. The tail is wagging the dog and will do so for some time.
18
@Michael Kilbride The founding fathers, specifically Madison, know exactly what they were doing. They made a pact with the slave holding states (and small states such as Rhode Island) to cajole them into ratifying the Constitution. Many of them, slave holders and non-slave holders, expected that the "institution" would disappear over time. Over two hundred years later the specter of slavery still hangs over our heads.
2
Believe it or not most Americans don't brood about some imminent demise of American democracy. People go to work or school or church and everything seems pretty normal... except in the media. A constant drumbeat of negative labels - in this case "barbarian" - make the disconnect between people like Mr. Cohen and the average American greater by the day.
2
@Chris
Ignorance is bliss for some, I suppose. The consequences of a ship off course to not be felt until the ship hits the ground.
Trump and Republicans reminds me off the reckless Schettino running the Costa Concordia on the ground. And commentators like Chris from Charlotte remind me of the passengers admiring the view just minutes before.
3
Thank you for precisely identifying the root of the problem...millions of Americans who treat normalcy in the face of a monstrous threat as acceptable or even laudable behavior. You probably would have dismissed Paul Revere as easily as you dismiss the media discharging their highest responsibility.
5
@Chris: Unfortunately, I believe you are correct. Listen to the MAGA goers standing in line for the latest hate fest of greatest hits ("Lock her up!" Build the wall!") talking about the MAGAbomber and they all think it's a lie, nothing to it, likely paid by Dems, false flag, etc.
Unless we outvote them, there is no hope. The only hope is to have more of us than there are of them. That's a really sad thing to think, but it's true. They appear to not be able to reason or think or know anything much about America.
In Texas some time ago, the education department voted out a class on critical thinking. As Texas goes (because of the textbook industry) so goes the nation.
Going, going, gone.
4
Great article! Trump personifies barbarian so perfectly we might forget he is just an enabler of our overlords. The real barbarians are the vulture capitalists who laid waste to our union jobs and pensions, making China great in the process. Their creed is to monetize and commoditize everything and everybody. Human resources became something to be managed, so they stay in their cubicle and don't cause trouble until such time as they are dismissed by mergers and acquisitions. Theirs is the empire of unfettered global profits--mega holding companies based in tax havens engaged in everything from healthcare to selling coal.
We see the devastation of whole towns by legal opioids, not just ghettoes in the throes of crack cocaine. This is what Americans who used to have self-respect have come to. Who knows how legal pot (already big business) will affect us.
We must look up from our mesmerizing ubiquitous screens and put an end to this barbarian rule, take back our government from the lobbyists who do their bidding, and elect new people who will represent us against these thugs.
82
I'm sorry but this is the truth, printable or not. When I read the following sentence I thought instinctively of Israel's strategy towards the Palestinians:
"‘Be patient, one of these days their crops will start withering from the salt, they will not be able to feed themselves, they will have to go.’ That is what they are thinking. That they will outlast us.”
I know this isn't what Roger Cohen meant, but my point is that there are barbarians everywhere, not just among America's allies (who pointedly include the Saudis) but among its enemies (including Russia, China and many in my own country).
The U.S.A. should have known, and done better; should have been an example to the rest of the world. But it glorified power, especially military power, and used it to try and control the rest of the world. Trump's massive boosting of the military budget, while the nation's infrastructure collapses, is only the most recent evidence of skewed priorities.
All empires sew the seeds of their own destruction through the misuse of military and economic power. The U.S. is no different. And in 11 days we have the charade of democracy, a democracy emasculated by the actions of vested interests, guaranteed eventually to sink all boats in an orgy of internecine warfare. U.S. democracy contains all the makings of a Greek tragedy.
108
@Hamid Varzi, What a great companion piece of writing to be read along side of Mr. Cohen's wonderful opinion piece.I'm so thankful that you have articulated your thoughts and presented them here. What you have written, I think about all the time, but you have, organized the thoughts and written them here to share with all of us. Thank You, and all of the wonderful comments expressed here today!
9
Why all the metaphor when there are literally people legally prohibited from entering the country storming the gates?
@Mmm
Poor people, including women and children, are walking a couple of miles a day to escape their miserable lives in their country.
There are no people " storming the gates ". Do you have facts to the contrary?
4
This is beautifully written, but a horrible misinterpretation of J.M. Coatzee's novel.
Yes, the magistrate saw he was living at the end of his civilization's history. He also noted that what we hate in others we have in ourselves: civilization doesn't want to fall into chaos, so the ‘civilized’ will behave like barbarians to defend it. What barbarians want to conquer is not the wealth of civilization, but order itself... from the oppression of anarchic freedom who would not welcome the liberation of confinement?
Yes, the magistrate rejected Col. Joll's adoption of barbarian means (torture) to secure his ends (defending civilization). The magistrate also rejected the barbarian's ends (civilization): where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, the magistrate was opposed to civilization.
Few truly believe, despite the hysteria in the streets, that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished. Only the magistrate saw he was at the End of his civilization's history, and so he was his civilization's Last Man. That meant being a (Hegelian) philosopher, recognizing the dialectical progression, and accepting the Change.
Roger, you read Coatzee wrong if you find in the novel a Fight Song for civilization rather than Eris's Zen. The magistrate saw 'the world has changed; we within it are changed... the Logos holds, nothing has changed; everything is on fire...'
9
Mr Cohen, like so many of your colleagues you blame the present sorry state of American politics on (to use your references to Coetzee's marvelous novel) the magistrate, the zealous officer = the man in charge = Trump. Trump will go one day (because of electoral defeat, or eventual death if he and his party manage to change the constitution and instate a Mugabe-style presidency), but the rot will remain. Trump is the mirror reflecting the ugly truth of American society in current times.
3
With the subjugation of all values to the dollar arises the man who most praises his high rise in dollars. And who gains great fame and power no matter how ill gained from his cheating and association with despots, opening the gates to red.
So rises the wall against them and cries of "lock her up". "Her" representing all to be sacrificed for the brief rise of GDP in a nationalist empire with a global appetite and great denial of its costs. Exceptionally exempt from the morality and ethics of restraint.
But sadly not exempt from great falls.
And so
36
I will be at my polling station at 6:00 am, November, 6. Nothing could deter me.
Rational people must begin the difficult work of reversing the madness now enveloping America.
9
@Alan R Brock: Alan, if there is early voting/absentee voting in VA, please vote NOW. We don't know what might happen by election day.
Everyone should absolutely vote MONDAY MORNING.
2
This essay and the book it quotes and paraphrases is intelligent, prophetic and right on.
Those who should will never read it.
8
@Jay Stephen oops; are
I read the book which is great, as is this article.
Brilliant analysis of the drastic situation the US is in. It's not fun watching the decline of the American republic and democracy with the evil of trump and the Republican Party at the helm of the sinking ship.
42
"The Barbarians Are Within"
Yes they are, and many say they are winning. And their aim is to destroy our Democracy. But, and it's a very big "BUT", we have a resistance, and it's a "VERY BIG RESISTANCE". It's those 65 million freedom fighters out there, who call themselves Democrats. And they're itching for a fight.
And as Roger says, it all starts this coming November 6th. So you millions upon millions of Democrats please get out there and vote.
11
Imagine a high school social studies class teacher having the courage to use this article as the starting place for a class discussion on individual responsibility and the fragility of democracy.
It is fun to read an article that so reflects my own awareness and fears.
I sit here and think that, in the past, America had to get past slavery, a horrible Civil War, and assassination of a President. It didn't have the best people to lead us, but still, we got through to now.
While it is the private colleges that seem to own the halls of power, I find myself hoping against hope that our public school system is up to the challenge of helping kids arrive at solutions.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
25
I was watching re-runs of "The Nineties" and was reminded of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and how instrumental it was to Republicans taking control of Congress in the first mid-term election of Bill Clinton's presidency. Where is the equivalent political treatise from the opposition party for this November's election? Given how much Americans care about healthcare and how incredibly broken our current system is, you might think that topic alone would prove fertile ground for a few Democratic strategists. To the contrary, so far we have nothing other than distractions from Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren and some vague mumbling about impeaching Donald Trump. This will only serve to fire-up the Republican base and turn-off many independent voters. I can't imagine it will even inspire that many Democrats to show up at the polls so once again the least organized political party in America will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
6
@Earl W. The media's fascination with Donald Trump, and it is fascination with one who so brazenly flaunts a disordered personality emboldened by the roar of the crowd, has left little space for "political . treatise from the opposition party". A clip here and there of the Democrats on meager gun control, health care for all, real immigration reform, care for the addicted, income inequality.
The media's all Trump all the time got him elected and may well do so again by empowering his devotees to hold tight the power at any cost to the fate of the nation.
5
@Mary Elizabeth Since we're in the 21st Century, perhaps the Democrats could make their case outside the traditional media. Step one: write their version of a "Contract with America". Step two: mobilize their base to share it via Facebook, LinkedIn, traditional email, etc. Just because the established media outlets have descended into sensationalism doesn't mean concerned citizens are powerless to organize and share their views on-line.
2
Mary Elizabeth. I agree. Simply put and this happened the obsession of tv with T in his campaign.
3
What a wonderful and thoughtful piece. And the intelligent discourse among the readers has given me new hope that more of my fellow citizens do not dismiss truth and rationality than do. It is at once a cautionary tale of doom but tempered with hope. The last line in the piece encapsulates that hope but implies that without action we may in fact be doomed:
"But no! We Americans are self-governing, and in the face of malevolent and feckless and corrupt people, there are better options. That is what the vote on Nov. 6 is about." Thank you Roger Cohen for a piece of hope today.
38
@Onus J. Tweed
It’s a postmodern conversation, willfully misinterpreting the moral of Coatzee's novel.
The magistrate saw he was living at the end of his civilization's history, just ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’. His observation was that what we hate in others we have in ourselves: civilization resists chaos, hence even the ‘civilized’ behave like barbarians to defend it. And what barbarians want from civilization is its crown jewel: order itself... from the oppression of anarchic freedom who would not welcome the liberation of confinement?
The magistrate rejected Col. Joll's adoption of barbarian means (torture) to secure his ends (defending civilization), but equally rejected the barbarian's ends (civilization): where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, the magistrate was opposed to civilization.
Few truly believe, despite the hysteria in the streets, that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished. The magistrate saw he was at the End of his civilization's history, thus became its Last Man. That meant being a (Hegelian) philosopher, recognizing the dialectic progression toward a pre-determined outcome, and accepting the Change.
Roger Cohen reads Coatzee wrong. He draws from it a Fight Song for civilization. J.M. Coatzee's antihero taught Eris's Zen: 'the world has changed; we within it are changed... the Logos holds: nothing has changed; everything is on fire...'
2
Thanks for telling the readers about this book.
Even though great works of literature cannot really be compared, it is for me the best novel I have ever read. Astonishing. Read it multiple times.
21
@CitizenTM
My favorite in the canon of one of my favorite authors, as well. Honest question though: did you read from the parable of the magistrate the lesson that 'civilization' needed to be defended? That's a profound misreading!
The magistrate purposely wouldnt fight for a Civilization become totalitarian, nor would he join forces with the Barbarians to achieve ends he found undesirable. The magistrate;s role was rather that of Socrates when presented with the Oligarch's order to help round up his friends, who had been declared 'enemies of the people'. Faced with an impossible choice between the dictates of the state and his own conscience (ego), he obeyed neither; Socrates could not enforce a law he considered unjust, and he would drink hemlock before breaking the law... Like Socrates, the magistrate simply observed the contradiction, and chose a 3rd option: he just went home!
12
@Justin Sigman
Thank you.
I completely concur with you. Roger Cohen uses the book as a spring board for his own arguments here. Coetzee is after something else. Still I hope it will make a few people pick up the book.
What I remember from my last reading - I may have to pick it up again - was (aside of the cleanest and most powerful prose) the profound disorientation of a person caught between the tribe that he was born into and that he served, the reality of what his life meant when confronted with forces outside of that tribe, nation, empire, and a desire to comprehend, but unable nevertheless to do the same, the nature of that tribe beyond that border.
After having been stationed at the edge of his world, his journey into the no-man's land and the arrival of the officer with instructions to be less timid than the magistrate it seems no-man's land would be the only place where the magistrate could exist.
It is not so much that he is disillusioned at the end, but more like void of any comprehension, but also void of any judgement. A blank.
I'm not arguing that that what the book is. It is what I remember. (It's been about 5-7 years since the last reading).
I also remember sensing a kind of a fatalistic cultural death foretold in 'Waiting for The Barbarians' .
Thanks again.
1
@Justin Sigman
Thank you.
I completely concur with you. Roger Cohen uses the book as a spring board for his own arguments here. Coetzee is after something else. Still I hope it will make a few people pick up the book.
What I remember from my last reading - I may have to pick it up again - was (aside of the cleanest and most powerful prose) the profound disorientation of a person caught between the tribe that he was born into and that he served, the reality of what his life meant when confronted with forces outside of that tribe, nation, empire, and a desire to comprehend, but unable nevertheless to do the same, the nature of that tribe beyond that border.
After having been stationed at the edge of his world, his journey into the no-man's land and the arrival of the officer with instructions to be less timid than the magistrate it seems no-man's land would be the only place where the magistrate could exist.
It is not so much that he is disillusioned at the end, but more like void of any comprehension, but also void of any judgement. A blank.
I'm not arguing that that what the book is. It is what I remember. (It's been about 5-7 years since the last reading).
I also remember sensing a kind of a fatalistic cultural death foretold in 'Waiting for The Barbarians' .
Thanks again.
3
“It is of the nature of declining powers to imagine foes, to flail, to produce zealots, to embark on doomed wars, to flex the atrophying muscles of dominance. It is of the nature of life that imagined enemies, once provoked, turn into real ones” very elegantly stated Cohen!
Toynbee beginning with a cyclical view of history emphasised decline, and in which the universal state was an aspect of decline, eventually concluded that Western Civilisation might evade the law of recurrence. Toynbee claimed to have detected laws of history; he also claimed to have understood what was unique about Western Civilisation such that it might break the historical chain.
It's indeed unfortunate that Toynbee optimism was misplaced. Trump is proving that “political culture and the democratic institutions of the United States are stronger than were those of Weimar Germany. But I fear that Trump is doing great harm to our political culture, and will continue to do great harm to it – above all through the active cultivation of racial hatred, and the utter contempt for truth and rationality” The Death of Democracy - historian Professor Benjamin Carter Hett.
Mark Twain was correct saying “History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.”
32
@N.G. Krishnan
Well-said. I'll add in support Russell Kirk's observation that History may not be deterministic, but human nature is. In "From Burke to Eliot", he observed that the mass of mankind reason hardly at all, in the higher sense, nor ever can: 'deprived of folk-wisdom and folk-law, which are prejudice and prescription, they can do no more than cheer the demagogue, enrich the charlatan, and submit to the despot.'
The thing about humanity is, none of us are as dumb as all of us. Even the most enlightened of civilizations seems destined to repeat behaviors which, in light of History, are clearly stupid.
4
@N.G. Krishnan
“It is of the nature of declining powers to imagine foes,. . . . to embark on doomed wars, to flex the atrophying muscles of dominance. It is of the nature of life that imagined enemies, once provoked, turn into real ones”
I think Cohen may finally be re-thinking his persistent support for US war-mongering the past 17 years, either that or he's completely immune to irony.
2
The barbarians got inside the gate a few decades ago. If the predictions of climate change are correct, the economy and form of government we have now cannot survive. When over half of our population is either uninformed, in denial or fatalistic about it, we cannot make the necessary changes now to forestall the worst effects and so will have to deal with them in crisis mode later. The challenges won't be met with the same freedom and comforts we enjoy today. The haves and have-nots will be in greater conflict. The "barbarians" now in control of our governments are preparing for their own families' survival, not the rest of ours. Those of modest means who elected them to power will be fending for themselves, along with us who acknowledged the threat and voted for leaders who would act before the deadline.
72
Elementary and high schools in the US should have an "All Continents Club" so students can see the world and realize there are many cultures, languages, histories, geographies, and ways of thinking. See and experience the world. Include Antarctica and how snow is greatly retreating from Palmer Station and other areas. Plants growing where previously was snow. And that the US is not just an island.
44
@Don Yancey
Don when I was in junior high school in 1957 we had exactly that course, called Geography. Long gone.
20
@JMcF . . . . . .... and the Weekly Reader? When is the next 'International Geo-physical Year'?? Most likely brought to us by Exxon-Mobile this time, to save the expense of publishing from our shrinking public tax revenues. . . ... .
1
The barbarians have been within for aye, all of our existence as a nation … and we’ve survived.
Washington and Jefferson had Callender. A bevy of officials at least touched by corruption emerged from U.S. Grant’s administration some of them to achieve high office (and one of them is reputed to have been elected president even if he didn’t last long). How many people at the heart of Teapot Dome were really destroyed? And we shouldn’t forget Pat Paulsen.
In the 1970s there was a guy in Washington State running for Congress who, when asked his position on Native Americans, responded “I believe that every white man over the age of 21 has the right to own as many as he can afford to support.” (True story.) I don’t remember if he was elected.
From time to time some of us look at the barbarians who plague us at this moment in time and conclude, along with Chicken Little, that women are about to burn their bras, human sacrifice is about to erupt, dogs and cats will start living together... mass hysteria! But, somehow, the sky stays up there.
I know that it distresses Roger greatly that the barbarians at THIS moment in time seem to have bought up the world. Heck, even our heroes these days are porn queen pole-dancers who seek to extort money from a sitting president to pad a retirement account for the day when the pole … inevitably … will no longer support the dancer.
But Roger really needs to chill. The system is stronger than he thinks; and, like Gloria Gaynor, will survive.
8
@Richard Luettgen
Absolutely right that there is mass hysteria: plenty on view at Trump's rallies.
Survival perhaps, but in what form?
23
@Richard Luettgen
Do not be surprised that should the Barbarian in Chief's party succeed in the election, that political violence will escalate. When injustice is perpetuated upon the majority it ultimately comes to that, and of course the reaction will be a crack down by the government. The sequence of events will then unfold.
5
@Richard Luettgen
Corrupt officials- they can always be voted out.
But what of nearly half the country indoctrinated by a right wing propaganda machine operating for well over 20 years, right out of George Orwell's 1984, that doesn't want to vote them out?
That has been fed lies and vitriol and bigotry and despite and fear of anyone the media machine of right wing secular and radical religious talk radio, Fox "News," and conspiracy theory spewing internet outlets can scapegoat as "The Enemy?"
That no longer knows, or cares to know the truth?
What happens now that the radical right fringe has become mainstream?
Yes, we are a self-governing people. In 2016 we used our power to put the Republicans and Donald Trump in control of our government.
And in spite of every outrage, every incompetence, every divisive, bigoted, ignorant, anti-democratic word and action that Donald Trump has committed as president, he and the Republicans still maintain most of the support of their base.
The system is only as strong as an electorate committed to keeping it strong makes it.
If the electorate continues to empower the "malevolent and feckless and corrupt people," allied with Donald Trump in the Republican Party and out in the country, by voting or by staying home, the strength of the system will not save it.
14
Actually, Trump reminds me more of Richard III: clever, manipulative, sure of his own powers, absolutely with a conscience; and of course determined to make his way to the throne, no matter how many bodies he has to step over to get there.
The fact that Trump has trod on reputations and institutions instead of corpses is a difference of degree, not of kind. Trump specializes in character assassination, not murder; but sometimes it’s a little hard so see the difference. A few dead bodies seem comparatively trivial compared to destroying the life’s work of thousands of statesmen and, by being careless about arms reduction treaties, putting the lives of millions at risk.
In the Shakespeare play, Richard makes so many enemies that they eventually gang up against him. Spoiler alert: his enemies win.
58
Trump is still riding high, his followers still happy with the victory and the chance to goad the snowflakes. What will they do when the house switches and the truth is exposed. What will they do when Mueller delivers what is undoubtedly bad news for Trump? If the GOP were interested in the rule of law Trump would have already been checked. They will not accept the result and they will use violence, and Trump will continue to incite violence.
46
@Chris Donnie Boy could be dangerous when cornered. A Dacha awaits him if he brings the F35 plans. Once the house switches, at least there will be consequences not appointments to the Supreme Court for lying to Congress.
3
The barbarian lives in all of us, since there are still many that vote out of the tribe, they perceive as their own, and they must protect, or many more still that vote for the singular (themselves, in the form of a tax cut) instead of their community.
We can hold up a mirror to any one of us.
15
Disruption without an afterplan turns into chaos.
19
@alkoh
I remember thinking 'oh oh - this cannot end well', when Silicon Valley first got high on the concept of 'disruption'. This word had for ages a negative connotation and in my opinion it still has. We lament hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, abortions, bankruptcies - but also interrupting people's sleep, speech, life, privacy and so forth.
But suddenly disruption is known as cool.
9
Brilliant piece.
It’s been apparent probably since Vietnam that the US was losing its mojo.
Every great civilization historically has gone down.
Technology, unbridled arrogance and our foreign policy boneheaded moves have accelerated the spiral for the US.
Trump is just a catalyst for the inevitable decline and unfortunately it’s like a top spinning out of control live at 5.
Vote Democratic if that floats your perception of an improvement. Different lens to watch the mess is the cynical view.
Act locally, focus on family and friends and hope that when the stuff hits the fan you don’t get covered too bad.
23
The ends justify the means for the president and Republican congress.
It's new, the way Trump and party have doubled down on the audacity, frequency, and consequence of their lying and their violence.
Asked about denigrating Blasey-Ford, Trump shrugged, he didn't regret it, because he got what he wanted. No regrets for attacking the father of Ted Cruz, "things turned out very nicely."
New audacity level. Ends justify means. Fair play is a hoot. It's fiendish.
His congress lie so baldly as to have ceded from representative government. Ads campaigns, interviews, debates, to delude constituents.
Bullying is an inadequate word, rape speaks to the force of it, the violence, the unconcern for suffering, the enjoyment of power.
Republican congress is cozy with our extreme danger, with the incendiary attacking, the violence, perversity and the dictatorial behavior.
Open Republican tampering with the electoral system. Ballots lost, misinformation, rigged machines.
I fear that the election may be rigged beyond a shadow of a doubt but that the victors, aided by their new judges, will hang on tight.
Or that if they lose, there will be violence, and they'll be fine with it.
I wonder if there is any behavior which benefits them that they would quash.
I am so afraid that new precedents will arise, big and bad precedents will face them, and they'll feel compelled.
All the things Trump is joking about, today, including violence.
He doesn't joke. That isn't a smile.
90
"That isn't a smile." Reading this sentence stopped me cold in recognition. DJT doesn't ever smile. Instead, he rearranges his facial muscles to mimic an agreeable expression. But his eyes never change. The smile always precedes another 'poor me' rant, his 'smile' ends up as a wide straight line across his face before he falls back to his default of anger and complaint.
10
Oh, if only we were a well educated people who appreciated parable and irony, then, pethaps the moving poetry of this piece would motivate all the electorate of this still great nation to vote and “throw the rascals out”.
123
@Thomas Unfortunately, voting where I live, in my district in Manhattan, will have nothing to do with throwing rascals out. It may send a message that "I care" or "I'm going to stand up and be counted," but that is the extent of it.
Poetry and "vote" aside, I do wish the Democrats, OR SOMEBODY, could come up with a strategy for communicating, in plain English, with people who not only don't ready poetry, but maybe don't read anything, regarding the issues we all should be concerned about as citizens, in a comprehensive and civil way, so better informed decisions can be made.
96
@Thomas On the day when someone who is the archetype of the American supporter of Trump, from pronouncements to life style to appearance, has been arrested for posting bombs, a perfect sample of what Trump's electorate represents in the range of humanity, I would be a little less ironic (perish the thought of you being a bit humble in the circumstances) about people who see the people you identify with for what they are.
6
@ellienyc I was a school social worker in a district where the federal government during an audit found that the average, yes, the average reading level at a high school in a south east Michigan city was grade 4. I've taught school in rural Michigan. I was trained to teach remedial reading. The level of comprehension is extremely low in our state. Perhaps well-done graphics, perhaps comics or well-done animation could reach these cognitively challenged people. Most media is clearly written and produced beyond their levels of comprehension.
1
Mr. Cohen, you really tapped into your inner muse with this article. I especially appreciated your line, "and they never heard a chord, or read a phrase, or saw a sensuous line on a canvas that caused them to pause in wonder." This seems to describe some of my Facebook friends from high school and others I've met elsewhere who assert the Fox talking points with determined certainty and immunity to logic. They seem to confirm the Dunning-Kruger effect. Keep up the good fight, sir. Many of us in the hinterlands appreciate your columns. Mitchell in Columbia, Missouri
175
@readinginNYC
Well said, Mitchell. I too loved the line you quoted.
Those touched by the beauty of art, poetry, music and literature see a world beyond themselves and their immediate concerns and gratification.
Thank-you, as always, Mr Cohen for a thought-provoking and timely article.
27
Thank you - your column reenforces my connection to myself - to who I am - to my personhood - to my convictions - to my dignity as a human being. It is the most important thing I have in life - or what life do I have?
109
"It is of the nature of declining powers to imagine foes, to flail, to produce zealots, to embark on doomed wars, to flex the atrophying muscles of dominance."
Roger Cohen, you never fail to inspire me with your sense of optimism that democracy will prevail, barbarians or no barbarians.
Contrast that with a dark 5 minutes tonight when MSNBC host Rachel Maddow shared her concerns that our elected barbarian, who has spawned an unbelievable number of hate groups, may have the goal of persuading law enforcement to serve him, not the law.
I hope we aren't making too much of the mid-terms. Because half the country is scared to death and the other is in thrall to conspiracy theories, and the hovering question is, what do the frightened do if they don't prevail?
Combustion is in the air; I can almost smell it, and it's rancid. The bomber ain't talking, and God knows what else is lying in the shadows, among the ruins of his bomb lab, ready to pounce.
I know you're right that our American barbarians are within--not literally, clearly, but in how we perceive and renounce them.
But I also hope you're right that the "desperation of mortality can also yield the lucidity of courage" so each of us, in our own way, refuse to go quietly into that good night.
211
@ChristineMcM But desperate old men afraid of dying rarely do that and continue being pains in the you know what until they have a massive coronary or a massive stroke.
Sometimes they relent a little, when they are really really scared with death near, and rediscover religion. But honestly, I don't know which is worse -- old pains in the you know what or the old "born agains."
5
We could have a future where Trump supporters send bombs to liberals and liberals get arrested for it.
2
I was delighted while reading this essay, and by the thoughtfulness of the comments, which provided proof that considered communication begets the same. This concept was once a source for hope, but now I know that it is only reciprocal if all involved want it, and are able to sit with uncertainty. We are all sometimes unable to tell what is true. But I fear much of the country is unwilling to consider the repercussions of decisions that feed quick gratification, and therefore don't even really care what is true. And I don't what can be done about it.
36
Cohen's column contains a fair-enough use of Coetzee's book. Coetzee never reduces to lessons, however. His relentless, painful stories tell us how we are troubled, conflicted, unwilling or unable to see ourselves. Against trump, sure, but they ask much more of us than that.
14
trump really shows his colors in the wake of the letter-bombs, which he complains distract from the Republican campaign. His focus is always on himself, and he "passes" on making calls to those who were the intended targets of the mail bombs. Even as one of his fanatic supporters targets, among others, two of his predecessors in office, he whines and portrays himself as the real victim.
Heaven knows, all presidents make mistakes, and some are even devious while they're at it; but at least they see themselves as representing all the people, whether they voted for him or not. The one who now occasionally occupies the White House during a tweet- or work-break between rallies and golfing weekends sees himself as nothing of the kind. He strokes and flatters his supporters while encouraging them to hatred and violence against his opponents. No other occupant of his office has even remotely approached this despicable - or, should I say, "deplorable" - behavior.
Thankfully, these mail bombs hurt nobody; but their deployment must be a watershed in shaping voters' behavior. No decent voter of any party, or none, will countenance voting for party whose office-holders pretend to not to be happy with trump, but look the other way and keep their mouths shut no matter how bad his behavior.
Truly, the barbarians are within. Maybe they always have been; but now they have a barbarian-in-chief.
338
@mancuroc : " now we have a barbarian - in - chief".
how precise a description of us.
and let it be recalled, again and again, until saturation : it Was trump who in initiated that barbarian talk and incendiary rhetoric, encouraging the likes of that Florida man who mailed the bombs, to ACT OUT aggressively. to attack and harm whomever looked to you to deserve to be harmed. i'm sure there is a full doseire of trump's incitements to attack and harm. lets see it on these pages.
thank you so much, Roger Cohen, for elucidating for anyone who still cares about this country, what has been dumped on us. and what we need to do to restore our sanity and civility. vote !
17
An epistle which further reminds Dems must have the Senate as well as the House, when Wednesday Nov. 7 dawns.
And Dems must do what has to be done regarding Pres. Weasel 45*; to ignore his lawlessness would undermine the core tenets of our nation, and it's not the fault of Dems that the country will be placed in the unprecedented situation - it will be the fault of GOP'er gatekeepers who utterly refused to keep such a flawed personality from ever getting near a ballot slot.
The die was cast with the GOP'er gatekeepers' epic Fail.
124
I always believed the American experiment would one day founder, as have all attempts to build lasting, even great, societies, civilizations, empires, whatever you want to call them. I never thought I would be alive to see it happen, or that tens of millions of my fellow citizens would cheer wildly for the man bringing it down.
735
@Richard: the reason that such grand experiments fail is because we fail to fight for them.
We've forgotten what Jefferson meant by defending democracy. It doesn't mean just voting (though that's essential). It means fighting systematically to create new political parties, harnessing the positive energy of the downtrodden and (absolutely vital) civil disobedience and storming the barricades.
Like the teachers in Kansas and Arizona, for instance. That is the only way such wars for the soul of the Republic are won.
15
Coetzee borrowed his title from a Cavafy poem on the disoriented end of Empire.
The closing lines predict the failure of Trump's promised fix:
What’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
25
@Martin - Thank you. What a thought-provoking stanza. Who do we have to blame when it is finally and irrefutably revealed that we are all The Barbarians? That "we have met the enemy, and he is us?"
3
@Miss Anne Thrope
Another great, related, quote opens the film Apocalyto, on the collapse of the Aztec Empire:
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
- Ray Bradbury
As our Non-Book-Reader-In-Chief traipses around the country egging on his Worldwide Wrestling Federation fans with violent rhetoric and demonization of all those who are not Whites R Us cult members, his right-wing Trump mob looks as intellectually curious and well read as Donald himself, a man whose literary range spans the sewer grates of the first and last pages of the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer.
This is what happens when Republicans work hard for 25 years to steal the nation's treasury while organ-harvesting America's brains and turning it into a right-wing souffle of fear, loathing and acute chronic cognitive dissonance.
You get a sea of rage-filled, 'religious', rural Republican white faces screaming for vengeance of imagined enemies while cheering the city slicker who just swindled a trillion dollars from them, who tried to rip away their healthcare, who is soiling their environment, who appoints corporate supremacists to eradicate their individual rights, and who hands out guns and bullets so the enraged masses can shoot each other.
The Republican Party worked hard to disembowel America's brains so Greed Over People was the absolute law of the land.
And America was left with the brainless Trump and his brainless mob demanding to Make America Hate Again.
Pachyderm Spongiform Encephalopathy is a terrible disease.
Let's cure it on November 6 2018.
816
@Socrates Here’s the clinical description:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/amp1...
11
What a terrific piece of writing. My only quibble is that what's going on in our country gives barbarians a bad name.
272
If there is such a thing as a "wisdom in writing" award, Mr. Cohen should receive one. The eloquence of his prose is captivating. The conclusions drawn from this essay are irrefutable. No equations, no polling, no statistics required. Just humanity.
Human beings, as a part of our intellectual development, evolved learning about the world through stories. It was the storyteller who was the educator, the informer. Consequently, we long to hear the story.
Mr. Cohen has just told our tale, our story. The power of any story lies in its emotional connection to the listener, the reader. This power goes beyond specific events and becomes universal in its application. Bible stories work in the same fashion. They teach life lessons. The underlying specifics may be fiction, but the life lessons ring true across time and culture.
Mr. Cohen has told such a story. Unfortunately, the underlying facts to his tale are true. They are our reality. The problem is that many of the participants (Trump supporters) do not realize that they are the actual characters in this tale of woe. They can't see the life lessons being taught. They are like the actors in a play. They totally become the part. In doing so, they fail to realize what is happening to the theater they are performing in. The place is burning down and they don't smell the smoke. They too will be consumed.
438
@Bruce Rozenblit It is remarkably well written, but methinks Cohen slightly skips over the part where the Barbarians set out to out-militarize the rest of the World in order to remake it in their (flawed, money-worshipping) image, by either economic pressure (WTO/IMF/TPP), state-sponsored corporatism (Exxon-Mobile) & financial bullying, or, in not necessarily the last resort, direct military intervention, which Cohen has been cheerleading for as long as I've been reading the Times.
6
Yes, of course we need to vote but I am not optimistic for this mid-term. I work on a college campus in NC and the majority of undergrads I talk to really don't care about the election. Young people are not turning out in early voting in our state and the numbers for early voting for all age groups match those of 2014 very closely. The blue wave is not coming - the barbarian-in-chief will happily loot us and hasten our demise for another 2 or 6 years.
49
@EC. Then those young people will get what they deserve. Democracy is a chance for every individual to help fashion the future. If you don’t vote, then clearly you don’t care.
10
Barbarian within the Gate
Dispenser of lies and of hate
To a receptive clutch
Whose knowledge ain't much
Let's vote and make his reign abate.
169
"He had been chosen to blow up the whole place. He set about his task with vigor"
"turns in part on the fact that the barbaric presence in his pages is the Empire, not the Empire’s imagined enemies"
If that is true, then Cohen here is defending the barbarians. He falls back on the assumption that really the old Empire was good, wasn't barbarian, and should not be seen that way.
He defends what he calls the barbarians from the decision of voters to destroy them, to end the barbarians.
So either his premise is not true, or he is on the wrong side.
He can't have the guy chose to destroy the barbarians "with vigor" be himself the barbarian.
4
Just put that book at the top of my reading list.
Sounds like a great way to while away a long winter.
21
@Chris Morris
It's a short book. But I recommend reading it at least twice. Astounding in any way.
1
There are so many brilliant turns of phrase here, that I am almost at a loss for words to respond; trying to decompose this into a word here or there for discussion, seems a mite like examining a Monet at the brush stroke. Still, among so many profound insights, this one caught my eye: “The millions who served at distant, tedious frontiers were scarcely recognized on their return. They trudged their trauma home in sullen silence.”
I grew up I the Vietnam era; my uncle died there in ’69. Who remembers “Same Time, Next Year?” I was too young to realize it at the time, but my father went through a turn to the right, very much like that of Alda’s character, George, when my uncle died: 19W, row 3. But my dad stayed that way, and it has made all the difference. I heard about incessantly, and saw, the disrespect shown those who served this nation to keep it free, or so they were told. A shroud of guilt descended upon the land, with solemn oaths never to do so again.
Yet here we are. “Thank you for your service.” It always grates when I hear it. I served my country out of respect for my uncle and love for the land, our land, which we call ours – not just some of ours. As fate had it, my time was served during years of relative peace, yet I remain proud of having done so. Still, I think of those ‘scarcely recognized on their return’ for whom the antidote to Vietnam was apparently lapel pins and hollow thanks. The Barbarian in chief knows this, using it for his own advantage. I weep.
402
In Vietnam, our soldiers were valiant...the war was not.
16
@Erik L.
One of the most moving comments that I have read in some time Erik.
The men in your family are heroes in my book.
Thank you.
10
@JARenalds The real heroes live in Vietnam, they fought against the Colonial, Global Capitalist Menace.
To a certain extent, Coetzee's narrative as described here seems to reflect not only what's been going on in the U.S. but also what's now happening in China- here, the "barbarians," arriving from Central America, are willing to take the chance that, despite the animosity of our feckless leader and his army of Deplorables, they'll still be better off than they were at home. In the Middle Kingdom, the "barbarians" arrived long ago and have been residing peaceably in the border regions of Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. Suddenly, it's been decided that they need to be broken in body and spirit so as not to form even the puniest of challenges to the power of the Han Chinese state. Who could have imagined just a few years back that our two radically different (albeit similarly wealthy) societies would prove to be the cruelest, most paranoid and xenophobic? At least here we still have the opportunity to rid ourselves of malicious, contemptible leaders and to replace them with rational and compassionate ones. And we had better take steps to do just that before that possibility is forever snuffed out.
179
@stu freeman
Coetzee's narrative does nothing like that. Highly recommended book though about the morality of occupation and borders.
1