A Weird Thought

It's been said that nothing is harder to predict than the future. Indeed, I suspect there may be only one thing we hypermoderns do, in trying to understand the times we live in, that is more hazardous than our feeble attempts at prophecy. It is when we - often very smugly and comfortably - project the tendencies of the present onto the past, and "read back into" our recent history more or less the exact outlines of our current situation. To borrow from Orwell: Is Oceania currently at war with Eastasia? Why, then we've always been at war with Eastasia.

Case in point: It may seem, in keeping with the general fallout from Covid-19, that the most glaring feature of current Sino-American relations is our two countries' mutual, mounting animosity and distrust. At the same time, we know that that hardly explains all recent events Chinese-American, right? It doesn't, for instance, begin to explain our rather advanced degree of trust, collaboration - dare one even say cohabitation? - during the pre-Trump previous 25 years. 

The fact is that neither of us got to this point of bitter separation/divorce merely - as some married couples do - by hating, suspecting and accusing each other, and otherwise maintaining a healthy social distance. Nor did our previous Mutual Infatuation Society - one that may yet be with us in some circles, but that surely climaxed in the two decades on either side of AD 2000 - exactly come out of nowhere either. Rather, its striking degree of pre-Trump progress appears to be a quite rich and complex phenomenon: indeed, one that may have been some long time coming, through many delays, detours, hopes and frustrations (c.1860-2000). Along with, arguably, a shared persistence in overcoming divers obstacles across well over two centuries.

My own overwhelming sense is that what climaxed c. 2005 was partly the fruition of a shared dream of both countries. A dream, at least on the American side - and going as far back as Franklin and Jefferson - of a young, vigorous post-Western civilization seeking validation, guidance and commercial opportunity from what was, after all, not just any old Asian country, but in fact the oldest pre-Western civilization in the world.

But now suppose that what the Jeffersonian American Project longed for was both a brother-civilization, if you will, and an ally. If so, then two further points seem brutally obvious to me: our hunger for Chinese affirmation was not on account of 

1) any Yankee inferiority complex with respect to either Europe or Asia, or
2) any lack of confidence in the wisdom of our own conceits.

To the contrary, my repeated impression of Jeffersonian-Painean America (c. 1800-1820) suggests a country more than confident of both its right and its capacity, maybe not to rule, but surely to "overtake" and enfold? the better part of the globe. Or at all events, those parts of it that weren't firmly within the orbit of Imperial China. My question is, might not both of us - young American and ancient Chinese empires - also have been seeking common cause against a common enemy? Against, say, a Concert of European powers that viewed us both as either already, or in process of getting, way too big for our breeches? A Concert of Europe that had every intention of taking us both down at least a peg or two? My point is not to cast doubt on, much less excuse the pettiness and jealousy of European resentments. At the same time, considering that the worst European "snobbery" may have nothing* on good old Chinese and American "we-are-the-Future" smugness, self-entitlement and proudly imperial "mission," are we sure we can entirely blame them?

*At least from pretty much everything I've seen, read and heard.

Which brings us down to the present day. And with it the question of whether not just Europe, but the rest of the globe hasn't got still more reason to be leery of even the most dynamically visionary USA and PRC - either together or separately. In any case, and whatever the current ledger may show of dynamism and vision on both our sides, there seems to be no loss of smugness, or sense of Imperial mission. May I suggest, then, that what we "Chimericans" share most especially and enthusiastically is no mere contempt for "the West" (to say nothing of that lame, despicable Russia). Rather is it a mounting sense of the non-American West's superfluity and obsolescence, and increasing irrelevance to the world's future. Albeit, I'll admit, for two initially quite different reasons in each case. 

In the case of today's Neoimperial China, this contempt seems largely due to its confidence that its own culture not only vastly predates the West, but can expect a vibrant future well beyond the latter's decline and demise. Whereas our Imperial American disdain seems driven by something different but not unrelated: an ingrained habit - one I find useful to call Neojeffersonian - of seeing ourselves as not just Europe's rightful and much superior legatee and successor, but as having successfully outgrown and transcended the better part of the entire West's traditions, its limitations, perhaps even its very definition and character.* 

* In particular Paragraph 10, and also the section under the subheading "Role of Caleb Cushing."

In short, our joint "Chimerican" disdain and impatience of the West can hardly be described as a common sentiment, proceeding as it does from hugely different origins and histories. At the same time, that doesn't mean our two coinciding futures have not at various times (like, eg., c. 1996-2016) foreshadowed a kind of convergence of attitudes, or even a common conviction - at least as regards the (rest of the) West. The issue, then, is not why both an ancient China and an infant America may have looked down on Europe over 200 years ago. Rather it is what has made us both, in c. the past 30 years, so blithely confident of our vast superiority - whether together or in competition - to the rest of the world. So blithely confident that we had most if not all the answers to the world's dilemmas: hence the inevitability - an irreverent wag might argue? - that we both should be so very differently, yet no less miserably, caught off-balance by the explosion of COVID-19.

(to be continued)