National Post (National Edition)
That fading city on a hill
It's the end of another marathon American election campaign. Is it also the end of the American age? That's been declared prematurely many times before, but in this election we have heard more often, and more intensely, that if the other side wins, America itself is at stake.
American political candidates routinely speak about their country as the greatest political, economic and cultural achievement in the history of mankind. Occasionally we hear that too in Canada. Older, more experienced countries never do that.
But does anyone sincerely believe that about America today? For those of us who love the United States from outside, this day of foreboding concludes a long season of sadness.
I love Fifth Avenue, the main street of New York, the caput mundi, the capital of the world. Fifth Avenue is what the Imperial Forum was to ancient Rome, the centre of power and prestige, culture and commerce.
From the Empire State Building to the New York Public Library, from St. Patrick's Cathedral to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from Greenwich Village to Central Park, from Saks to Bergdorf Goodman, from the Plaza Hotel to Trump Tower — all of American life, for better or for worse, is here in one way or another.
For those who sense a certain fin-de-regime ambience this election, the barbarian hordes are coming. Or at least the grand dames of Fifth Avenue are expecting them.
In June, rioters and looters smashed and grabbed their way up Fifth Avenue, besmirching the protests in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Saks Fifth Avenue boarded up its windows after Macy's was looted, then added a chain-link fence topped by razor wire. Many countries do not have prisons so well-secured.
Americans like to speak of their “peaceful transfer
of power” as if it is not done routinely by dozens of countries which find no need to remark upon it as remarkable. This time there have been widespread condemnations of President Donald Trump for raising questions about that transfer of power. What is not in doubt is that some of the wealthiest, most influential and informed institutions in the country do not expect peace in the streets.
The security excess that always surrounds the American president built a “non-scalable” fence around the entire White House complex. There is some logic at work there; many people are loathed by Trump and they loathe him right back. So precautions would seem in order.
Yet in San Francisco, in Chicago, in Boston, American liberals boarded up
their storefronts and condominium lobbies and public buildings against expected eruptions of mob violence from those on the far left. Police have closed ritzy Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills Tuesday and Wednesday.
Why leftist radicals would sack the buildings of liberals who are as eager to see the end of Trump as they are is a mystery, but savvy businesses do not spend tens of thousands on plywood and Plexiglas and private security and pit bulls unless they think it necessary. The pandemic caused a toilet paper shortage; politics is causing a plywood shortage.
Not only in the caput mundi. The New York Times reports that a contractor in Colorado has a two-year (!) supply of plywood for retailers who call upon him to
board up their stores.
“Our local lumberyard asked what's going on, why such a big order,” the contractor said. “I said, `We think all hell is going to break loose.' That's why we are stocking up.”
All of that is the afterburn of the early summer riots. Police also prepared for the prospect of militia violence by those who wished to “secure” polling places and intimidate voters, a threat from the far-right rather than the far-left.
Can it be only 30 years since Ronald Reagan left the presidency, extolling America with his favourite image of John Winthrop's “shining city on a hill”?
“I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it,” Reagan said in his farewell address.
“But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace — a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity …
“And how stands the city on this winter night?” he asked.
Indeed. How stands the city this November day? The streets are eerily empty. The commerce and creativity suspended, boarded up. There is little harmony and fears for peace.
Soon, the winning candidate will announce that with his election, America's best days are still to come. Election 2020 suggests the opposite; maybe the best has come and gone. The city sits solitary. Are the lights now going out?