Imagine, for a moment, that you were the most powerful nation in human history. By a very long way. Sure, Rome had an empire that reached to Scotland and Africa. So what? Romans also lived in prehistory. Real power isn’t what you have at the tip of a sword. Even Rome knew that much — which is why it governed its conquests as equals, when they accepted Roman institituions. Real power? That’s something else entirely. It’s the freedom to make your own destiny, isn’t it?

So. What destiny would you choose? What would you do with all that power? Here’s what a sane person, or a sane society, might have done. Given everyone free healthcare. Education. Finance — savings, incomes, assets. Housing. Good media and books and information. Safety nets. Retirements and pensions. Why would you have done all the above? Well, if you were an intelligent person, or society, you would’ve learned the great lesson of the 20th century. When people are financially poor, they turn on their neighbours, trying to take their bread. When they are emotionally poor, they are easy meat for demagogues. When they are intellectually poor, they are pliable and manipulable, by every conspiracist, fantasist, fool, and extremist.

You, being an intelligent person, would have learned this great lesson. Democracy is secured by wealth. Not wealth as in “only rich nations today”, but as in “not as dirt poor as nations were throughout history”. It is a luxury, which only becomes a necessity when people are capable of it, financially, socially, culturally, emotionally, and intellectually. When they have time, money, education, wisdom, courage, morality, ethics, and self-understanding — then they can have democracy.

That is why premodern societies didn’t have democracies — they had tribalism and feudalism, over and over again, in an endless cycle. For millennia. Lords and kings and knights and barons, ruling over peasants and serfs and villagers. Why? Not because people didn’t aspire to democracy. They did. But it always eluded them. They didn’t have enough of all those things to really make enough people capable of democracy yet — and in that way, the lesson that that self-governance, self-directedness, all the things we prize and cherish in democracy, are made possible by these deep forms of wealth, hadn’t been understood at all yet.

So. You would give everyone the basics of a decent life, so that democracy could be secured. But what is the point of democracy? Why would you want that? The point of democracy is greater prosperity. That is the second great lesson of the 20th century — and it is much more subtle than the first one. Prosperity is just all these forms of wealth, multiplying on themselves. Simplify them if you like. Call them art, science, literature, knowledge, morality, truth, beauty, discovery, defiance — the stuff, really, of coexistence, of meaning, of happiness, of fulfillment itself. These are the things money is there to denominate — and without them, all the money in the world is quite useless. They are what wealth really is. You, being intelligent, would understand that the point of democracy is for these greatest accomplishments of humankind to go on soaring to new heights. So that people could live more fulfilled, happier, and more meaningful lives than ever before.

But why would you want that? Well, when people are busy living ever more fulfilled, happy, and meaningful lives, what aren’t they doing? They aren’t busy doing that one thing that defined all the millennia before we understood the great lessons of the 20th century, are they? They aren’t busy making war. Pillaging and plundering and raping and murdering one another. Do you see the link? The great lesson of human history so far is just this: only when human beings invest in themselves, and only as much as they do, do they give each other the power to create better things than war, murder, and rape.

Why were people stuck doing those things, for so long, anyways? It was because without the idea, inclination, or means to invest in themselves — which is what democracy really is — there was only one path, really to riches. To take the next tribe’s land. To enslave their people. To take their women and children and gold and soil. Human history was defined by this foolish cycle. We only understand its folly, though, in the last hundred years or so — after two terrible world wars.

And so if you were a truly intelligent person, you’d understand these three lessons. Poverty, greed, and ignorance — all different forms of impoverishment — cause war. But the point of a democracy, which is secured by shared wealth, is to enable people to go on investing their common wealth in one another, giving themselves ever more education, finance, knowledge, truth, beauty, morality, justice — so they can live happier and more meaningful lives, and thus, break the vicious, stupid cycle of poverty, misery, and greed causing war, ruin, and devastation. Does that all make sense? It’s subtle — but it’s not overly complicated.

Now. Let us come back to the question. You are the most powerful nation in human history. You can chart your own destiny. You can give everyone all the above — or you can do something else. What do you do? Here’s what America did.

It didn’t do any of the above. It did the precise opposite of all the above. denied people all the above. It took away their rights to healthcare, education, finance, housing, income, and so on. It created a dog eat dog society, in which only a tiny few could prosper — at the expense of the many, because the ordering principle of society was predation. In other words, it learned not a thing from history. Not one thing.

You have to be pretty stupid to do that, don’t you? How stupid? Well, you were the most powerful — ever. You could have done all the aforementioned with the single stroke of a pen. Forevermore. But you didn’t. That gets us pretty close to the stupidest nation in human history, doesn’t it? Close, perhaps. But not all the way, certainly.

Let’s approach the remainder of the question backwards. What’s happened in America over the last decade — and then the last 24 hours?

Well, that story goes something like this. First, America normalized mass, regular, school shootings. People dying without basic medicine like insulin. A hidden nation almost as big as the UK living in poverty. All that — normalized. As in: we care, maybe a little bit. But not enough to really do anything about it. Do you see the trend? Cruelty, folly, growing by the day and year — all the great lessons of history unlearned.

Where would that lead a nation? Well, what happened in the last 24 hours? An American President stood before the whole world and confessed, more or less, to being a puppet. LOL. But that’s not the shocking thing. The shocking thing is what happened next. A nation was outraged. Pundits were alarmed. But nobody, really, lifted a finger. There weren’t mass protests. People didn’t line the streets. Intellectuals didn’t issue joint letters of denunciation. Not a single politician switched ranks. Instead, there was timid, meek “debate”.

Now. The slow degeneration of American life, into selfishness, cruelty, and greed — and Americans being so horrifically, catastrophically immovable, that faced with the spectacle of a President pliant to their great adversary, they do something that resembles weary capitulation? Why might these things be linked?

You are the most powerful nation in human history, ever. By a very long way. And yet instead of learning the lessons of history — that people must invest jointly in themselves, to become educated, wise, intelligent, moral, humane, and decent, therefore ever more capable of a truer democracy, and all that is the best defense we know of against people engaging in war, devastation and ruin — you don’t bother with any of that. You impoverish your people. You make them financially poor. You make them emotionally broken, traumatized and shattered. You make the socially poor, mistrusting and hostile. You make them intellectally impoverished — ignorant and foolish. You make them morally poor — bound tight to systems of predation, in which they are always competing to punch the next person down.

Is such a person going to care enough — not much, or more, or less, but enough, because here there is a critical bar — about the loss of their very own democracy, to its worst adversary? Even when that adversary crows, through the mouth of a puppet, “all this belongs to me!” — will such people care? How could they? Don’t you remember the first lesson? Democracy is a rich nation’s concern. But you have impoverished your very own people in every single way that was possible. So now when, the moment of truth arrives, who will be able to stand up? No one. And that is when America’s moment of truth arrived, no one did.

Now. We have one question left to answer. Why would you be this foolish? Why would you impoverish your very own people, flunking all the tests of history, failing to learn its great lessons, leading yourself to sure ruin, because a nation that is impoverished is also not going to be one which can care enough about losing its democracy? Why would anyone be that dumb — especially someone who was already the most powerful nation in human history?

Well, there’s only one possible answer. It wasn’t enough. Being the most powerful. Ever. Of all. Something in you needed more than that. But what could be bigger, grander, better? Castles on Mount Olympus? Why would you need something bigger and better than being the most powerful one, ever? You would only need it because you felt unworthy to begin with. Ah, but then why didn’t you examine that feeling? Why didn’t you sit down for a moment, and reflect?

What is it that would make you feel unworthy, when you are the most powerful one of all? There’s again, only one possible answer. That power that you have is something you already know, deep down, you are misusing. You are using it to harm people. To subjugate and segregate and and repress — not to liberate, in all the ways above. You feel guilty, ashamed, because you haven’t lived up to your very own ideals, nor what the world expects of you. You are the most powerful nation in human history, ever, but because you are misusing your power, you feel unworthy of it.

What should you do? Shouldn’t you first understand why even being the most powerful one ever didn’t seem to ease your hunger for power? That the need to always be more powerful, even when you’re the most powerful nation in human history, can only be a way to mask and hide the growing guilt and shame that comes from misusing your abilities in the first place? And in that way, it’s a signal that you must change, mature, grow, do better and wiser things — things which genuinely count, endure, and matter?

But what happens if you never bother to know yourself? To see any of that? Well, then you will go from the most powerful nation in human history — to a laughingstock, in record time. Because you are constantly seeking more power, even when you are the most powerful one, ever, but now you are even taking it away from your very own people, impoverishing them, and in that way, you will not last very long. A day will come when those very people will see a puppet President before them, and they will only be capable of shrugging. And what will you be then?

Someone unworthy of your power. That power was wasted on you. You didn’t do anything with it that mattered. You squandered it. You blew it. Instead of keeping the beautiful and great wheel of prosperity spinning — more investment in people, better democracy, happier lives, less violence and ruin — you ground the wheel to a halt. You reversed it. You ground your very own people to dust. But can people who have been ground to dust stand up, when it matters most?

Yet that is what you did. You were the most powerful nation in human history, ever. But all you ever really used your power to do was to grind your very own people to dust. So that you could satisfy that need, that strange and insatiable need, to always feel more powerful, stronger, mightier, even when you were the most powerful one of all. You never understood that need was insatiable because you were misusing your power to begin with, and that someone using their power wisely does not need more, but can rest in humility, at ease in tranquility.

You always needed to feel more powerful, because even infinite power couldn’t satisfy someone who feels unworthy inside — and so you used the greatest power in human history not to build the shining city some people once spoke of, but to grind your people to dust. A vicious cycle of folly.

The moment of truth arrived. The enemy landed on your shores. The storm descended. The winds began to blow. But the people were made of dust now. They tried to stand up. They tried to rise, perhaps. But the moment the gale rose, they shattered and blew apart. At the moment of truth, nobody was left to tell it, speak it, defend it, protect it — or even remember it.

The enemy laughed. History rewound. The old game, the old game. Poverty, misery, greed. Ruin, war devastation. It was beginning again. People made of dust — they can’t even withstand the breeze. How can they fight anything at all when the storm arrives? But who turned them to dust? You did. That is what you used your power, which was the greatest power in human history, to do. So what did you expect? Why didn’t you understand any of that — ever?

Because you were the dumbest nation in human history.

Umair

July 2018