The World Turned Inside-Out

On this July 4, the United States is facing a challenge to the existence of the nation that was born from the Declaration of Independence, ratified on this date (more or less) 248 years ago.  Just yesterday, Kevin Roberts (president of the Heritage Foundation, author of the draconian Project 2025, a blueprint for a second #P01135809 term) said publicly:

“We are in the process of the Second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” 

Let that sink in for a moment. 

The title of this blog post is a riff on the marching tune played while British troops surrendered at Yorktown in 1781 – The World Turned Upside Down. Here’s how Lin-Manuel Miranda portrayed this in Hamilton.

In my essay last Thursday on the Cold War, I stopped at the point where the Berlin Wall came down and the post-World War II global framework was wrenched apart.  I thought it might be interesting to watch again the video that most of us recall from November 9, 1989.

We had no idea what was to come – the fall of Gorbachev, the rise of Yeltsin, and the ultimate triumph of Putin – and how those events would shape the world we live in today.

Currently, autocrats are in the ascendancy across the world.  Right-wing parties have increased their share of representatives in the European parliament.  Elections in France also signal the triumph of the political right, while elections in Britain (scheduled for today, of all things) are expected to show a shaky victory for the left-leaning Labor Party over an abysmally failing Conservative Party.  The Liberal-Democrats, a strong progressive third party, are expected to have enough seats in Parliament to pull Labor to the left, while the Tories still have a lot of populist support throughout the country for their anti-immigrant, anti-tax, and anti-government policies. The government of the UK is as likely to be hamstrung by its political extremes. Sound familiar?

In the United States, recent events (I’ll write more about them tomorrow) threaten an American populist redirection as the Supreme Court and the #P01135809 campaign promise a white-nationalist Christo-fascist regime if he wins reelection. Here are a few similar dates (there are more, I know, but this is a good sample).

• The World Turned Upside Down in 1781. 

• The United States Turned Upside Down in 1865.

• The World Turned Upside Down in 1945. 

• The World Turned Upside Down in 1989. 

• The United States Turned Upside Down on November 4, 2008, when it elected Barack Obama to the presidency.

One thing all of these “upside-down” dates had in common: they moved in the direction of a more complete democracy.

What’s going on in the world (and in the United States right now) is a World Turned Inside Out moment – moving from democracy to authoritarianism. 

It Can Happen Here.