The United States Faces a Crisis It Once Diagnosed in Others

Who knows what Alexis de Tocqueville would say if he returned today from his exploratory “grand tour” of the United States. Would he still hold the same view of democracy in America? Would he recognise in today’s United States the country that once guaranteed equal rights and opportunities?

Not only has America long been the country where inequalities are greatest — remember the Occupy Wall Street slogan, “We are the 99%”? — but it is also a country where violence has been elevated to government policy.

And to think that poor Tocqueville, so enthusiastic that he extolled American democracy over a thousand pages in his Democracy in America, was convinced that war was now a thing of the past.

America has always been a violent country (not just in the movies), but now that violence is institutionalised. It has become part of cultural policy — ethical, officialised, liberalised.

What has happened to America? What has transformed the most advanced country in the West, defender of freedoms and beacon of democracy, into a troubled place?

Many point the finger at Donald Trump, a restless and fickle president who behaves like a true populist, quick to contradict himself and embrace extreme ideas without worrying about the consequences — convinced, above all, that peace is achieved through war.

But Trump is only the latest stage (for now) of a long journey toward political and cultural decline, one which began with the Vietnam War and has gradually intensified over time.

The spectre of anocracy

America’s coming dark age is called “anocracy,” a term denoting a government suspended between democratic freedoms and autocratic tendencies. Anocracy is democracy in the balance: it occurs in an autocratic regime seeking to democratise itself, but equally in a democratic country sliding toward despotism. It is typical of societies that, emerging from a dictatorial past, are preparing to undergo a democratic transition — or, conversely, of societies that, despite a solid democratic history, are slowly sliding toward autocracy.

Is there reason to fear that the United States is transforming into an anocracy? Many factors contribute to this state of institutional crisis, ranging from the rise of populism to the collapse of elite consensus, from the perception of social insecurity to the climate of violence established both internally and externally.

According to Peter Turchin, author of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration (2023), this is a consequence of the alternation between integrative and disintegrative phases. America, dragging much of the West along with it, is currently undergoing one of these negative phases, which can last as long as a century.

Turchin’s view may seem like a return to the cycles and recurrences of history, which have fascinated humanity since time immemorial. Polybius identified cyclical forms of government, Plato alluded to them in The Republic, and, later, Giambattista Vico made them the cornerstone of his thought. Even Nietzsche speaks of the return of the identical. But the version closest to Turchin’s seems to be the anti-modern one of Oswald Spengler, the author of The Decline of the West, who compares civilisations to vegetables — subject to flowering, maturation, and decay.

It is no coincidence that Spengler predicts the definitive political form of the final civilisation will be “Caesarism”: the rise of an authoritarian leader. Something America has never experienced before.

There would be no need to say more about this historical determinism, were it not for the fact that Turchin’s variant involves the use of sophisticated statistical calculations based on the innovative techniques of “cliodynamics” — the science of history on which he has been working with his team.

By analysing historical data since the post-Second World War era and their economic and social consequences, Turchin arrives at conclusions that are less fanciful than Spengler’s and considerably more convincing.

Collapsing wages, the “wealth pump,” the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the privileged elite, a lack of solidarity, and the glorification of individualism: these would be the main causes of decline. This is coupled with the rise of emerging elites — educated and possessing the necessary qualifications to attain positions of power — for whom, however, there are not enough available positions. Competition among elites can lead to the formation of counter-elites, thereby increasing social disintegration and instability.

There is even a role for Ayn Rand’s objectivism, which seems to be enjoying considerable popularity. Rand, a Russian-American writer and author of We the Living (1936), advocated a rigid form of selfishness in which the individual’s sole task is personal success and the preservation of oneself and one’s own interests.

Physician, heal thyself

To understand public opinion in Trumpian America, this perspective must be supplemented with other symptoms highlighted by authors such as Michael J. Sandel on meritocracy (The Tyranny of Merit, 2020) and Barbara F. Walter, author of How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them (2022). Walter reveals the existence of the Political Instability Task Force (PITF), created in 1994 under President Bill Clinton and now hosted by the Center for Systemic Peace, to predict at least two years in advance in which countries a civil war might break out.

One of the key predictive factors for determining whether civil war will erupt in a nation is the tendency to move “toward” or “away” from democracy: both movements are indicative of the political instability that could lead to violence.

To determine the degree of risk, the analysis ranges from specific warning signs to complex algorithmic calculations. Among other factors, according to Walter, one must consider whether a country is founded on an ethnic or religious identity and, finally, the impact of the internet, the widespread use of smartphones, and the development of social media. Social-media algorithms are true “accelerators” of violence, tending to maintain a continuous state of crisis along with the perception that moderate policies are failing.

Turchin and Walter operate on the same ground and complement each other, since in both cases the goal is to analyse historical facts to understand how much a country is risking in terms of democracy. This is not merely sociology but a matter of political urgency, given what is happening in the world. The most surprising conclusion, however, is that now, among the countries at risk of instability, the United States itself must be included.

As the saying goes: medice, cura te ipsum!