“How many divisions does the Pope have?” Josef Stalin was supposed to have asked derisively. And yet, Pope John Paul II, still commanding no military force, was instrumental in destroying the Evil Empire Stalin had built.
When future historians are able to see the big picture, they will probably think of the 20th century as a time when the Eurocentric world was squeezed by Russia from the east and by America from the west.
The two giant nations, named unlike the old nation-states by acronyms—the USSR and the USA—were Europe’s outposts. Both grew out of the European Enlightenment — German and French in the case of the Soviet Union and English and French in the case of the United States — and developed ideologies that in turn deeply influenced Europe once the last European attempt to keep ruling the world — effected by Germany in 1914-45 — definitively collapsed.
Soviet communism introduced notions that are considered progressive even today, more than one hundred years later. The Soviet government never really practiced what it preached but it was the first to declare, for instance, complete equality of men and women, equality of races, a ban on child labor, free child care, universal free education, health care, and pensions.
And of course, it promised a job to everyone, claiming that it eliminated unemployment.
The Soviet model was heavily influenced by the ideas of the American Revolution.
Indeed, in the early days of communism in the 1920s, some Bolshevik circles saw America if not a natural ally in their struggle against capitalist Europe, then at least a kindred nation — even though before Franklin Delano Roosevelt the two countries didn’t have diplomatic relations.
The republican model and the democratic system pioneered by the American colonies has been adopted by the Western Hemisphere in the 19th century and by much of Europe after 1918. It spread around the world, too, in the post-colonial era.
One key difference between these two acronymic nations has been their view of morality, of the difference between good and evil. The US remained deeply rooted in religion, combining a Yankee practical sense with considerable piety. To Americans, good and evil were universal concepts that existed in the realm of the divine, not in the world of humans.
The USSR, on the other hand, became the first atheist state, which not only separated the church and the state the way the US Constitution had done but took an official position that God doesn’t exist. It set out to stomp out religious beliefs and — more important — universal morality. Good and evil, they declared, are a class concept. Thou Shall Not Kill and other Commandments do not apply to one’s class enemies. History — in their interpretation — required that other classes disappear so that killing members of those classes couldn’t be considered evil. It was a historical necessity and therefore actually good.
Thus Vladimir Lenin resurrected the premodern concept of morality as allegiance to the tribe — or class in this case — which had gone out of fashion in Europe with the spread of Christianity and Judeo-Christian values.
Religion is a way of making sense of human existence. Communism attempted to replace it with a different meaning of life: that of building happiness for future generations. It was a doomed project from the start. Sure humans like most other species are wired by nature to procreate and protect their young. But wasting your own life — which is, moreover, the only one you’ll ever get according to the atheists — breaking your back for the benefit of some abstract future generations who might not even want or appreciate the happiness you’re creating for them — might not be satisfactory.
So communist beliefs evaporated and what was left in the Brezhnev era was relative morality just as Lenin had wished — except in practice it meant complete amorality. Not surprisingly, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the most amoral groups in society — the secret police and the career criminals — came out on top in the new Russia.
To the new Russian ruling class money is the only thing that matters and an end in itself. They do go to church — but they seem to be interested in religion only because of its promise of eternal life. They have it so good here on earth it would be a shame to leave it all behind and split into molecules.
Once the US became a global superpower Washington set itself up as a moral arbiter and a force for good in international relations. It promoted democracy, freedom, equality and religion as universal values, leading to a happier, more fulfilling life in this world but highly moral ones as well.
Thus America’s path toward its own amorality was more complicated. Much like Putin’s Russia the seeds of its destruction had been planted long ago — in the era of robber barons when many of the 20th-century fortunes were made and against which Teddy Roosevelt railed so much in his time.
“The business of America is business,” President Calvin Coolidge supposed to have declared in 1925.
“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,” confirmed Charles Erwin Wilson, the head of GM.
Even though both were misquoted, this didn’t make the phrases any less pivotal. The sentiments expressed gradually gave rise to the greed decade of the 1980s as a reaction to the idealistic altruism of the 1960s and 1970s, the corporatization of American life, the dominance of finance and the primacy of money.
The Donald Trump presidency is the culmination of American immorality to date. There have been dishonest presidents before and history knows some pretty corrupt administrations. But never before have the lying, the corruption and the self-dealing been so blatant. Nor has American society been so willing to accept the highly immoral priorities of the system, when the performance of the stock market takes clear precedent over people and the need to combat the pandemic, and when stock indexes seem to rally on the news of higher unemployment, longer bread lines and rising evictions.
The extraordinary — and wholly unprecedented — development in American history is that Trump is beloved by his followers not in spite of but specifically for what he is. For being a brazen and unapologetic grifter who rides the system, lies every time he opens his mouth, cheats on his wives and taxes, steers government business to his companies and tells the world to stuff it.
His followers imitate him by not wearing masks which are meant to prevent those of them who are infected with the coronavirus from giving it to their fellow Americans and even fellow Trumpists.
Trump’s America is no shining city upon the hill promoting a moral international order. Rather, it embraces the world’s dictators and counts among its closest allies Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. For Trump’s America an alliance with Vladimir Putin is not a mere transactional deal — it’s a deep ideological axis.
It remains to be seen whether the Joe Biden presidency could reverse this course. With over 74 million Americans voting for Trump — nearly as many people as live in Iran — that seems highly doubtful.
