Trump or Biden, America will continue to decline

By the time you read this, voting for America's next president shall have been over. It is possible a winner shall have been called. If the results are pretty clear and unassailable, somebody shall have conceded and a winner declared. If the results are more contentious, then it may take a wee bit more time to know if it is still Trump or Biden this time.

But one thing is pretty certain. Whoever emerges the victor will be leading an America that has been greatly diminished in the eyes of the world. It is a diminution largely of its own doing. No longer is America the great leader by example nor the beacon of light and inspiration for those who seek freedom and opportunity with a fair sense of moral uprightness and responsibility.

Many things about America now are hypocritical, self-righteous, in excess and scandalous. Its hallowed institutions are crumbling. Some, like the media, assume too much and assert beyond the scope of responsibility. Others, like its military, no longer command respect. While before a carrot and stick would suffice, now the carrot has been done away with. And even then, it now has to actually brandish the stick with menace and malice.

If America is showing signs of imploding, it is because it is. And it is all the fault of democracy, the kind uniquely practiced in America by Americans for Americans. This is not the democracy born in Athens nor vividly demonstrated by the French. This is the democracy that asserts freedom to do anything without regard for reason or consequence.

To me, real democracy includes the freedom to exercise restraint in face of urges that are self-righteous and, therefore, ultimately selfish. There is a whole universe of examples, of which I will cite a few. In the elections just finished, one of the contenders, the sitting president Donald Trump, has had to fight for every minute of his presidency because the CNN-led media cavalry got it all wrong about him the first time.

Why is America tip-toeing in the South China Sea, unlike how it is prone to kick doors open in the Middle East? Because its interests in the South China Sea are not as urgent and self-consuming as the haven of terrorists, whose success once brought America to its knees. Why is personal safety only secondary to unrestrained movement in the hierarchy of pandemic imperatives.

For all its bitching about rights and equality for women, it never got around to electing Hillary Clinton. And now another try with Kamala Harris, not on her qualifications but on being a woman and black, to give substance to a long-limp form. And that is just about it. America is largely hollow inside. Ask not for whom the bell of Black Lives Matter tolls. It never will for the likes of Money or Bron, who white cops won't touch with a 10-foot pole.

America cannot have its cake and eat it too. Not even democracy is sturdy and resilient enough for that. You gnaw at democracy's roots, which essentially is respect for the dignity of any man, and it eventually dies. Only America's headstart of greatness, as sown by its founding fathers who understood perfectly what they wanted, has kept America from disintegrating sooner. But it will. It will be the undoing of the great founding.