After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made
A book review of the newest work from Ben Rhodes, the former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriter for President Barack Obama
After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made is the second book by Ben Rhodes, the former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriter for President Barack Obama, and a kind of sequel to the memoir of his time in the White House, The World As It Is.
I’ve rather enjoyed many of Rhodes’ podcasts with Crooked Media, Pod Save the World and Pod Save America, so I was familiar with his bio and political history when I began the book. Most of my early voting life I considered myself an independent and felt I could conceivably vote for a certain type of socially moderate Republican (I say conceivably because I’m not sure I ever actually voted for a Republican, ever.) Most of my twenties, I opted for 3rd Party candidates, feeling that neither major party really represented the way I felt about the world or the policies I wanted to see - the Republicans being too tied up with the Conservative Religious Right and the Democrats just a slightly more socially liberal version of the Republicans. Both were too enmeshed with big money corporate interests. Both banked on being “tough on crime” and used disingenuous salt-of-the-earth anecdotes to gain votes (“My father drove a tractor and therefore I am the right person to lead this nation through a variety of complex domestic and international issues.”) Both represented “The Man” in my mind.
When Obama ran for president, I had begun to see the danger in splitting the vote by “voting my conscience” with 3rd Parties, but mostly I wanted to vote for Obama - I wanted to be a part of this new America, an America that sends a Black man, with a name like Barack Hussein Obama, to the White House. It felt like we were finally putting the finishing touches on a truly multicultural, multi-racial democratic society and we were on the verge of an ever more progressive political landscape. Universal Healthcare was just around the corner! Paid Family Leave! An end to the War on Drugs and the Prison-Industrial-Complex! Common sense gun reform! It was all laid out in front of us like the Yellow Brick Road leading to Oz.
Then came 2016.
Actually, no, then came the reality that electing Obama wasn’t the beginning of a new, more progressive America. The endless wars were still endless. Big Money and Big Tech grew increasingly more powerful and more dangerous. I honestly wasn’t prepared for the racist backlash that followed Obama’s election, though in hindsight, I really should have seen it coming. In 2016, when Trump won the nomination, I knew there was no way I was voting for anyone but Hillary - nevermind I didn’t really love her as an option. Nevermind the Obama years hadn’t really created the New America I had been hoping for (there was always McConnell to blame for that, and I do.) Nevermind anything - there was no way I was going to risk splitting the vote on the Left and allow Donald effing Trump to wield the power of the President of the United States of America. No. Fucking. Way.
We know how that turned out.
Here we are, in 2021 and the part of me that maybe, possibly, conceivably, could vote for a Republican is thoroughly and permanently destroyed - not because I have changed my political philosophy drastically in the last couple decades, but because the Republicans have irreversibly gone absolutely batshit crazy. As far as I can tell, the Republican Party no longer even exists - they are the Trump Party. They threw in their lot with treasonous, lying, Qanon spouting, democracy destroying, women-hating, white supremacist, aporophobic bigots. They are dead to me as a political option. (Just learned that word, aporophobia - fear, disgust, and hostility toward poor people. An apt word for the followers of the Prosperity Gospel.)
On the other side of this coin, while I am absolutely fuming at the Republicans, I am also pretty steaming mad at the Democrats. How could you have let this happen? What are going to do to repair the system now? (Answer so far - not much. Again, there is plenty of blame for McConnell and the filibuster here, but at some point the Dems need to make a better case for themselves with the electorate.)
It was with this somewhat jaded perspective that I began this book, After the Fall. Rhodes reflects on the fall of American Liberal Democracy by shining a light on other faltering democracies around the world - Hungary, Russia, China (or more accurately, Hong Kong). These countries began the twentieth-first century, more or less, with the hope and promise of young liberal democracies and have slipped further and further into authoritarianism in the ensuing decades. (There are certainly more countries you could add to this list - India and Brazil, just for two examples - but Rhodes focuses on these three mostly because he had numerous contacts with members of the pro-democracy opposition in these countries. Some of whom have suffered immensely at the hands of the authoritarian regimes they are fighting, Alexey Navalny for instance.)
Rhodes begins his book with a breakdown of the “The Authoritarian Playbook” and an eerily prescient quote from Ece Temelkuran: “The final takeover does not happen with one spectacular Reichstag conflagration, but is instead an excruciating, years-long process of many scattered, seemingly insignificant little fires that smolder without flames.” The word excruciating seems to me the exact right word to describe the slow, seemingly unavoidable slide into authoritarianism that occurs over years and decades, until you can’t even figure out how you got to where you are. One of Rhodes’ main arguments in the book is that America spent most of the half-century after World War II, and certainly since the end of the Cold War, trying to remake the world in its image: Liberal Democracies for all! Globalization and open capitalism will benefit everyone! We’re so sure you’ll love democracy we’ll even invade and occupy your country to make sure you do it right!
If America was the Used Car Salesman of the late Twentieth Century, the 2008 global financial crisis was the lemon that the world bought and paid for only to have the wheels fall off on the way home. Sorry, no warranty, no money back, all sales final. No wonder countries like Russia, Hungary, and China have decided they are no longer buying whatever it is America is selling. We promised the world peace and prosperity through open capitalism and democratic principles and we gave them a global financial catastrophe instead. Follow that with the election, to the Presidency, of a TV personality with a pussy-grabbing problem and you can see why our credibility has eroded around the world. Good luck promoting democracy in Belarus when your own citizenry tries to overthrow election results through violent insurrection at the Capitol building.
pg 170-171
[Alan Greenspan’s testimony to Congress after the 2008 financial meltdown]
“I have found a flaw,”...referring to his basic worldview…Here was perhaps the most prominent embodiment of the American-led global economy acknowledging that the whole system was flawed. “I made a mistake,” Greenspan went on, “in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”
…People who had tacitly accepted the consensus of American-led globalization now saw both its failure and its potential replacement [China] …”The financial meltdown showed clearly that it is the greed of those capitalists that brought a lot of problems to a lot of people. That was the time that people saw the failure of the American model versus the success of Chinese authoritarianism.”
The story of America’s fall from grace is the main theme of Rhodes’ book, yet, at times, he paints it in a bit of a melodramatic fashion. The title of his book implies a certain amount of tragedy that this shining beacon on the hill has dropped so far and so fast. Sure, we like to think of ourselves as the greatest country in the world, the most influential democracy, with the grandest principles of freedom and liberty, but…are we? Have we really ever been? Seems to me it is our idea of ourselves that has fallen the farthest, and maybe that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps we thought a little too highly of ourselves the last 250 years. If Rhodes is occasionally a little too high on the America of his personal past - certainly he was full of hope about the path of the country when he joined Obama’s election campaign and administration - it is probably because, for him, America was a shining beacon in the hill, as it is for a person fitting a specific demographic in American society (white, male, economically stable). For him that light shone a lot brighter than it did for others; a sentiment he does recognize and admit.
Rhodes often acknowledges the dissonance between what America thinks of itself and what it is. A slave-holding nation founded on the principle of freedom. A country with institutions deeply embedded with racism and classism that touts the equality of all. A country that prides itself on its natural beauty and wild places that it stole through literal and cultural genocide. We very often do not even recognize the cruelty embedded in our own traditions - sports teams and golf courses named after Indigeneous tribes we pushed off the land; nursery rhymes to remember Christopher Columbus’ exploits (just the non-murderous ones.) I live in a state that until very recently celebrated Lee, Jackson, King Day: a celebration of 2 Confederate Generals on the very same day as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rhodes acknowledges these incongruous and incompatible aspects of American society, but occasionally he also waxes poetic about the America he feels has been lost. Almost as though he wants to…there’s no other way to say it…make America great again. For certain he is nostalgic for the Obama years or the 1990s, rather than some fictionalized, white-centric American past that the MAGA folks are yearning for; yet even this desire to go back to something else is both futile (obviously), and seems to negate the monstrous amount of work that progressive activists have put into building the America they think it should be - the America it has always claimed to be.
My favorite parts of the book are when Rhodes is interviewing activists around the world and getting their perspectives on both America, past and present, and their home countries. It is, in some way, comforting to hear those stories. To feel that others are out there watching what is happening here and nodding their heads in recognition. They’ve been through this. They can help us learn what to expect, recognize the warning signs, even if they can’t do anything to help us stop it. We’ve thought of ourselves as somehow different from the rest of the world for so long, it gives a sense of camaraderie with a larger global community to share in this struggle. We are not so different from other countries that have struggled with this same right-wing authoritarian pull.
It would do many Americans some good, I think, to hear from these global voices. To realize how foolish we sound when we claim “What is happening in your country could never happen here.” At the same time, our notion that America is the center of everything and everyone around the world looks to us is beginning to no longer be true. The last decade has shown that the world can, does, and will move on from America when it no longer serves their interests - and whether that be for good or ill is both a matter of perspective and remains to be seen. China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary no longer feel like they have to model themselves on our democracy and they have new arsenals at their diplomatic disposal when we bring up civil and human rights abuses in their countries (I can just imagine Putin chanting “I know you are, but what am I” the next time our diplomats bring up rigged elections). In this way America has fallen - when we lack even the pretense of being a shining light of democracy for the world, we lose our ability to influence these countries to hopefully improve the lives of millions of people.
Page 185
The international order of laws, rules, norms, and institutions that America has taken the lead in building since the end of World War II is supposed to at least curb excesses - to serve as a check on flagrant abuses of human rights…to at least discourage corruption and the bullying of smaller countries by bigger ones. But none of it is self-enforcing. As the United States abandoned any investment in that international order under Trump, China ramped up its efforts to create its own new reality through the sheer force of its size and the dogged nature of its actions…As one prominent African entrepreneur put to me…”I mean, one can argue with China and say, well, China is not democratic. But when you look at the results - hundreds of millions of people brought out of poverty in a very short period of time - one must say, well, okay, how do we learn from the way that has happened?”
It is my hope, and Rhodes as well in the final chapter of his book, that we, as Americans, will use this moment to reflect on who we are (indeed this is the title of the final section of the book - Who We Are: Being American). Not just who we pretend to be or who we aspire to be but who we are now - with all the flaws and missteps - and how we can move forward as a country to where we want to be. Rhodes recalls his image of America from his youth as a country that does Big Things. We certainly have a lot of Big Challenges ahead of us - climate change, health system collapse, economic collapse, growing inequality - and the question remains, can we Do Big Things together, as Americans? As someone who worked for the first Black president of the United States, Rhodes draws some inspiration from Obama.
Page 323
How I used to marvel at Obama’s patience with America, the way he could weather bizarre slights at home and defend its exceptionalism abroad from a position of pragmatism - maintaining that even a flawed America still offers the world a unique opportunity, an example of how citizens of a multiethnic, multiracial democracy can change things for the better. How that movement could make a place for someone like me, even if I didn’t share an identity beyond that contested word which could, after all, apply to someone who came from anywhere: American.
In the end, one of the hopes we have is that nothing is preordained - we still have some self-determination in how this story of America plays out.
Page 331-332
This was the most obvious and terrifying truth that I’d come to see these last few years: that there was nothing inherent in America that made us immune to the viruses that had consumed all manner of societies in the past…Things that I once thought unimaginable could happen here, in America. Just voting Trump out was not going to do anything to change that reality…that would require more collective effort, the work of a generation in the cyclical fight over what it means to be American.
Like all human beings, we are fallen, able to do both good and evil. Recognizing that truth, however, only reinforces our agency for events. There is no predetermined reason that the unbridled capitalism we’ve championed needs to fuel rampant inequality and climate change around the world. There is no reason that the United States has to organize its national security state into a machine that wages an endless and self-corrupting war against the unconquerable fact of terrorism. There is no reason that technological platforms created by human beings need to run on algorithms that reinforce our darker and more destructive aspects. Moreover, the system that has been set up over more than two hundred years of American history does offer each generation an opportunity to think twice before committing irreversible damage, and to use democratic mechanisms to redirect…the American experience.
American democracy doesn’t offer us immunity from human fallibility, but it does offer second chances.